Shiny Tools

The perennial "Shiny tools don't make the craftsman" argument is bubbling along on one of the fora again. I confess it maketh me to yawn mightily. To my mind, making it a point of pride to use the crappiest-looking tool for the job is just as crazy as buying a fancy one and thinking that's the solution to woodworking genius. Oddly it only seems to be an issue in the wunnerful world of hand tools, which also makes no sense to me. Now if folks got their undergarments in a twist over someone spending £600 on a power tool that will last, what? 20 years, if the gods smile benignly upon you. Well, I could see the point of sucking the collective teeth. A bit. But £250 on a plane that'll last you the rest of your life and probably all of someone else's? Or even lots of someone elses? It's cheap, man. Cheap.

Why yes, I have used that argument in justifying a tool purchase before now. How did you guess?

But anyway, to those folks who want to be smug about using their rusty Stanley Bailey they fished out of a pond in 1973, I say - You flash so-and-so. How about this fully operation piece of tool goodness, then?

Somewhere among the worm holes is a working tool. See?

You can hear the intake of breath from the Health and Safety-concious from here... This, my friends, is apparently how you go about removing the bark from your house in the mountains of Romania. Apparently hearing the munching of the little critters eating their way through the walls of your abode in the dead of night is not conducive to a peaceful mind, so the bark has to go.