Compliments of the Season

Dashing in to wish the loyal (and much-neglected) reader a Merry Winter Festival Of Choice. Let's hope 2009 will see me getting my woodworking self in gear rather than stuck in neutral, eh? Happy Woodworking, folks.

Getting a handle on it

A tiny update to the Veritas Dovetail Saw blurb. BugBear got all excitable with the images of the LV and LN handles and came up with this:

He's kindly given permission to use it, so I have. The red line is the Veritas and the blue the LN. It's a very small difference, isn't it? It's interesting though; when I had a couple of prototypes to try, the difference in those was apparently only 5%, which doesn't sound like much, and yet the contrast was noticeable. It's a lesson to us handle meddlers; spare the rasp and don't spoil the handle. Try a file instead.  ;)

Sincerest form of flattery

Now is it me, or is there a certain amount of déjà vu going on in the plane world at the mo'? The new Stanley planes I think I've already muttered about - Chris Schwarz does it better here. But I think these offerings recently spotted in the Tilgear Winter Offers flyer may be new to anyone outside Tilgear's very limited ken. i.e. Most of the known world.

Look at all familiar to you? There's more (prices plus VAT, whatever percentage that is this week):

Well, well, well, sez I to myself when I saw them. China? Or India? Place your bets. Now you could argue that LN wasn't entirely guiltless concerning a certain amount of flattery in reproducing the Stanley originals in the first place (them and a few dozen others over the years!), but this is extracting the Michael to a ridiculous degree. If I was within reach of Tilgear's emporium, I'd be over there in a trice to take a look and ask some searching questions; I imagine the quality of castings, machining and so forth is sadly lacking at those prices... The really worrying thing is how many unscrupulous dealers (probably on de 'bay) will employ some economy with the truth in order to try and pass off these low cost copies as the Real Deal - and how many people will get taken in. It'll certainly add an extra requirement for caution when looking for secondhand LN bargains. You have been warned.

ETA: On more careful examination, the edge plane seems to be rather more Veritas than LN. That's nice; good to know these rip-off merchants are pursuing an equal opportunities policy... :-/