Mac Disaster

That depends on the finish, degree of accuracy you want, the amount of time you are willing to take and the amount of frustration you are willing to tolerate.

There are cases of impossibility such as with the jig saw.

There are many cases of repeatability where the equipment has to be rechecked after each cut to avoid substantial errors. There are some where the lack of sturdiness of the machine prevents an accurate result being achieved with any degree of certainty. Sliding compound mitre saws are an example of this.

I agree with you that the use of jigs is helpful, but then you have to spend time making them. I do that for cases where a jig will be used a lot ( your circular saw one would be a good example) or for cases where I can't think of a better or alternative approach.

Actually for a circular saw I would never use the rip fence anyway - there are too few cases where they are useful. The better solution is to use a guide rail. I occasionally do that if cutting a very large sheet, but then cut it over size and do the precision cuts on the table saw.

One example of that was where I was making a ramp for a wheelchair. This was using decking boards and there had to be a smooth transition from the lower level onto the ramp. To do this involved thicknessing the first board at an angle and so I made a jig designed to hold the board but raising one side. The whole lot would then pass through the thicknesser. This worked very well and I suppose took me about 30 mins to make the jig. Realistically, it's a one use jig, or maybe again if I need to replace/repair the ramp.

I don't mind spending time making jigs to do very specific things, but not a whole load of them just to do the basics that can be achieved by using more sturdy equipment.

I also don't mind doing the setups. For example, setting up the spindle moulder or dado cutter, doing test cuts, measuring with digital caliper, adding shims to the tooling and repeat can be time consuming. However, once done, they remain solid until the next set of cuts is done. It would be incredibly frustrating if the whole exercise had to be repeated for each cut because the tooling moved around.

If that were the case then I would agree with you.

Like quite a few other people, I thought, based on experience with a rather average B&D jigsaw, that they were generically very limited, mainly because the blade wandered.

It got used very little because of this and in the end was thrown out, never to be replaced.

I then had the opportunity to try out a Bosch GST at a tool exhibition. Like chalk and cheese. So I bought one. A lot can be done with this and accurate results for the used purposes obtained. Nowadays it gets quite a bit of use. I also have a bandsaw, which is in some respects able to do some work that a jigsaw might otherwise do, plus it can cut definitely perpendicular with very thick material. Of course it has one basic limitation - can't cut in the middle of something.

However, coming back to the jigsaw, what decision would I make? There are three:

- Don't buy one at all

- Buy a £40 one and find that it is limited to a very small range of jobs like cutting holes where the results don't show

- Buy a £100 one and do a fair range of jobs with it including those where the results do show.

If I had relatively little money, I wouldn't buy the £40 one - it's pointless.

I think that you are missing the point about necessity.

I could certainly afford to use professionals for anything required. In some cases, I do because it is work that I don't want to do. Examples of that are roof work and heavy ground work. One other is where there are some expensive materials involved, I haven't done the exercise before and I want the supplier to take responsibility for the entire project. An example of that was some slate floor.

Pretty much everything else, I do because I am not satisfied with the standard of work of most professionals. The assumption made is that the work is being done to a price and therefore in the shortest possible time. Inevitably, this results in corner cutting, lack of attention to detail and sometimes poor finish.

I'll give you an example. Some years ago, I needed a new Aga to be connected to the gas supply. Normally I would have done that, but decided that I wanted the supplier to do it since commissioning was included in the price anyway. The result was shoddy. It passed the gas soundness tests but the pipework wasn't straight, had splashes of solder over it and there were extra unnecessary elbows. A pig's breakfast. The supplier complained bitterly when I withheld payment until the work was redone by a different fitter and properly.

In another instance, I was having some oak joinery such as a staircase, doors etc., hardwood flooring supplied and laid. Nowadays I would do that myself, but hadn't done a floor before. The supplier found a carpenter who had done a lot of this and other joinery work and was in semi retirement. There were quite a few unknowns to the project. The best solution to this was to agree a daily rate and have daily reviews and discussions of what was happening. He knew that I would not accept corner cutting. The alternative would have been a sandbagged fixed price. The outcome was an excellent job at a good price which we were both happy with. I certainly wouldn't use this arrangement with most professionals.

Other work I do myself, because, as I said, I am not satisfied with the standards of professional work. There would be no point in getting into a discussion about payment because the work done wasn't up to that required.

For me, good quality and accurate work is a necessity. I tend to take quite a bit more time over projects than a professional would be willing to spend in order to obtain the required result. This may not be the same type of necessity as somebody else might define -

For example - some people may accept any old bathroom rework because it's a choice between that and having nothing. I will put in the care and attention to very precisely line up the plumbing, the fittings, the tiles and so on. To me that's a necessity and not utopia.

To that end, I have been making bathroom cabinets including the doors. To achieve the correct visual effect required working to fine tolerances on the joinery for it and attention to detail. For example, the room door has stop chamfers on the frame which are of a certain cut and stop at specific distances from the corners. The cabinet doors have the same thing, but accurately scaled to the door size. The result looks correctly coordinated, and in the design used was necessary to avoid bittiness.

You can't buy doors of this design, so that was a necessity.

In one area, I do indulge myself in the hobby sense and that is with woodworking hand tools. For example, I spend quite a bit of time as a relaxation honing and tuning my collection of Lie Nielsen planes. These are used for specific types of project where I want to achieve something with the appearance of hand rather than machine finish. It is quite different doing this as opposed to milling material on the power machinery. I could probably achieve the same results with much less expensive planes, but I enjoy caring for and using these.

I would never suggest that anybody uses public transport. I think that much of it should be shut down to make room for car access.