Head first down the long slippery slope...

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Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, because Lee Valley has taken all my money again and there's none left to spend anywhere else.

Just bought my first decent plane, the Veritas Low-Angle Smooth Plane with A2 blade. Since it was also staring me in the face, I also bought the Veritas Jointer Fence to go with it. $250 poorer, I'm now on the street begging for money so I can go buy more planes. Worse than a slippery slope, it's essentially a vertical drop. Someone help me!

?c=1&p=41716&cat=1,41182

[diggerop]

plane here in Oz. : )

down for pricing)

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I'll bet a sizable portion of the amount is for shipping. There must be a few decent tool manufacturers in Oz. How do their prices compare?

[diggerop]

There are some excellent small-scale tool makers over here, however, they are all relatively expensive. e.g. Harold and Saxon chisels - $700 plus for a set of six, HNT Gordon wooden planes - starting at $380.

This nation has a relatively small population, (22 million at present) plus large distances between population centres, along with a largely unionised and expensive workforce. Shipping is expensive. Large scale, low cost manufacture requires that we compete with and export to, the rest of the world. We cannot. Consequently, local manufacture is expensive.

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[Robatoy]

It is safe to say that all your exports are to overseas markets?

[diggerop]

It is safe to say that all your exports are to overseas markets?

Heh. One of the quirks of being an island nation. I'd imagine that having that enormous affluent potential market sitting below your southern border must be a huge plus for Canadian manufacture.

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Of course, but it also has some unique disadvantages too.

[Swingman]

Yabbut, over much of it'd take 100 acres to run one head of cattle. :)

[diggerop]

Heh, that or worse in places. Some, on the other hand is first class cattle country. Fortunately, we do have an abundance of land area, - my state (WA) almost is almost 4 times the size of Texas ; )

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[Swingman]

I don't know how old you are, but there is a good chance I was there before you. 22 million, eh? You think it's empty now ... the population has exactly doubled since I lived there in the early 60's. :)

[diggerop]

Was about 8.5 million when I was born. How old am I? ...... it depends on which part ..... the body has lots of creaky joints and doesn't seem to work as good as it used to. The brain, on the other hand, is convinced that it is perennially 25 years old and the rest of the body had better get moving and keep up. : )

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[John]

and experienced the joys of working with such a truly fine tool, I can offer you no help, only sympathy. Probably best that you hand your credit card over to SWMBO while you're still far enough from that precipice to retain your solvency.

Reply-to address is real John

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Kind of strange isn't it? Everywhere else, populations have quadrupled and more. What's with all these TV shows I've seen where the Australian man is depicted as spending 90% of his time chasing (and catching) women?

Since the remaining 10% of the Australian man's time is shown to be spent by drinking, I'm guessing that he's too drunk when he catches those women.

Either that or most of them have suffered catastrophic personal injuries by playing Australian rules football.

:)

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No SWMBO around, which may or may not be a good thing when it comes to my money, but either way I'm doomed. I'm already looking for ways to sharpen the damned thing and I haven't even used it yet. Considered the Lee Valley MKII for $399.00, but I think I'll go with the Worksharp3000 for $239.00.

As usual when buying some tool, I suffer from the woodworker's chronic impairment of rationalization. I easily envision using it all sorts of other places besides the current project I happen to be working one. Once that happens, I'm doomed to buy something else. Once in awhile I actually envision that if I was a klutz at building or fixing things, I might actually be rich.

[diggerop]

There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. The reason we spend so much time chasing women is so we can have someone to cook and clean and fetch cold beer. This allows us to focus on the most important things in life, - eating, drinking, watching football, drinking, fishing, drinking, shooting, drinking and watching cricket. As a bonus, a really good woman will also go and earn the money to pay for the beer. There may be something else she could do, but it escapes me at the moment. ; )

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[Larry Jaques]

On Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:09:46 -0500, the infamous [e-mail] scrawled the following:

charged right up there along the failing dollar.

Send me all your planes and SIN NO MORE, HEATHEN! (Got my address?)

[basilisk]

Feed the dogs.

basilisk

[Dave Balderstone]

Hey, they've a nice book on sale right now. I drove by after work today and picked up a copy...

Fifteen and an arf Canuckibux. Hardcover, even. Beautiful plumage!

[Larry Jaques]

On Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:21:58 -0600, the infamous Dave Balderstone scrawled the following:

Cool. From $12.89 on eBay and Amazoned, too!

[David Nebenzahl]

On 10/31/2009 3:09 PM [e-mail] spake thus:

San Francisco's "Care Not Cash", that give homeless people such as yourself vouchers for shelter and food. Otherwise, they'd just spend all that money on tools.