A business trip took me to Winnipeg this week and I had a couple of hours t o kill before my flight home this afternoon. Lee Valley is a short hop fro m the airport and I decided to pay a visit as I've never been in one of the ir stores. The service was exceptional, the staff was knowledgeable and I left with two of those great bench dogs, a 3" engineers square, a shop apro n and a full suite of current catalogs. Had a productive conversation with one of the guys on vise options for the new bench I'm going to build. Fin ally, came in $10 under budget -- the budget set by the amount I got for pe ddling a router and table on CL last week. You guys north of the border go t it good!
kill before my flight home this afternoon. Lee Valley is a short hop from the airport and I decided to pay a visit as I've never been in one of their stores. The service was exceptional, the staff was knowledgeable and I left with two of those great bench dogs, a 3" engineers square, a shop apron and a full suite of current catalogs. Had a productive conversation with one of the guys on vise options for the new bench I'm going to build. Finally, came in $10 under budget
-- the budget set by the amount I got for peddling a router and table on CL last week. You guys north of the border got it good!
I just hate having one 10 minutes away from home. :-)
I used to have a Woodcraft store that was that close until we moved.. What is even worse than having a WW store close is when "everyone" that works there knows your name, even when you don't know their names. :-)
Before the demise of Woodworkers Warehouse the local store was too easily accessed. As a result I went through 3 generations of table saws, 2 jointers, 2 dust collectors, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't so much that I couldn't control myself as it was that as I took on more projects and my skills grew I found I needed different types of, or larger more stable and powerful machines. WW seemed to time their sales (and demise) to my needs pretty well...
WOW that is a lot of equipment! Although I am waiting as I type this for my 3rd TS. I have had 2 DP's, and 2 planers, that is about the only duplications of the big stuff.
Unfortunately the brands of equipment that I have been buying in the last 5 years or so never goes on sale. ;~(
The phone call from Woodcraft just indicated that they are on their way right now. Yipeeee.
It does seem like a lot but when I found that things seemed unsafe or that I was taxing the equipment I had it was time for something bigger. The jointer is a prime example... I had a 6" but when I started jointing long heavy boards I actually had it standing on edge one day with the end of the out feed table facing the floor. Needless to say, this was dangerous! Bolting it down was not really an option due to space and concrete issues. The short beds also made jointing the long lengths tricky. That is when the DJ-20 came along... no way I can tip that over and the longer beds allow me to joint long boards with no problems. If I was only making furniture and not doing any architectural/structural woodworking the smaller machines would have been fine. Truly needs based acquisitions vs. compulsion!
I've gone through generations of table saws, dust collectors, shapers, thickness planers, jointers, and ambient air cleaners. The only stationary tool that I will continue to have multiples of is bandsaws. I have an 18" in my shop and a 36" in my wood shed. The latter of which, a Crescent made in
1905, is intended for milling logs (small but not firewood size) and resawing as it is large, heavy and has 5 HP of power. I sold my old stuff off... It's probably a good thing that I don't have room to keep the dups. ;~) Then again, I haven?t found anything I was doing on the smaller machines that I cannot do on the larger ones. I also watch carefully and patiently for deals so as to not break the bank...
kill before my flight home this afternoon. Lee Valley is a short hop from the airport and I decided to pay a visit as I've never been in one of their stores. The service was exceptional, the staff was knowledgeable and I left with two of those great bench dogs, a 3" engineers square, a shop apron and a full suite of current catalogs. Had a productive conversation with one of the guys on vise options for the new bench I'm going to build. Finally, came in $10 under budget
-- the budget set by the amount I got for peddling a router and table on CL last week. You guys north of the border got it good!
Lee Valley Waterloo is a five or 10 minute bicycle ride from home for me.
Here's a link to the Crescent the day I got it to my shop:
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It's not fully assembled but you can get an idea how big it is... stands about 8 feet tall! Obviously, the wheels are 36".... ;~)
I imagine that much of my shop, at various points in time, appears on Doug Stowe's Wisdom of the Hands blog in the archives... He wrote of my sons quite a bit when they were younger. I think the archives are searchable.
Here are photos of another saw that is a little newer than mine...
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The only real difference is the feet. Mine has web feet and this one has pillow feet. That fact allowed me, with the help of others, to narrow the production year to 1905 and not later. It has the 1905 patent dates in the casting and web feet whereas in the 1906 catalog the pillow feet are in evidence...
One of the guys in the Rockler store knew my name when we were living in Alabamastan, 120 miles from the store. I only live 50mi. from the Rockler and Woodcraft (and Peachtree and Highland) stores now. ;-)
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