Official Luthiers Forum!

I've been observing Sergio Zepeda (experienced luthier down here) this week in preparation for starting on my own guitar sometime soon. At one point we began discussing tools and he made the comment that "they don't make chisels like they used to...the old ones hold their edge much better".

At some point next year I'll be moving back to the U.S. and I'd like to set up a basic shop. So my question for you is: what types of woodworking tools were of better quality in the past? In other words, is it worthwhile to look for vintage chisels or would I be better off buying new ones out of stew mac or something. Planers? Scrapers? Carvers? I know there were lousy quality tools made 100 years ago just like there are today, so for the sake of argument lets assume we're talking about medium/high quality tools.

Thanks,
Andy Wright
Managua, Nicaragua

Andy, if you have the time you can get vintage buck bros., greenlee,
stanley chisels on ebay and garage sales for very little money (between $1
and $5 per piece). You just have to reshape and resharpen them and most
likely make new handles but it's well worth the effort, I love old good
quality tools and yes, unless you spend at least $40/50 per chisel, they
don't make them like they used to. You can get cheap old stanley planes
the same way too. It's just a lot of time flattening the shoe, reshaping the
blades (without ruining the temper…) and sharpening them the right way.
I'm still improving my skills on that end and get better at it the more I do
it, but the results are well worth the effort. You'd have to re-sharpen new
expensive tools anyway.

_________________
Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

That’s a loaded question. Steel is actually better than is was a half century ago, quality control in most companies is much better than it was 50 years ago, so the materials to produce fine tools is better than it ever was.

Now the issue is that most companies look at their market to determine the most cost affective product for the market they wish to serve. 50 ears ago there were only a few tool makers serving professionals, hobbyist and around the house handymen alike. So they produced one line of a tool, but now days it is more cost affective for some companies to serve nitch markerts like the low end users so high end users have to find makers that service the high end market.

A prime example of that is Stanly. As we all know the Stanly Bailey product is vastly different from Stanly of today. But todays modern Lie Nelson planes in my opinion exceed the quality of the old Stanly Bailey planes.

My point is, It is not that the tools are not as good of quality anymore, rather it is that there are more grades of tools available, but the makers of yesterdays top quaility tools may not be the makers of todays quaility tools
MichaelP38715.5325231481