New Lee Valley Catalog

[John Schreiber]

Maybe I'm the first to get the new catalog. What an honor.

I'm looking at the usual great cover art and I'm still trying to figure it out. It seems to be a combination of badly designed tools, some poorly assembled tools, some really strange tools, and some tools which look ok to me. The note about the cover photo just says that they are antiques.

Is this the April 1st edition? Is it a "spot the problem" quiz? Am I crazy?

Hats off to Robin; he sure has my attention.

- edit: There's a picture of the cover here <https://www.leevalley.com/home/CatalogSelect.aspx?c=>, but there's not enough detail to see what's what.

[Roger Myers]

John,
I received the catalog a couple of days ago...always a great day when it arrives :)
About the cover, it looks to me like it is a very nice collection of antique saws of various types arranged "artistically"....some commercial made saws, some user made tools, some with "interesting" embellishments...but I don't think it's any more than that. As an old tool collector...errrr....I mean old tool user ;) I appreciate the interesting collection shown, and have quite a few like those in the shop.... not all are useful, but all are interesting with a bit of history behind them....
Roger

[Doug Shepard]

Why am I having flashbacks to Steve Martin in The Jerk?
The new phone books are here. The new phone books are here.
:D:D
I got mine a few days ago.

[glenn bradley]

Mine has been sitting on the coffee table for awhile. I have been afraid to open it.

[Rod Sheridan]

Mine has been sitting on the coffee table for awhile. I have been afraid to open it.

Come on Glenn, it's economy stimulus year, go for it.:D

You know the rest of us will be following shortly......Rod.

[John Schreiber]

. . . About the cover, it looks to me like it is a very nice collection of antique saws of various types arranged "artistically"....some commercial made saws, some user made tools, some with "interesting" embellishments...but I don't think it's any more than that. . . .
I have appreciated the Lee Valley covers over the years. I think the first one I saw had the ebony and ivory plow plane (http://www.leevalley.com/gifts/christmasQuestionPopup.aspx?p=47001) on the cover. I looked quite a while in the catalog before I realized that it was an example of the finest tools instead of just an advertisement for their products.


http://www.leevalley.com/images/item/Extras/2009ww2.jpg


Check out this cover though. One of the clearest are the keyhole saws. I've never seen one with the teeth on the top edge. Two of the three on the cover like that. I also wonder about the gizmo with what appears to be a jewelers saw and a jewelers drill built into the same tool. It wouldn't work well for either purpose. The three big saws are interesting. The top one looks like a thumb guillotine to me. The middle has an adjustable handle which didn't stand the test of time and the teeth are amazingly small for a big saw. The bottom one is interesting at best. Usually the tools on the cover are of the highest quality. I think we're having our leg pulled this year.

As I said before, I could be crazy and I mean no disrespect to Lee Valley, but if they wanted to put beautiful tools on their cover like they have in the past, they sure made some odd choices.

[Rod Sheridan]

Thanks John, the oldest catalogue I have kept is the 83/84 one.

Thanks for the reminder about the old catalogue covers on their website, after the cover, the first thing I read was the letter from Leonard inside.

In the seventies it seemed that you could only find cheap, poorly made hand tools at local stores, hand work seemed to have died out. Suddenly you could buy a LV catalogue at the local bookstore.

WOW!!!! There were high quality hand tools available and you could order them by mail......It was Nirvana.

Regards, Rod.