Post what woodworking tools in general, you wish you hadn't have purchased!

[Tony Zaffuto]

Just what the title says! My list would take me hours to compose, so let's limit it to just two (and not the $5.00 new items that always seem to follow us home): First is an ECE frame saw. I just could never get used to not using my western-styled handsaws. Second would be the various scratch stocks that I never seem to apply enough time to get to work acceptably.

[Stephen Rosenthal]

Woodjoy Bow Saws. I’ve got the large and small. These are too big to be considered turning saws. Beautiful tools but I’ve never gotten the hang of them, probably because I haven’t put the time in to do so. Like you, I don’t see anything that my numerous western handsaws and backsaws can’t do. Or for that matter my bandsaw or scrollsaw.

[glenn bradley]

Biscuit jointer - Sold it but could have used it a time or two in the nearly 20 years since I sold it.
Cheap dovetail jig - Sold it. I can do them faster by hand and I am pretty poor at it.

[Frederick Skelly]

$100 delta scrollsaw. Kreg pocket hole set.

[Prashun Patel]

Cheap sandpaper, peachtree and wood river cabinet clamps. Cheap screws.

[Bruce Haugen]

Just what the title says! My list would take me hours to compose, so let's limit it to just two (and not the $5.00 new items that always seem to follow us home): First is an ECE frame saw. I just could never get used to not using my western-styled handsaws. Second would be the various scratch stocks that I never seem to apply enough time to get to work acceptably.

That exact same frame saw. It looks impressive hanging on the tool wall but that’s it.

[Todd Trebuna]

I’m going to go with a dovetail jig. I’ve never used it. Haven’t even had the desire to use it. Of the dozen drawers I’ve done, I basically butt jointed or finger jointed and never looked back. None of my clients have ever complained (They’re family after all.)

[Bill Carey]

Another vote for dovetail jig. And the 15 gallon compressor I finally managed get rid of.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

I have a dovetail jig. Somewhere.......

[Jim Koepke]

My dovetail jig was used once for a test fit. Hand cutting seemed easier.

jtk

[Jim Matthews]

Any jig for cutting dovetails.

Sharp saws cut straight.

[Derek Cohen]

Bloody Holtey!

The shavings are too thin. And it's impossible to avoid fingerprints!

https://i.postimg.cc/dVwWtdw0/no984-3196.jpg
http://www.holteyplanes.com/images/no984-3196.jpg

It's going back ...

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Mike Henderson]

Biscuit joiner. Never really used it and now I have a Domino which is better than a biscuit. I should try to sell it.

Way back I bought a Rockler fixed finger dovetail jig. Took too long to set up and I just never used it. Sold it. Now I do dovetails by hand.

Mike

[Tom M King]

ECE Primus planes. They work really nicely, if you plane really slowly. If you try to get something done, the spring makes them chatter the worst of anything cutting wood.

[Derek Cohen]

Biscuit joiner. Never really used it and now I have a Domino which is better than a biscuit. I should try to sell it.
....
Mike

Mike, I find this interesting. So many sold their biscuit joiners and purchased a domino. Obviously they think that they do the same thing and that dominos are better than biscuits.

Well, I don't. I think that they do different things and have strengths and weaknesses which compliment each other. So I have a DeWalt joiner and a Festool Domino 500.

Have you attempted to join mitred ends with a domino? It would poke a hole through the sides of 3/4" boards and thinner. Now a biscuit is long and low, like a spline. Ideal.

Want to align boards in a panel? Dominos are overkill. No need to mortice that deeply. The extra strength is unnecessary - it's just alignment. The biscuit is ideal.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[David Carroll]

What a great question! I once saw an ad (it might've been from LV) for a small Warrington Pattern hammer. It wasn't expensive and so I added it to my order without too much thought. When I got it, I laughed at how impossibly tiny it was. It would generate about as much force as the back of a teaspoon. But it was my own stupidity for not reading the description.

The other one was a set of 4 or 5 (I think) Freud Branded Joinery saws, with boxwood handles. A dovetail saw, a tenon saw, a Gent's dovetail saw and a very fine toothed razor saw. The saws were terribly designed and poorly executed, with tiny, poorly finished handles. The "Boxwood" had so many knots that the Dovetail and the Gent's saw handle were bent noticeably. Absolute junk! I made new handles for the dovetail and tenon saw, the others I used until they were dull (didn't take long) then cut up the rest for scrapers. The Brass back on the Gent's saw was folded unevenly by about 1/6 so one leg was longer than the other, but the worst of it was that the saw-plate kept dropping out of it.

DC

[Chris Fournier]

I have a 6" X 48" edge sander which I thought I couldn't live without, then I bought an oscillating spindle sander and finally a nice General 100-5 disc sander. I could do without the edge sander, it really is my fault as I thought it would be better for the contour work that I intended to use it for. I guess I now know why it's called an edge sander...

[Christopher Herzog]

Delta drum sander. Too much money invested for the amount of use.

[Mike Henderson]

Mike, I find this interesting. So many sold their biscuit joiners and purchased a domino. Obviously they think that they do the same thing and that dominos are better than biscuits.

Well, I don't. I think that they do different things and have strengths and weaknesses which compliment each other. So I have a DeWalt joiner and a Festool Domino 500.

Have you attempted to join mitred ends with a domino? It would poke a hole through the sides of 3/4" boards and thinner. Now a biscuit is long and low, like a spline. Ideal.

Want to align boards in a panel? Dominos are overkill. No need to mortice that deeply. The extra strength is unnecessary - it's just alignment. The biscuit is ideal.

Regards from Perth

Derek

For mitered ends of boards I use a 5/32 slot cutter in my router table and a ramp where I push the mitered end into the slot cutter. I mostly use FF biscuits for those miters. You can see my setup here (http://www.mikes-woodwork.com/BoxTutorial-2ndVersion.htm), scroll down a few pictures. I have ramps for four sides, six sides and eight sides.

To align boards, I mostly use cauls. I got turned off to biscuits as alignment devices after a friend of mine (who used them often) miscalculated and when he trimmed the panel cut through a biscuit and had it showing on the end. I decided I'd find another way to align boards in a glue up and wound up with cauls.

[Side note] for small things, I often use the 4mm dominoes. I've used them occasionally for miters. I put the domino in high on the miter and do a test on scrap to make sure I won't go through the board (if I recall, they go 10mm into the board, and on a miter they're going on the diagonal so you could even use them on 10mm wood). The advantage of the 4mm domino is less setup than my router table and ramp.

Mike

[Back when I bought my DeWalt biscuit joiner it did not have an option for cutting for an FF biscuit. Only the PC joiner had that. And you had to change the cutter to cut for an FF biscuit on the PC.]

[Mel Fulks]

David, Those hammers are popular, I doubt buying it was a mistake.

[Bruce Mack]

Derek, I didn't know you owned one. I know low angle bevel-up configurations will cause tear out, but I hope you'll answer this icon does not.

[Bruce Mack]

Drat, I think I took the bait. If you own this, Derek, you also have an unlisted Leonardo.
Bloody Holtey!

The shavings are too thin. And it's impossible to avoid fingerprints!

https://i.postimg.cc/dVwWtdw0/no984-3196.jpg
http://www.holteyplanes.com/images/no984-3196.jpg

It's going back ...

Regards from Perth

Derek

[David Carroll]

David, Those hammers are popular, I doubt buying it was a mistake.

The only thing I ever use it for is adjusting the set on the little Victor plane that I bought from them. It does work for that, when I don't have a spoon handy ;-)

DC

[Rod Wolfy]

A dovetail jig with a whole $200 set of dovetail bits (never used) and a LN #1, which was nothing but a pretty toy (too small a handle to use).

[Derek Cohen]

Drat, I think I took the bait. If you own this, Derek, you also have an unlisted Leonardo.

:D

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Curt Putnam]

There is little in the hand tool world that I regret. Obviously some vintage stuff has yet to work properly. A Crown gent's saw that will not cut. In the power tool world I have a PC biscuit joimer that I've not used since the 90s but I don't regret having bought it. It was what I knew how to do at the time. I do not regret but am disappointed with the MFT/3. It's a whiz bang tool for plywood but I do not do much of that anymore. Bought a couple of Ridgid 6" ROS sanders that refused to run for more than a grand total of 6 minutes. I mostly regret all things Black & Decker. Various accessories for the table saw I no longer have.

[Edwin Santos]

Biscuit joiner. Never really used it and now I have a Domino which is better than a biscuit. I should try to sell it.


Mike


Mike, I find this interesting. So many sold their biscuit joiners and purchased a domino. Obviously they think that they do the same thing and that dominos are better than biscuits.

Well, I don't. I think that they do different things and have strengths and weaknesses which compliment each other. So I have a DeWalt joiner and a Festool Domino 500.

Have you attempted to join mitred ends with a domino? It would poke a hole through the sides of 3/4" boards and thinner. Now a biscuit is long and low, like a spline. Ideal.

Want to align boards in a panel? Dominos are overkill. No need to mortice that deeply. The extra strength is unnecessary - it's just alignment. The biscuit is ideal.

Regards from Perth

Derek

A Domino machine and a biscuit joiner are about as similar as mortise and tenon joinery is to spline joinery. Literally.

[Stew Denton]

The two that come to mind immediately are a "corner chisel" that was a spring loaded cutter that cut the two sides forming the corner at the same time. It had a sheet metal housing that sat on the surface of the corner, and then you whacked the back of the cutter with a hammer. The problem was that the cutter was dull, and the angle of the cutter was about 70 degrees or some such a matter. Before it had gone deep enough to cut much of anything the cutter was nearly flat where it hit the wood. It could not possibly have worked. I bought it as a young fellow. I may have the worthless devise somewhere to this day. If I never find it again it will probably be too soon.

About that same time I bought a template set with a housing/mounting set up to use with a router to cut letters for signs. Things went well till I tried to use it. The clamp/mounting device that was supposed to hold teh template in place was so weak/flimsy that it moved all over the place when you put the router in place on top of the mount/template and started to try to use it. It was basically useless, and moved all over the place on the wood surface rather than stay in one place. The clamp would bend all over the place before it could exert enough pressure to hold the template housing in place. Any kind of test at all would have revealed that. It was not Sears best effort, and for a young college student making a bit over about $2 an hour it was well more than a full days pay to pay for what I still consider to be a useless piece of trash.

If they didn't, Sears SHOULD HAVE have had the thing tested to see how well it worked, tested by a good woodworker, and a few young less experienced souls like myself as well. A truly experienced and good woodworker might have figured out some way to modify it or add a clamp or two so that it could have been made to work at least marginally. How it ended up in the catalog "as was" I will never know. In my opinion it should have never have been offered for sale, and again, I consider it to have been a worthless piece of trash.

Again, I will never understand how it got in the catalog, but this was back in the day when I read articles that said "a good manager can manage anything," as this is pushing almost 50 years ago. Did one of these "good managers" get transferred from something like the "ladies footwear" group over to manage the woodworking tools department? Did this "good manager" also transfer in some of the "ladies footwear" folks in to test the tools for her? Who knows.

Regards,

Stew

[Gary Cunningham]

A Woodriver #6. Bought at the beginning of my wood mangling work.

[Erich Weidner]

1. Giant 220v air compressor. I got it based on the output so I could spray finish projects. To date, (over 10 years) I've only used it to fill car tires, and it takes so long to fill that I just grab my little pancake compressor which I bought for installing all the baseboard in my house. Used that one a ton. Now I own (still have never used) an LPLV gun. I think I can get something smaller. That big sucker is gonna go whenever I build my 8' bench.

2. There are lots of ties for #2, so I'll go with the Porter Cable dovetail jig. I never even opened the box before I decided I had no desire to use it. I gave it away (along with a pile of other stuff, much also unused... I had a gadget/gig collecting problem before I got into hand tools).

[steven c newman]

Porter Cable No. 4210 dovetail jig.....