That once used tool.....

[Jim Becker]

I was not clear about my experience with the Stanley No. 113 compass plane. I purchased it to finish chair rails that featured significant inside curves.

While I was able to achieve my desired result, I found that my workflow with the compass plane was frustratingly inefficient.For me, it it was finicky to set up and awkward to use. I do not produce many inside curves in hardwood, but when I do I usually now reach for a round-bottomed spokeshave.

If I ever take up boat building, the significant reference surface offered by the compass plane may make up for the downsides.Until then, it has been collecting dust.

Based on a recent use of the #113 (or similar) by a YouTube personality I follow in the guitar making world, the compass plane is one of those tools that's really good at what it does, but requires two things: the skill/understanding on how to adjust it precisely for the use of the moment and the skill/understanding of when to set it aside and continue with a "flat" plane. This is particularly true when the curve(s) are compound or variable in radius. That fellow doesn't even keep one in his shop in his normal working collection; it lives at another business of his that specializes in antique tools. That's how infrequently he uses it!

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Ken, ya got me beat...I only have 22 x 30 with a chunk out of it for the stairway to the upper level and my cyclone/compressor closet. LOL (But I'm about to leverage one end of the upstairs as working space and probably will move the lathe up there along with the miter saw since my lumber storage is all upstairs at this point other than "shorts")

[John K Jordan]

...A little sympathy, please - I don't even have room for a kitchen and bathroom!

So you have to be nice to spousal unit then?

We have been married just 49 years so I'm still figuring it out. She has nearly completed a house remodeling "project", actually 11 major remodeling projects inside and out, for the first time all hired out and without me having to do anything except design, wire, ride herd and assist with an extra hand, decisions, tools, materials, backhoe/forklift and such.

Now she says it looks like this saved enough to add a wing on the shop so I am told to get to designing. I must force myself to smile and nod and say "yes dear." I have such a hard life.

[Jerome Stanek]

I was at an auction and saw some drywall tools that I bid on and there was a set of stilts I really didn't need them or want them but I ended up with them. 2 years later I was doing some bathroom remodels in an office building and I ha to keep going up and down a ladder when it hit me that I could use the stilts. They cut my time in more then half and I wasn't as tired at the end of the day.

[Rick Potter]

I was a non user of my PC profile sander for years. Then while making oak kitchen cabinet doors, I discovered that it was just the tool to give the edge profiles that extra sanding the end grain of the stiles needed, so they wouldn't absorb too much stain.

Gotta admit, it was great for that.

[Charles P. Wright]

So, I built my first piece of furniture using a New Yankee Workshop plan and the wife was so impressed, she took me to our new HD and insisted I buy a Ridgid TS-3650 table saw. Now this saw had been very highly reviewed by some of the top ww magazines as far as hybrid table saws go. So I bought it, put it in boxes in the back of the F-350 I owned then and as I assembled it, I took 1 box at a time into the shed. It came with a mobile base. The first time I went to use it, the thing wouldn't go through the 32" door.

The TS-3650 was my first "real" WW tool. I ended up getting it for about $400 on sale + the 10% HD credit card discount. It is a great machine for the price, and I built a bunch of stuff with it. I've since upgraded to a Sawstop, which has more power, longer rails, and the safety feature, but almost everything I can do with the Sawstop I could do with that saw. My BIL still has it for very occasional home improvement type stuff.

Also, I think aside from the Sawstop ICS base, the integrated Herculift is the best mobile base that I've ever seen on any tool.

[Rob Luter]

Mine was a top of the line (at the time) Bosch sliding compound miter saw. I was doing a remodel with tons of baseboard and trim. It saved me a boatload of cash versus hiring a finish guy to do it. It then sat dormant until I sold it several years later.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

The TS-3650 was my first "real" WW tool. I ended up getting it for about $400 on sale + the 10% HD credit card discount. It is a great machine for the price, and I built a bunch of stuff with it. I've since upgraded to a Sawstop, which has more power, longer rails, and the safety feature, but almost everything I can do with the Sawstop I could do with that saw. My BIL still has it for very occasional home improvement type stuff.

Also, I think aside from the Sawstop ICS base, the integrated Herculift is the best mobile base that I've ever seen on any tool.

Charles, I still use that TS-3650 in the shop I built years ago. I agree on the Hercu-lift. In fact I bought the first model Ridgid planer and have a Hercu-lift on it. I have thought about upgrading to a SS but haven't done it so far.

[Jon Grider]

For almost 10 years I worked, er, played in less than 1/2 of a 2-car garage, with two lathes, two bandsaws, dozens of tubs of wood, tools and sharpening. It was so tight when a friend came to turn one of us had to go outside so the other could get to the bigger lathe. I sympathize deeply with those working in such spaces now!

Of course my dinky 24x62 building also houses, in addition to turning and big flat wood tools, an office with library, weld shop, machining, electronics bench, wood and metal storage, equipment maintenance tools, photography, animal care and medical supplies, varmint control stuff, and incubators and brooders for hatching poultry. A little sympathy, please - I don't even have room for a kitchen and bathroom!

What? No hot tub or home theater? Poor guy must be hard to be slumming it.

[Terry Wawro]

Mine is a fiber cement siding shear cutter. For years I've ruined many a saw blade and endured cutting with a dust mask until our last remodel. I figured $150 was OK for a new tool since I seemed to be having to cut siding all the time. Use it once two years ago and now it's collecting dust.

[Ron Citerone]

Craig's list tools top my list. Old massive worm drive saw and 90 degree drill. Only used oth of them 1 time.

[Mike Kees]

I bought a decent Delta scroll saw probably 20 years ago.I do not think I ever used it,my wife used it for 3-4 years and then my Dad 'borrowed ' it and sadly returned it.

[Günter VögelBerg]

I few years ago I was moving and combining households and I sold a lot of tools, but many of them I have purchased again, making them doubly expensive. These include:

dovetail jig (learned to do by hand, but not proficiently enough to do my entire kitchen)
handheld power planer
quarter-sheet sander
powder-actuated nailer (ok, not a woodworking tool)
mortiser
biscuit joiner

Many of these are things I sold because I wanted to focus on hand tools, but I have needed to wo household projects where my focus is not on building skills but on getting things done.

[Frank Pratt]

I bought a Fein multi tool when they still held the patent & were the only game in town, so it was $$$$. It got a few hours of use & then sat on the shelf for the next several years. It's been used only a couple of times since. But sometimes it is the only tool that will do the job in any kind of reasonable time. I haven't ever used any of the various sanding accessories that came with it.

[John K Jordan]

I bought a Fein multi tool when they still held the patent & were the only game in town, so it was $$$$. It got a few hours of use & then sat on the shelf for the next several years. It's been used only a couple of times since. But sometimes it is the only tool that will do the job in any kind of reasonable time. I haven't ever used any of the various sanding accessories that came with it.

I also bought a Fein and yes, it was high. But good quality. This is one tool I'd hate to be without although I suppose any brand would work. I use mine quite offen, usually in construction: flush trims and such. Was useful for cutting PVC when I installed my dust collection too. It used to be uncommon to have a multitool but now every guy I know who does construction and remodeling has one of some brand. One nice thing about the Fein that I haven't seen on others is the 12' cord.

A tool I have I use but rarely but when I need it nothing else will do: an inspection camera. Look inside walls when snaking wires, helped when I fed new brake lines inside the frame to the back of my diesel truck, look inside cylinders and find dropped screws and things when working on engines, retrieving things that have somehow gotten into small places. I bought mine (Bosch, I think) at a time when if you wanted one you spent around $300 dollars.

JKJ

[Roger Feeley]

My cousin's daughter lives with her husband in a small NY condo. I've been told that he does some amazing woodworking. They have a generous balcony and he has managed to fold up his shop into some rolling thing that goes into a closet. In good weather, he rolls it out and unfolds it like some complicated origami. I really need to go visit them and see for myself.