Originally Posted by
Charles Guest
Most sharpening threads are just thinly veiled justification for a four-figure investment in honing and grinding gear. Inevitably someone will present photos in excruciating detail of adequately cut dovetails along with all the gear it supposedly took to prep the equipment they felt necessary to execute the dovetails in the photos. The only problem is that it doesn't take all of that stuff, and dovetails aren't that hard to do in the first place. Inevitably the irrefutable by lack of logic argument is made that "they would have used all of this had they had it" is made and then it just devolves from there. "They" of course meaning the master craftsmen of the past whose work we all know and love. The effectiveness of these arguments, generally, requires a gullible reader impressed by intermediate woodworking done at the torrid pace of two projects a year the success of which largely results from an unlimited budget in time, tools, and materials.