Alan:
Thanks for the comments.
I don't see the comments of those that disagree as umbrage, and even if they are, they don't bother me.
I understand why the cost of the tools I recommended can be a real problem for some. I know what it is like to not have enough cash to buy a tool I thought I really needed. For six years I was a poor engineering student in Utah, with a wife and three babies, supporting my young family and paying all my school and living expenses single handedly by working as a carpenter during the summers and a cabinetmaker during the school months. Back then, aside from a steel framing square, an ancient Disston D-8 and a battered old skillsaw I bought at flea markets, and four bent and rusty bar clamps, all the tools I owned fit into a single apple crate. Nearly everything my wife and I owned back then was either made by ourselves or bought used from garage sales and flea markets. College towns have great flea markets. We were very poor but those were good times for us.
As many that contributed to this thread have correctly pointed out, there are other ways to achieve the same results without spending $400. The first essential tool is a decent straightedge. This thread talks about traditional ways of making one yourself.
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...n-Straightedge You might want to pay attention to the links to a book titled
Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy. Cool stuff. I wish I had read it years ago. There are also other sources on the web and in old books.
Or with some luck you can buy a decent inexpensive straightedge that will be adequate.
Using this straightedge as a guide, you can follow the method Charlie Stanford outlined to check your square. If you find that your square is out of wack, you can use files, stones, glass, and sandpaper along with your straightedge to true it. If you are careful, it will then be plenty accurate, and you will have gained a new skill.
The more expensive tools I recommended save time and give a man ongoing confidence that his other tools are performing as intended. At least, I think so. It logically follows that, if a man knows his tools are performing correctly, Murphy loses some power over him, and he must acknowledge to himself that any errors that creep into his work are the fault of his own hand/eye/intelligence, and cannot be blamed for long on a square that might have become damaged when it was dropped yesterday, or a worn-out dial caliper, for example. Removing the variable of suspicious tools from the equation can help a guy improve his skills significantly, but that will happen
only if he wants to improve his speed and accuracy.
But for the guy that is happy with the skills he has and the quality of the things he makes (
and there is NOTHING wrong with that) owning such tools is illogical, and he would be wasting his money to buy them. But I think some folks find it irritating for me to suggest their tools might have problems, ergo the objections. No problemo.
In my opinion, in the case of a man that uses his tools to feed his family, any tools that waste his limited time or decrease the quality of his work product are guilty of stealing bread from his family's table. Such a man may have no choice but to use crappy tools, but he will not be satisfied with them once he learns he has options. The men of my family have been carpenters, cabinetmakers, masons, and plasterers in America and England for at least 300 something years, according to my Father, Uncles, Grandfather, Great Grandfather, two dusty diaries, and my brother that double-checked my Grandmother's geneaology work by investigating the church and tax records in Olde Blighty. So I suppose my lack of tolerance of questionable tools is an inherited attitude.
But for the newbie, the guy with little cash, the hobbyist, or the guy that doesn't need or value more precise work, the tools I recommended are unimportant. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Stan