Money Can't Buy You Skill

Woopst!  I forgot my camera in Garmisch yesterday.  That means my ability to use the written word to paint a picture in your head is going to have to be good enough for now.

I thought I would do another experiment today.  As if I haven't beaten the dead horse to death until it was dead regarding my lap-joint try square, I decided to make four more today.

An old photo, as my camera is not here today.

Now that I think I am getting pretty good at making these lap joints using only a Ryoba saw and a pair of chisels, I figure I can show you what having the use of the tool porn in my chest can do.

I first squared up all of the stock for these four squares using some rift-sawn oak for the blades and some not-ideal-but-pretty-with-knots-in-it walnut for the stocks.  I noticed after I completed this step that I did everything up to this point with my Basic Tool Kit (BTK, a jack plane, ryoba saw, pair of chisels, and some marking tools).

Interesting.

I guess since I have been using these tools almost exclusively lately, I am really getting to know them and like them.

I laid out all of the joints, and then set the timer.

With my BTK, two squares took 49 minutes to cut the two lap joints.

For the other pair, I used a Spear & Jackson dovetail saw, a BadAxe crosscut sash saw, a Lie-Nielsen router plane and a Lie-Nielsen large shoulder plane.  These two squares took 45 minutes to cut the joinery.

I'm also not sure that they look any better.

At first glance, adding $700-$800 worth of tools to the mix gained me a whopping four minutes.

I think, however, that this really wasn't a fair test.

I noticed that while I was perfectly comfortable cutting the joints with my BTK (having made several of these exact same try squares over the last few weeks), that this is the first time I have used my 'regular' tool kit to make this square.  Every time there was something to fix, I wanted to go back to my chisel.  Trimming the shoulders of the joint was cumbersome, because I wasn't used to doing it that way.  I could get the shoulder nice and flat, but when I test fit the joint, it was way off square and took quite a bit of fiddling with before everything was nice and square.

Today, I found out that lots of nice tools, even "essential" ones, take some practice to master.  My guess is that in the hands of someone accustomed to using these same tools I have, these two joints probably could be cut and fit in about ten minutes.  That will be my goal.

Pictures of these try squares will be forthcoming, once I get the clamps off and finish them up.  You will be able to see my joinery and the differences between them.

On a related note, I have plenty of try squares for sale!