From rec.woodworking

This started with a college student who wanted to set up a workshop. He lived with two room mates in an apartment with no extra room. He tried to muscle into the university workshop, but his major was chemistry and only the art students were allowed to use it.

He got some interesting suggestions, including setting up a shop on the balcony of the apartment, renting a garage, small bench tools like a bench drill press and small lathes. There was, of course, a faction that suggested hand tools, but this new kid on the block has been frustrated with hand tools in the past.

The thing that really set people off was his last comment, "for some reason vises cost like $50 around here." That touched off the now classic debate about whether the woodworking hobby needs to be an expensive endeavor or not. The comment from one woodworker that read, "if $50 scares you, perhaps you should consider another hobby," was like dropping a match in the sawdust.

People definitely got up in arms about the cost of tools. One camp said woodworkers need to buy good, expensive tools to do good work. And well made tools, they posit, are worth whatever you pay for them.

Others disagreed vociferously and accused the alternate camp of elitism. Old, used tools, they suggested, were both inexpensive and worth the effort to recondition. There were stories about great old tools that people had discovered and tuned up. One writes, "it's not about money. It's about skill and ingenuity."

Charlie Self, a frequent contributor to Woodworker's Journal, wrote about a friend who found a workbench for $5. "Sure, it needed some work to get all the drawers working, the 2" thick maple top leveled again, and the vice actions cleaned up, but it does prove that it is really possible to woodwork with small amounts of money," Charlie wrote.

There was one woodworker who said he had very mixed results in buying old tools and reconditioning them. Another went on a rant about how kids these days think they should have tools handed to them on a platter and aren't willing to work for them.

But we were glad it didn't go any further than that, because it is a perilous path. The best solution for this particular woodworker was suggested by a couple of people. They told him to try to get in good graces with the person who runs the university workshop. "Woodshops," wrote one, "are autonomous republics ruled by their chatelaine, not a distant principal. You can do anything in there if you have the favor of the appropriate teacher or technician."