In cycling, another interest of mine, there is a vast market in spurious gizmos of every ilk & tittle – a thousand things you don’t need to ride a bike, many of which cost hundreds or even thousands of coin. There seem to be a few in woodworking too, these days.
I came across this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=XY9MzSCvxc8&feature=emb_logo
Not a bad idea perhaps but does anyone need a gizmo costing $120 !!!! to perform the simple task of extending a half-blind dovetail cut so the waste can be taken out marginally faster?
There are some expensive and well made saws, planes and chisels to be had. They all perform in many kinds of woodworking operations, on all sorts of pieces. This gizmo does only one very limited thing …… and only in a saw kerf of a very specific width. (The seller just happens to have a matching dovetail saw for another $250, naturally).
Would anyone buy such a thing as this kerf extender? ‘Fess up now! 🙂
Lataxe
Replies
A $120 spatula? Hard pass.
Seen many ground down from an old beater chisel. Rob is no different than Lie Nielsen or others that take the mundane to pinnacle heights and price them accordingly.
I have several 'elegant' tools that do simple jobs. The higher quality and execution appealed to me and brings me satisfaction in use. I have more very basic tools that do their job fine and make me equally happy.
High dollar doo-dads are great for Xmas and B-Day lists. This allows others to buy us what we would not buy ourselves ;-)
I wouldn't personally pay that, but it doesn't diminish the fact that it's a brilliant idea, and really helps cut half blind dovetails.
I first saw this trick performed by Tage Frid many years ago. He used a card scraper for the task, and wrote about it in one of his books that Fine Woodworking published. Megan Fitzpatrick does the same thing, and had a series of half blind dovetail posts on Instagram recently, where she was using the card scraper as Frid showed.
I have a similar gizmo to Cosman's that I made. I had an extra gent's saw from an auction box lot, and I cut off most of the blade.
It really is a very nice shortcut.
The big thing with gadgets and pricing is, how much will it cost YOU to make it... in materials, time, etc.
Depending on how you value your time, $120 might be a steal! I mean, if you make (or need to make) 50 bucks an hour, will it take you more than three hours to make it? Also, do you have the skills to build something like this?
Rob has a whole system for cutting dovetails, specialty saws (at north of 2 bills each) his Kerf Maker (which is a little piece of one of his saws, with the correct size kerf to match said pricey saws) and the Kerf Extender thing, also sized appropriately. Unless you buy into the whole thing, one of the items might not make life that much easier...
I, for example, use mostly Japanese pull saws. The kerf width of my fine toothed, backed, joint saw is smaller than his whole system... So, for me, it won't help.
For me to make a Kerf Extender or Kerf Maker, I'll need to get another saw blade and chop it up, neatly (which is on my to-do list). Since Japanese saw blades tend to be less expensive than a lot of high end Western saws, no biggie. Then, I ask myself, do I feel confident enough in cutting the steel, and keeping it flat, not ruining the temper, etc... Most times, I'm more broke and thick headed, so I end up making my own stuff! LOL
The other thing with Rob is that a portion of a lot of stuff he sells goes towards helping his Purple Heart program, which supports combat wounded veterans. He does a lot of good work, and produces a lot of free content on Youtube. So, when I can, I've supported him. I love his dowel hinge making set, by the way! Super high quality, very accurate and a great solution for a cool technique I've used a few times (and made my money back on it).
I've made marking gauges, marking knives, jigs, fixtures, fiddly things etc. Some big things, even. A lot of the time I do it out of stuff cluttering up the shop... Stuff, I've kept for years. So, for me, the return on investment (ROI) has paid off. I also have to think that way because I make a living off of building stuff... I can't spend 30 hours making something to save myself five minutes down the road twice. But, I can spend 40 hours on a thing that will save me five minutes every day!
But, I have bought a metric s-ton of gadgets over the years, sharpening guides, measuring devices, etc. as well. It's all about ROI for me.
But, if you're a hobbyist who makes good money in the day job, and does this for relaxation, but doesn't like messing with metal? Well, I guess you're dropping a buck twenty! Neither approach is wrong. Just different needs.
the technique works but all you need to use is a cheap old card scraper.
The tool cupboards in my shed hide some very fancy gizmos, especially of the planing kind. I justify their purchase in many ways, one of which is that I could not make it myself to that standard. Another is that many of these gizmos have a wide range of applications and capabilities. I will pay large dollops of cash for such a useful gizmo.
But there's another shelf in the tool cupboard that contains those things one might classify as "shed-made jigs". There's not a lot, as there would be in a North American WW shop. (Some woodworkers of that continent seem to spend more time making jigs than furniture)!
My jigs are those that are simple to make and seem to save a lot of money over the commercial versions. I've recently made several for jigging various tools on a Sorby Proedge sharpening machine, which saved me over £100 agin' the commercial versions; which are themselves inexpensive compared to an RC kerfing thingy ...... It took me only a couple of hours, which I might have otherwise idled away typing in here.
This kerfing doo-dat might be one of the the jigs I will make. I might make four of differing thickness from the four Lee Valley card scrapers of different thicknesses one can buy for $6.20 a piece. You might even get two kerfing thingies per scraper!
How long would it take to make a kerfer with a handle and back? Perhaps a couple of hours to make four sets. They don't need polishing, after all. :-)
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But another question arises? How well do these kerf extenders work? It's not hard to imagine the use of such a device splitting the piece on which the part-cut dovetail joints reside. The kerfer is, effectively, a very small froe - used in the same way (bashed with a beetle). One could imagine a similar result - not a completed depth of a part-cut pin kerf but two pieces of rived wood.
Who has used such a device extensively? Do splits of the workpiece occur? If so, I may continue with the chisel.
Lataxe
I've never had a split. You do the bashing in stages. Insert the blade in 3/16ths of an inch. Tap a few times till it reaches the baseline. Insert another 3/16ths. Tap till it reaches the baseline. Repeat.
Three to four repetions remove a little wood each time. It's not like using a froe at all.
I'd buy it, but not at that price!
I accept that there are the charitable donations from Cosman, but his prices are just too steep for me, especially as an only occasional dovetailer.
I love gadgets...
John_C2:
It seems to act like a froe as it doesn't actually remove any wood but (I assume) splits it then squashes fibres of the wood to each side of the blade making the kerf deeper. I can see that if you're careful to go in small stages, the risk of extending the split beyond the bottom of the pin floor will be reduced or eliminated.
But perhaps it does "remove a little wood". If so, in what form? Not sawdust......?
Rob_SS:
I don't mind RC making charitable donations to whoever he pleases. However, I prefer to make my own charitable donations to who I please, not to someone else's choice. Wot if a tool seller is giving 10% of my price-paid to them Kluxers or the Mao-wuz-right society?
Incidentally, when we were both working the ladywife & me gave around 10% of our net income to charities. We had some hard lessons, though, after investigative journalism of the old fashioned kind discovered that some of the larger charities we gave to were spending over 90% of their receipts on the organisation itself - CEOs with vast salaries, etc.; and about 30% of the total budget going to advertising costs in an effort to get more money!
We now give very carefully to charities and avoid those having paid staff in favour of those in which the staff are also charitable in that they work for nothing and the dosh goes to the intended charitable causes.
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Gadgets - one day I would like to make a gadget-attribute list, differentiating the useful from the dingbattery features. :-) But hang on! I may find I have a cupboard with rather too much dingbattery in it and too little of utility. What would the ladywife say should she discover my telling tabulations of tool truth?
Lataxe
Personally I like Mike Pekovich’s box that uses a trim router.
It doesn't remove wood at all. And it's not parting the wood fibers, as a froe does.
It works because the tool is about the same thickness as the saw kerf. It compresses the wood fibers down, toward the baseline. Think crushing, like putting your foot straight down on an empty paper cup.
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