[AT] HF sawmill

[Indiana Robinson]

If a man tells me that he is really proud of having a complete set of
the very finest (insert your favorite brand here) tools my response is
"good for you, I'm glad for you"... If on the other hand he tells me
that he absolutely cannot work with less than the best and that I am a
damn fool for buying less than the best then my response is "how
pathetic"... He probably is not much of a mechanic and I probably
don't want to waste my time trying to become friends with him. In this
world you are wisest to just learn to do the best you can with what
you can afford to work with. If you just "can't" work with a cheap
tool at all then you probably can't work with a good one either...
I always feel a little sorry for the man that tells me that the way
you judge the quality of a tool (or anything else) is by how much it
cost. He is doomed to spend most of his life wasting a lot of money...
In the sales field we always had a name for those super high priced
items we sold, not the name you heard like deluxe etc. we just
referred to it as "sucker bait". We typically carried something that
was just barely up to snuff for those that had to buy cheap. Another
line that was good "meat & potatoes" good daily stuff and then always
a line of high priced stuff for those that didn't know crap from
quality but wanted to spend money.   :-)
-
Harbor freight has a lot of worthless crap... They also have some
pretty nice stuff that is as good as what you will find about anyplace
else. The idea is to be able to tell the difference... Most of their
sandpaper is crap. I also saw one of the most junky table-saws there
that I have ever seen. On the other hand stuff like jacks,
jack-stands, various shop hoist and such are pretty much the same
stuff sold elsewhere.
-
It would be foolish to expect to buy a $2,000 sawmill there and expect
it to work as well and last as long as a $40,000 Woodmizer (or insert
your favorite name here).
In the same thought process I cannot expect the same performance from
my $4,000 Woodmizer mill as I would from The $40,000 Woodmizer mill.
Still there is no reason that it will not do my job and last well IF I
TAKE CARE OF IT. You just have to be able to judge quality and balance
how much quality you want to pay for to do the jobs you need to do. I
need less quality in a lot of tools now than I did when I was still
farming and using tools hard daily. Some tools I used to use almost
everyday I now may use 4 times a year.
I mentioned taking care of stuff. How long almost anything will last,
even the cheapest stuff depends on how you treat it. Just because you
can put a 3' piece of cheater pipe on your Snap-on ratchet doesn't
mean that you should... :-)
I keep saying that some guys could tear up an anvil straightening
feathers. I had a neighbor (now deceased) who could go out and buy a
really nice used tractor and have it missing out and smoking the next
day. He once bought a new Oliver tractor (around a 40 - 45 HP) and the
first month the rear wheel lugs loosened up and messed up the lug bolt
holes in the wheels. He drove it to the shop and tightened up the
damaged bolts as best they would and then welded the wheel on... That
was just the way he farmed... He bought a very nice Ferguson TO-20
with a loader. The loader lifted with some long rods from front to
back. Somehow he broke one of those rods and he welded an old
plowshare on to it for a repair. He would drive past the house with
that old plowshare in the middle of the rod flapping around right in
his line of sight... Good neighbor, just not good on tools and
machinery. He probably lost more tools than I own. Once you plow a
tool under or lose it in a manure pile it doesn't matter much how good
it was.  :-)
I once had a young man working for me that never met a tool he
couldn't break.  :-)  He went through string trimmers like an elephant
through peanuts. :-)  He was a hard worker, just hard on stuff.
Everything.
Everyones priorities are different. If you can easily afford the best
and you are not taking from your family doing so then why not treat
yourself to the best. If on the other hand you feel you deserve the
best but your poor wife is beating the laundry on a riverbank rock
maybe your priorities are a bit askew... :-)
In my case I would rather take a nice vacation than over spend on
tools. I buy a LOT of stuff at yard sales.







-- 


Be tolerant of almost everything but intolerance...

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com