gcolbert
Sonar Fanboi
I'm sorry Muttley, but you must be getting old and loosing your memory. Your post on building a custom LP makes the point quite clearly. Obviously, you have spent years building up your workbench and selecting the exact tools that you need to do the job right.
My point to the OP is that you have to get a lot of other things right before you worry about one single tool. You seem to have forgotten that.
Your benches are obviously solid and built to your specifications. It looks like you have a great clamping system integrated into it to hold your work securely. Your bench vices are very nice. About the best price you can find for these now days is $150 apiece (more than the cost of a router). And those wonderful clamps that you are using to hold the maple together go for about $50 apiece. You need three or four of these to do the job right. Then there is the question of how you joined the maple front to the mahogany back. I don't think that you just unclamped the pieces, slapped glue on and put a book on top of them while the glue set. How much have you invested just to be able to clamp the front and back of the body together? Are you telling us that you didn’t need to plain these surfaces before gluing them together (or did you just clamp them hard enough that they fit)?
The first tool that you show is a wonderful hand plain for jointing. It may have been a while since you priced one of these, but a good one is priced well over $200 sometimes over $400 (twice the price or a reasonable router).
Yeah, you have a nice workshop. That is one of the contributing factors to why you can do such good work. Don't try to tell some poor sap who is just starting out that he can do this on a folding card table and plunge router. He is just going to be disappointed and frustrated with his results (or is that your intent?).
My point to the OP is that you have to get a lot of other things right before you worry about one single tool. You seem to have forgotten that.
Your benches are obviously solid and built to your specifications. It looks like you have a great clamping system integrated into it to hold your work securely. Your bench vices are very nice. About the best price you can find for these now days is $150 apiece (more than the cost of a router). And those wonderful clamps that you are using to hold the maple together go for about $50 apiece. You need three or four of these to do the job right. Then there is the question of how you joined the maple front to the mahogany back. I don't think that you just unclamped the pieces, slapped glue on and put a book on top of them while the glue set. How much have you invested just to be able to clamp the front and back of the body together? Are you telling us that you didn’t need to plain these surfaces before gluing them together (or did you just clamp them hard enough that they fit)?
The first tool that you show is a wonderful hand plain for jointing. It may have been a while since you priced one of these, but a good one is priced well over $200 sometimes over $400 (twice the price or a reasonable router).
Yeah, you have a nice workshop. That is one of the contributing factors to why you can do such good work. Don't try to tell some poor sap who is just starting out that he can do this on a folding card table and plunge router. He is just going to be disappointed and frustrated with his results (or is that your intent?).