"Conan The Librarian" wrote in message
...
Wolfgang wrote:

"Conan The Librarian" wrote in message
...

...At the risk of going even further afield -- I wonder if this is
another one of those cases of guys who are process-oriented vs. results
oriented. My hobbies are very much focused on the process.
For most of us, most of the time, it's a sort of hybrid. Very few of us
will bother to grow our own trees for lumber or make our own carbon fiber
sheeting.....or whatever the hell it's called. Nor will many of us buy a
vintage Record plane or a Winston rod and then pay someone to use it for
us.

Touche. :-) There's an ongoing disucssion on a woodworking group I
sometimes follow that usually devolves into something along the lines of,
"well if you're not flint-knapping your own tools ...".

I still make my own glass knives for microtomy.......um, but the process is
a bit more technologically sophisticated than "knapping".

But I do think there's a real dichotomy there.

Only if you ignore the bulk of the spectrum in concentrating on the infrared
and ultraviolet cranks at either end.

For example, if I'm not mistaken, Steve doesn't tie his own flies,
preferring to buy them rather than take the time to tie them up himself.
I love tying flies, and when I do buy them it's usually to get a "working
model" to copy. I have yet to build a rod, but (like Claspy, that crazy
bugger) when/if I do, I'll probably go the whole nine yards and try to
build a bamboo rod.

If either of you does decide to build a grass rod, I'd expect, given your
predilections, that you would start by making your own planing forms.

I enjoy the fact that I have a tangible byproduct of my hobbies, but I
have so much fun partaking of the process that I imagine I'd still do it
even without the tangible evidence. If I was more concerned about the end
result, there are any number of places where I could speed up the process
and even insure that my work is more uniform.

But I've even been known to clamp a board to my bench and take a
handplane to it for no other reason than to see the little wispy shavings
come out of the plane. :-)


Chuck Vance (I've heard rumors that Bill does the same thing, too)

I used to do a lot of that......just to dull the plane irons.....so I could
sharpen them again.

I'm currently interested in making and flying kites, making cheese, and
making paper. Would you believe it, in a city the size of Milwaukee I
cannot find a decent retailer for materials for any of those activities!


Wolfgang