The Offshore Voyaging Reference Site

Justifying Expensive Tools

The enjoyment of one’s tools is an essential ingredient of successful work

Donald Knuth

This quote makes me feel a lot better about blowing the price of a nice second hand car on new tools after we sold the McCurdy and Rhodes 56 with all my old tools. Thanks to Stan Honey for the heads up on the quote.

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Ignat Fialkovskiy

How do you fight corrosion on those expensive tools?
in my experience pliers so easily stop opening, ratchets stop ratcheting…

George L

Actually, it’s the other way around – justifying inexpensive tools is very hard to do. Rather than feeling bad about spending so much money for good tools, we should feel bad wasting any money on bad ones. Whenever I allowed myself to be tempted by a “good deal”, tools that are “good enough” it turned out to be a waste of money.

My later mother, daugther of a smith who was shooing horses till he was 80 (with my grandmother hammering away – he did have shoulder issues eventually) used to say, “you can tell the master by his tools”.

If its not worth buying proper tools, the job ain’t worth doing. ’nuff said …