Here in Ireland wood-turning has a fair following.
It is known that older lathes are generally better - they consist of more metal, the shafts are solid rather than hollow.
edit: I cannot fathom why this was downvoted..
It is known that older lathes are generally better - they consist of more metal, the shafts are solid rather than hollow.
edit: I cannot fathom why this was downvoted..
It could be just relentless pressure to reduce costs, after the people who knew why it should be done a certain way had all retired, and a customer base that changed into one that either didn't know how to recognize quality, or valued it less.
Maybe we can do without heat-treating the surface? Maybe just give a quick grind instead of hand scraping the ways? Maybe outsource the castings instead of doing them in-house using the process we'd honed over decades?
A modern Lie-Nielsen is easily as good as the best Stanley planes.
Old tools are hit or miss. Sure, the design on a drill press hasn't changed in 50 years. But the newer model probably has less runout and a better motor. Bandsaws are the same. One old tool you could never pay me enough to use is an old table saw, or radial arm saw. I like my limbs, and the only saw worth paying money for right now is a SawStop. It's like asking someone if they want to drive a car without seat belts or airbags.
1) those plastic gears are sacrificial gears that will break if you drive it too hard but they cost nothing and are easy to replace; the "properly built one" may have a burnt out motor at this point and may be too costly or impractical to repair - and
2) you don't see the lot of them that haven't survived to this day and whose owners have thrown them out and forgotten about them already. And
3) people keep comparing the lowest end appliance from the 50s with the lowest end appliance today, and obviously the modern one is going to be a piece of disposable garbage. The disposable garbage tier didn't exist back then so compare the quality tier then with the quality tier now, and you'll find that modern quality stuff stands up just fine, if not better because of material advances and minor innovations. Yes, sadly, there are probably categories where the quality tier has gone away and there's only garbage left, that is unfortunate.
There is an amazing culture of tool restorers on YouTube that show restores, rebuilds, mods, and others. If you like old tools checkout Hand Tool Rescue (a real purist), and recently Fireball tools has a series fixing and modding an amazing 100 year old bandsaw to make it safe and easier to use.
I have to mention "my mechanics" in that context. His level of work and attention to detail is far ahead of everyone else. He's Swiss of course.
You can still get good use out of a Buffalo drill press from the 1940s. A lot of those machines were made and went into small machine shops, and are just out there circulating around because the basic tool is so simple. (E.g., this well-known woodworker's shop: http://penultimatewoodshop.blogspot.com/2013/05/shop-tour-mi...)