Strange that this came up on HN. I do hand tool woodworking and respect Chris Schwarz a lot (have a few of his books). I had not seen this gizmo before. I’m curious to try it now. Looks like it’s still sold at Lee Valley.
I find that file alone is quite enough for me but it does look really nice use case. Would imagine it could be handy sharpening hard to reach places.
Also, while Chris isn't recommending it as a general tool for sharpening, I can imagine the name "Universal Sharpener" could lead people to believe it's a good choice for general purpose sharpening.
The mug is as close as I get to woodworking on most days, unfortunately.
For some reason, Facebook has been showing me lots of woodworking videos and books lately. And this has some relevance for me. I did notice multiple posts pushing books by Chris Schwarz, and now I see this comment. So I'm wondering if Mr. Schwarz is simply buying ads, and social media is doing its thing.
For about six months 80% of my ads were weird crystal figurines and other art pieces being sold for five figures. I kept clicking, and the advertisers fell over themselves to show me more of them. It delighted me every time I saw an abstract sculpture selling for more than my car, or a three story nativity carousel, both because it was fun to click through and look at them, and it was amusing to imagine how hard the ad engine wanted to sell me a 5-figure tchotchke for probably a 10% CPA commission.
I also had a fun period where I indicated I was interested in buying -- functional! -- windmills.
Be careful about clicking on anything you'd actually like to buy, though, like woodworking tools -- eventually you'll see something too good to pass up.
I mean you never know. But i think there's another explaination: He is one of the most popular woodworkers ATM and he has published a lot of material, so it's only natural if his name comes up more than others.