Do you fix your own gear or just toss it when something goes wrong?

I was out in the garage last Tuesday laying down a bamboo floor and my old Stanley plane blade chipped on a hidden nail, so I spent the evening filing and honing it back to sharp instead of running to the big box store for a new one, where do you draw the line between repairing and replacing your analog tools?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_spencer19d ago

Fix what you can. New stuff just breaks faster.

carter.julia19d ago

I read an article recently about how people in the 1800s would use the same hand plane for 50 years and just replace the blade or sharpen it over and over. That kind of stuck with me because my grandpa had a wooden jack plane he passed down that still works fine. For me the line is when the repair costs more than half of a new tool or takes way too many hours for something I use daily. But with simple steel and wood tools like planes or chisels, I'll always fix them because they're built to last forever if you put in the work. I feel like we've lost that patience as a society and it makes me SAD to see people throw out perfectly good tools just because they need a little attention.