Excellent thoughts on a subject very dear to my heart. Whether tailed or
tailless, there are so many gadgets out there to be bought or made that
one has to wonder where could all of that be kept in such an order as to
be immediately retrieveable as one or the other is needed.

Seems that every one of the mags has a new article every month on making
the ultimate this or that jig that every shop must have in order to
accurize or speed up your work. And every mag every month has an article
on the newest must have jig or apparatus costing in excess of my
mortgage payment which, after hours of set-up time, can help you create
the perfect M & T, or wonderfully easy DTs or what-have-you.

And the forums are full of folks touting the great benefits of this new
gadget they just spent the baby's milk money on that effortlessly
sharpens this or that, or makes setting up a tool to within thousandths
of an inch of accuracy to cut material that can change in tenths of an
inch overnight given a good rain storm, or a hot dry day.

Now, I've bought at least my share of gadgets over time in an effort to
by-pass the learning curve toward being proficient with one or another
tool, and have found them to produce well below what was expected. Now,
with the exception of a few jigs that get a whole lot of use, set-ups,
what there are, are one-off things done with scrap and clamps, which are
disassembled after use to be recycled into the next one-off set-up.

But I guess there are enough folks out there with the time, space, and
money to support a market for the store bought gadgets. As for me, I
would rather spend those resources on making stuff.

Jerry