Hey everybody, it’s that time of year again – it’s the Anarchist’s Gift Guide. We’ve been doing this for more than a decade now, people seem to like it, so I guess we’ll keep it up. Why? Unlike some other gift guides, ours isn’t sponsored. (In fact, if somebody asked us to write about their tool for the gift guide, our standard retort would be: “Why don’t you poop up your own butt?”) This is stuff we use and love. We have 11 offerings this year, and will publish one a day until we’re done. – Chris & Fitz
Conifer and Cairn Angle Setup Blocks
When I was self-employed, I thought about making setup blocks for Lie-Nielsen honing guides and selling them – a piece of plastic cutting board screwed to a block a wood to quickly be able to set the perfect projection of a plane blade for a 35° secondary angle. But I didn’t do it, because that sounded like work.
Enter John Byer, a woodworker in Indiana. He makes HDPE setting blocks for the Lie-Nielsen honing guide (25°, 30° and 35°) and the same angles for the Veritas Side Clamping Honing Guide. We have both.
They’re large enough to handle any blade that fits in the guide, and they are priced to make you never make your own again. Most of all, they are quite durable. Our wooden angle-setting guides got chewed up in no time. So far, the HDPE has proven quite resilient. – Fitz
$30 each seems pretty expensive.
I can’t speak for the maker, but whenever anyone tells us that, I say: By all means, if you can make a comparable product of the same quality in the U.S. and sell it for less, we welcome the competition.
$44.17CAD for Canadians. I imagine this is something that a 3D printer could spit out, then it just needs a printing file made available to others – ideally free. Will talk to my son in law over xmas – he has a 3D printer and he’s an engineer.
I am paying 65 for Mike Farrington’s PE combination honing guide/setting block. It lets you bring the stone to the tool, which saves time and lets you get away with buying smaller stones and thus a smaller flattening stone. It also sets you up for skew chisel sharpening if you use those.