Planing down a slippery slope

I am not a plane collector…I am not a plane collector…I am NOT a plane collector. Is there some sort of 12 step program for people with a “tool acquisition” disease???

I have a collection of old electric trains, I know what it’s like to collect things (boy, do I), just ask my wife.
I started out with an old Stanley #4 and 9 1/2. I hadn’t used them in a ton of years, so they just sat on a shelf. Then, sometime back, I started getting back to an interest in hand tools. The more I read, the more I realized just how useful they were, and what a great feeling of satisfaction I received from using hand tools. Still, the old planes stood on the shelf.

Then one day, I got down to sharpening them, and then I made some shavings…the first in a lot of years, and then I believe I felt myself slip (just a little)...felt my whole workshop tilt downward (just a little)...the slope was almost imperceptible, yet was there
.
Then I thought I’d just take a peek on E-bay, just to see what was out there…and the whole house tilted noticeably, dishes slid off the table, glasses fell out of cabinets, furniture slid across the room. A vortex seemed to appear, swirling, seemingly drawing everything into it’s center, and calling to me as the sirens called to Odysseus. Only there were no rocks, only planes…hundreds of them, all different, all calling.

I began to realize that to become a complete woodworker, I need far more than I had. (I thought a little one and a big one was good enough, how naive I was)

Then came a #3. (I still haven’t succumbed to the urge to own a #1 & #2, unless I find one at a garage sale) Then a 220, another #4 w/ adjustable frog screw (the one I just made handles for), a #5, a #75, a Stanley/Gage self setting #4 (my favorite), a #78 rabbet plane, a Millers Falls low angle #56, 3 tiny Harbor Freight planes (work pretty good when tuned), and a Stanley #45 Rube Goldberg machine…so far.

With each new acquisition, I felt my world tilt a bit more, so that it is only with a great deal of effort that I am able to maintain my grasp on the level plane(sorry about that) of reality.

But…I’m not a collector.

By the way, does anyone have a Stanley #95 that they want to get rid of???
-SST

-- Accuracy is not in your power tool, it's in you