Personalize your tools

[SLAG]

T. P.

You are right I mistook it for another book of the same genre. That other book was a coffee table extravaganza.

Sorry folks.

 (I sometimes do make mistakes, but not often )

SLAG.

[ThomasPowers]

And sometimes you get lucky; we used to live near a remaindered bookstore.  I found the way to have a jaw dropping library was to buy books cheap when they were remaindered and then hold them till they were out of print and greatly desired by others.  (Also the local public Library had a donated and de-accessed bookstore with ridiculously low prices, my mint copy of the 23rd edition of Machinerys Handbook sold for $5 and a Peter Collingswood Textile book going for $65 *used* and out of print was $3---my wife was a Volunteer at the library store, I had to finally point out that while the books were cheap I had to do all the work on the bookshelves!)

[JHCC]

Really fancy tools like those on that book cover were often (although not always) for aristocratic hobbyists. Louis XVI of France liked to make watches, for example, and one of the Russian nobles in War and Peace is described doing decorative turning on a lathe.