Posted: Wednesday, July 24, 2024 at 07:26 PM | Categories: Woodworking

As you probably know from this site, I'm a geek and a software developer. I'm also a woodworker and it feels like I'm going to pull in more woodworker stories this year - mostly because I've been doing more woodworking than coding lately.

I recently discovered Woodpeckers Precision Woodworking Tools and I really love their stuff. It's really (really, really) expensive, but I like that it's US Made (Ohio) and seems to be good quality stuff (it would have to be at those prices). I've experienced some quality issues with lately, so I'm starting to look for alternatives.

I'm replacing the quickly thrown together wooden storage drawers I use in my shop. I made them 20 years or so ago and frankly I'm embarrassed of them. I've been playing around with two different finger joint jigs, so I'm in a position where I'm ready to start making some new drawers.

One of the things I know I want to do for these boxes is use library card deck like pulls to pull them out from the shelves. Thinking through that, I realized I needed a reliable way to attach the pulls to the drawer faces so I started looking for jigs to use.

Of course, I started at Woodpeckers, but quickly realized that for the amount of use I was going to get out of it, it wasn't worth the expenditure. $219 is way too much for something like this unless you use it weekly.

I knew there were some companies that cloned Woodpeckers tools, so quickly started looking around. I discovered Levoite a while back and knew they very deliberately cloned Woodpecker products. For their site, they generally copy the product images from the Woodpecker site then Photoshop out the Woodpecker name from product images.

In this case, their Woodpecker clone is $147.59 but they're going to let me have it for $92.99. Not bad, and I almost purchased it.

Yesterday, I discovered a company called Trek Drill that had a very similar product. The pictures are different at least, but it looks like the exactly same product.

I've also been buying a lot of electronic components and some tools and parts from Ali Express, so hopped over to their site to see what I could find. There, the same product is only $18.62. Recognizing that I'd only use this tool rarely and maybe only enough times to build my 14 drawers or so, I went ahead and purchased it for less than $20 with shipping.

I wish I had the expendable cash to buy each one and compare them, but I don't.

I did recently purchase a Chamfer Plane from Levoite; I saw it on the Woodpecker site and it looked interesting. But, again, I wouldn't use it more than once or twice a year, so I went with the cheaper version. The quality is much lower than what I'm used to from Woodpeckers, but I'm not (yet anyway) a professional woodworker. Once I'm retired and regularly making furniture, I might then invest in the Woodpecker version.

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