Walt & Mary Henderson wrote:

> 
> 	I have used both period & reproduction tools in my work.  Both
> have their plus's & minus's.  My preference in the past was to use
> reproduction tools for the heavy (or very specialized work), but I am
> now in the process of switching over to using period tools (generally
> the ones with no makers mark) for all work.  My daily working kit of
> tools is of course made up of bench planes, rabets/fillisters, dados,
> and a half set of hollow & rounds.  I have complex moulders, but favor
> the simpler tools, as I believe many period craftsmen did, for a number
> of reasons.

I don't think there's a big problem here. The tools that take
the hard use are the common ones, easily replaceable.

There's still a lot of jack plane around, and they're
easily made/replaced in any case.

The rarer, finer, more exotic tools normally perform
such light and/or infrequent work that wearin them out
and (hence) remving them from the historical record is
a monumentally slow process.

    BugBear (who did have a moments pause
when he found out that the toothing plane he'd
flatten'd the sole of was 18th century)