Hmm. If I’m visualizing this correctly, and depending on the size of the table . . .

Two pairs of legs with stretchers in between, on pivots that allow them to fold up agains the bottom of the table, slighly offset so that the legs end up alongside each other when folded instead of interfering. If you want them to touch the bottom of the tub, set them up to fold at the “knees” rather than the “thigh”, if you see what I mean. The difficult part is figuring out how to secure them in the extended position. If you’re okay with putting in a couple of bolts whenever you unfold, you could add a couple of supports that link the stretchers to the underside of the table at an angle (pivot at the other end again). Or you could attach a length of wood to one stretcher with a pivot and notch the other end so that when the table is unfolded, it drops over the other stretcher and forms a tight cross half-lap joint.

All this requires gluing or screwing hinges or bits of wood pierced for dowels or screws to the bottom of the table to form the pivots.

letting cats roam outside is objectively harmful.

That’s very situational. If you’re in a rural or semi-rural area that has small wildcats (or foxes or similar) already, adding a handful of domestic cats isn’t going to disrupt anything much. The only reason to keep cats inside in such a place is for their own safety (from larger predators like coyotes, and from highway traffic).

If you’re in Australia, Antarctica, or a protected island biome with no native small wildcats or canids, or you have a known endangered species in the area that cats are likely to prey upon, that changes the equation. If you’re in a highly urban area, that changes things in a different way, because the danger to outdoor cats from traffic and other human activity rises exponentially.

Very unlikely this person is a grandparent—up until about 40 years ago, most cats outside highly built-up downtown areas were allowed to free-roam, so an older person would see it as normal.

One thing that’s helped me a bit in similar circumstances was to find the manual (by searching on-line, since the paper ones don’t tend to survive in our household). Even 30-50 years ago, they were pretty good at telling you what to absolutely not do, in order to reduce the number of lawsuits flung at the manufacturer. Also a nice-to-have for maintenance purposes.

(Now if only I could find the one for that damned drill press . . .)

If your local library is no good, you can also try Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=woodworking. Has an exhaustively detailed book on joints in particular, plus an assortment of beginners’ manuals. A lot of hand tool stuff hasn’t changed all that much in the past century.

Saves a trip to the store, and the cost of a more expensive (because inflation) new can.

Yeah, OpenSCAD is purely a CAD program with no support for CAM, which is the toolpaths part. FreeCAD is the only reasonably mature multiplatform open-source CAM-supporting software that I’m aware of, although there might be something Windows-specific or Web-based that I haven’t found. There may be a Blender plugin somewhere, but I wouldn’t trust it.

He was the one I was thinking of with the bandsaws. I’d forgotten he’d done a jointer.

At those prices, shop-built bandsaws and clamps may come back into fashion (I can’t recall ever seeing a recipe for a shop-built jointer, though).

You could still avoid computers in some jobs in the 1990s and into the early 2000s. And some people were supported by their spouse or other family members and never did work, or stopped working after they married or had children.

I don’t think he ever rephotographs anything or removes it from the site. A mess, like I said. I suspect he’s a retiree running a part-time business out of his home.

An antique or vintage brace may have a chuck intended for square-shanked bits, but there are chuck adapters available that should allow you to use hex-shanked bits (to the best of my knowledge, anyway—I’m also just building up my toolkit, so lots of reading but little practical experience). Or track down some of the old bits.

https://www.letoolman.com/antique—vintage-tools.html lists “Vintage Stanley brace & bits $10. each with a free bit” in his horribly messy inventory. Might be worth emailing to ask?

https://www.mortiseandtenonmag.com/blogs/blog/sourcing-antique-hand-tools has a lengthy list, with everything from the ridiculously-priced to the reasonable.