I think he gave you good advice and it would normally hold true. It is a little different situation currently. When going through my shopping list, I looked at the VOC Spares site. There is a note on there recommending colonials to try Coventry in Boston first because of shipping delays. UK deliveries up to 2 weeks to arrive, Europe 6 weeks and the rest of the world up to 9 weeks. I can make a lot of parts in 9 weeks. Coventry was temporarily out of stock, which actually turned out to be a good thing.
As it turns out, thanks to participants in this thread...the ET162’s that one buys may need to be trimmed or perhaps more likely they may be too short? The store bought ones may work, but the idea of making my own and adjusting their height to fit the steady plate makes more sense to me than adjusting spindles or shimming to adjust the steady plate to fit the store bought spacers.
The other thing is that I enjoy making parts and tools. I’m still new to the world of lathes and machinery, so making things helps me learn.
Again, your mentor is a wise man and from a strictly economic standpoint, making small parts doesn’t make sense. I could spend way more than $4.08 worth of time just rooting around under the bench searching for the stock... but then there is also the question of whether or not we should be trying to apply logic to our hobby at all.
If you ordered yours from Coventry, you may have got the last 4. They always have a very high fill rate. Out of 40+ lines, the only thing things out of stock were the spacers and they don’t sell clutch linings separately anymore.