I totally agree John, nothing is more beautiful then tooling. There is heart & soul in every piece of leather carving & tooling.
Lasering is just another medium that brings cool detail and something different.
My late husband bought the 2nd ULS system they sold, Beta model II, that was nearly 20 yrs ago. He got it to do fret work on the guitars he made. But you know after you have played with lasering everything in the house, even the mouse traps sooner or later you look for something new, LOL.
When I meet him I started the leather engraving but mostly I use hair on because thats what I enjoy.
When they made the first lasers they were not refillable, so one Christmas right in middle of the rush days mine ran out of CO2. Thank goodness the rep here in Washington has his demo for sale & I was only down 2 days.
I don't use mine every day but I can't imagine life with out it. I use it to cut very detailed signs, cad cut for printing t-shirts & hats, etching, burning, cutting things out, make filigree business cards....Its just endless the fun things you can do with it. But there is no soul in the work, its computerized. There is heart in my work though.