I've seen a number of people ask recently what books they should look into if they're interested in woodworking, particularly without power tools. I realized I'd never actually done a post on that, so here it is.
This is NOT a list of the best hand tool books out there. I haven't read them all, and I may be missing something fantastic. This is a list of some books I've found helpful, and some of why I thought they were worth recommending. So, in no particular order:
- The Anarchist's Toolchest, by Christopher Schwarz. This is an excellent book on theory and history, with excellent explanations of all the tools in an idealized English toolchest, and their use. The toolchest is there, with full instructions, but isn't a great first project. The rest of the trilogy, The Anarchist's Design Book and The Anarchist's Workbench, are also fantastic, and arguably more useful for a real beginner.
- Working Wood 1 & 2, by Paul Sellers. This is a much better "getting started" book than the Anarchist trilogy. It has a good section on tools, a number of starting projects with good explanation and photos, and an appendix on sharpening and tool care. If I had to recommend just one book, it probably would end up being this one.
- The New Traditional Woodworker, by Jim Tolpin. I've already reviewed this, here. Since you already have that link, I'll just say it's a good book, and worth your time.
- The Essential Woodworker, by Robert Wearing. This hasn't been one of my favorites, since I found the other three first. That said, it's good enough that I'll recommend it. It's now in print through Lost Art Press, and worth the purchase price. It starts out very basic, then walks through building a few things, ranging from simple to complex.
- The Joiner and Cabinet Maker, by Anonymous, Christopher Schwarz and Joel Moskowitz. This one is a little strange. It started out as a short book in 1839, disappeared for quite a while, and was eventually found by Schwarz and Moskowitz. The original book included discussion on how to get ahead in your trade, why you might be interested in woodworking, and basic operations. It also included three projects: a packing crate, a box for school books and lunch, and a chest of drawers. Schwarz and Moskowitz added a preface on what the trades and trade unions in England looked like at the time, footnotes with explanation or expansion in the original text, and a section walking through actually building the projects in the book. It's not exactly a how-to book, but there's a lot of good advice and explanation in it. And, if nothing else, it's a good read! (Also the audio book version was read by Roy Underhill, and although I haven't listened to it it's bound to be fantastic.)
So there you have it: my top choices for introductory woodworking books. Give them a read, and let me know if you like them!
In Part 4 of the "Woodworking on $1.50 a day" series, I wrote about an inexpensive "Hong Kong" style wooden plane. I did so largely because it's really nice, as a beginner, to buy a tool and start working, especially when you don't exactly know what "well set up" feels like.
If you're not into the "tap it with a mallet" school of plane adjustment, you do have one other option that can (if you're lucky) be even less expensive, which is to buy used. If you luck out you may find a nice old plane for $10-25 at a yard sale or flea market. The problem is that it's not going to look very nice at that price. It's going to be rusty, the handle or tote may be broken, and the cutting edge may be more of a mashing edge, with big nicks in it. This may be something you can fix.
If you're going to buy an old plane -- and I certainly have, and will again! -- here's what you should look for.
1) Size. The common sizes are usually referred to by the numbers Stanley gave them. Here they are:
#4. The most common, used primarily for smoothing. 9" long, 2" wide.
#3. A smaller smoother. 8" long, 1 3/4" wide.
#5. A jack plane: you'll mostly use it for removing a lot of material quickly. 14" long, 2" wide.
#7 or #8. A jointer, 22" or 24" long. Use it to make the edge of a board straight.
2) Brand. There are hidden gems in every brand, but there are also brands where you can pretty much rely on the tool having once been excellent. I'd trust anything made by Stanley before the second world war, and anything made at any time by Millers Falls. How do you tell if it was made before World War 2? Good question! Sadly, there's no easy answer. There's a flowchart here that may help, but may not. Record also made some good planes, as did Sargent. Just to add to the confusion, all of those companies made planes for Craftsman at various points.
2) Condition. This is more likely to matter. Here's what you want to see on a smoothing plane.
A smooth sole. Rust is fine, pitting is not.
Mostly smooth sides. A little pitting won't hurt anything, but make sure it's not too extensive.
A smooth cutting iron. Say it with me: Rust is fine, pitting is not. (At least within a half inch of the cutting edge.)
A long cutting iron. Some of the older planes had a short piece of hard steel welded to a long piece of either softer steel or iron. If the iron is too short, there may not be any hard steel left, which means it won't cut. EDIT: As TaDaMan points out in the comments, overall length is fairly irrelevant. What really matters is the distance between the cutting edge and the slot for the cap iron screw.
A cap iron that fits closely. Again, some rust is OK, but the end closest to the cutting edge should fit tightly against the blade. You can fix it if it's a little off, but it should be pretty close.
No missing parts. A tote (handle) or knob (front handle) that's cracked can be glued together. One that's missing entirely will have to be replaced somehow. On most of these planes there's a lever that lets you move the blade a little bit side to side. If it's missing, you're likely to have trouble.
What planes would I recommend? I most commonly use a #3, #5, and a transitional (wood body, metal adjustment knob) 24" jointer. Most people prefer a #4 to a #3, but I'm weird.
I'd recommend starting with a #5 or a #7, and I'm well aware that that's an unusual recommendation. Here's why:
Smoothing with a plane takes a lot of skill and a well set up tool, and sanding is easy. There's no way around it. A really good tool will compensate for only a little bit of skill, but first you have to get it really well set up. That's hard to do if you only have a little bit of skill. For me, at least, my first year or so working with a #4 was infuriating. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get it to work. I eventually went to a class and found out that part of the problem was the tool, and part was technique. It drove me nuts until then, and still does, occasionally. So I don't think you should start with a smoothing plane.
A jointer, on the other hand, is relatively easy to use. You put a board on edge (I'll talk about workholding in my next $1.50 a day entry, I think), and you run the plane from one end to the other. You'l need a little practice in keeping it square and not creating a bow instead of a straight line, and a lot of people find that a fence helps a lot, but that's pretty much all it does. It's easy to learn to use, and the initial setup isn't as fiddly. Conveniently, it also solves the problem that ripping a board (cutting it to be narrower) with a handsaw leaves a rough edge that isn't always straight. I realize it's counter to what just about everyone else says, but I think you should start with a jointer.
A #5 can do a lot of things. On boards shorter than about two feet, it can make a pretty good jointer. On large boards, it can make an OK smoother. If you curve the cutting edge, it can take out big chunks of wood if you go cross-grain, which is nice if you have a thick board and want a thinner one.
Anyway.
Once you've bought a plane, it's probably going to need some work to make it usable. There are a LOT of sources on how to do the repair work. Almost all of the ones I've seen are good. I'm going to include a pointer here to one video, by Paul Sellers. Why this one? A few reasons.
First, it's long. He covers pretty much the whole process over the course of the video, including a lot of conversation about how much perfection is necessary. At the end of the video, you'll know a lot about how a metal hand plane functions and how to clean and assemble one. Still not much about how to use one, but at least you should have a decent picture of how to get started.
Second, I enjoy his no-frills approach. He's spent something like 50 years as a professional woodworker, and has stripped a lot of the craft down to bare essentials. I like that in a teacher: give me the critical, no add-on skills first, and THEN I can learn the more complicated ways to do things.
Third, I like his accent. He's British, and I like listening to him. It's a minor thing, but it doesn't hurt.
So here we get to the first of the really iconic tools. Almost everyone involved in woodworking, even if they're mostly a power tool woodworker, seems to see the hand plane (specifically, a Stanley-style metal plane) as one of the major symbol of fine woodworking. I'm not really convinced of that for a power tool shop, but whatever.
This is not the post I intended to write.
The post I intended to write talked a lot about how you just can't get decent hand planes for a low price, and how you were going to have to either accept a dramatically sub-standard tool or resign yourself to lots of saving and lots of watching flea markets. And if you were going to stick purely with European ("Western") style planes, that would still be true. However. I wrote a review last week of the Mujingfang 11" Jack Plane, and I've been forced to change my mind.
So what do I think now?
In the Stanley numbering system, there are are lot of oddities. However, from #1 to #8, the planes get progressively longer, wider, and heavier, starting from the cute little #1 smoother to the #8 jointer.
The most common planes in the middle of the range are probably numbers 3, 4, and 5. Three is a small smoother: I happen to prefer it for most things, but that's personal preference. It runs about 8" long and 1 3/4" wide. The number four is also a smoother, running 9" long and 2" wide. The number five is the first one that's usually called a "jack" plane, and is 14" long by 2" wide.
The Mujingfang Jack is sort of an odd size by that standard, since it's called a Jack but is 11" long with a 1 3/4" wide blade. So the blade is the width of a #4, with a length halfway between a #4 and a #5. The mouth is relatively small, and it's never going to be a fantastic plane for removing a ton of waste. So why do I like it? It's sharp out of the box - sharp enough to take the hair off my arm --, and adjusts more easily than any other wooden plane I've used. I finally (FINALLY!) get why people say adjusting wooden planes isn't as hard as it looks. Now I know what I'm shooting for with my older tools. It's very light weight, and it leaves a good surface behind. Honing it a bit will probably make that even better.
Recommendation
So for month four, I suggest one of two options:
1) Buy the Mujingfang 11" jack. It runs a little bit over the budget, but I'll try to come in under for month 5 to balance that out. It can be pushed to remove a significant amount of stock, or you can take off very fine smoothing shavings. And it's long enough to act as a jointer for short boards, which is nice. I've read that a plane should be able to straighten a board twice as long as its sole, which means about 22" for this plane. With practice, you can extend that significantly. If you really can't swing $51, you could try their shorter 7" smoothing plane. It's $44, but my guess is that it will be significantly harder to use to get a straight edge on a board. I also haven't tested it, so I can't make an informed recommendation. Or you could wait one more week.
2) Head to flea markets, yard sales, antique stores, and the like, and find a Stanley #4 or #5, or equivalent from some other brand. Buying used is always tricky, and it may take some work, but you may find a gem of a plane for a lot less than $45. I would suggest avoiding eBay, at least in the beginning: it's hard to judge whether things are really in as good condition as the ad copy says. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. I've had some good luck, and some really bad luck.
What can I do now?
This is where things get really neat. Now you can smooth and straighten boards that you've ripped. You can resaw small boards and wind up with half- or quarter-inch stock, which you can smooth with the plane. So all of a sudden small boxes are possible, and you can build things that aren't limited to the dimensions of commercially available lumber.
You now have a set of tools that can realistically build a nice workbench, a long-lasting toolchest, or quite a lot of furniture. You'll still have some trouble with housing dados and grooves, but they're doable. Mortise and tenon joints should be possible, at least in sizes matching your chisels. With the addition of a plane, you can now chamfer edges, reduce the thickness of table tops, or a lot of other things.
I'm going to try to make a few quick projects over the next few weeks to demonstrate what can be done, but for now, just start practicing. Rip a 1" wide strip off a board (along the grain), then use the plane to smooth and straighten it. Once you're done, do the edge of the original board, and strip another piece off.
Here we are, entering month three. You've spent the past month or so learning to cut dovetails, trying to figure out how to cut a housing dado with your ryoba saw, and hopefully making some shop furniture. This month, we're going to make life easier by getting some marking tools.
A lot of people will tell you that you should spend a fortune buying marking and measuring tools, and that you need accuracy of .001" over a foot, and you need to buy a super expensive square to be that accurate. In my view, that's nonsense. You'll get that much movement in your board over the course of an hour, just from changing temperatures. Yes, accuracy is important. Yes, reliability is important. But it doesn't have to be THAT good. Here are some suggestions:
Square
Assuming you live in the US, buy an Empire True Blue 16" Combination Square. They're inexpensive ($14 at Home Depot, and only a little more on Amazon), easy to get, and mine has remained accurate for something like 6 years now. This gets you a good square, a good 45 degree marker, and a 16" steel rule. It'll be a little awkward for small parts, so consider supplementing it with their 6" version at some point later. For right now, it will do. EDIT: Both of my Empire squares have retained accuracy for over a decade, now. I'm still using them, and I'm still happy with them.
Marking Gauge
I'll be honest: I'm torn here. The next tool you need is a marking gauge of some sort, and I'm unsure what to recommend. So instead of a single recommendation, I'll give you a few choices, cheap to expensive.
Harbor Freight Mortise Gauge: At $10 it's the least expensive of the lot. It's also the cheapest. If you go this route, open the package at the store. Check to make sure the sliding arm is actually perpendicular to the fence when it's locked down, that it actually locks down, and that all three pins are there. I have one, and I use it regularly, but it's sometimes frustrating because it's not really a precision tool. Also, you'll want to file the pins down to a football cross-section, and use very little pressure when making the first mark. It works, but it's not great.
Rockler or Wood River Wheel Marking Gauge: If you have a Rockler or Woodcraft nearby, you can pick up one of their house branded gauges for about $17. A wheel marking gauge is usually easier to set and use, and they'll almost certainly hold their setting better.
The Veritas Wheel Marking Gauge: This is the best of the lot. It's my most used gauge, and it's fantastic. It's also over $30.
As I said, I'm not really sure how to go. I think, in the end, I'd recommend buying one of the cheaper options, which will leave you enough money for item 3. Probably go with the Rockler or Woodcraft gauge: they seem to get good reviews, and are certainly higher quality and easier to use than the Harbor Freight version.
Marking Knife
A marking (or striking) knife. Something like the one by iGaging will make your life a lot easier: the spear point means you can get the blade flat against your rule or whatever you're using to mark, and they're pretty inexpensive. Another option is a folding knife: I went this route, with the Stanley 10-049 Pocket Knife, which is recommended by Paul Sellers. It's easy to store in a shop apron pocket, and being able to close it means it'll stay sharp longer. On the downside, I wasn't able to find any source for them except Amazon, which means you'll have to order it.
What can I do now?
To be honest, that hasn't changed much. When I started this series, I wanted to prioritize tools that would get you working as quickly as possible, since most people aren't thrilled about spending three or four months buying tools they can't actually use. The difference this month is accuracy.
A good square will enable you to do layout much more accurately: if you can lay the line more precisely, you'll wind up with straighter cuts and parts that fit together better. A marking gauge will make cutting rabbets or dovetails simpler, because it will be easier to mark the width of the rabbet or depth of the tails. A marking knife makes a more precise line than a pencil or pen, and opens the option of using a knifewall to guide your saw, which is more accurate than just trying to cut on a line.
Basically, this doesn't let you do anything new, but it helps you get better at what you were already doing.
It's been a month since you last went out to buy tools, and you're getting tired of nailing joints together. You really want to cut some better joints, but you're not sure how to get started. Well, that's what this month's purchasing is, so let's get going!
Month 2
This month we're going to find some chisels and sharpening tools. This is where you get to make some choices.
Chisels:
For chisels, you want bevel-edge chisels in at least 1/4" and 1/2" sizes. Adding a 1" chisel will make your life easier, but isn't necessary for a lot of things. If you look at Amazon, you can get Irwin Marple chisels for $8-$9 each. That's about $18. I'd recommend buying a 1/4" and a 1/2", and spending the rest of this month's budget on sharpening stones. If you don't want to order from Amazon, Sears and Home Depot have similar chisels at similar prices. You can also keep an eye on thrift stores, flea markets, and yard sales: those are a bit risky, because you're not really going to have the tools to restore a badly damaged chisel, but you might find a fantastic deal.
Keep in mind these are not high-quality tools. They're not going to be very sharp out of the box, and they probably won't hold an edge all that long. That said, I worked with a set of Craftsman chisels for a few years, and while they sucked, they still worked.
Sharpening:
Talking about sharpening is like tap-dancing through a minefield. Given a budget of about $25, though, you're pretty limited. Given that, I'm going to go with the two cheapest initial cost options. There are a lot of excellent videos on how to sharpen, so I'm not going to cover it here.
Sandpaper:
First things first, you need a flat surface. There are two cheap ways to get one, although neither will be perfect. First, go to a home store and buy a granite floor tile. They should run around $5-8, and will be flat enough. The second option is to talk to a granite supplier. See if they've got an off-cut too small to sell as a countertop, but big enough for your use. You probably want something around 8"x2" at a minimum, and ground smooth on at least one side. Larger is better.
Next, you should be looking for sandpaper. You want wet/dry paper, and for routine sharpening you can probably start with 400 grit. I'd go 400, 800, and 1000 grit. If you want to, you can go up to 2000, but I mostly didn't bother when I was using sandpaper. When you go to sharpen, drip some water or windex on the paper, set it on the granite plate, and sharpen.
So what's the catch? The catch is that while the initial investment is low, the long-term cost is high. Yes, sandpaper is cheap, but the cost adds up. You can't use the same sheet for very long, or you'll run into issues where half of the cutting edge is sharp and the other half isn't.
Oilstones:
Oilstones are a slightly larger initial investment, but not horrible. You can get a three-grit set on Amazon for around $25, which is just within our budget. Similar options may be available at local stores, or they may not: it's hard to guess in any given area. You're mostly going to want fine and extra-fine grits, not the coarse one. That's really for working on a damaged blade, which hopefully you won't have.
Is there a catch? I've never used that particular set, so I don't really know. In all honestly, I greatly prefer a diamond plate, and so I've switched to that exclusively. But they're not cheap: the combined price for the set I have is something like $150, which is absurd for a $45/month budget. If you have a windfall, sharpening tools would be a great way to spend it, but for now just put it on your "someday when I'm rich" list.
What can I do now?
The addition of chisels makes a big change. You can now cut dovetails, for instance. For practice, I recommend buying a piece of 1x4 or 1x5, and cutting a set of dovetails every day for at least two weeks. Try to get a little better every day, and fix something that didn't quite work right the day before. At the end of two weeks or a month, you're likely to be cutting them fairly quickly and quite accurately.
So that means you can make dovetailed boxes, or drawers for a case that's nailed together. You can make housing dados and rabbets if you're careful, which means you can make a pretty solid book case. You can now make mortise and tenon joints in softwood, and in hardwood if you're cautious.
This is, honestly, the point where you can start making furniture. You don't have a smoothing plane or a big range of sandpaper grits, so making fine furniture is a challenge, but you can make things. For that matter, you now have the critical tools for making a workbench: I didn't have much more than this when I built my small bench.
So spend the next month practicing sharpening and making joints, and I'll figure out what you should buy next.
I recently saw another "I want to start wood working, but I really can't afford to spend much money" post, and it got me thinking. There used to be good options for buying things gradually, but at this point it's pretty much high-interest credit cards or nothing. There used to be books titled things like "Europe on $5 a day!", so I thought I'd do something similar.
Even as a college student, I probably could have put away a dollar or two a day, so I'm going to think of the available money as $45/month. It's a nice round number to work with. Before I go any further, though, I'm going to try to address the cost vs. quality problem. With woodworking tools, you generally get what you pay for. On $45 per month, you're not going to be buying heirloom tools. You're going to be buying tools that you'll probably start wanting to replace after a couple of years.
So what's the value here? Aren't you just throwing money away? Well, yes. You are. But not everyone can afford to buy top line tools from the beginning, and if you're going to insist on Lie-Nielson tools on even $5 per day, it's going to be years before you can get much work done. This is a "Get in the shop as fast as possible" list. You can keep the tools in a cardboard box until you build yourself a better tool box. And now I'll get back on track.
What do we need to do?
To start with, what are the critical tools or operations? In no particular order, here's my list.
A saw that can make rip cuts.
A saw that can make cross cuts.
A saw that can make fine joinery cuts.
Chisels for shaping, cutting joints, etc.
Some sort of smoothing tool. Card scrapers, hand plane, sandpaper, or whatever.
Marking tools... the usual choices being a marking gauge, marking knife, and so on.
Ways to drill large and small holes.
A hammer (for driving nails and just generally smacking things) and screwdrivers.
A way to make long board edges straight after being rip-cut.
A way to cut rabbets
The actual tools.
OK. So that's a rough tool set. Let's talk about actual tools, then. As a guideline here, I'm going to go as cheap as I think is practical: this is not a kit of heirloom tools. This is a set that will let you get going as cheaply as possible, and which you'll replace over time as you come up with more cash. I'm also going to try to think about order of operations here, so I'll split things up by month.
Note 1: I get nothing if you follow these links. I get nothing if you don't follow these links. I'm pretty much writing this for fun, and the only profit I get is the excitement of checking to see whether anyone has read this.
Note 2: Prices are as of the day I wrote this. I'm not going to keep updating, but the basics should stay pretty similar.
What am I including?
Before I start the actual list, a quick note. I'm only including durable tools here; no wood, even though it's a major cost. Why not? Because you can do quite a lot with cheap or free lumber. Dimensional lumber from the home store, scavenged pallet wood, and things like that.
Month 1:
This month, you're going to Sears. No matter what you do, you're eventually going to need to drive nails and screws, so we'll deal with that and see what we have left. First, pick up a 16oz Curved Claw Hammer. The curved claws are good for removing nails, and I happen to like wood handles. Also, it's about $5, which seems right for this project. Next up, pick up a cheap 6-in-1 screwdriver. I have this one, and it works fine. It's about $9 right now: if you see one that's cheaper, grab that instead. You'll want #1 and #2 Phillips head, and 3/16" and 1/4" slotted heads, which most of that style have. We're up to $14 here, so let's add a saw and call it a day. I have a Shark brand Ryoba (there's a review back near the beginning of the blog), which I quite like. At the moment Sears is listing them at about $29, so it will bring us up to $43 before tax. I'll call that good! If you're willing to splurge a little on month one, I'd add a few sheets of 180 grit sandpaper and a variety pack of nails. That will bring you up to around $50-55, but allow you to start woodworking immediately. You could also put off the screwdriver until next month... it's not really critical if you only have nails.
What can you do with this set? A surprising amount, actually.
I'd start with a Japanese-style toolbox such as this:
Build it to the length of your saw, and ideally out of something like 1x10. It will hold and protect your tools, but it doesn't need to be perfect. All the joints are butt joints held together with nails, so there's no complex joinery. It also doesn't have to be perfectly smooth, so sanding the ends of the boards with 180 grit sandpaper will be fine. Just wrap it around a piece of scrap and get going.
This toolset will also allow you build a standard five-board bench, like this:
And that should be enough to keep you busy until it's time to think about your second month's purchasing...
