New to hand tools

[Bryan Cramer]

After seeing another woodworker work I now realized how hand wood working tools complement power tools. I know what I would want a chisel set, block plane, smoothing plane, handsaw to cut dovetails, and maybe a rabbit plane. I will still use my power tools. I do not want to completely switch to hand tools. Right now I need a good chisel set better than the home center ones I started with. I do not have a decent workbench (more like a work table) so until I build one I would not be able to use hand planes. My budget for a 4 piece chisel set is $150. What brand do you recommend? I have no idea what to purchase as a sharpening set up for the chisels and the future hand planes. I am on a limited budget. I can only afford one book if you recommend it. Any other advice is appreciated.

Thanks

[Sean Hughto]

Do you have anything to sharpen on now? Like a grinder? If I need four good user chisels and a way to sharpen them for under $150, I'd pick 4 vintage chisels for ebay for less than $20 each. I would then buy a Norton combination waterstone - something like 4000/8000. The rest I would spend on some decent sandpaper and piece of glass to mount it on, that I could use for rough shaping of the bevel and flattening the backs if I had no grinder.

[paul cottingham]

The Narex chisels at lee valley are a good buy. You will have money left over for a 4000/1000 combination stone and a mkII sharpening jig. Buy a piece of plate glass and some grit for flattening the stones. A good start.

[Charlie MacGregor]

The Narex bevel edge chisels have been getting good reviews and are very reasonable. Set of 4 (1/4", 1/2", 3/4", 1") for $30 at Lee Valley (until Aug 8th). A search for waterstones in this forum will provide you with hours of productive reading. It seems like most start out with honing guides like the Veritas Mk.II and eventually graduate to a hollow grind and freehand. As far as workholding, a little ingenuity and a few clamps and stops will hold about anything but nothing beats a good bench. I very much like David Charlesworth's DVD on sharpening. Good Luck.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Not having a proper bench surface anymore, until I get moving on building one (I used to do most of my work on surfaces attached to my portch at my old apartment) I've gotten quite far with what basically amounts to a long bench hook along the longside of the kitchen counter. It gets a little tiring if I don't stand on something (the counter is a bit high for this kind of stuff) but it works well. There was a recent "tricks of the trade" entry in Popular Woodworking that demonstrated something similar. If your work table is sturdy enough to not move around, (brace it against a wall?) simply screwing a stop to the end of the table can get you quite far...

[Peter Scoma]

+1 on the Narex chisels. I have 100+ new and vintage chisels and I still purchased a set. For 85$ you cant go wrong. As others have said, forget sharpening stones (for now) and buy a 1x3ft piece of 1/2 plate glass, a stack of sandpaper from 150 to 3000 grit, a can of 3m adhesive spray and the Veritas MKII sharpening jig. For planes, search the bay for an old stanley 9 1/4 block plane and a number 4 bench plane.

As far as which book to purchase, that's a no-brainer. Get Chris Schwarz's workbench book and start planning to build a proper workbench. I got a copy for 15$ at Borders (which are all closing and blowing out their inventory). Amazon likely has some used copies you can get to keep costs down.

As you start learning to use more handtools and want to acquire more, check out the local flea markets and antique markets. I started down the slippery slope of handtool usage/collecting when I purchased 5 stanley planes (60 1/2, no 5, x2 6, no 3) for 40$ off craigslist. With some searching you can find some nice pieces while keeping your costs down.

Good luck

PJS

[James Owen]

Chisels: I've never played with the NAREX chisels, so have no first-hand knowledge of them, but they get excellent reviews and many recommendations from Creekers.

Ashley Isles and Henry Taylor both make excellent chisels in true Imperial sizes; TFWW carries the AI line; Traditional Woodworker carries the HT line. Pfeil/Swiss Made also makes excellent chisels, although the edges on the side bevels are a bit thicker than the LN, AI, and HT chisels, and they are metric-sized; Woodcraft carries the Pfeil line. All three brands of chisels generally run around $30 to $40 per chisel, depending on size. All are very close to Lie Nielsen in quality, for about $10 to $20 per chisel less. And of course, the Lie-Nielsen chisels are truly excellent, but they run $50 per chisel, which exceeds your stated chisel budget. All of the premium chisels listed in this paragraph require very minimal tuning.

Books: someone else has already mention Chris Schwartz's Bench books. Other books that provide in-depth information on hand tools: Traditional Woodworking Handtools (Graham Blackburn) [good overall review of hand tools]; Restoring, Tuning, and Using Classic Handtools (Mike Dunbar) [provides extensive information on restoring a comparatively small selection of vintage hand tools, as well as excellent information on using them]; The Anarchist's Tool Chest (Chris Schwartz) [very thorough information on a wide selection of hand tools; essentially a "these are the tools you need to build furniture" kind of guide, with a lot of history, philosophy, and opinion thrown in, as well]; Hand Tools (Aldren Watson) [an excellent historically-oriented overview of hand tools and their use]; Hand Tool Essentials (Editors of Popular Woodworking) [a good general guide to hand tools]; Woodwright series (Roy Underhill) [while these tend, in general, to be more project-oriented -- except for The Woodwright's Guide: Working Wood With Wedge & Edge, which is more tool-oriented -- there is a lot of good hand tool information in all of them].

The Blackburn book and the new Schwartz book are around $35 each (nice hardbacks); most of the rest can be picked up new in the $20 to $25 range (nice over-sized paperbacks).

[Harvey Pascoe]

Beware of the Veritas MkII jig, it is made for plane irons and does not hold all chisels well, particularly smaller ones and those with irregular shapes such as beveled sides. That cheap little single wheel, cast aluminum job sold under many names (mine is Somax) is probably the better way to go for chisels. Eclipse is one name as I recall. The MkII has difficulty holding the blade square and is also quite clumsy to set up.

[Jim Matthews]

Jim Tolpin's "The New Traditional Woodworker" is quite good, and has lots of professional experience behind the writing.

I'm a fan of Anthony Guidice, "The Seven Essentials of Woodworking (http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Essentials-Woodworking-Anthony-Guidice/dp/0806925272)" which was first to buck the power tool trend back in 2001.
Amazon frequently has second hand copies available on the cheap.

Another free source are podcasts, my favorite being The Logan Cabinet Shoppe (http://www.logancabinetshoppe.com/index.html).
Bob is half my age and has already forgotten more about hand work than I'm likely to ever learn.

Lastly, to differ on tool choices; by top quality NEW tools as you can afford them.
Antiques require "fettling" to work their best and who has time to polish tools?

Lee Valley sells modern backsaws that are excellent, right out of the box.
If any of the products they sell fail to satisfy you, there is a return policy in your favor.

It is far too easy to end up with a drawer full of rusty "someday" tools that won't work for you.

DAMHIKT

[Roy Lindberry]

Jim Tolpin's "The New Traditional Woodworker" is quite good, and has lots of professional experience behind the writing.

I'm a fan of Anthony Guidice, "The Seven Essentials of Woodworking (http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Essentials-Woodworking-Anthony-Guidice/dp/0806925272)" which was first to buck the power tool trend back in 2001.
Amazon frequently has second hand copies available on the cheap.

Another free source are podcasts, my favorite being The Logan Cabinet Shoppe (http://www.logancabinetshoppe.com/index.html).
Bob is half my age and has already forgotten more about hand work than I'm likely to ever learn.

Lastly, to differ on tool choices; by top quality NEW tools as you can afford them.
Antiques require "fettling" to work their best and who has time to polish tools?

Lee Valley sells modern backsaws that are excellent, right out of the box.
If any of the products they sell fail to satisfy you, there is a return policy in your favor.

It is far too easy to end up with a drawer full of rusty "someday" tools that won't work for you.

DAMHIKT

Wow. Thanks for the Logan Cabinet Shoppe link! I have a feeling I'll be spending a bit of time there.

[Steve Branam]

I'll just put in a shameless plug for the "Intro Hand Tools" (http://www.closegrain.com/p/intro-hand-tools.html) section of my blog I've been putting together, exactly for people like you who are just starting out (it's been kind of on hold as other things keep putting it off, but I'll be adding more to it soon). It starts off with a list of books.

I highly recommend two of Roy Underhill's "Woodwright's Shop" books, The Woodwright's Guide, Working Wood with Wedge and Edge, and The Woodwright's Apprentice, 20 Favorite Projects from the The Woodwright's Shop. The first one is his latest, from last year, and is focused on individual skills. The second is from 1996, but it's projects comprise almost an entire hand tool woodworking course by itself. There's a lot of overlap between the two (in fact, many of the line drawings in the first are from the photographs in the second and some of the others in the series), so either one would be good, depending on what your preferred learning method is. The projects include portable workbench (which you can also see on my blog when I built one), tool tote, and progressively more complex joinery. If you built everything in it, you would have developed an incredible array of skills.

[Peter Hawser]

Bryan, as a fellow hand tool newbie, it is a jungle out there. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of "The Anarchists Tool Chest." It can really help you understand what tools to get and has a great chapter on sharpening. It's also fun to read. It can help you buy the right tools the first time and avoid so much heartache, frustration and waste. The kicker with hand tools is you have to know how to sharpen them and that can be intimidating. It really isn't. Beyond all the techno jargon, minutia and endless descriptions of .00000 this/that and gossamer shavings, it is essentially very simple. You will soon discover that there are perhaps 1000 opinions on sharpening. The book has great advice on this - use the one that works for you. He makes a strong case for stones over the sandpaper method which seems cheap at the outset, but can add up over time.

I would only suggest cheap hand tools for one purpose. In order to learn how to sharpen and not end up in tears after botching the edge on a nice quality tool. I practiced and practiced on cheap Home Depot chisels and a Groz plane for $20.

Steve's post on the Underhill books just cost me some money. Roy is an awesome teacher and if you can't get his show on TV, many reruns are online.

[Peter Scoma]

Great advice in this thread but I do have to respectfully disagree with some. I dont think cheap (as in poor quality, not inexpensive) handtools shold be in anyones tool chest. The Narex chisels arent Lie Nielson's but they are a great deal for a beginner. At 8.50 a chisel, theyre probably less expensive than the modern Buck chisels sold at Home Depot and of significantly higher quality.

RE: the MKII sharpening jig, I think it works great for chisels, especially for beginners. In time you will learn to sharpen freehand but the MKII is a great way to get started. I personally dont find it clumsy at all, in fact it is much easier to use than the standard eclipse jig that forces you to balance the tool on a roller that is often to small for anything over an inch.
Good luck
Peter

[Alan Schwabacher]

A large collection of links to useful information on handtools on the web can be found here:
http://www.cianperez.com/Wood/WoodDocs/Wood_How_To/INDEX_How_To.htm
As you are not planning on exclusive hand tool use, note also the link at the bottom to the power tools index.

Others have mentioned the Woodwright's shop episodes that are available on the web. Here they are:
http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/video/3000/index.html
I think as they add each new year of episodes, they need to drop off a year from the collection, so watch the 2006-2007 episodes before they go. This includes my favorite episode "The Spirit of Woodcraft".

Peter Korn's "Woodworking Basics: Mastering the Essentials of Craftsmanship" (also available used under the 1993 title "Working with Wood: The Basics of Craftsmanship") is an excellent introduction to woodworking with both hand tool and power tool instruction. It covers very similar territory to the Guidice book mentioned above. I'd give Korn's book the edge, but would not be surprised if others disagreed with me.

I like older tools. If you get good ones and learn to use them properly, they can work just as well as much higher priced new ones. When you are starting out, buying from a reputable dealer can ensure that you get a good tool. If you can find an MWTCA (Midwest Tool Collectors Association) meet, you will not only find an excellent source of a large variety of tools, but you will also find a lot of people who can help you to learn to use them. The user grade tools can be very inexpensive.

[Chris Mahmood]

Maybe you're thinking of the original Veritas jig? All of those things were true about it but the MkII doesn't have those problems that I've seen. Even a little 3/8" Japanese dovetail chisel I have works in it and the cross-section of it is basically triangular.

[Kirk Howard]

http://shopclass.popularwoodworking.com/c-3-subscriptions.aspx

Here is an offer for 4 free days of some fantastic videos. Just don't forget to opt out if you don't want the full subscription charge.