New to Hand tool woodworking

[Alan Cassidy]

Hi Everyone!

First time posting, thank you in advance for any feedback.

I've been doing some mostly power tool wood working for a few years now and have become a huge fan of it. I'm relocating to a place where I won't have the space to use really any power tools for 6-12 months and seems like the best opportunity for me to really dive into the hand tool side of things. I'm nearly finished with my workbench build, Scandinavian inspired.

I plan to be mostly making small-large boxes that will work in the limited space, maybe some small furniture pieces. Want to focus on dovetail joinery. Will probably have to do some lumber squaring but plan to get s2s lumber if I can't find any good s4s readily available.

Hand tools I currently have (have a bunch of flat/phillips drivers and clamps /squares /marking gauges etc already as well)

I currently have 3 various number 4 Stanley planes I picked up cheap and restored. Plan to use one for scrubbing, one for smoothing. probably just keep the other as a back up / shelf dust collector tentatively.

I've acquired a router plane and a plough plane.

I have a decent set of chisels to start with 1/4 1/2 3/4 1"

What i will be acquiring in the near future

I plan to purchase either a Japanese Pull saw or Vertitas Western style Dovetail saw.

I plan to purchase a 1/4 mortising chisel

Going with a Tren 300/1000 grit diamond stone and probably will land on a 5-8k grit finishing stone of some sort as well

The one thing I can't seem to make my mind up on for the life of me is what I want to use for my shooting board.

The options that I believe i'm leaning towards currently are (in order of what I currently think is most likely decision at this time)

Veritas Shooting Plane

Veritas Jack rabbit plane (read a really cool article I found on this forum of a guy that converted it to be able to be used for shooting and seemed to work very well.

5 1/2 Veritas custom


TLDR;
What to get for shooting board as new hand tool wood worker.

My thought process in leaning towards the shooting plane is I feel as though I'll have a much higher likelihood in finding a 5 or 5 1/2 in a flea market this summer pretty soon here than a shooting plane (especially a reasonably priced one) however I don't necessarily like that the handle on the veritas is toward the rear requiring me really to put a outside track on the board to keep it from wanting to pull out, really n ot a big deal and an easy fix.

I also like the idea of having a low angle jack plane in my arsenal of planes I start out with which is probably the most enticing part of the JRP to me at this point. Seems like it could be "jack of all trades" + shooting board plane with little effort.

Was wondering if anyone had any feedback, my main worry about not getting a 5 1/2 if i'm not able to find one would be can I make do with small boxes/ small furniture/ squaring up small-medium lumber easy enough with a No 4? At what size of board does it become beneficial to have a 5+ for squaring lumber?

Any Cons to the Jack rabbit plane used as a general use plane/ shooting board plane that i'm not thinking of?

Sorry for the super long post and thank you again!

[Alan Schwabacher]

There are many valid ways to approach this, so this is simply my own preference. Have fun with this.

Your list looks like a reasonable start. I don't think you need a dedicated shooting plane at this point. A simple bench hook is useful for crosscutting, and you can use it to shoot the ends of boards by running the plane along the bench next to the bench hook. A plane a bit longer than a #4 is likely useful to straighten edges (and faces) of boards longer than is convenient with the #4. An old #5 is more common than a #4, so should be available. A #5 1/2 is a lot less common.

Bevel up planes are simpler than bevel down ones, but I like the versatility of the cap iron in bevel down planes that lets me adjust instead of change the sharpening angle to avoid tearout. The sharpening angle matters more for the low angle bevel up plane since it determines the planing angle, while it's only the clearance angle for planing bevel down. That means freehand sharpening without a guide is easy to learn to do quickly and well for a bevel down plane, but it seems to me that those who use bevel up planes depend more on honing guides. I could be wrong.

You do need saws: a crosscut saw of some sort, a rip saw, and a dovetail saw. I and many others have both western and Japanese styles, but you can choose one or the other and do just fine. It's relatively easy to learn to sharpen western saws, but not as easy for Japanese ones. I am a believer in using whatever you have. Make it work, and you will find out as you work which tool will give you a significant advantage. If you crosscut with a rip saw, for instance, it will make a messy edge. You can shoot the end clean, or knife before careful cutting, or get a cleaner cutting crosscut saw to fix it. My preference is to let the experience show you why you want each tool while you get some work done.

[David Carroll]

Welcome! That all sounds great! You do mention focusing on dovetail joinery and then, almost as an afterthought, you mention lumber squaring. In my opinion, you have this backwards. First learn to square lumber, and thickness accurately. Doing so will make dovetailing much easier. Even if you're starting out with S4S stock, it is rarely flat enough and wrestling with cupped boards to force them (under protest) to join together sweetly is an exercise in frustration. Apart from that, it sounds like you have a good plan and solid start! Let us know how it's going and ask questions!

DC

[Tony Wilkins]

One thing on saws: you may find you like one more than the other and it may not be the one you expect. I thought I’d love the Japanese pull saws and I don’t mind them. However, after trying my first western saw I was hooked and use them much better than the Japanese variety.

You have some interesting choices for your next purchase. All of them are useable but I would call any of them necessary or the best choice. If any of the #4s are square to the side (and they should be) then just use that to shoot.

[Jim Koepke]

Hi Alan and welcome to the Creek.

Depending on how big you make your boxes, a #5 might be your best all around plane. If the sides of your boxes get much longer than two feet you may want to use a longer plane. A #6 is an easier plane to find in the wild than a #5-1/2. My #6s are often the go to planes for edge joining or larger surface prep.

500707

That is one of my #6 planes on a 3X8X7' piece of hemlock fir. (Oops, added the image before realizing you are not a contributor and can't see pictures.)

A shooting plane is nice but other planes can handle the job. I purchased a LH Veritas shooting plane and added a fence to my shooting board to keep it tracking straight. It is an amazing plane.

A rabbet plane is good for cutting rabbets and not very good for shooting. One reason a bench plane makes a good shooting plane is the step or table of a shooting board will have a small area of the edge the plane rides on. A rabbet plane will remove this edge and that will be one problem. The blade can also cut into the guide ramp for a second problem.

Also, rabbet planes are not very good doing the work of a regular bench plane. A rabbet plane is more likely to leave tracks in panels or wide boards.

Third, most rabbet planes do not have as much area behind the edge. The sharpening for regular use will cause the blade to need replacement before a regular bench plane blade.

Specialty planes are best left to being used for their speciality.

For dovetail saws I am impressed by the Veritas dovetail saw. One was purchased for my grandson as a gift. After trying it out, even with a few dovetail saws already in the shop, a 20ppi saw was bought to add to my saws.

I purchased a Narex 1/4" mortising chisel and am very happy with it.

jtk

[Ben Ellenberger]

Have fun!

I don’t have much to add to what’s already been written. You’ve got all the planes you need to get started, but don’t feel bad about getting something else if you really want to. Get whichever saw seems good to you (I started with a Japanese saw, but pretty much exclusively use my Veritas dovetail saw now).

flatten and square some stock and get to it. Throw away the first three joints you cut, then just start making boxes.

[William Fretwell]

Welcome Alan,
Start with a simple shooting board, you will make more!
A low angle jack 5&1/2 is good. Mine came from Lee Valley. Make a hot dog handle, mine is held on with a rare earth magnet in the groove, works well, very secure along with the fitted groove. Make the hot dog in two halves, that way it’s easy to fit the groove to the plane shape, add the magnet and size the groove width before you glue it back together.
Rub some beeswax on the groove the plane rides in.


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[Charles Guest]

Build something this weekend, with the tools you have, even if it's a simple box or even a cutting board.

Don't get stuck at the tool acquisition phase, thinking you have to have a ton of kit to build things out of wood.

Next weekend, build something a little more complex.

Purchasing and restoring woodworking tools is not woodworking any more than collecting old surgical instruments makes you a surgeon.

[Alan Cassidy]

Thanks for the input! Going to look into a bench hook.

[Alan Cassidy]

A simple bench hook is useful for crosscutting, and you can use it to shoot the ends of boards by running the plane along the bench next to the bench hook.. Thanks for the input going to look into one of these

[Alan Cassidy]

Thanks everyone appreciate all insight very helpful. First things first, i've got some nice walnut I know to be square and my saw should arrive in the mail soon. Going to take a stab at dovetails for the first time and then hit the flea markets to see if i get lucky before getting anything new. Have a great weekend!

[Reed Gray]

There are a lot of good video channels up on You Tube. Some of my favorites are Rob Cosman, Johnathan Katz Moses, Matt Estlea who has one on which planes do you really need, Wood by Wright, and others. Sharpening is a key, a big key, and there are so many ways to do it. Check out the JKMoses one recently about sharpening. Have fun. It took me about 10 tries to finally get a set of dove tails that actually looked like I did it correct....

robo hippy

[David Carroll]

I know not everybody likes Paul Sellers, but I like his videos for their practicality. He seems more focused on making projects using a limited number of readily available tools and materials (S4S pine mostly) than some of the other internet personalities. I wish that I had seen his videos when I was new to hand tool woodworking. But that was a long time ago. He does have a pay site, but there is a lot of content free on his YouTube channel.

DC

[steven c newman]

He also has a FREE Masterclasses set of videos.....where he does a complete project with just his selection of hand tools....all YOU need to do is simply log onto his site....select a project....and get busy....for free...

[Jim Koepke]

Purchasing and restoring woodworking tools is not woodworking any more than collecting old surgical instruments makes you a surgeon.

Of course it isn't woodworking.

It is a way to become well informed in how the tools work. The other advantage in buying & restoring old tools is the profit that can be made.

Not too long ago my rust hunting paid off by buying, restoring and selling old hand planes and other tools. This earned me enough money to purchase some new tools without raiding the household budget. Since then my income has improved and I do not need to restore tools for income. Now it is enjoyable to find and restore tools to give to any of my grandchildren who are interested in woodworking.

If one enjoys fettling old metal it is a fine thing to do. If one doesn't enjoy working on metal, then skip it and buy ready to use.

For me it has allowed me to have a well equipped shop for a much smaller cost. Besides, woodworking tools are not the only tools in my shop. There are a lot of restored metal working, automotive, plumbing, gardening and electrical tools to help me keep things working around the house and the rest of the property.

jtk

[Kent A Bathurst]

My favorite plane is my L-N #62 low-angle jack. I have two irons - one at 30* + 12 = 42* for shooting endgrain; one at 40* = 12 = 52* for shooting edges and general planing.

I admit that I also later got a L-V shooting plane with 2 irons; O1 at 27 plus a PMV-11 at 38. The mass and skewed blade of the L-V are remarkable.

If I had only had the LN 62, I'd be fine with that. Just got greedy.

Also - I'd suggest a block plane. Too many good choices for me to advise, but I have LN rabbet block and 140 skew, ratty vintage Stanley 60-1/2 with Hock iron - iron worth more than the plane, and a Keen Kutter K220 just because [Tom Busey refurb]. Can't come up with a plausible excuse that even I will accept for an LN 102, but I'm not done trying. No need for all of these. But, yeah.

[Reed Gray]

To me, part of the journey to becoming a woodworker, is learning how to set up the tools and use them. I think everyone should buy an old junker hand plane and restore it so that it actually works. It gives you a better understanding of how the tool works. You will have to tweak just about any tool you get, just to make sure it works the way you want it to...

robo hippy

[Jim Koepke]

To me, part of the journey to becoming a woodworker, is learning how to set up the tools and use them.

Reed, your post reminds me of a fellow woodworker I met many years ago at a Portland Tool Event. He had ordered a Lie-Nielsen plane that he couldn't get to work as he expected. He was going to bring it back to the Event the next day to have them help him set it up. He was afraid he would mess up the plane if he made any adjustments.

Anyone who has taken one apart, cleaned it and put it back together wouldn't have any fears about changing an adjustment.

jtk

[Robert Hazelwood]

Any Cons to the Jack rabbit plane used as a general use plane/ shooting board plane that i'm not thinking of?


I have this plane and while its a very nice piece, it is probably both my most expensive and least used plane. The few times I used it, it was as a giant shoulder plane basically, to true up a tenon or breadboard end. It's really good at doing large cross grain rabbits, cleaning up big tenons, etc. Too big for smaller joints though (it will work but you'd wish you had a smaller tool), which are far more common.

Rabbit planes aren't much good for surfacing/truing boards because there is no sole to the side of the blade to maintain flatness of your workpiece perpendicular to the stroke, and the corners tend to dig in. You could camber the blade I suppose, but then its no good for rabbits. You could buy multiple blades I guess but its a finicky tool to adjust with all of the set screws and such. Also the low angle bevel up blade is prone to tearout unless the grain is cooperative. You can sharpen the tip at a higher angle to mitigate that, but then its not much fun to plane cross grain or shoot end grain. So you need an extra blade and fiddle with changing it out from task to task. With a regular bevel-down bench plane you can set the chipbreaker close and plane just about anything without tearout.

I think it was Derek Cohen who did the review years ago showing it used as a shooting plane. You basically screw a flat board into the side using the threaded holes for the fence and use that as a temporary sole to run the plane on. It works ok but after setting it up initially I never used it for shooting because I learned I could shoot end grain just fine with a sharp #4 and not have to bother with converting the JR from whatever setup it was currently in. I'm pretty sure Derek uses a shooting plane, not the JR, in the projects he posts. I don't think I have seen the JR used in his posts outside of that review.

I'd only recommend the JR if you need to do a lot of large scale rabbets/tenons.

I would suggest using one of the bench planes you have for shooting. If you really want to go nuts with shooting end grain then get an actual shooting plane with a skewed blade - its not that much more expensive than the JR. If you want to do rabbits on your dovetailed boxes, I'd suggest one of LVs smaller dedicated rabbet planes.



my main worry about not getting a 5 1/2 if i'm not able to find one would be can I make do with small boxes/ small furniture/ squaring up small-medium lumber easy enough with a No 4? At what size of board does it become beneficial to have a 5+ for squaring lumber?


I have a #4 and a 5 1/2 and use both regularly. The sizes aren't that different really in terms of what you can flatten. For small/medium boxes a #4 can handle it fine. It's more important to have a plane set for heavier shavings and more camber, and one that will do finer, with less camber. Could be two #4s, a #4 and a #5, whatever. If you are working with rougher lumber you might want one that can do really heavy shavings.

One thing you might like about a 5 or larger compared to the 4 is the longer toe which makes it a little easier to get a clean start on the end of a board. When you're beginning that can be tough on a #4 or smaller, but with some practice you will get over that. I wouldn't get hung up on a 5 1/2....you are much more likely to see #5s for sale in good condition.

[Mike Allen1010]

My favorite plane is my L-N #62 low-angle jack. I have two irons - one at 30* + 12 = 42* for shooting endgrain; one at 40* = 12 = 52* for shooting edges and general planing.

I admit that I also later got a L-V shooting plane with 2 irons; O1 at 27 plus a PMV-11 at 38. The mass and skewed blade of the L-V are remarkable.

If I had only had the LN 62, I'd be fine with that. Just got greedy.

Also - I'd suggest a block plane. Too many good choices for me to advise, but I have LN rabbet block and 140 skew, ratty vintage Stanley 60-1/2 with Hock iron - iron worth more than the plane, and a Keen Kutter K220 just because [Tom Busey refurb]. Can't come up with a plausible excuse that even I will accept for an LN 102, but I'm not done trying. No need for all of these. But, yeah.

Kent, great to hear from you-seems like it’s been a while. I always enjoy your practical thoughts about real world woodworking. Thanks for posting.

Best, Mike

[John C Cox]

I will pile on with the advice that hunting and restoring old rust is a hobby of its own. There's nothing wrong with it, per-se, but it does consume time and effort.

Rather than going cold turkey on power tools, I would suggest a hybrid approach like James Krenov adopted. Incorporate hand tools where they make the most sense in your work flow, then work into more use. As an example, I resaw using a bandsaw unless the work is fairly small. I do all my jointing by hand. I do most mortise stock removal with power drills or a router and finish the holes with chisels. Most tenons are done with hand saws and chisels, and so forth.

As for the shooting board and special shooting plane... I typically don't use a dedicated product. Shooting is done with a finely set #4 or #5 plane on my workbench. Often, defects in the joint can be remedied by the clamping/work holding configuration during the shooting process. The plane will tend to cut most heavily where the clamps hold the wood and shallower farthest from the clamps.

[steven c newman]

Can always follow along on one of my build-along threads....The Dungeon Woodshop is a Hybrid Shop.....some days it is mostly hand tools....other days it is all power tools..whatever fits the tasks I am trying to get done...

Been so LONG since I even used a Chuting Board....have no idea where I stashed it.

Go and check out the one called Lumber Run.....

[Melvin Feng]

one simple tool that I didn't see mentioned is a card scraper. They are relatively cheap, and you can buy a set with curves too. I use a carbide burnisher, but I saw a fancy small one recently that had indentations to make rolling the hook a bit easier. I will say that it took me quite a while to learn how to do it with a standard burnisher.

I am one that had quite a bit of fun restoring old hand planes. I initially did it to save money, but eventually really enjoyed the process, and then I spent more money to replace the blades with hock blades and caps than I spent on the planes themselves, and now I have a pretty good selection and they are a pleasure to use.

for dovetails, I like having a separate dovetail chisel with the acute side edge bevels, it makes it a bit easier to get in to clean up the dovetails for me. I just have one, I think in 3/4". I also have a crank necked chisel for helping to clean up glue squeeze out from joints. For sharpening, I went with the 400/1000 diamond stone and then strop. I did later add more, but that is what I started with.

I assume you have a bevy of clamps too.

have fun!

[Jim Koepke]

I assume you have a bevy of clamps too.

One of my neighbors does a bit of buying and selling for fun. He bought a truckload of old clamps. Maybe from a school or something as they were all covered with glue drippings. I bought a bunch from him. With those and the ones already on hand, it is getting close to the point of possibly having too many clamps.

501262

There's a few more to spare.

jtk

[John C Cox]

The card scraper is a tool I can't live without. I will second (or third) the motion of getting at least 1 good chisel with extremely fine side bevels for sneaking into corners. For a long time, there was nothing on the market for this, but now several makers offer quality chisels with fine side bevels for when you need that.