This morning I drove just outside of the Twin Cities to Medina, MN to attend my first MWTCA Tool Meeting. I was struck with how busy it was at 9 AM when I arrived. I have to get there earlier next time.

I had a small shopping list, hoping to find a couple of common items for good prices, and I had pretty good success. I was impressed with the quantity of tools available, many of them for prices competitive with eBay, with the advantage of actually being able to handle the tools and take the home immediately. Prices definitely varied for similar tools from booth to booth, but overall felt on the low end to me. Buying was slightly awkward, it wasn’t always clear who was manning each table. It would be nice if there was a name on each both, and maybe even colored name tags for sellers. Anyway, it worked out.

You definitely need to know how to evaluate tools. There were quite a few stinkers: saws with bent plates or missing teeth; wooden stock planes with checked bodies; auger bits with obliterated spurs; sticky hand drills. These were often priced the same as tools without the defects. But unlike on eBay, you can examine them and pass on the crummy stuff.

Here’s what I picked up. Including the fee to get into the event, my total came to just over $100.

I’ve always wanted to try wooden planes, especially with how Joshua at Mortise & Tenon goes on about them. I found a great-looking 15″ jack plane with a tapered double iron for $10. Ten dollars! One corner of the wedge is split, and the cap iron its missing its screw, but it still functions and those are easy repairs anyway.

My crosscut saw is in pretty bad shape, the plate is short and flexible, and one of the nuts is falling out so the handle is very loose. I was hoping to pick up a new one. I passed up on a lot of saws, many were pitted, or noticeably bent, or missing teeth, or priced higher than I wanted. I nearly gave up, but then I found a perfect, full-size Disston D-8 10 TPI crosscut tucked in a box of other saws for $27. Bingo.

While I have a bit brace, I don’t have a hand drill. I’ve kept my eye out at antique stores, but they’ve always had sticky gears. There were dozens of hand drills at this meet, but most of them were tiny, or only had one horizontal gear, or were sticky, or the chuck looked dodgy. Finally found one in great shape for $17, actually at the same place as I found the handsaw. It’ll be nice not to have to break out the power drill just to drill a few nail holes or whatever.

Finally some smaller, miscellaneous items. A large chisel for paring, flattening, etc ($18); a half-dozen auger bits to round out my set from numbers 3 through 16 (50¢ each); a set of number stamps to go with the letter stamps I already have ($12); a 1/4″ beading plane ($7!); a small hammer for adjusting planes and starting nails ($12); and a ratchet wrench because it was $3.

Overall a really great place to help round out the missing pieces in my toolchest. I think it’d be a good place to start gathering tools, too, though the selection is obviously a bit more limited than eBay.

Podcasts

WoodTalk – This is a fun, lighthearted weekly podcast featuring Marc Spagnuolo (The Wood Whisperer), Shannon Rogers (The Renaissance Woodworker), and Matt Cremona. They discuss what they’re working on each week and answer listener mails and questions. Episodes are about 45 to 60 minutes long.

Shop Talk Live – Like WoodTalk, this is also a pretty lighthearted show, though it tends to be a little more focused. This podcast is hosted by several editors of Fine Woodworking magazine. It has regular features where the editors discuss projects that have inspired them, or tools or techniques that have worked well for them recently. Episodes are about an hour long.

Videos

The Renaissance Woodworker – Shannon Rogers, mentioned above with WoodTalk, maintains an excellent series of weekly videos on YouTube. He’s a hand tool woodworker, so I watch all of his videos with interest. He likes to experiment with new tools, and is also frequently improving his shop. He also works in a lumber yard and is able to give insight into the business side of lumber yards. Definitely one of my favorite woodworking personalities.

Paul Sellers – Paul Sellers is an experienced professional woodworker and posts mostly-weekly videos demonstrating basic woodworking techniques. I’ve somewhat fallen off his videos lately, since I find they’re often targeted at people brand new to woodworking and I sometimes disagree with his choices. But I think he’s an excellent place to begin getting familiar with the craft due to the breadth and depth of basic woodworking knowledge available in his videos. His enthusiasm is infectious and he makes woodworking seem really easy, perhaps even misleadingly so.

Rob Cosman – Rob Cosman posts great, in-depth videos about his current projects, and sometimes more general videos about techniques. Updates sporadically, but I always enjoy his videos.

Blogs

Popular Woodworking Magazine Blogs – PWM has a number of different blogs, all of them worth subscribing to. Chris Schwarz posts great, down-to-earth articles about once a week. Megan Fitzpatrick, PWM’s editor and director, often posts about running the magazine and other woodworking community aspects. Other PWM authors contribute a few articles on various techniques each week. Sometimes they run older articles from the magazine itself.

Lost Art Press Blog – Chris Schwarz maintains a blog for his publishing company where he posts about upcoming projects, his travel experiences, and techniques he’s experimenting with. Sometimes his articles here and on PWM blog seem like first drafts of articles that end up in PWM or in his books. Published authors also frequently contribute to the Lost Art Press blogs. Lately they’ve been running a fascinating series of profiles of Lost Art Press authors. I also like the Walk in the Woods articles from Steve Schafer about plant identification in the wild.

Fine Woodworking Magazine Blog – The Fine Woodworking magazine authors post a few blog articles per week, usually focusing on a specific technique. Like the magazine, which I discuss below, these tend to focus more on power tools than hand tools, which means I end up skipping most of them. But it’s low volume, so I am keeping up with it for now.

Crucible Tool Blog – Chris Schwarz also co-runs a premium tool company. This is a very low volume blog, but its articles discuss the process of developing their tools. It’s fun to read about the effort they put into designing each tool, and the manufacturing processes. (I hope you’re not tired of Chris Schwarz, because there’s more to come.)

The Something Awful Forums Woodworking Thread – This isn’t a blog per se, but people on the SA forums post their completed projects, in-progress updates, and questions here for discussion. It’s quite active, usually receiving at least a few posts every day.

Magazines

Popular Woodworking – This is my favorite woodworking magazine. It shows up about six times per year and I’m always sad that I can blaze through it in just a day or two of commuting to work. My favorite parts of the magazine cover techniques, tools, or hardware, with about an even split between hand and power tool usage. I’m less interested in the in-depth plans and project walkthroughs. The magazine also often has craftsperson or shop profiles, which are fun to read.

Mortise and Tenon – This is actually halfway between a magazine and a book. It’s a once-yearly periodical sold for $20 plus shipping. Only two issues have been published so far. But they’re both excellent to read. The focus is strongly on pre-industrial woodworking. Some of my favorite articles in each issue are examinations of pieces from a couple hundred years ago, including internal construction details, tool marks, that kind of thing. The second issue had a great feature about reconstructing the history of a bed built in America that somehow turned up in England.

Fine Woodworking – I’m less enamored with Fine Woodworking. It seems to focus largely on project plans, and definitely has a strong preference for power tools. It feels somewhat more focused towards the professional or working woodworker as opposed to the amateur. That said, I’ll probably keep my subscription as I already read my woodworking sources faster than they can write them. I also really enjoy their Shop Talk Live podcast, mentioned above, and this is a way to financially support it, albeit indirectly.

Books

The Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery by Gary Rogowski – This excellent book just contains a long list of joinery options for every scenario. When I’m designing a project, I review this book to recall my joinery options. It contains full color photographs for how to construct every joint with a variety of tools, from hand tools only to a complete power tool shop.

The Complete Illustrated Guide to Furniture & Cabinet Construction by Andy Rae – This book discusses the basics of frame construction, especially discussing how to build durable furniture and account for wood movement. The first chapters are a great overview of how to build durable furniture, before moving on to design details and specific examples of case construction like drawers, hinges and doors, case feet and trim. Like the previous book, I use this as a reference when designing a new piece.

The Essential Woodworker by Robert Wearing – I highly recommend this book. It’s a brief introduction to every woodworking skill needed for simple furniture construction. If you want to know how to dress your stock, put together a table, or construct a box, this book will tell you how to do it with no fluff. This book will make you conversant in furniture construction, giving you a base of knowledge you can use to understand other resources.

Understanding Wood Finishing by Bob Flexner – I hate finishing, but this book helps make the task less daunting by getting right down into the nitty gritty for how each kind of finish actually works at the chemical level. This gives you the information you need to decide what finish, or combination of finishes, will give you the effects you want. I haven’t finished enough projects to have made much use of this yet, but at least I have a basic understanding of finishes from reading this book. Again, when it comes time to select and apply a finish, I use this book for reference.

The Anarchist’s Design Book by Chris Schwarz – I like this book so much, I actually have read it cover to cover twice and haven’t yet built anything from it (though I plan to do so shortly). It’s impressive the variety of high quality furniture can be built with the book’s key joint, the back-wedged, staked mortise and tenon. Chris’s writing is always a joy to read. Chapters scattered here and there describe his design philosophy or cover finishing techniques including an excellent two-page primer on milk paint and a short treatise on a soap finish which I’m eager to try.

Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use by Chris Schwarz – If you’re interested in designing your own workbench, I expect this is a good resource. I read it cover to cover, because I enjoy Chris’s writing, but frankly you could probably get by without this book if you simply want to build one of his workbench designs. He’s shown them off on his blog and in videos around the web often enough that they’re dead simple to clone. I built my knockdown Nicholson bench using the instructions in this book, but his blog posts on the subject really were sufficient that I could have skipped the book.

I finished the second of the two projects that got me into woodworking this week (the first was a coat rack). This is a new table for our kitchen, which will give us about six more feet of countertop space.

This project had a lot of firsts for me. This was actually my first time working with rough cut lumber. I’d been wanting to do that for a long while, learning how to buy from lumber yards really opens up a lot of options. The frame is all quartersawn white oak and the legs are ash. The shelf is also quartersawn white oak (except the center piece which is plainsawn and is an accent and definitely not because I grabbed from the wrong pile at the lumber yard). Floor to top, the table is 36 inches high. The top is 70 inches long and 25 inches deep. I purchased the top pre-made from Michigan Maple via my lumber yard, since I didn’t have the confidence to build a nice flat surface that size with hand tools. After completing this project, I think I might be able to try it in the future.

The joinery is all mortise and tenon. The lower stretcher, for the shelf, was double tenoned to increase the vertical grain surface. Most of the mortises were chopped out with a mortising chisel, but I also tried a bit brace to pull out most of the material on the deep shelf joints. I didn’t time it, but including time to clean up the edges of the mortise, it seemed to take about the same amount of time as the chisel. But it was much less physically exhausting, which meant I could keep up the pace for longer.

I chose to drawbore all of the mortise and tenon joints, mostly for strength but also because I don’t have clamps long enough to span the width of the table. Drawboring will draw the joint together without clamps. Since this was my first time drawboring, I did a practice joint, without glue. I actually still have this test joint in my garage. Every now and then I try to pull it apart, but it’s solid, even with the thin pegs and without glue.

I don’t have much experience with details, so I chose to do something simple on the edges. All parts of the frame have a consistent width facet which tapers to nothing as the board reaches the joints. The legs have the same facet along the full height. To make the facets taper, after marking the depth of the facet with a marking gauge, I started with a No 5 plane to shape most of the facet. However, I never let the cut start until a few inches from the end. Then I switched down to a No 4 to get a little closer to the edges, then down to my block plane to finish tapering. Because the cut never touched the corners, this provided a smooth taper as the plane angle changed while traveling into the existing facet. The progressively smaller planes led to sharper angles.

After everything was glued up, I went over it with a card scraper. In retrospect, I should have done this before glue up. But I was still learning how to use a scraper, so I wasn’t sure I would even use it. Once I got the hang of it, I found it very effective at cleaning up tool marks and at least smoothing over rough grain, if not fixing it up entirely.

At this point, I leveled the frame in our kitchen. Then the frame was finished with Emmet’s Good Stuff. The lumber yard recommended it; it’s food safe and water resistant, which is perfect for a kitchen table.

The top is attached with buttons made from some scrap pine. I followed the instructions from The Essential Woodworker to size and cut the buttons. The mortises in the rail were 1/2″ tall and about 3/8″ deep and chopped with a bench chisel.

I did hit one big “oops”. The drawbore offsets on the shelf were far too large. This ended up causing the bottom of one of the shelf stretchers to splinter while I was pounding the pegs in. I didn’t measure the offsets while drilling, I just eyeballed it, and it looks like my offsets were between 1/16″ and 1/8″. Far too large, as this made the offset in the 2nd stretcher almost 1/4″, hence the splintering. But it’s on the underside and isn’t visible from any reasonable angle, so it didn’t really impact the final project. Live and learn.

And that’s my kitchen counter table. Definitely my largest and most complex, and best executed, project to date.

Next up… a proper workbench.

You can get in-progress pictures of my projects by following me on Instagram or on Twitter.

I’ve been getting into hand tool woodworking for the past year or two. As part of that, I’ve been putting together a set of tools mostly on an as-needed basis. I’ve gotten to the point where I feel I have most everything I need for simple frame furniture construction. Since it’s fresh in my head, I thought I’d document what articles I used for research and what tools I ended up buying based on that research.

Sources

My primary recommendation for your research is this excellent series of articles at Wood and Shop. It doesn’t dive much into specific tool models, but does give some idea of the scope of tools you’ll need as a beginner and what you might get next as you get into more complex projects.

Next, I suggest watching videos of woodworkers on YouTube. You can see what kinds of tools they use in real projects. In particular I recommend Paul Sellers’s channel. You can also see a great overview of common hand tool usage in this video from Mike Siemsen.

Beyond that, I’ll give more specific resources for each type of tool below.

In general, the recommendation I’ve found is to strongly prefer either vintage tools from before the 1940s, or brand new tools from either Lie Nielsen (Made in USA) or Veritas at Lee Valley (Made in Canada).

Older tools were expensive at the time and were very well made, but are mostly cheap now. New tools are expensive now, and also well made. New, cheap tools are what give modern tools a bad reputation: it’s not that “things were made better back in the day,” it’s that cheap crap simply wasn’t available!

So as a new woodworker looking for the best bang for your buck, you’ll want to buy vintage tools. But don’t forget that modern toolmakers making excellent tools do exist. Some vintage tools are no cheaper than their modern, high quality equivalents. It’s always worth comparing prices. New tools also have the advantage of knowing exactly what you’re going to get, and know you’re not going to have to refurbish the thing before you can use it.

What follows here is a list of tools I’ve purchased and how I decided to make those purchases.

Rough dimensioning

Here’s the tools I use for dimensioning lumber roughly to shape.

I have two full-size (26″) Disston handsaws, one 4 PPI D-8 rip cut and one 10 PPI D-7 cross cut, both manufactured around 1900. These were bought on eBay for about $30 shipped, each. The Disstonian Institute is a fantastic resource for learning about Disston saws. The author covers every Disston saw that you might want to use. There are a billion vintage saw brands, but Disston is widely recommended and plenty cheap, so I just stick with that. A less aggressive rip cut saw is on my to-buy shortlist. It may be fast, but 4 PPI is pretty brutal to the wood.

Veritas rip cut and crosscut dovetail saws, Disston D-7 crosscut, and Disston D-8 rip cut

For planing to thickness, I use my vintage Stanley No 5 plane with the iron set deep. For Stanley planes, if you’ve got the piece in hand or have good photos, you can date them with the Stanley plane dating flowchart. Again, shoot for something older than 1940. My No 5 turns out to be from the 1920s. I got it for $35 shipped on eBay.

A word on buying from eBay. Search for the tool you want, then check the “Sold Listings” filter box on the left. This will tell you what prices the tool is actually selling for. Get a good feel for the range of prices, taking into account the condition of each sold tool, then set a target condition and price for yourself. Every time you see a tool pop up in your target condition, bid your max, and forget about it. The trick is to just let the good ones go to higher bidders. If the tool is commonly sold, like most Stanley planes, you’ll eventually win one at your target price by slipping through the higher bidders. If you haven’t won one in a couple of weeks, do the price analysis again and adjust accordingly.

Flattening

My primary tool for flattening long boards is a Stanley No 8C from around 1900. I wanted a No 7, but a No 8 was available locally for $100. No cheaper than eBay, but saved me a bundle on shipping. For shorter boards, I just use the No 5.

I use home made winding sticks along with my No 5 to remove twist.

Stanley No 71 1/2 router, Stanley No 8C, Stanley No 5, Record No 4, and Lie Nielsen rabbet plane

Joinery

Once the boards are flat, it’s time for joinery.

I bought a pair of Veritas dovetail saws for about $80 each, one rip and one crosscut. This was an early purchase; these days I probably would spring for cheaper vintage backsaws on eBay. But these saws came highly recommended from a number of sources, and I didn’t know at the time how to shop for vintage tools, so they let me get started faster. I use these for cutting tenons, small cross cuts, or any other cuts on already-flattened boards.

Stanley Bailey bench chisels, Ray Iles mortising chisel, and a deadblow mallet

My bench chisels are a modern Stanley Bailey set of 5, purchased on Amazon for $70. Another early purchase, but I do somewhat stand by this one. Vintage chisels seem difficult to shop for: they are often unbranded, so you don’t really know what you’re getting. On the other hand, vintage chisels are super cheap, on the order of a few bucks apiece, so you’re not risking much.

For my first few projects, I used my bench chisels to cut mortises. A recent purchase was a single Ray Iles 5/16″ mortising chisel on eBay for $70 shipped. This thing cuts mortises way better than the bench chisels did. The straight sides of the chisel, as opposed to the beveled sides of standard bench chisels, prevent the chisel from accidentally twisting in the mortise and widening it. As I mentioned, I find shopping for vintage chisels difficult, so I opted for a high quality modern one instead. You only really need one or two mortise widths anyway, so this 5/16″ should be sufficient for most things.

I also recently purchased a Stanley No 71½ router plane, a little over a hundred years old, from Patrick Leach at The Superior Works. Patrick sells a huge range of vintage tools. He doesn’t maintain a website, instead you have to sign up for his mailing list to get the tool list each month. I bought from him partly because I was having poor luck on eBay and wanted to try a private seller. The router plane was bought for about $100 shipped, which is a little more than I would have paid for a “good deal” on eBay, but still not a bad price. I may buy from Patrick again.

Other good options for router planes are either of the ones sold by Veritas and Lie Nielsen. They’re priced both comparably with vintage Stanley routers. All three makers are slightly different and have advantages and disadvantages. Chris Schwartz wrote a great comparison review of both of the modern varieties. No clear winner here; make your own decision.

The Wood and Shop article linked above gives a glowing recommendation for the Lie Nielsen Rabbet Block Plane. I bought one of these direct from Lie Nielsen for $175, which makes this little guy my most expensive single tool. It’s great for sneaking up on the tenon width when fitting it into your mortise. The nicker blades make the necessary crosscut against your tenon shoulder to avoid tearout on the tenon surface. It’s a great little tool and I’m glad I have it. I do find it difficult to adjust the iron to be both flush with one edge and parallel to the sole. I expect I just need more practice. I think you could get away with a vintage shoulder or rabbet plane for much cheaper, but this is a nice tool.

Shaping

For doing final smoothing, I have an English-made Record No 4 from the 1950s that I bought privately from the same guy I bought the Ray Iles chisel from, $40 shipped. According to some brief research I did, Record is regarded as being slightly higher-end than Stanley, but near enough that it makes no difference. The seller kindly sharpened and honed the blade for me, and this thing takes the finest shavings leaving a great, shiny surface.

I don’t yet have a card scraper, but that’s only because I keep forgetting to drop one into the shopping cart at Lee Valley. One of these days I’ll remember.

I’d also like to get a spoke shave, but I haven’t done much research here yet. I’ve seen both vintage and modern recommended. This needs a price comparison, taking into account how much restoration needs to be done on old tools. For example, how hard is it to sharpen a vintage spoke shave?

Sharpening

Both of my hand saws required sharpening upon receipt; yours will too. On Paul Sellers’s recommendation, I buy Bahco triangular saw files from Lee Valley and shape my own handles for them. I built my own saw sharpening “vise” by sawing a kerf down the middle of some long scrap 1×1, which I then just clamp to the bench with my saw in it. I guess you can buy a vintage metal one if you’re into that.

DMT diamond plates, Bahco saw files, and a leather strop

For sharpening chisels and hand planes, I bought the three-plate diamond plate set from DMT on Amazon for $100. It comes with 325, 600, and 1200 grit diamond plates (by DMT’s measure; each manufacturer has their own standard) in a nice little box. It does well enough, but I won’t be purchasing it again when these wear out. They’re quite small for plane blades, and I really don’t like the polka dot pattern. When sharpening plane blades, you rock the blade up on each edge to give it a very slight radius. This helps prevent plane tracks in your surface, but the trouble is the corners then get caught on the polka dot indentations. I like diamond plates, so I’ll continue buying DMT. But instead, I’ll start getting their flat, and much more expensive, 8″x3″ plates. I already have one of these in 8000 grit. This will hopefully help with planing end grain, which I have been struggling with.

I also built a leather strop with some scrap leather from a local wacky goods surplus store (5 cents) nailed to a length of scrap construction grade pine I had laying around. I use some green, extra-fine buffing compound I bought on Amazon. Paul Sellers has a good sharpening video where he shows how to use a leather strop.

Measuring and marking

For rough cuts, I’ve got some old tape measure. Whatever. I’ve also got a cheapo combination square from the hardware store for making roughly-square cuts. It’s nice to have one you don’t care about, in case you drop it while shifting around rough lumber.

Big box combination square and measuring tape, home made winding sticks, Staedtler pencil and eraser, Veritas striking knife and dual marking gauge, General Tools protractor, and Starrett combination square

For careful work, I use a 12″ Starrett combination square from Amazon for about $70. The length is nice for wider boards, but I think I’d also like to pick up a 4″ or 6″ square for finer work, since the 12″ blade gets quite unweildy at smaller board sizes.

At the recommendation of the above Wood and Shop article, I picked up a Veritas dual marking gauge, but I’m not in love with this tool. I used it for marking mortises for a while, but now I just do it with my square and a pencil or marking knife, which I find much less fiddly. The furniture I’ve been building tends to be human-scale (tables, coat rack, etc) so getting absolute accuracy isn’t that important. Maybe I’ll be glad to have this when I do finer work like box or drawer making. I don’t regret it, but it spends most of its time in a drawer.

Speaking of marking knifes, I have been using some old Stanley box cutter so far. It has worked well enough, but always felt kind of clumsy. I picked up a Veritas striking knife, but haven’t yet had a chance to use it. I’ll update this with thoughts later.

Work bench

Confession time: I don’t yet have a work bench. I have some old sheets of plywood screwed together by my house’s previous owner. My solution for work holding is pipe clamps against the plywood. Yuck.

A real bench will be my first project when the weather thaws. I decided to go with Chris Schwartz’s knockdown Nicholson (sometimes called an English bench). I picked this bench for a few reasons. A big one was Schwartz’s reputation: he wrote a big book on workbenches, and this is where he ended up. Also, I wanted something quick to build and cheap. This bench has no complicated joinery, just a handful of dadoes. It’s also used in the video I linked above where Mike Siemsen shows how to use a bench with just holdfasts and no vise. Having no vise saves me a boatload of money, and I can always retrofit one later if I need. Here, have a bunch of links:

• Video overview and short discussion from Chris
• Introduction and discussion from Mike
• Free PDF and Sketchup plans for download
• Suggested materials list

There are other workbench options. Another popular one is the Roubo bench (sometimes called a French bench). I decided against this because I want a front apron for work holding. Paul Sellers also has an excellent video series of his workbench build. This is close to what I want, but I think the Nicholson looks simpler to build.

Conclusion

This was basically a list of all the tools I own in my work shop. With a couple exceptions that I noted, I wouldn’t want to do without any of them. By carefully buying vintage tools, I’ve been able to keep costs quite low without introducing much extra refurbishing work. I’m eager for spring to come back around so I can get back to woodworking in earnest.