The Magic Toolbox...

As some of you know, I got into this whole wonderful obsession when my wife’s grandfather passed away and left me with a lot of his tools. He was a hard working, honest man who through his work as a carpenter embodied the “Als Ik Kan” ideal of the Arts & Crafts movement. When I first started to go through the tools five years ago, I experienced a kind of fascination everyday as I stumbled across tools I had never dreamt of in my wildest philosophies. Central to this inheiritance was a gigantic rusty toolbox that weighed in well over 50 pounds. Inside that toolbox was treasure trove of tools old and new, pristine and weathered. It is these tools that most hold the mark of the man who put them to such great use throughout his career. I use this as a preamble to hopefully explain some of the reverence that I have for all of these pieces.

The magic toolbox still has not disappointed me. At first, I disregarded many of the tools as esoteric or too highly specialized to invest any effort into learning to use them. As my own work has matured, I continue to go back to the magic box to see if I can pull a rabbit out to help refine my work. Since my discovery of chairmaking with my recent Windsor epiphany, I have become interested in the ancient brace and bit set nestled at the very bottom of the toolbox.

In doing some shop modifications to make room for a fancy Roubo bench that I hope to start this summer, I broke out the brace to drill some clearance holes around some stuck masonry screws that were holding in place a base cabinet. Wow, that is fun stuff! The control and “feel” for the wood that you get with a brace and auger bit is next to nothing as far as I am concerned. Don’t get me wrong, my 18V cordless drill and 18V impact driver will never be far from my hands, but yet again, the magic toolbox has provided another option for a more delicate approach.

Setting Up a Shop with Woodworking Hand Tools

For many of today’s woodworkers setting up a shop means buying a bunch of often expensive machines and power tools, figuring out how to plug everything in, making sure you have enough outlets and electricity, and all this before you even begin to think about dust control and noise issues.

Even apart from the health and safety issues, and ignoring the expense, there is still a learning curve involved in becoming familiar with table saws, jointers, planers, router tables, and a variety of other powertools, stationary or otherwise. All this can seem overwhelming for the beginner, and while ultimately the rewards of woodworking are typically well worth the effort, it can be a lot to deal with in one gulp.

There is an alternative — much less expensive, simpler, safer, healthier, and for many, even more rewarding. For hundreds of years there were no power tools, and yet the craft produced amazing woodwork, and more importantly for the hobbyist, an enormous amount of satisfaction and pleasure.

The secret is to start with woodworking hand tools by setting up a shop that relies exclusively on relatively inexpensive items. As you progress you may well have the urge and opportunity to add in some basic power tools to make certain jobs such as stock preparation easier — which, incidentally, is what power tools were invented for — but in the meantime you will have learned a lot of skills and techniques that cannot be easily duplicated with power tools alone (try making a cabriole leg on a router table or a Bombay chest on a jointer — it can be done but only with a complicated array of extra jigs and fixtures, which seems to defeat the purpose of being efficient).

The heart of a hand tool workshop is its bench. Thereafter you need a certain number of basic sawing, planing, and cutting tools. You will need to understand how to prepare and sharpen them, how to use them and the jigs and devices that go along with making their use easy, secure, and accurate. And you will need to understand the best way to organize your workflow and storage. It’s a lot of information, but it can provide the foundation for an almost limitless array of techniques that will equip you to produce virtually anything. A hand tool workshop is by no means an inferior substitute for the more typical power shop, but rather can be the foundation for much more sophisticated woodworking.

Hello!

Hey everyone! I`m a hand tools and toolboxes lover that enjoys blogging about them. I love doing stuff around the house and constantly buy new tools for these purposes!

My passion is also blogging and I`ll keep writing about numerous situations in which I ended up using hand tools, toolboxes and what not to complete stuff around my home.

If anyone has any questions about my work or blog please contact me through a contact page!