Welcome to Benchmarks, your exclusive Fine Woodworking Unlimited e-letter. As a Member you have instant access to all of the accumulated content on our website and in our archives—43 years’ worth and counting. And there’s a lot to discover in that dense collection of woodworking know-how. Benchmarks will help you along your journey, guiding you with personalized, curated content chosen by the experts and delivered monthly.

I’m leading the charge out of the gate, but I’m not the star of the show. I’ll be sharing this platform with dozens of our most valued contributors and teachers, eager to chat with you about their favorite articles, to share tips and techniques, or simply to show you what they are working on. The floor is wide open.

I’ll kick it off with some tool-buying advice, speaking as someone who has made some mistakes in my early going. Because of those mistakes, I stick to two pretty simple rules when I’m buying tools:

Rule 1: I set a budget and buy the best tool I can afford within that budget. After all, woodworking for me is just one of a few hobbies that require some occasional cash. Plus there are other critical expenses to pay for, like eight years of college for two kids.

Rule 2: There must be a need for any tool purchase. I used to have an addiction. If there was a “great deal” on a tool at a tag sale or used-tool marketplace I’d be inclined to buy it. Unfortunately, many of my great deals ended up as great failures. The tools weren’t bad necessarily—they were just the wrong choice and contributed to shop clutter. So now I buy only what I need. I admit this approach is not easy for a tool addict, especially when I still see so many “great deals” in my travels.

If you have some great tool-buying advice or a favorite tool story you’d like to share, tell us about it. Send an email to [email protected]. Meanwhile, here are some of my favorite videos and articles about buying and setting up tools.

Tom McKenna
Editorial Director, Fine Woodworking

	Tune-Up Tips For precision, and for your safety, all woodworking machines must be set up properly. And that means dealing with a lot of moving parts, all interconnected and all critical to overall performance. In this video workshop, Matt Wajda and Ellen Kaspern, both instructors at Boston’s North Bennet Street School, show how to get all of your critical woodworking machines running at peak performance. See More
	Rust Prevention Rust is the enemy of your tools. Left unchecked, it will relentlessly attack metal, eating away at it like locusts. When my family moved into a larger house a few years ago, I had initially set up shop in the garage. It didn’t take long for my tablesaw top to develop a haze of flash rust. That experience made me ditch the garage shop idea and set up shop in a more weather-resistant space: my basement. It also inspired me to research and write this head-to-head comparison of rust prevention products. See More
	Essential Power Tools One of the most common questions from people just starting their woodworking journey is, what tools do I need? There’s no easy answer, for sure. It depends on your budget and what you want to make. Before you start spending serious money, you should give Gary Rogowski’s article a serious read. It’s packed with great advice on how to avoid what we call a “tool bomb.” See More
	Essential Handplanes When it comes to choosing your hand tools, there’s no better source of information than handplane aficionado and contributing editor Garrett Hack. He literally wrote the book on Handplanes! His take on building a handplane collection is one of the best guides I’ve read, full of practical advice on what to buy and why. It is a must read for anyone diving in to hand-tool woodworking. See More
	Storage Solutions Once you’ve gotten the woodworking bug, it’s amazing how fast you can amass a collection of hand tools and accessories. When it comes to storing my own hand tools, I prefer simple solutions. In this article Jason Stephens illustrates a down-and-dirty way to organize hand tools, keeping them well within reach and well organized. I think his hanging panels are a smart solution—one I plan to “borrow” for my own space. See More