Replies

1. 
   DCarr10760 | Mar 27, 2006 10:42pm | #1

   Sharpening.  I think that's the single most important hand tool skill to master.  With sharp tools the learning curve for nearly all other skills is accelerated.

   David C

1. 
   Midnight | Mar 28, 2006 09:56pm | #5

   absolutely....

   without well honed business ends, the best planes, saws, chisels et al are mere paper-weights for all the good they'll do..Mike Wallace

   Stay safe....Have fun

2. 
   citrouille | Mar 27, 2006 11:10pm | #2

   If your question was "what is the first hand tool to buy" my answer would have been a 20 mm chisel (and of course the stone to keep it cutting).
   And do yourself a favor, stay away from all the contraptions used with a stone, practice half a dozen times free handed and you'll get it !

   C.

1. 
   jeff100 | Mar 28, 2006 07:19am | #3

   ...stay away from all the contraptions used with a stone, practice half a dozen times free handed and you'll get it !

   So then are you saying that the angles on chisels and plan irons is not important?

   Jeff

1. 
   citrouille | Mar 28, 2006 01:25pm | #4

   I will say the angle is important to a certain point, once the bevel is ground you can just hone it without too much fuss, one degree more or less ...or even a couple of degrees are not making any difference.C.

3. 
   pzgren | Mar 28, 2006 10:50pm | #6

   Claude,

     First, I'd rate sharpening -- for all of the sharpenable tools you have: chisels, saws, plane irons, scrapers, etc. -- you can even go into auger and drill bits, and so forth here..... As Mike pointed out, once your edge tools get dull, they're just expensive paper weights..... The honing guides, etc., are useful for beginners or for those who have had problems in the past, to give you the confidence that you CAN sharpen your tools yourself. After you get the hang of it though, free-handing it is faster and more efficient -- a couple of swipes on the stone, and you've re-newed the edge and are ready to get back to work. My recommendation is to learn to free-hand it, even though the learning curve can be a bit steeper than learning to sharpen using a guide; but, once you learn how to, it's like riding a bike: you never forget. Anyway, whichever method works best for you and gives you the results you're looking for is the best method for you to use.

     Second, cutting to a line. Practice is simple: take a piece of scrap wood, mark it with a series of one- or two- or three-inch long lines perpendicular to the edge, about 1/4 inch or so apart, and start cutting. If you have a good quality saw that is in tune, you should be able to cut to the line after a few tries. If your saw is out of tune, its behaviour will give you a clue about what is wrong (consistently cuts to one side, etc.). If that's the case, then that problem will have to be corrected before you'll be able to consistently cut to the line. After you have the short lines down, try cutting longer lines both with and across the grain. Lots of applications for this skill: ripping to width; cutting to length; cutting tenons; cutting dovetails; hand-cutting grooves, dados, and sliding dovetails; re-sawing; etc.

     Third, accurate chisel work. This, in reality, is more than one skill, but for convenience, I'll lump them all together. Hand-cutting mortises will serve you well, and save you big $$$ in specialized electron munchers. Most of the hand tool books that I and others have recommended in this and other threads have all the details, so I won't repeat them here. Trimming-to-size work (tenons; dovetails; the edge or end of a board; walls and floors of sliding dovetails and dados; any place where you need to take off just a sliver or a thin slice of wood to get the perfect fit).

     Fourth, planing skills. Again, more than one skill here. Most important planing skill, IMO, is learning to read the grain accurately. Once you've gotten that down, you'll save yourself a lot of frustration (and tear out) when hand planing. Learning to hand plane a rough cut piece of lumber to dimension is a very worthwhile skill. (If you haven't already read my little tutorial on this elsewhere in this forum, and want a copy of it, let me know and I'll send it to you.) Hand plane trimming skills are also very worthwhile and useful for getting the perfect fit; essentially the same idea as with chisels, only on a (usually) larger scale. Surface finishing skills: once you can put a good, clean, smooth surface on a board, you severely reduce or even eliminate the need for sand paper and all the dust/noise that it creates.

     Fifth, finishing skills. Once you have put all the time and effort into preparing the wood and constructing your project, it is only fitting that it receive a proper, good quality finish, appropriate for the piece. There are a lot of others on this forum that are a lot more knowledgeable about finishing techniques than I am, so I defer to their expertise.

     Hope that this is of some use to you

   James

1. 
   moleculaire | Mar 28, 2006 11:40pm | #7

   Thanks!That was really an exhaustive response. Thank you very much. I'll start like you said. I am happy, now i'll know what to focus on. Very informative.It's a nice walktrought what i'll be doing this summer.=)Claude

4. 
   dherzig | Mar 29, 2006 03:01am | #8

   I have found that the tapes prepared by the late Jim Kingshott available from Tools for Working Wood are the best training for using hand tools. (And this includes a number of weeks spent at schools.) They have given me the skills and confidence to gradually eliminate all of my large power tools and most of my small ones. Using planes and chisels to do 95% of what I do has been infinitely more satisfying, quicker and better than anything else.