Which tool most defines you as a person or a woodworker or craftsman of any kind?
I’m not talking favourite tool of the week, or the one you use most, I’m talking the one you would most like to see carved on your tombstone. The tool you think of when someone says woodwork.
I’ll kick off with an old Marples chisel.
It was owned by my grandfather and I nabbed it when he died. To me, this represents a standard of craft with hand tools to which I aspire and a challenge as to how long it has taken me to get it to an acceptable level of sharpness. Also, how that ‘acceptable’ level of sharpness has changed over the years from ‘It cuts’ to ‘it’s sharp’ to ‘I can shave with it’ and still there is a grade beyond that yet to be mastered. I think of him every time I pick it up.
Sad thing is, apart from you reading this, none of my family would know that is my favourite tool. They would think it’s the new tablesaw I just spent way too much on, my router or bandsaw, but no. The tool that most defines me is a busted-handle cheap Marples chisel.
What’s yours?
Replies
A thought provoking question. I have favorites to use, but which best defines me? Perhaps my Stanley Bedrock #7 which cost my twin brother and I 50 cents when I was 13, I’m now 55. We got a #5 at same time, same price. I took a long hiatus from the hobby and this is a tool that bridges my teen years building stuff mostly from scrap lumber in the single car garage where my twin brother and I set up our own workshop and my hobby today. It also always reminds me of me of him, he died from pancreatic cancer a few years ago - his enthusiasm for woodworking and being passed some of his power tools got me started in the hobby again. It represents the mistakes made along the way in learning the craft - back then we promptly wire brushed it and painted over the japanning with flat black rustoleum paint trying to make it look newer. As I said in the post on old hand planes just this morning - who knew collecting these would ever become such a thing? We got them sharp enough to cut, but it now has a Hock iron representing how much things have advanced and how much I’ve learned about getting sharp. Back then we ground blades with a belt driven bench grinder and a cup of water and honed free hand on an out of flat hand me down oil stone. For all the shop classes we had, they didn’t teach us much about sharpening. Now, I am blessed to be afforded LieNielsen and Veritas planes which fettle in a fraction of the time to take whisper thin shavings, but still have the #7. Given inflation and technology just my sharpening kit- guides, gadgets, waterstones, lapping plates, granite, etc alone might total to as much as our entire shop of used tools like the #7 and various new Sears Craftsman woodworking tools we accumulated with earnings from farm labor, table saw included! (a gift from our encouraging dad, who never even used it himself) But back then, that plane helped us get square and flat (close enough anyway). We managed to build a very large array of projects with that modest tool kit and during our teen years had an awful lot of fun, productive days in that shop. One needs only a small fraction of the tools a lot of us hobbyists have to start building and to have fun doing it, so for those newbies, pick a project to build and get started. For the rest of us, thinking about this reminds me of those that helped me along the way, I have a ways to go to pay that forward and am setting a goal right here to kick up my efforts a notch or two.
Old Stanley #5 jack plane. My first plane. After I bought some poplar, had it jointed & planed, and the next week when I began make a plant stand I noticed the board had twisted. An old timer told me I needed a hand plane and sold me the jack plane for $25. I planed the twist out of that board, and even though I have added many tools since, that Stanley jack defines me.
Wow, talk about a theme.... My first woodworking tool, and the tool that defines me, was my father's old Sargent 409 smoothing plane. He didn't really do woodworking but he had a small work bench in the basement with a lot of tools on and around it. I took it after he passed away. The mahogany tote was broken but I glued it back together and added a spline and some dowels so it could withstand the abuse that it would surely experience going forward. I don't use that plane anymore but it's currently surrounded by a compliment of other old and new planes that I do use so it has plenty of company.
What a juicy question. My answer, in general, is handplanes. More than any other type of tool, they have taught me how really soul satisfying work comes from getting really good, over time, at a number of component skills: sharpening, adjusting, setting up, technique of use, etc. And the auditory, visual and kinesthetic feedback when all is right is both soothing and exhilarating. I get a particular satisfaction out of solid worker vintage planes (something about the connection with prior users), and my favorite is my Sargent No7, which I picked up at a backroads antique store in rural NE Georgia for $15.
A close second is my card scraper---a humble piece of rectangular steel that can so elegantly accomplish such fine and essential work on a project, with such little effort and operator skills so easily acquired.
I'm more of a handyman than a woodworker currently so probably my claw hammer, estwing, would define me best. Very few projects that I have done get done without it. My wife knows I plan on working when she sees it. Hopefully a few more years of woodworking and I can change that answer but for now, it will do.
At 16 I was given a Stanley plane used to install weather stripping on windows
My old dozuki with the bent tip. Can’t seem to get through any kind of project without it.
I had to think on this for a long time. So many choices, but I kept coming back to my 1-2-3 blocks. It's where I started my quest for straight and square and it epitomizes my wont for not measuring.
Yes, it does provoke thought - and memories. Planes, yup. I currently have about 20, but my go-to is a Bedrock 606, unusual in that it has a laminated blade. Then a #5, then a #6 that was my great-grandfather's.
I just finished a piece where I used mostly vintage tools. The 3 above planes, plus a #12 scraper plane, #45, a #78, a #82 scrpaer, and a #9 1/2. A Disston backsaw 1896-1910, a 1904 Goodell miter box and other stuff. GGF's framing square, the dovetails were laid out with his dividers.
And then there was the little Plumb claw hammer and a coping saw I got for Christmas 70 years ago, still in use.
Yes, I'm old and I have been gravitation toward older tools for some reason, so I suppose that is defining me at some level.
BTW, anyone interested in vintage tools and is in the Atlanta area, should visit the Funk Heritage Center at Rhinehart College in Waleska, GA. They have thousands of hand tools on display, categorized by vintage and function. https://www.reinhardt.edu/funkheritage/highlights/tools/
My dovetail saw. Then my block plane, followed, finally, by the half-inch bevel-edge socket chisel.
I don't want to become a tool fan of this or that sort of item. Before you know it, I'd be droning on in an exceedingly tedious fashion about the merits of this table saw design rather than that. ......
Oooops - too late. :-)
Lataxe
Haaaa... Lataxe's favorite tool is his keyboard!
Where's that "like" button?
Great question. Since woodworking is a hobby and I do it to relax, I am in no hurry. I want to enjoy myself. The direction I wanted to go was using hand tools mostly. I will add a few machine tools. I also appreciate the past as our forefathers were able to very much with very little. I want to develop that innate skill. In By Hand and Eye, I recall them talking about how dividers and a square were ancient craftsmen tools. As such, I choose a square and dividers.
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