Woodworking Hand Tools Needed By A Person Who Wants To Become A Professional Furniture Maker Part1
This month and continuing next month I will be showing you the kind of advice I give to students who are about to join our workshop on a one-year course in cabinet making:
Most of us have a bag of tools rattling around somewhere in the garage and by all means bring those with you but you will need to spend quite a lot of money on hand tools. We usually estimate a tool budget for a young cabinet maker of between £600 and a £1000 to get you going. You may spend a bit more than this and you certainly won't spend less than this. My general advice is to buy as few tools as possible choose them well in the first place and learn to use them with confidence. There are so many expensive tools out there that you do not need that will only clutter up your work space and slow you down . I am going to be talking about a range of saws, chisels, planes, marking and measuring tools and routers. I have included routers because although it is not a hand tool the small router has really become an essential bench tool for the modern cabinet maker. Any employer would expect you to have your own router. What I won't include are what would generally be regarded as "shop tools". These sit in the tool box of the workshop owner and generally come out once every 5 years. They're essential tools for the running of a business but then not the kind of tool that you might buy in the first year of training. You might acquire them at a later date but not right now. I'm going to be talking about the choices you'd have available and suggesting various brands and models. The best thing would be to come here and try out the tools that we have in the workshop but if you're coming from abroad you might find that buying tools, in, for example the USA, would save you quite a few dollars from the present prices in the UK. Bearing in mind that tools when you buy them will also require a considerable amount of tuning and fettling to make them work. Indeed you might take the first 2 weeks and spend it on rather laborious metal work just to get your tools working to the standard that we need to do fine work. So where buying a more expensive tool will save you time in tool preparation I will indicate this.
Let's first of all look at bench planes. A bench plane is a key piece of equipment to a cabinetmaker. It's used for flattening components, bringing them down to final dimensions also removing the planer marks and final fitting of joints. No component made in a top quality workshop would go out straight from the planing machine. It would always be checked over and surfaced with a bench plane before final sanding and polish. You need a medium sized bench plane usually described in the catalogues as a fore-plane or a jack-plane. The fore-plane is slightly longer at about 18 inches, whereas a jack plane can be about 14 inches. Most of the people here would go for the larger plane. If you are of a relatively slight build I would recommend the smaller and lighter of the two planes. There are two types of planes available that are mass-produced - the Stanley and Record. If you were buying a Stanley plane I would recommend you bought a second-hand one. If you were buying a new plane I would recommend a Record plane. My experience with new Stanley bench planes have been rather unfortunate. The casting on modern planes tend to be so green that you can spend half a day getting the plane dead flat only to find it continues moving and is no longer flat in a few weeks time - so you are back to square one. Record planes aren't much better though they seem to be slightly better finished and have a nicer blade fitting arrangement. All mass produced modern planes have plastic handles which I think is a shame as your hands can get sweaty and the handles can get slippery. You can replace with Rosewood ones but that will cost you an extra £12.50.
When you going to buy a plane - be it new or second-hand don't buy it mail-order - go along with either a straight edge or borrow a straight edge from the tool vendor and check the flatness of the sole of the plane. Check by holding it up to a bright light source and resting a straight edge first diagonally corner to corner and then lengthways down the centre of the plane. If the plane is curving with the two ends moving away from the straight edge return the plane straight away to the salesman. If it's bending away in the centre this isn't too bad as the sole of the plane can be flattened if the toe and the heel of the plane are in contact with the flat abrasive surface. With either Record or Stanley plane we would recommend that you replace the blade with one of the higher quality replacement blades that are currently available. Clifton make an especially good blade called a Victor blade that we've had exceptionally good results from.
This is part one of a three part article by David Savage first published in Good Woodworking magazine in july 2000 please feel free to reprint but credit the author
David Savage is an Internationally recognized professional Furniture Maker and Designer with over 30 years experience. David runs a furniture making workshop in Shebbear the beautiful county of Devon in England . David can be contacted through his website fine furniture makerThis article was published in 2000 you can see current advice to student makers on woodworking hand tools.
Tags: plane, bench plane, straight edge
