There’s a time for fettling, restoring and swatting dates in old books. In fact it seems that we spend a lot of time doing these things. Sometimes we need to make the time to build stuff.
It’s easy to think, “I’ll be able to build that once I’ve tuned this up some more”, or “if only I could have tools like him”.
It’s a little too easy to get wrapped up in a lifetime of excuse.
I looked at my bench today and saw tools with handles wrapped up in electrical tape and my trusty jack plane looking as ever, like he has been chewed on by an old dog (and he has).
My tools are sharp. But they could be sharper.
Your planes are set far finer. Your saws are set better and a whole lot straighter than mine.
Well set tools don’t impress me, nor does the terminology. Building does.
If you feel your tools aren’t up to it, embrace the challenge. I learnt some of the most valuable lessons through being vastly under equipped. A craftsman can blame his tools, but only if he is short on ingenuity.
The finest tools don’t build stuff, you do.
This week I’ve had half a dozen ebay dogs turn up at my door and they are now all functional and ready for use. That includes metal and wooden planes and saws of all varieties. There wasn’t a lapping plate in sight but they now work. They could be better, but they work.
Over the weekend I’ll be turning this pile of oak in to a chair. What will you be building? Crack on!
This weekend I shall be making the legs for the behemoth of a workbench I am making.
Hi Frugal, that sounds wonderful. I hope when the bench is complete I’ll get to see a pic!
Richard,
I’ll be painting my clinched nail chest this weekend. Thanks for the inspiration on that one. I had a bunch of scrap wood from someone else’s (I swear) hydroponic pot grow tables, and I knew it would be perfect for your chest. I’ll send you photos when I finish.
Justin
LOL….I swear they were someone else’s tables… LOL
Great Justin, I look forward to seeing them.
Just fitted the base to the dovetailed pine box I’ve made with my 405 multi plane and now need to think of a design for a soft closing lid which the good lady requires to keep her sewing reels in order.
Amen, brother. My ‘sawdust’ generation is at a much lower level than yours but a variety of little nitty-gritty tasks got done. Built my second generation of blade setting jig for my Ecilpse honing guide using a chunk of 2×4 ‘shaped up, with my trusty #4 plane (hey – it ain’t much but at least I used a hand tool!), worked on the bone pile of old metal planes to get them sorted out a bit (net result – I have way too many Stanley #5s!! – got to sell some of those) and continued work on a set of roll out kitchen shelves for my wife.
I shall be playing with the misses IF she doesn’t wake up
I recently made a shoe horn for a sick neighbour, he was very impressed!! Said ” what wood is it John”….. I replied ” skip wood”. All with hand tools ……any offers more my Ryobi router
In the pool halls I used to haunt, when I was younger, I would hear “it’s not the stick, it’s the shot”. There’s a lot of truth to this. You should be able to grab a house cue and have at it. A real fine cue sure does help, though. I’ll be slaving away getting our shop production ready in the immediate future. Very soon to be working on projects again.
After a week on the tools I shall be hand sewing a Tudor waistcote !!!!
Fantastic! I would very much like a Tudor waistcoat!
Rock on.
Best advice ever. I am building a kitchen table out of quarter-sawn red oak and its coming along nicely even though I pause now and then to sharpen a tool.
You sound like my wife.. “Quit buying tools and just build something! ”
LOL! Great post, thanks!
Mmm… Not sure how I should feel about this post. My thing is restoring old tools to gleaming perfection. It’s what I find to be therapeutic. I’ve cleaned and restored from a Myford ML7 lathe to a hand cranked pillar drill. All now look clean and bright and work sweetly. Sure, I build things from wood, but only when I need something. I built my 27 sq m workshop from scratch 10 years ago. I built all the fittings in it, including the workbench. I like restoring old tools, though. Does any of this count?
It counts for me. I love restoring old tools as well. I get a lot of satisfaction in putting an old rusty tool back in business.
That all completely counts Jim! I love to restore and build things for the workshop too, the only thing to avoid is letting the need for more or better things become an excuse and get in your way, and you’re certainly not doing that.
For me, weekends are for the ‘housekeeping’ tasks around the workshop. Which includes fettling and sharpening. (My excuse for having so many planes! I don’t have to stop in full-flow, to hone an iron. Yes, I know it doesn’t really work like that!) Just like woodwork, computers need housekeeping too, and since I started using a PC, weekends are also for computer ‘housekeeping’, clearing up minor problems there. That leaves me weekdays when I can make sawdust.
!
I made some progress on my table build this weekend. And I rehabbed a tiny little wooden plane I have bought today on the flea market.
Cheers,
Stefan
Took your advice and made a Japanese tool chest, even though my workshop is so full of bathroom renovation supplies (and other junk) that there’s only about a foot of free floor space along the front of my bench. Turned out ok, though.
I can surely understand that building your toolkit is becoming something you do instead of building with your tools. I have fallen to this trap more than once. But recently I have started to make time for both. I am a hobbyist and can spare in average of 6 h in week to build something. So I task myself to resharpen or flatten or whatever one thin in “session” rest of the time is spent on building stuff. My wife is already impatient waiting those bookshelves I am building currently.
Though some projects are essential. For example I was about to do a set of dovetails on a shelves but didn’t manage to hold the piece firmly to saw so in last week I set myself to make a Moxon vise. And that is the answer for your last question – I completed the wooden parts for this vise this weekend.
Finishing the double top, with drawers, on a computer desk – variation on a design seen elsewhere – but using non-traditional fixings, S/S bolts in oak boarding. Not for everyone, but can give a very rigid fixing. Work on an all steel infill proceeding – very slowly – in parallel. Mowing grass, painting door.
Perhaps I need shorter lists.
We all seem to be in the same boat!
I very much agree with the sentiment of this post but I do think that it is still possible to run into wall workwise because of the state or nature of your tools.
The first time I ever tried to glue up a panel from two boards I used an old Bailey-style foreplane (18″ long) to shoot the edges but could never get the two to join properly. I tried every trick I could find online or in books and I tried taking very calculated shavings but I could not get them come together cleanly. I eventually found out that the sole was actually curved along the length of the plane so I switched to my No. 4 (whose sole I knew was flat) and was then able to produce two panels with nearly imperceptible glue seams. Maybe someone with more experience would have been able to manage it with the curved-soled foreplane but I just couldn’t. And I spent a long time trying, ha ha.
But I suppose this story is also representative of the original point of your post. I’ve never seen anyone recommend shooting panel edges with smoothing planes but that doesn’t mean you can’t.
A master will make a crappy tool do the job, a novice cannot get a great tool to work right.