Popular Woodworking Editors' Blog

I consider myself fortunate to share the Popular Woodworking shop with two world-class woodworkers – Christopher Schwarz and Glen D. Huey. After many years of working mostly by myself, it’s refreshing to see approaches and techniques that are different from mine yet work just as well, or even better. As an old dog, it’s nice to learn some new tricks. Also sharing the shop is a less experienced woodworker, our managing editor Megan Fitzpatrick. We all try to be helpful and teach her what we consider to be the “right” way to do things as she develops her skills in the shop.

Nice guys that we are, we feel free to jump in and offer unsolicited advice whenever we pass by and she is at her bench. Except for the admonition to not get blood all over the shop, I don’t think there has been an occasion where the three of us offered the same method, tool or technique.  Megan isn’t shy about pointing out to us where we contradict each other (or occasionally ourselves) and we’re slowly learning not to jump in as she practices what one of us has shown her. I think all beginning and semi-experienced woodworkers go through a similar experience, but not as intensely and not on a daily (or hourly) basis.

I learn things by going into “sponge-mode” trying to soak up as much as I can from different sources. I try different things until I find something that works for me. When I learned about woodworking, there was no Internet and no local woodworking store; there was one bi-monthly magazine, and only a few catalogs and resources for tools. I got reasonably good at doing things before I found out that I didn’t have anywhere near enough tools.

If I were just learning how to work with wood, it would be easy to become overwhelmed with the volume of information available today. This is especially true when it comes to tools. Many of our readers want to be woodworkers, but they aren’t yet because they are busy gathering all the tools they’ve been told they need, and getting their shops together before they actually start making stuff. There’s a good chance that many of these will pass on before they realize that gathering tools and getting the shop in order can become an eternal effort.

The problem with woodworking is that there is always one more tool that promises to make a daunting task quick and painless. Special tools can indeed do that; the hard part is sorting out the tools you want from the tools you think you need – and the tools you really need from the tools that will help you do what you want to do. The list of tools I want looks like a telephone book, but the tools that will do at least 90 percent of what I want to do are in the picture above. I have more tools than this, but these are the ones that have been with me awhile – the ones that have shorter blades from being sharpened a zillion times and the ones that show some signs of age.

I think this represents a good basic list for any woodworker. If your main interest is power tools, these tools will make your setups more accurate and will save the day when the power tools get you close to what you want, but not quite there. If you want to be a hand-tool woodworker, knowing how to use, sharpen and tweak these basic tools will get you well on your way. You’ll have a better idea of what more specialized tools you need, or you may decide that these are all you need. The important thing is to get going and make something.

Click below for a list of the tools in the picture as a Word document.

10-05-07_list_ blog.doc (30 KB)

Click below for the list of the tools in the picture as HTML

RLang_list.htm (9.69 KB)

– Robert W. Lang