Thread: Suggestions for a beginner?

Make yourself a shooting (Chute) Board, Very Cheap and great for mitres or 90 degree angles.

I have recently upgraded mine to do both 45 and 90 degree angles

There are many posts, pictures and plans on the forum

I missed an important part - I am more thinking chisels, hammers and saws.

😁

Billy, these sorts of requests are extremely hard to answer without so many qualifications that they become pretty meaningless. It is virtually impossible to buy the 'perfect' set of tools straight off. Hand tools especially, are highly individual, which is why tools like chisels & saws come in so many different sizes, even when they are ostensibly for the same purpose. Not only does it depend on what you intend to make, the choice of things like plane sizes will vary acording to your physical size/strength & personal tastes. For example, some people prefer the #4 as a general smoother, while others swear by the 4 1/2, & yet others like a #3, while those who own all 3 will select different ones for different jobs, & so on. You really have to use tools yourself to appreciate their fine points and learn how to get the best out of them. Having said that, buying tools that have a reputation for high quality (Veritas, Lie-Nielsen, the various boutique saws, chisels from numerous manufacturers) means you will get tools that are definitely fit for purpose & will work 'out of the box'. Many "second-tier" brands are perfectly good tools too, though some may take a bit of fettling to get working well.

Buying good oldies can be a much more economical way to build up a set of excellent tools, but more risky for a newbie, if you don't know what to look out for. If you are in/near a capital city with an active hand tools group, you could do a lot worse than join up & have access to advice from expereincxed people.

Few of us old hands here would have started out with much. I had a very small set of tools for a very long time: a couple of planes, 4 chisels, a few saws and sundry tools like marking gauges & various home-made bits like a marking knife & scribes, mallets, etc., & I managed to make lots of things that were of acceptable standard. My advice would be to plan a project that takes you into new territory, then think what tools & aids will be vital, and perhaps which tools would be nice to have for the job, but not essential. Then buy the former for sure, and maybe treat yourself to something in the 'luxury' line if the budget allows after you've bought the essentials. If you keep doing that for a while, you will soon get to know which brands & types of tools suit you best, and before you know it, you'll have quite a decent set of tools...

Cheers,

I found myself in the same position a few years ago. After a great deal of research, I've ended up with the following list (plus quite a few other tools that I now realise aren't that essential). I'm assuming that, like me, you're primarily concerned with value for money, so I'm writing the list with that in mind. However, unlike me, you already have some power and other tools. This means that the tools I've listed as essential might not be for you. Also, there are many ways to skin a cat.


Saws:

A 240mm Ryoba for ripping and crosscutting medium sized things, and a dozuki for ripping and crosscutting small things. These two saws will cost around $100 and do everything you need, from your description.

A coping saw. A few dollars from a flea market. Older is gooder.

Planes:

A Stanley #5, with two irons, one slightly curved. The normal iron is for getting a nice finish, i.e. as a smoothing plane. The curved blade lets you remove or "hog" wood very quickly, such as the initial stage of flattening a board, i.e. as a jack plane. You can also adjust the plane's mouth and extent the straight iron a little, and you then have a jointing plane (for making long, flat surfaces such as on the edge of the relatively small boards you'll be working on).

A shoulder plane. Incredibly handy, for trimming joints.

Optional: A router plane and a plough plane.


Chisels:

I'd recommend a set of Narex bevel-edge chisels. Available from Lee Valley online, I think. You can also collect vintage chisels; as a beginner you really only need a few. I'd suggest only a 1/4", a 3/4" and a 1 1/4" chisel at first. The largest chisel should be ground at a low angle so you can use it for paring. Purchase or scavenge additional sizes and types as you require them.

Sharpening

The most economical method of sharpening is King waterstones. You might also be able to find old oilstones at flea markets, if you are lucky. These are quite different tools though, so I recommend you do some reading before you decide which method to pursue.

You can get by with just a #1000 and a #6000 stone. I would avoid combination stones.

A cheap Eclipse honing guide can be had for around $12. A Veritas Mk II is much, much better, but expensive.

You will need something to flatten your waterstones, or oilstones. The cheapest way to do this properly is to use a piece of glass (pretty much any bit of glass will do) with some silicon carbide grit. The grit can be purchased from a lapidary supplier online for a few dollars, or with the waterstones. Down the track, buy a course diamond stone instead.

If you plan to rehabilitate old tools, you will need two additional stones; the Sigma Power #120, and if you can afford it, the Sigma Power #400. This adds about $80 to your order, though. It is simply not possible to flatten the back of an abused Titan chisel, for example, with a #1000 grit King waterstone. Don't even try using sandpaper. I suppose you could instead spend that $80 on after-market plane blades (like Hock or Lee Valley) and buy the Narex chisels instead of vintage ones, for the time being.

You need a grinder, too. I purchased a vintage hand grinder, special white grinding wheel, and Veritas tool rest for $130. I've also used a cheap dry grinder from Bunnings (and I mean, very cheap) and this worked fine, too, but you need to be careful not to burn the tool. If you want to go cheaper still, you can use the Sigma #120 waterstone I mentioned earlier as a grinder. Unless you are planning to rehab chisels, this works just fine and costs about $20.


Drill

Buy a vintage brace with a relatively small sweep (size), and get old auger bits from your local flea market (usually a few dollars each).

Measuring and marking

Marking knife ($20 ish).

Small square. Doesn't need to be super-duper accurate. Use this until you can make your own squares, which is not anywhere near as hard as it sounds. Also when you can afford it, buy a good quality combination square, or scavenge a nice vintage one.

Marking gauge. I strongly recommend paying $55 for a Veritas dual marking gauge. It's not much more than you'd pay for a wooden one, and is a squillion times better, in every possible respect. Ah, how I love that gauge.

Cheap plastic vernier. About $2 from eBay.

Hammers

Wooden mallet. I'd recommend that you buy any piece of Chinese-made crap, treat it with linseed oil a few times and then beat the ** out of it for a year or two until you can make yourself a better one (unless it falls apart first of course). Because a mallet should be proportioned according to your body (and in particular the length of your forearm), the type of work you do and your own idiosyncratic preferences, it doesn't make sense to me to buy a decent new one; and I've never seen a vintage one worth bothering with.

Dead-blow mallet. Optional. Go buy one if you have a job where no normal mallet can mallet the malleting job to be malleted (like big mortises). About $10 from Bunnings.

Hammers: doesn't matter. Any small hammer will do. My favourite hammer is from Ikea. I suspect it is made from surplus furniture components. It works fine. You will eventually approach a task where some kind of special hammer is called for, but worry about that when you get to it.

Files and rasps and such

You will find perfectly good files at flea markets, although they generally don't have a handle. Take the handle from an old chisel, and bash the file's tang into that instead. Just check that the teeth of the file are straight and undamaged, and that there is a brand name stamped on the file. (It doesn't really matter what the brand name is; the fact that the manufacturer thought highly enough of their product to put their name on it is usually indication enough. That said, avoid Chinese steel).

You will need a new auger bit file for sharpening your drills. These are available online.

As for rasps, I confess that I don't know where to find cheap, good ones. I have a few new Nicholson rasps and they are horrible, so I avoid using them.
Workbench

I haven't built a proper bench yet, so can't say much about one except that you should really consider making one, if you're interested in hand tools.

I knew what you meant, and i knew you would get a response like Ian's eventually.

The thing is we all have a mixed bag of tools, whether they are 7 different makes of chisels, 3 types of hammers/mallets, numerous planes the list go on. You need to feel comfortable with what you use, otherwise it will collect dust and rust.

There was a mention in a previous post, about Bunnings selling a set of wooden handled Stanley chisels for $30 (on sale) and thats a bargain!!! Not sure if they are still on special.

One important thing you must consider is sharpening, regardless of chisel brand, old or new, the chisel needs to be razor sharp (take hairs of your arm). As your on a budget, look up Scary sharp method as this is the cheapest and extremely effective.

I mentioned a shooting board as it is a cheap and effective tool especially for picture framing.

It's absolutely true that each person will have a different set of tools; the list I've put up represents what I myself have ended up with, which may well be completely different to yours. For example, I use Japanese saws because someone on this forum recommended them, and a few happened to be on sale. I use Western planes because someone gave me an old one as a gift once. Neither choice has much to do with utility. I suppose the moral of the story is, start out with whatever you can get your hands on!

thanks for all the advice - it is really appreciated and i'm going to put together a little wish list!

thanks again!

Originally Posted by snafuspyramid

.......I suppose the moral of the story is, start out with whatever you can get your hands on!

Very good advice, I reckon.

And Jason's mention of sharpening is very timely - the ability to make cutting edges sharp is vital. You will never really enjoy using hand tools until you achieve this. On that point I will give a bit of specific advice, and second the recommendation for starting with water-stones. I'm an old oil-stone user myself, but if I were to start over today, I think I would be a water-stone person. Although water-stones suffer more rapid wear & must be kept flat, they cut faster than (equivalent) oilstones, so give a more rapid & gratifying result, especially for beginners. If you really want to go for the top, p'raps think about ceramic stones, but I think water-stones probably give far & away the best bang for buck.

The other suggestions about a bench and shooting board are also very good. Besides being essential tools themselves, they make great first projects, teaching you the fundamentals & how to work with accuracy, but they crtainly don't need to be fine furniture, so you can make (& correct) a few mistakes without spoiling the function one bit....

Good luck & enjoy the journey!

IanW & snafuspyramid have raised the waterstone Issue for sharpening, and whilst I agree with their reasons, as I too have Man Made Waterstones (Ie King) and natural Japanese Waterstones > 10,000 grit and leather strops but the expense can start to creep up.

IanW has offered me exceptional advice in the past, and I hate to state a different view point

My sugggestion of Scary Sharp is cheap (But slow),
Bunnings Sell Wet & dry paper @ 86 cents a sheet from 240 to 1200 grit. When Sharpening you can cut each piece into three sections prolonging the use. You can also buy 1500, 2000 & 2500 online if you want to look at youself in your blades or chisels

Go to a local Marble/Granite Stone mason or kitchen builder and ask for an off cut (Potentially free). You can usually pick up the cut our remains of the sink.

A sharpening Jig is a must, and I agree the Veritas Mk II guide is supurb

The money you save can be spent on more tools.

To purchase Waterstones, it will cost easily over $100 even with combo's and there is still the need to flatten them. How you choose to flatten them can also be an additional cost (Sandpaper, Diamond Stones etc)

Originally Posted by JasonBF

.....IanW has offered me exceptional advice in the past, and I hate to state a different view point

Hey, Jason, I'm no oracle - you are allowed to have your own views!

You like the 'scary sharp' method, and have some sound reasons for doing so, I can't decry that. I normaly avoid getting into 'sharpening discussions' because they generate so much passion, but I happen to have a strong dislike for any system that uses a compressible substrate such as paper or cloth as the cutting medium. It will result in rounded surfaces, no matter how flat a surface you stick it on, or whether you pull the tool in one diretion only or not. It may look flat to you, but I will bet good money that any plane blade or chisel whose back is polished this way a few times will NOT be flat any more. As long as you don't switch to polishing backs on something truly flat like a decent-quality diamond plate, you'll probably never notice anything amiss. It doesn't affect the function of things like plane blades much, but it's a pita on tools that need to be flat, like paring chisels.

There, I had to say it........

Cheers,

[QUOTE=IanW;1556309]Hey, Jason, I'm no oracle - you are allowed to have your own views!

Phew

Regarding the difference between purchasing waterstones, on the one hand, or using sandpaper, I'd start out by saying that it generally doesn't matter which you use. Oilstones, sandpaper, waterstones, a powered slow grinder, a leather strop, all do the same thing - make things sharp. Different methods require different skills, cost a different amount and take different amounts of time, but they all end up at the same place.

So from here it's pretty much going to be an academic debate, to which you need not pay any attention. For some reason sharpening is the most controversial part of woodworking, probably because there are so many different ways of going about it. But I repeat, it doesn't really matter which method you use - they all get you to the same place.

With all of that said, I'd be inclined to recommend waterstones and NOT sandpaper. It's true that sandpaper is initially cheaper, but it adds up quickly, especially if you're using finer grits or higher quality paper (both of which are necessary). The other reason why I would avoid sandpaper is because it is extremely difficult to perform certain tasks with it. Specifically, it is almost useless for lapping the backs of chisels and plane irons. This is an essential first step in sharpening - making the back of the blade flat, and to some degree, polished. Older blades are almost always badly deformed from decades of improper sharpening, or being clamped in position. Even many new chisels or irons also have this problem (although not the Narex I recommended).

Flattening the backs (lapping) is not suitable for sandpaper for two reasons. First of all, it requires a LOT of sandpaper. You can expect to spend about eight hours restoring a full set of Titan chisels, for instance. While that wouldn't bother the waterstones too much, it would chew through sandpaper like nothing else. Second, sandpaper is slow. Very slow. Again, this isn't really that important with regular sharpening but it will cause a real headache when lapping. Thirdly, and most importantly, sandpaper will "dub" the edges when lapping. There is no way to avoid this. It is also a problem when lapping the soles of planes, which is why I don't recommend it for that, either. This is a problem which will only become apparent once you use waterstones or another sharpening method - you'll see that only the middle of your chisel is flat, while the front and side edges have been worn away slightly. This prevents the formation of a sharp edge, especially at the corners. it is caused by the fact that the abrasive wears very quickly in the middle, which means that the metal is always exposed to the sharpest abrasive right at its edges. With waterstones, spent abrasive is immediately "washed away" as the binder breaks down, avoiding this problem. This probably doesn't matter with planes, but it does with chisels. It took me several hours to repair all the damage I had done to my chisels with sandpaper lapping.

Finally, I don't think that you really need the Veritas MK II honing guide. The Eclipse style guide is much cheaper and works well, albeit after a little modification with a file. There is a video on Lie Nielsen's website, or on Youtube, that demonstrates how to use stop blocks to achieve proper projection angles. With that said, buy the MK II when you can afford it. You will not regret the purchase.

Good evening snafuspyramid,

Thank you for pointing weaknesses and problems with sandpapers. I had only used oil-stone (Stanley Amazon) for a short while; and I have been using water stones (King) for the past year and a half.

I am happy with water stones. But the preparation and clean up can be a put off I have been thinking of sandpapers. Given that blades from LN or Veritas are ready to go. I am guessing that using sandpapers for honing should be okay?

It looks very neat from the instruction video below:

Originally Posted by BillyBleed

hi all, I am going to try my hand at using traditional tools rather than power tools - ... - I use a mitre saw as needed and a mitre trimmer which I have found the most useful of my tools so far and its a hand tool.. not to forget sanding by hand.. so much more pleasing and therapeutic.

basically I mainly make picture frames for my artwork and lamp stands at the moment.

i would be looking to make finger joints, mortises, dovetails and dowels joins.. Kind of covers most of it don't it?

what would be the ideal starting package to build for myself that would allow me to achieve the results with ease (elbow grease) without fiddling around and getting frustrated?

i would like to spend in the region of 400 to 600..

Originally Posted by BillyBleed

I missed an important part - I am more thinking chisels, hammers and saws.

I copied that to remind myself what the initial query was.

I think it is fascinating to think how everyone has a different experience and different preferences and aims.

It will depend on your personality whether you want some reasonable/decent chisels, an acceptable saw and markout tools - then into the wood and have at it ... or you'd like to research/study the techniques and methods ... hunt on ebay and tool shops for buying opportunities ... etc

For one thing I'd say - if you buy tools you like/love then you'll never regret the purchases.

Second - Read. Woodwork magazines + books + the internet. Watch Youtube.

I think: Woodworking & Carpentry for Australians - Haines & Smith is worth having if you find it for $20 or so.

I don't regret any step in learning/buying/trying things over the last two years, but it is only now that I have learnt to sharpen very well (and yet I'm sure others go far far beyond what I know). So ... I'd say learn to sharpen very well as early as possible. The best way to learn is probably to connect with someone with experience.

I think the *cheapest* way to sharpen is to get some old oilstones and some Chromium Dioxide to strop with. You could potentially get 5 old oilstones and a new green 'crayon' for $50. When you know what you're doing, then you could go to ceramics or diamond stones or whatever.
People used these for a few hundred years - and it (can be) interesting in itself to experience it for yourself.

I agree that the Eclipse honing guide is cheap and effective, but if you have later ambitions towards carving tools and moulding planes, then spend some time on learning to sharpen freehand.

Good luck
Paul.