What is the first tool you should get when starting woodworking?

  What is the first tool you should get when starting woodworking?

Mathew Mehlenbacher provided an excellent answer. But allow me to add something to it.

For perspective, I own well over $10K worth of professional grade woodworking machinery, and I build 18-th century museum quality reproduction furniture. I have had my furniture featured in architectural magazines. However, I consider my hand tools the more valuable woodworking tools and the necessary starting point for anyone who wants to learn fine woodworking.

What is the first tool you should get when starting woodworking?

Only through using hand tools well can one learn the nature of wood, i.e., its texture, its weaknesses, how cleanly it responds to a plane or chisel, how grain changes affect its behavior, and why it is necessary to choose each board for an intended use. If you do not learn this, you will never be able to build anything properly or anything fine.

Many fine woodworking operations HAVE to be done by hand and by someone who knows how to hold and control a hand tool. For example, there is a world of difference between a hand cut dovetail joint and one made by machine or between a hand carved detail and one made with a router or a CNC machine. One is fine woodworking. The other is production work. The difference shows.

Machines do thing fast. They also make mistakes fast. If you have to use wood putty, it is no longer furniture. It’s called kindling. Moreover, the fine finishing of a joint initially cut with a power tool often requires paring with chisels and planes. Machine operations should be used for those crude or repetitive operations where their power and speed actually helps. They should not be used as a substitute for a lack of skill. One really needs to first develop sufficient skill to build anything using only hand tools and then add power tools to your collection.

Where one buys those tools is important. If you desire to do anything better than home-handyman quality work you should NEVER buy woodworking tools (other than power hand tools) at a big box store such as Sears, Lowes, Home Depot, or a hardware store. The chisels and planes and hand saws sold at such stores are of very poor quality and will be extremely unpleasant to use. The stationary power tools sold by such stores are, at best, contractor quality, suitable for light construction but completely inadequate for making furniture. Make your choices from reputable companies that specialize in selling woodworking tools, such as Woodworker’s Supply, Garrett Wade, or Highland Hardware. For stationary power tools limit yourself to reputable manufacturers such as PowerMatic, Delta, General, Makita, or Hitachi. Do NOT buy any power tool imported from China.

OK, just what are the tools you will need? For hand tools:

set of good cross-cut and rip hand saws. Example: British Tyzak & Turner hand saws.

set of fine and medium brass backed back saws.

set of paring chisels.

 sharpening stone system.

Layout and marking tools.

wooden mallet.

set of high quality low-angle block, jack, smoothing, and joining planes. Examples: Record and Lie-Nilesen

shoulder plane. Example: Record No. 311

Woodworking clamps: bar, case, corner, panel, band, and wooden hand-screw types. (You can NEVER own too many clamps!)

double pinion hand drill and a brace and bit and the required drills and augers.

 set of carving tools.

woodworking bench with side and end vices and bench dogs.

The power tools you should buy in their order of importance:

good 10-inch tilting arbor 3 to 5 horsepower table saw with a right extension table and a precision fence system, e.g., a PowerMatic 66 with a Biesmeyer fence. There are some table saws designed to prevent injury by sensing contact with flesh and stopping the blade.

set of carbide tipped rip, crosscut, and finish blades for the table saw.

precision miter slide for the table saw.

6-inch joiner.

floor mount drill press.

power planer of 12-inch or better capacity with extension infeed and outfeed tables.

dust collector system.

router.

bandsaw.

stationary belt sander.

shaper, preferably with a power feed.

 Example:

a 3-horsepower PowerMatic 26 with a Delta stock feeder.

set of carbide tipped cutters for the shaper.

resawing (3-inch wide blade) bandsaw.

lathe.

warning: Do NOT buy a radial arm saw for woodworking projects. Those tools seem versatile and appealling to would be woodworkers. But they lack precision and should be considered a carpentry tool, fine for building a garage or shed, not a furniture making tool. They are very good for rough cutting lumber prior to machining it. But they are not intended for, and should not be used for, fine work.

There are, of course, hundreds of tools you will find helpful and add to your collection. I own ten routers, six power drills, over a dozen hand planes, and four complete sets of chisels, a vacuum veneering system, and spray finishing equipment, and drawers and cabinets full of specialty tools. But the above list of tools will allow you to build just about anything.

 

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