What Key Handtools Would the Young Person, With Not a Lot of Money, Need For the Best Quality Work?
What would be the best tools available for them on the market? Within the past 10 years (from 2000-2010) the market for hand tools has changed enormously.
These are the changes that I'm going to explore in a series of articles you will soon be able to find from my profile.
Not all the articles are based on tools; I cover a lot of other topics which are involved within a woodworker's life.
You will see if you take the time to read any of those older articles that the quality of woodworking tools has improved over the past ten years, and not before time.
A long time before that when I was a boy of 10, I was given the toolkit by my dad for Christmas.
These were not children's tools, but real woodworking tools and it was my constant frustration that I couldn't make them work.
The planes and the chisels in the school woodworking shop always seemed better than my tools at home.
For a long time I blamed myself for this.
Bad tools poorly produced, down to a price, will always undermine workmanship and will always prevent you from making a proper judgement about what is wrong, you, your lack of knowledge, or the tool itself.
In the pursuit of woody knowledge I've seen many woodworkers spending far too much money buying woodworking hand tools that they did not necessarily need.
We love the shiny new glittery things.
Polished brass and shiny rosewood.
Like a magpie we seek to put these things in our shelves in the workshop to be admired, if only admired by ourselves.
But we don't need all those tools we don't need a whole pile of different planes just to convince ourselves that we are a skilled worker.
Most of the time we need fewer tools.
And the more skilled the maker, the fewer the tools that they will gather about themselves.
Up until about 2000 we saw a process of woodworking tool manufacturers reducing their product lines making fewer and fewer tools and making those to a lower quality.
Large-scale manufacturers like Record and Stanley were in the process of being run by cost accountants, pile them high and sell them cheap was the order of the day.
Since that time we seen the emergence of small high-quality manufacturers.
Lie Nielsen in America, Veritas in Canada, and Clifton in Britain picking up some of the pieces left by the big boys.
Lie Nielson taking on models of planes abandoned by Stanley and making them better than the originals.
Clifton run by former Record manager doing a similar thing in the UK.
Veritas very much looking at old is well established designs and seeing if it couldn't be done better in a new and different way.
I have carefully avoided being associated with any manufacturer.
For over 30 years we have been able to independently advise our students on what might be best value.
In some cases this has got me into hot water with tool makers but I think that's tough! Sometimes their inventions give us better tools and in some cases we have wonderful inventions which are really great but then what is the problem.
This topic of tools and the changes within the last decade will begin to fill the article database, giving you the most update to date content on woodworking handtools.
These are the changes that I'm going to explore in a series of articles you will soon be able to find from my profile.
Not all the articles are based on tools; I cover a lot of other topics which are involved within a woodworker's life.
You will see if you take the time to read any of those older articles that the quality of woodworking tools has improved over the past ten years, and not before time.
A long time before that when I was a boy of 10, I was given the toolkit by my dad for Christmas.
These were not children's tools, but real woodworking tools and it was my constant frustration that I couldn't make them work.
The planes and the chisels in the school woodworking shop always seemed better than my tools at home.
For a long time I blamed myself for this.
Bad tools poorly produced, down to a price, will always undermine workmanship and will always prevent you from making a proper judgement about what is wrong, you, your lack of knowledge, or the tool itself.
In the pursuit of woody knowledge I've seen many woodworkers spending far too much money buying woodworking hand tools that they did not necessarily need.
We love the shiny new glittery things.
Polished brass and shiny rosewood.
Like a magpie we seek to put these things in our shelves in the workshop to be admired, if only admired by ourselves.
But we don't need all those tools we don't need a whole pile of different planes just to convince ourselves that we are a skilled worker.
Most of the time we need fewer tools.
And the more skilled the maker, the fewer the tools that they will gather about themselves.
Up until about 2000 we saw a process of woodworking tool manufacturers reducing their product lines making fewer and fewer tools and making those to a lower quality.
Large-scale manufacturers like Record and Stanley were in the process of being run by cost accountants, pile them high and sell them cheap was the order of the day.
Since that time we seen the emergence of small high-quality manufacturers.
Lie Nielsen in America, Veritas in Canada, and Clifton in Britain picking up some of the pieces left by the big boys.
Lie Nielson taking on models of planes abandoned by Stanley and making them better than the originals.
Clifton run by former Record manager doing a similar thing in the UK.
Veritas very much looking at old is well established designs and seeing if it couldn't be done better in a new and different way.
I have carefully avoided being associated with any manufacturer.
For over 30 years we have been able to independently advise our students on what might be best value.
In some cases this has got me into hot water with tool makers but I think that's tough! Sometimes their inventions give us better tools and in some cases we have wonderful inventions which are really great but then what is the problem.
This topic of tools and the changes within the last decade will begin to fill the article database, giving you the most update to date content on woodworking handtools.
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