Many moons ago, when I decided to give unplugged woodworking a whirl, the first order of business was to amass a modest collection of the appropriate tools. I quickly identified six main areas to consider: measuring, marking, chiseling, planing, sawing and boring.

The measuring side of things wasn’t an issue as I already had tape measures and rulers and suchlike; and the marking was taken care of relatively cheaply with the purchase of a small Stanley fold away knife and a second-hand marking gauge. My bench chisels were a present from my children on Father’s Day last year, followed up with my mortice chisels this year. That just left the planes, hand saws and hand drills.

I quickly built up a reasonable collection of hand planes (nos #3 – 7) which have served me very well so far, and it wasn’t long before I had half a dozen saws, both panel and tenon, rip and crosscut. These were all found on eBay, for very reasonable prices, and with a little restorative tinkering were pressed into service very quickly. It was the hand drills that posed the biggest problem. Continue reading “For the sake of completeness” →