Sure, they don’t have power cords or spinning blades. But, you’d be surprised how many injuries hand tools can cause.

Some of them - well - are pretty gruesome. I remember reading about a woodworker who had purchased a fine set of chisels at a hefty price. He was working on chopping some waste out of handcut dovetails, when a chisel started to roll off his bench. His reaction was to try to snatch the chisel out of the air when it started to fall…

Well, he grabbed the sharp end, and needed several stitches in his hand to close the wound.

The truth is that hand tools such as chisels, slicks, draw knives, spokeshaves all have the potential to bite. The real danger comes when you slip with the tool and a part of your body is in the line of fire. That blade coming at you quickly can do some serious damage.

What are some of the common sense hand tool safety tips? Well:

• Keep ‘em sharp. Dull tools need more force to work, and their dull tips can slide off wood before they dig in to get a bite. Keep the tools sharp and honed, and they’ll perform much better.
• Use the right tool for the job. Trying to chop mortises with a paring chisel is a bad idea. The shallow bevel that’s perfect for slicing wood is terrible for chopping. The steel could break, sending shards in many direction.
• Secure the work. Hey, if you want to learn the hard way that pushing a plane against an unsecured piece of work invites slipping, be my guest. You won’t like the results…
• Watch your body. Think before you cut. Is any part of your body in the line of fire if the blade slips? I once shaved a nice slice of meat from my thumb because it was in the way of a spokeshave blade. That sucker stung for a few days.
• Think before you work. ‘Nuff said.

Similar safety tips go for hammers and mallets (don’t whack your fingers), pinching tools (pliers, etc.), screwdrivers and other hand tools. Just a few minutes thinking about safety can keep your hand tool woodworking a lot more fun.

Oh, and it’s hard to get blood stains off a piece of maple. Just a little FYI.

When it comes to working on my projects, I always seem to find myself reaching for a hand plane. Whether to flatten a board, true an edge or plane a bevel, my planes give me total control over whatever wood I am working with.

Since I’ve written a lot about my hand planes, it’s only fair that I show you the family photo so you see which ones I use.

Across the back row from left to right, I have:

• A Veritas bevel up jointer plane. This baby gets the most work by far when I’m in the shop, especially when I’m making boards square and flat.
• A Union No. 28 transitional fore plane. This plane dates back to the mid 1890’s and I love it. The beech sole rides beautifully over whatever wood I’m planing. I have this plane set up almost like a scrub plane, and it takes pretty thick shavings as I level out the boards.
• A Stanley Bailey No. 5 jack plane. This one dates back to the early 1900’s, and I replaced the iron with a Lee Valley O1 model. This plane is great to work with, giving me consistent results whenever I need to reach for it.
• A Stanley Bailey No. 4 smoother plane. I got this one from a friend who bought a ‘bag o’ planes’ for me at a flea market for $10. Another plane I fitted with a Lee Valley replacement iron. This plane has pushed sandpaper down the importance list and really made finishing projects a whole lot more fun.

On the left side, from back to front:

• A newer Stanley block plane. This was my first real block plane, and it works really well.
• An older Stanley low-angle block plane. This honey is a gem. The low-angle action slices through end grain like nobody’s business.
• Older Staney No. 100 block plane. A relatively new acquisition that I’m growing to love more every time I use it.
• Veritas Flush Plane. Wow, an interesting tool that can handle all manner of tasks. Got some glue stuck in an inside corner? This baby can clean it out with no problem.

In the middle row from back to front:

• Stanley No. 80 cabinet scraper. OK, it’s not technically a plane, but it does the work a scraper plane could do. It took some time to properly sharpen and adjust this one, but it’s really nice that it works now!
• Kakuri Japanese smooth plane. This plane is a champ. It doesn’t have an adjustment mechanism - you use a mallet. Properly set (it takes some practice), I can plane translucent shavings from a board, leaving an an absolutely smooth surface. You pull this plane toward you - different feel, but boy, does it ever work.
• Stanley No. 92 Spoke Shave: Again, not technically a plane, but until I can buy a compass plane, this tool is the one I reach for when I fair up curves. Spokeshaves have very small blades - sharpen with care!

And, the right side from back to front:

• A Lu Ban Asian-style shoulder plane. Another wood plane that takes some time and care to set, but once it’s in the sweet zone, it’s all butter. I routinely cut my rabbets a little thicker than needed and use this plane to make a perfect fit.
• A Veritas bullnose plane. A great value from Veritas. This plane can function as a small shoulder plane (I wouldn’t do a lot of work with it), and the nose comes off for the work as a chisel plane. Again, great for reaching into those corners.
• Another old Stanley No. 100 block plane. Again, a nice plane to work with.

Over the next few months, I’ll keep on doing how-to articles on working with these planes to achieve excellent results on your projects. Until then, hey, since I have the planes on my workbench, maybe I should give them a good cleaning and hone the blades!

So, last time I showed how I face plane using hand planes. Now, we move over to the edge of the board. Believe it or not, this is actually easier to do than face planing… No, really, it is.

(Click on images for larger versions) First thing you have to do is secure your board to your bench. You can do that with a regular woodworking vise and a special ‘appliance’ you build to hold the wood. Mine is made of two pieces of southern yellow pine dovetailed together (it’s a VERY rough dovetail…) with holes for some inexpensive hold-down clamps. This is the end of the board that doesn’t fit into the vise.

Can you use two face vises? I don’t see why not… but the one to the right (for right handers) is not going to get a lot of use in a traditional set up… this appliance can be removed when not in use… and it costs a whole lot less!

This is what your wood should look like when you get it all set in the vise and appliance. In this arrangement, there is little - if any - chance the board will slip. That is essential when you plane - you want the wood to stay still while you move the tool.

Once it’s locked in, sight down the length of the board. Get as close as you can to the edge and squint, looking with one eye to see if there is a crown or dip in the board. If you notice high spots, mark them in chalk or with a pencil so you will know where to do the first work.

The next thing I do is take out my old No. 32 transitional fore plane set for a heavy cut. I want to get those high areas out of the way quickly and get that edge as straight as possible. This task can also be done with a No. 5 jack plane with a metal sole. I just prefer the wooden soled plane because I think it slides more nicely on the wooden edge. As you can see, the shavings aren’t curls… they are much more like wood chips. I’m not going for finesse here, I’m roughing in.

From there, I get out my trusty Veritas bevel-up jointer plane. Yes, I bought a newly minted plane instead of finding a quality used one. I haven’t had much luck finding a complete No. 7 Stanley jointer - most of the ones I have purchased had ‘issues’ that were beyond my abilities to repair. Since my shop is relatively crowded, and the plane was less expensive than a powered jointer, I figured I would spend the money I was saving for a powered model on this beautiful tool.

I also bought the 90 degree fence for the plane. True, if I was edge jointing two boards for a glue up, I could plane them both side by side in the vise, with any variations in angles canceling each other out. But, I have found that true, crisp 90 degree angles glue together more nicely. That’s my experience - of course, your mileage may vary.

The technique is very simple. When you start planing, push down hard on the front knob while you push the plane along. Once the plane is completely on the board, push down evenly as the plane glides along. When you get to the end, relax your pushing down on the front knob and bear down on the tote (the back handle). Think about scooping up a bucket of water. Practice, practice, practice and it will come easily.

As you can see, the are the nice, board-length curls you come to expect from a hand plane. When I get to the jointer, that’s when I want to make the cuts a lot finer to refine the edge of the board.

The real test comes when you run a square along the edge to confirm you have planed at 90 degrees, and you remove the board from the vise and appliance and lay it down on the bench top. You should not be able to see any light passing under the board.

Total time to edge a board? I dunno - three to four minutes. No snipe. No screaming motor. No chance of losing fingers or the board exploding if a jointer knife snags a knot. There’s a lot to be said about those hand planes!

Patrick’s Blood and Gore Page

Sure, it sounds like a page where people might talk about gruesome murders or the latest shoot-em-up video game, but this is actually one of the best resources for Stanley hand plane information on the Internet.

Patrick Leach of the Superior Tool Works assembled this virtual library of information on the hundreds of different styles of hand planes build by Stanley Tools from the mid 1800s through the 1960s.

Leach concentrates his efforts primarily on the Bailey and Bedrock offerings, not delving too deeply into the lesser-quality lines such as Handyman.

While his style is pretty tongue-in-cheek, and he does lean heavily toward offering his own personal opinions (especially when it comes to the transitional offerings from New Britain) there is no doubting that he has done his research. Sole lengths, blade widths, special features and the like are all offered in meticulous detail. If you are looking for a new hand plane, this site is a must see.

How to Build Three Basic Hand Planes

I’m sure that you know by now that I’m a big hand tool nut. If you love hand tools as much as I do and want to try your hand at making your own, this is the site for you.

Popular Mechanics offers easy to follow instructions complete with a detailed measured drawing and step-by-step photographs to make construction as easy as possible. There are even helpful tips (the proper way to glue the wood pieces together to ensure the most stable plane body, etc.) that will help you avoid common pitfalls in building your own tools.

I’ve got to admit, building your own hand plane sounds like a challenge I’m up for.

If you’ve been following Wood Talk Online for a while, you’ll know I am a big hand tool guy. Not because I relish the thought of sweating in my shop (that’s a given during the long Florida summers) or I want to do things the ‘hard way’ (my dad would argue otherwise…).

With hand tools, I feel more connected to the craft, get to understand the wood better and get myself into less trouble should something go amiss (have you ever had a router bit slip out of the collet and ruin a project? If so, you’ll know what I mean!).

When people think of hand tools, their thoughts first turn to hand planes, hand saws and chisels. As well they should. Even in the most electrified shop, competent woodworkers should have at least a good set of chisels, a block plane and maybe a backsaw to handle some basic tasks that would take forever to jig up on a power tool. I have those in my shop, and I find myself reaching for them frequently.

I also have a few others that I find myself reaching for time and again. Many of them may not be found in your shop, but each of them really makes a difference in how I work. Fortunately, many of them are also dirt cheap and take only a limited amount of time to learn how to use. Ready?
Marking gauge. This has become a mainstay in my shop, and you can have mine when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. There is no better way to mark out a mortise or how wide you want a rabbet on a work piece. Sure, you could do the pencil-on-the-side-of-the-combination-square trick, but, come on, how accurate could that really be? I have one of the gauges made by Veritas that uses a circular blade to score a clean line on the wood. Older gauges use a sharp pin that will tear the wood fibers when you drag them across, so always look for one that slices. You will be very happy.

Striking knife. Pencils are nice for marking cuts, and I have a slew of them in a mug up on my work bench. But, when I really need to be precise, I reach for the striking knife. It has a flat side and a beveled side, and when I run that flat side against a steel rule, I get the exact mark that I need. Very handy, and I keep it with me at all times when doing joinery.

Spokeshaves. Just like the name implies, spoke shaves used to shave spokes on wheels. You can get a really comfortable grip on the twin side handles, and you usually pull the tool toward you. They act sort of like miniature planes, able to fair bandsawn curves with ease. Some have flat soles; others have curved ones, so look to get a set. Some of the new ones are very sweet, but Stanley made these things by the bushel, so you are bound to find a nice model at a garage sale or flea market. The only difficult thing about these are the blades are very small compared with plane blades, so you have to really concentrate when you sharpen them.

Scrapers. Card scrapers are so simple, you have to wonder how they qualify as tools. It’s a rectangular (or shaped) piece of steel. That’s it. But, when you burnish them just right, these things are magic. I was working on a piece of very curly maple. I knew if I put that piece through the thickness planer, it would come out looking like the surface of the moon. And, if I tackled it with sandpaper, it was going to take a long time to get right. I locked the piece into my vise and started scraping it. The wood was incredible! All of the rough surface came off, and the wood was smooth as glass. Look for more information on tuning a scraper in later articles, or check out Wood Whisperer Episode 14 - Barely Scraping By.

Rasps. They look like rabid files, don’t they? And, yes, they can splinter wood if used the wrong way. But, if you need to shape something, I’d be hard pressed to find a nicer tool for the purpose. The key is to use a light touch and remove small amounts at a time. I was working on a small box with a lot of curves in it, and the plans in the magazine called for three very intricate jigs to be built to achieve the results. Since the beginning of the plans mentioned that the woodworker had done most of the shaping by hand, I figured it had to be easier that building the jigs. Sure enough, the raps grated away the right amount of wood, and the final piece needed some very light sanding and scraping to perfect the finish. It sure beat listening to power tools running!

You might be reluctant to give hand tools a try because you think they are old fashioned or slow. However, I think you might be surprised just how much faster, better and more enjoyable they can make your woodworking. I’m glad I started down that slippery slope!

Growing up, my buddies and I used to debate really Earth-moving stuff all the time. For instance:

Could The Flash outrun Superman?

Who was stronger? The Bionic Man or Spider Man?

Who did you think is cooler? Luke Skywalker or Han Solo?

We thought we were so darned sophisticated, debating such highbrow stuff.

The best debate, however, went like this: In a straight up fair fight, who would win – Bruce Lee or Muhammad Ali?

As any kid growing up in the western hemisphere, it was only natural that I put all of my ice cream money on the greatest boxer of all time - Ali. After all, he floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee. It seemed to be a no-brainer.

“But,” my friends would remind me, “Bruce Lee uses all that mysterious kung-fu stuff.” And, yes, in those Saturday morning karate movies, Bruce and his enemies seemed to do a lot of floating and stinging as well.

Believe it or not, that was the first exposure I had ever had to Eastern cultures. From there, my mind was opened to these strange and mysterious things and practices. Chinese food (the kind we make here in the United States), Japanese cars (everyone remembers the movie Gung Ho, right?) and the martial arts took me to lands far away on the other side of the Earth.

What the heck does this have to do with woodworking?Well, when I was just starting out with the craft, my thoughts naturally went back to my dad’s tool collection in his workshop. Crosscut and rip saws, power tools, chisels, a Sears hand plane with a high black painted tote. In my mind, those were the images of what woodworking tools should look like, and, when I started my tool collection, my decisions were based on those tool forms.

That was until I got my hands on my first Japanese style handsaw.

The simple act of cutting wood is a universal need. Cultures thousands of miles apart still had trees and a need for places to live. Thus, they developed similar tools to perform similar functions (cutting, shaping, jointing, etc.) But, while these tools are very similar, there was a mysterious (yes, that word again) feeling about these tools.

First of all, that new handsaw cut on the pull stroke. Wow. That took some getting used to, but it seemed to make so much more sense. I couldn’t get the saw to bind – something I had no trouble doing with my crosscut saw. The blade was ultra thin. I could flex the saw and cut plugs and dowels flush. For me, pulling seemed to be a more natural sawing motion than pushing.

One day, my neighbor Chris gave me his dad’s set of Japanese chisels. I was floored. It was quite an honor because my neighbor’s dad was a noted architect and had worked with George Nakashima, and Chris was very proud of his dad’s accomplishments. The chisels were a little beaten up, but, when I sharpened them, they honed to a fine edge. They have a very broad tip and a narrow body, which makes them perfect for cleaning up joints. When I need to do some very fine work, I find myself reaching for them a lot more frequently than my very nice set of western chisels.

Now, I am starting to get into eastern planes. Again, they do the same work that western planes can do, but these babies are pulled instead of pushed, giving a completely different feel. There are jointers, jacks, smoothers – all of the tasks that western planes are called upon to perform.

Every time I start working with those new form planes, I always make the comparison in my mind.Are the eastern tools any better than western ones? Define ‘better.’ Both give excellent results when sharpened, tuned and used properly. Both styles are the culmination of hundreds – if not thousands – of years of development by master craftsmen. Some may handle certain tasks better, but each is a solid performer in my workshop.

I guess both schools of tools would make for an interesting fight…