4 ms·

There is a large woodworking subculture that uses only (or at least mostly) hand tools. While new good hand tools can be expensive, you can get good stuff at a

by jabl 6y ago

There is a large woodworking subculture that uses only (or at least mostly) hand tools. While new good hand tools can be expensive, you can get good stuff at a more moderate cost on eBay. See e.g. Paul Sellers or Chris Schwartz. Sure, you're not going to set up a furniture factory that can compete with IKEA on price using hand tools, but who cares? You're doing it for your own enjoyment. And hand tools are enjoyable to use, much less noise and dust than machine tools.

preommr 6y ago
Doubt anyone would save much money on hand tools. Going all hand tools is more of a luxury - those hand planes and speciality saws are not cheap and an absolute nightmare to maintain. Any woodworker is going to need a collection of both. Things like a good chisel set are going to be essential no matter what. The basic power tools like a circular saw and a table saw aren't all that expensive either. Even cheaper if you buy them second hand. Add in a drill press, a jigsaw, router, sander and that's pretty much the basic ensemble. With good sales, all of it can come around to 1-1.5k The real expensive stuff is when people buy useless festool crap when they can make a jig.
- Ma8ee 6y ago
  You can definitely spend unlimited money on hand tools, but you don't have to. You get very far with just a few tools that you either buy second hand or buy new but avoid the the most expensive brands as well as the cheapest ones. Most importantly, with hand tools you don't have to have a big permanent wood shop. The tools don't take as much space, and most importantly, you don't have to set up dust collection etc.
  - marttt 6y ago
    "... most importantly, you don't have to set up dust collection etc ..." Also, you can work in complete silence.
    - mauvehaus 6y ago
      "Also, you can work in complete silence." Unless you're mortising or chopping dovetails...
      - Ma8ee 6y ago
        You can saw and pare the dovetails and drill and pare the mortises. This is how you do woodworking living in an apartment with a baby :).
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  Maintenance on power tools isn’t great outside of the most expensive options though, like makita, stihl, etc.
- mauvehaus 6y ago
  The basics of hand tools can be had for a pittance. A #4, #5, and #7 or #8 Bailey style plane can be had for $50-$100 apiece on eBay and they'll last forever. They new Stanley Sweetheart chisels are a steal at ~$20 a piece if you buy a set on sale. If that's too much, the US-made Buck Brothers chisels are about $10 a piece at Home Depot. You want the ones with the clear yellow handles. It's worth buying your first dovetail saw and/or tenon saw new so you know what it should cut like, but you can buy subsequent saws used and sharpen them yourself. The expensive bits are the sharpening stuff and the layout tools. For sharpening, I spent $200 on the set of 220/1000 4000/8000 Norton water stones, and $40 on a used grinder. You can get by with a grinder, a $15 oil stone, and a strop. Layout tools are pricey because they start overlapping machinist tools and come with commensurate accuracy. You don't need a square accurate to .001" over a foot for woodworking, but your options are pretty much that or one accurate to .030" over a foot, which is emphatically not good enough for woodworking. But depending on how you work, you need those tools for machine work anyway. You don't need to spend a fortune on most of the hand tools. Whether or not you find the maintenance a nightmare or not is mostly a matter of committing to learning and practicing until it's second nature.
marttt 6y ago
+1, I'm in the same camp. Check out a Hungarian woodworker building a chest in 1955: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V0gQ9M45G8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V0gQ9M45G8 I wonder how many tools an average contemporary hobbyist/industry worker would need to build that same thing. I'm from Estonia, and I recall a local master stating that in the 1930s a typical farmer had to do a lot of woodworking for his own use. And often they only had five(!) tools: a knife, a saw, a wide chisel, a narrower chisel, an axe. Most even didn't have a plane. This is all the equipment they used to even make furniture. Unplugged woodworkers of HN might find the book "Estonian woodworking" [1] interesting (it's a true classic of Estonian etnography, translated to English without permission in the 1960s and circulated as hand copies back then; these days published in English by Chris Schwartz). Or build a Roman Workbench (=Estonian workbench :) [2]. [1]: https://lostartpress.com/products/woodworking-in-estonia https://lostartpress.com/products/woodworking-in-estonia [2]: https://blog.lostartpress.com/2019/07/24/free-download-roman-workbenches/ https://blog.lostartpress.com/2019/07/24/free-download-roman...

by jabl 6y ago

preommr 6y ago

Doubt anyone would save much money on hand tools. Going all hand tools is more of a luxury - those hand planes and speciality saws are not cheap and an absolute nightmare to maintain. Any woodworker is going to need a collection of both. Things like a good chisel set are going to be essential no matter what. The basic power tools like a circular saw and a table saw aren't all that expensive either. Even cheaper if you buy them second hand. Add in a drill press, a jigsaw, router, sander and that's pretty much the basic ensemble. With good sales, all of it can come around to 1-1.5k The real expensive stuff is when people buy useless festool crap when they can make a jig.

Ma8ee 6y ago
You can definitely spend unlimited money on hand tools, but you don't have to. You get very far with just a few tools that you either buy second hand or buy new but avoid the the most expensive brands as well as the cheapest ones. Most importantly, with hand tools you don't have to have a big permanent wood shop. The tools don't take as much space, and most importantly, you don't have to set up dust collection etc.
- marttt 6y ago
  "... most importantly, you don't have to set up dust collection etc ..." Also, you can work in complete silence.
  - mauvehaus 6y ago
    "Also, you can work in complete silence." Unless you're mortising or chopping dovetails...
    - Ma8ee 6y ago
      You can saw and pare the dovetails and drill and pare the mortises. This is how you do woodworking living in an apartment with a baby :).
jeromenerf 6y ago
Maintenance on power tools isn’t great outside of the most expensive options though, like makita, stihl, etc.
mauvehaus 6y ago
The basics of hand tools can be had for a pittance. A #4, #5, and #7 or #8 Bailey style plane can be had for $50-$100 apiece on eBay and they'll last forever. They new Stanley Sweetheart chisels are a steal at ~$20 a piece if you buy a set on sale. If that's too much, the US-made Buck Brothers chisels are about $10 a piece at Home Depot. You want the ones with the clear yellow handles. It's worth buying your first dovetail saw and/or tenon saw new so you know what it should cut like, but you can buy subsequent saws used and sharpen them yourself. The expensive bits are the sharpening stuff and the layout tools. For sharpening, I spent $200 on the set of 220/1000 4000/8000 Norton water stones, and $40 on a used grinder. You can get by with a grinder, a $15 oil stone, and a strop. Layout tools are pricey because they start overlapping machinist tools and come with commensurate accuracy. You don't need a square accurate to .001" over a foot for woodworking, but your options are pretty much that or one accurate to .030" over a foot, which is emphatically not good enough for woodworking. But depending on how you work, you need those tools for machine work anyway. You don't need to spend a fortune on most of the hand tools. Whether or not you find the maintenance a nightmare or not is mostly a matter of committing to learning and practicing until it's second nature.

marttt 6y ago

+1, I'm in the same camp. Check out a Hungarian woodworker building a chest in 1955: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V0gQ9M45G8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V0gQ9M45G8 I wonder how many tools an average contemporary hobbyist/industry worker would need to build that same thing. I'm from Estonia, and I recall a local master stating that in the 1930s a typical farmer had to do a lot of woodworking for his own use. And often they only had five(!) tools: a knife, a saw, a wide chisel, a narrower chisel, an axe. Most even didn't have a plane. This is all the equipment they used to even make furniture. Unplugged woodworkers of HN might find the book "Estonian woodworking" [1] interesting (it's a true classic of Estonian etnography, translated to English without permission in the 1960s and circulated as hand copies back then; these days published in English by Chris Schwartz). Or build a Roman Workbench (=Estonian workbench :) [2]. [1]: https://lostartpress.com/products/woodworking-in-estonia https://lostartpress.com/products/woodworking-in-estonia [2]: https://blog.lostartpress.com/2019/07/24/free-download-roman-workbenches/ https://blog.lostartpress.com/2019/07/24/free-download-roman...