Stocking Your Tool Chest

While the following list is by no means exhaustive, it should be enough to get you through the easier projects you want to undertake. While woodworking can be a vocation, it should also be a passion. That love can serve you well as you face the inevitable difficulties that life can present.

Woodwright Necessities

Every woodwright needs tools. But it is important to remember that you need good tools, not necessarily old ones. Interest in the history of the working man is increasing, and his tools constitute some of the most important records of that history. We are the guardians of that information; when you buy and use old tools you hold a key to the past in your hands. Abuse can destroy this key, and the information that it holds can be lost forever. We all have the responsibility to determine, either by checking with an expert or becoming experts ourselves, just how rare a key we hold. We all come out ahead when we trade a rare plane to a collection in exchange for more common planes to use.

Working with metal tools

Early edge tools were often made of two different sorts of metal. The body was wrought iron while the cutting edge was a layer of steel forge welded onto the flat side of the blade. Pitting from corrosion is the greatest enemy of these tools. And watch for a tool that has been ground past the length of applied steel during sharpening. The easiest way to test the metal is to pick lightly with a file, which will skate off steel but dig into iron. Remember, missing parts can be recast and stripped threads can be replaced, but, as with all things in life, the price is time and expertise. Investigate before you buy to make sure you aren't taking on a greater responsibility than you can manage.

Working with wooden tools

Broken wood repaired with glue is often stronger than the original wood. But an old repair with old glue may not hold up if it is in a critical spot. Once an old glue joint fails it must be cleaned down to the bare wood before the new glue can be expected to hold. The other destroyer of wooden tools are the powder post beetles. The larvae will tunnel inside the wood, eating as they go. When they mature, they exit through the surface, leaving holes to show that they were there. They mate, lay eggs in a convenient piece of wood, and begin the cycle again. The more exit holes there are on the surface, the more eating has been going on inside. A cleaning solvent is usually strong enough to kill whatever larvae may be inside the wood, but knowing the extent of the damage is tricky at best.

The proliferation of information in our society is both a boon and a curse. The particulars of folk culture are in constant danger of being drowned in a sea of nostalgic generalization. The closer you can get to the source, the better off you are. It takes more effort to find the old books, to examine the tool marks left on old timbers, to talk to the people who made them, but you and the world are richer for your labors.

- Roy Underhill

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