You Can't Buy One Tool

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I know a lot of power tool woodworkers. Sometimes one of them will say to me, “Hey Rex, I think I would like to own one hand plane. You know, something to cut down on sanding and handle little pieces that aren’t safe to put through the jointer.”

I’m happy to help, and we find a nice old Stanley No. 4. But that same woodworker often comes back to me and says, “You know, I have a few sharpening stones for my chisels, but they aren’t that great. I could really use some nice ones for this plane.” That’s no problem either, but it’s never the end of the conversation.

At some point, weeks later, we end up having a long heart-to-heart about workbenches.

I was a power tool woodworker for years, and my workbench was very basic. It had a steel frame, a maple top, and a little mechanic’s vise. This bench was enough to work on small pieces and I could use it to clamp down parts for drilling or routing. I did good work. I was perfectly happy.

It wasn’t until I started using hand tools that I realized my bench wasn’t even a bench. It was a sturdy table. The vice was wrong (and mounted to the wrong end), the structure was too wobbly, it was too high. I figured this all out when I started planing wood.  Lean into a big old Stanley No. 6 on a lightweight bench and you’ll shove that thing halfway across the garage.

Soon enough, I was building my first real bench out of beams leftover from the construction of the local Chipotle. I had already upgraded my sharpening stones and built a portable sharpening station to hold them. I began buying 3-in-1 oil in the big bottles.

The truth is, there’s no such thing as buying a single hand plane. Even if you resist the urge to buy more (good luck with that), a plane needs a whole support network to even function. You’ll need stones to hone the iron, a couple of screwdrivers to adjust it, oil to lubricate the moving parts, and this is before the tool even touches wood. If you’re buying a vintage plane and restoring it (and I recommend you do) then you need a reference surface for flattening, several grits of sandpaper, something for rust removal, and (ideally) a powered grinder.

Your plane won’t work without a decent bench, something a bit lower than a table, something heavy. It will need to hold boards so the faces, edges, and ends can all be worked. If you don’t have a good vice, you’ll buy one or make one. And you might buy another to use in the tail-vise position. I use a pair of holdfasts, but whatever.

Last month, I wrote about the way that tools require a system of workholding to function. This month, I’m thinking about how each tool requires a support system to even exist. Until you can adjust it, set it, hone it, fix it, and protect it from rust, your plane is a paperweight.

And don’t even get me started on rust. You know what I learned recently? Dust particles in the air of your shop collect moisture and salt before settling on your tools. We all know what happens when you add water and salt to iron and steel. I keep an eye on my tools. I keep them oiled. But there are a lot of them and sometimes I pick them up and find spots of rust were there shouldn’t be any. I work in a basement, but a share it with the furnace and that helps. I keep two dehumidifiers running all the time. It’s not enough. As I sit here writing this, I can almost hear my tools rusting.

You know how the old-timers dealt with all this? They built tool chests. Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century chests even have a specific part called the “dust seal.” No kidding. Those old boys knew what they were up against and they knew what to do about it.

Honestly, I have zero interest in building a tool chest (or more likely three or four for all the vintage tools I’ve accumulated) but slowly, I’m being pulled toward the project. This is how it happens. You buy one tool, then you buy the tools to restore it and adjust it. Soon enough, you’re building a new bench so you can use it. Finally, the tool has you building complete pieces of furniture that have no function beyond storing the tools themselves.

Just as woodwork is organized into systems, tools exist in networks. Look at any tool in your shop and you can see the lines connecting it to other tools. Picture your router and then imagine an invisible line connecting it to the case of bits, the guides and jigs, the router table, and finally the custom wall-mounted case you built to house everything. There’s no escaping it. Buy one tool and you’ll soon buy another, if only to help maintain the first tool.

This is why I believe in systems of woodwork. If your tools are going to be connected, they might as well share those connections. You want a single set of sharpening stones to handle every edge tool in the shop. You want the screwdrivers you use to turn fasteners to also adjust your tools. (I own a fine new smoothing plane that adjusts with hex-wrenches; I hate this feature with a passion.) If you’re going to build a tool-chest, it might as well hold every hand-tool you own. Too many tools to fit in the chest? Maybe some of them need to go.

Yes, I’m a hypocrite, but it’s still good advice.