Woodshop

My dad is a carpenter. I grew up watching him create amazing things: wooden helicopters, chains carved from solid wood, furniture, puzzles, rooms, houses. I guess some of that snuck into me. For the last year or so I have been teaching myself woodworking. My personal interest has been to learn how to do as much work as I can with hand tools. I have many reasons for this. Firstly, budget. To fill a shop with power tools would cost more than my car. Secondly, space. I have half of a basement–about 300 square feet. Lastly, I have always had an fondness for doing things the old fashioned way. I read a book called The Seven Essentials of Woodworking by Anthony Guidice. He is a professional woodworker living–as far as I know–in the Saint Louis area. In his book he makes a very compelling argument in favor of hand tools. He says something about if you are making a few custom parts, by the time you got a machine set up and ready to go, you could be finished with the job and moving on using a hand tool. I do a lot of cooking and I have found this to be totally true in the kitchen. I can grate cheese with a fancy gizmo or a cheese grater. When you count set up, tear down, and clean up. The humble cheese grate is far more efficient.

Unfortunately, I have had to cobble together information from many separate places. Power tools are the rule of the day and, if you are interested in doing things by hand, you are kind of on your own. Hand tools are, by and large, considered novelty accessories to real tools.

Honestly, this is all fine. I'm the kind of person who likes to cook from scratch. My personal computer runs Linux. We replaced our front lawn with a native perennial flower garden. Doing things different has never bothered me much.

In the next several posts, I am going to retell how I got where I am and make recommendations for those who want to do the same. I will also connect you to the resources that I used to learn what I know and acquire the tools that I have.