Student Stories

I have had the pleasure of a long career in teaching woodworking skills. Some of my students are hobbyists, others get bitten by the bug and decide that a career in woodworking is the life for them. Check out some of the sites below to see what happened after they left me.


Richard Hardy - studied with me on a short course at London Metropolitan before taking himself off to Williams and Cleal to study furniture making full time.

Hardy Handmade

Mandie Beuzeval - decided on full time study at London Metropolitan and now working as a designer maker.

Beuzeval

Paul O'Brien - since completing the Introduction to Furniture Making course at London Metropolitan, Paul went on to train at the Building Crafts College on the City and Guilds Fine Woodwork Diploma (Furniture Making). 

I'm reliably informed that there are 102 hand cut dovetails in this traditional cabinet maker's tool chest.

Aysha Shah - completed the Introduction to Furniture Making course and continued her studies on London Metropolitan University's Furniture FdA . She's now completed her third year studying Furniture and Product Design.

AyshaShah.com

SketchUp

Good old pencil and paper is the mainstay of preparing rough sketches and quick diagrams in the workshop, but away from the workshop we prefer to use some kind of drawing package for presenting to our customers and for accurate dimensioned drawings for use in the workshop.

Our favourite package is Sketchup Make from Trimble. It is a powerful 3D drawing programme and best of all it's free. It takes some getting used to but thankfully there are comprehensive video tutorials to instruct you along the way.

Here's one to get you started:

The Tool Box Trinity

A decent set of tools is key to any trade, none more so than furniture making. The intention isn't to give you a comprehensive list of tools because it could go on for pages and is dependant on what projects you'll be working on. Instead we've chosen to concentrate on the holy trinity of woodworking tools: planes, chisels and saws. Every woodworker has their favourite set of tools and we're not likely to agree on every detail, so here are some of our favourites; they represent quality and value for money. We've compiled a list of the tools available from Amazon; not all of those shown below are included but we've added a few variations to make the list worth a look.

Planes

There are very few projects that don't require any hand planing. Even working in MDF, that most machine friendly of materials, calls for the odd bit of tidying up with a small plane. If I had to choose only two planes I'd choose the following:

Block Plane

A small plane for one handed planing of edges and for surfaces too small to comfortably rest a larger plane on; the low angled version is particularly suited to planing end-grain surfaces.

N°5 or 5½ Jack Plane

A general purpose plane that can be used to prepare surfaces for edge gluing or finely set for use as a smoothing plane for surface preparation prior to applying a finish.

( For a more comprehensive description of what each type of plane is for, check out what Matthew at Workshop Heaven has to say on the subject.)

There are many second hand planes for sale on Ebay; mostly old Stanleys and Records. These planes are in the main perfectly fine for planing MDF or softwood, but not really up to the job of planing hardwood. You could buy one and spend a day truing the base, and filing the frog to make it all work better and buy a better blade, but I'd recommend you spend your money or someone else's on the offerings from Quangsheng. I don't get any form of commission for recommending them, I just like them. They need only minimal preparation and they have a host of well engineered features that puts the current crop of Stanleys, Records and Faithfulls in the shade. In short these are planes that don't get in the way of you being able to produce your best work. Quangsheng N°5s can be bought for around £130 which may sound expensive, but when you consider you'll need to spend nearly twice that to obtain a British Clifton, American Lie Nielsen or Canadian Veritas then they represent very good value for money.

Quangsheng N°5

A notable mention goes to German distributor Dictum whose own planes are excellent and worth looking at as an alternative to the Quangsheng in both quality and price.

A Set of Bevel Edged Chisels

It is quite hard to find a truly useless set of new chisels today, as the quality of the steel available seems to be pretty much decent all round. Narex make a very nice set for not a lot of money. I have a minor quibble about the electro brassed ferrule but apart from that they are decent and deserve a place in your tool kit.

I have a  liking for the Ashley Isles bevel edge range. They're more expensive, but beautifully finished and feel comfortable in the hand. Well my hand anyway.

Saws

Woodworkers like to argue about saws more than any other tool, partly because we like a good debate but also because it reflects much about how we like to work. There are currently two camps slugging it out: those that favour a traditional saw which cuts on the push stroke and those that prefer nokogiri or Japanese pattern saws that cut on the pull stroke. There are pros and cons to each type of saw:

 Japanese saws are easier for the beginner to use because the blades are thin and pulling the saw towards you is a very relaxed way to saw. Their downside is that they are often better suited to softer timbers as the teeth can break off when cutting particularly dense species. It's worth asking the retailer if the saw you have in mind has been designed to cut hard timbers.

Dozuki 

Western saws are heavier than their Japanese counterparts; they have to be because they are pushed rather than pulled; the blades are much thicker too. Beginners often struggle to work in a relaxed way and find themselves exhausted after a short while. My theory on this is that most western saws are filed with cross cutting teeth, which give a smooth but slow cut. My preference is to use a saw that has been filed to a rip pattern, which as far as I can tell, cuts as efficiently across the grain as it does with the grain, without a disastrous increase in tear-out.

Lie Nielsen Tenon saw

There are quite a few rip pattern saws on the market but most of the brass backed types sell for around £130. Veritas has a modern take on the traditional tenon saw which I like very much and retails for about £37.

Veritas Carcass Saw

Hand Tools vs. Power Tools - The Age Old Debate

At Furniture School we're big fans of using hand tools for much of our work. We have a well equipped machine shop and more portable power tools than we have space for, and yet there's nothing more satisfying than the quiet enjoyment to be found in using sharp hand tools.

Our everyday work is mainly painted MDF, which lends itself to working with machine tools very well, but there is little reason to break out a chisel, plane or any other hand tool, other than perhaps to scrape off a bit of glue. Most of the time they languish on their shelves under a layer of fine dust from the last routing session. Dust masks, and ear defenders are a must; listening to the radio - impossible.

Then there are the nice days, the ones where we have no need to plug in the router, because we're engaged in hand cutting dovetails, or planing a choice piece of walnut. These are the rare days that this woodworking malarky is everything it is cracked up to be. These are the days that remind us why we chose this career in the first place.

The Case For Machines 

Machines were developed to make the tedious and arduous work of converting logs into useable timber quicker and less labour intensive than doing it by hand. They were designed also to speed up production in industrial settings and to produce finished quickly and cheaply with little variation. As furniture production moved away from using solid timber and towards manufactured boards, the necessity for machines to do most of the work came to the fore. They certainly were not trying to mimic the natural variations that occur in handworked timber.

At our workshop we use large fixed woodworking machines to rip, crosscut, plane and thickness rough sawn boards in a fraction of the time it would take by hand, but after that we revert to using hand tools as much as possible. We make liberal use of portable and table mounted routers for running grooves, rebates and template work because it's fast, accurate and it makes little sense to do those things any other way. Besides, those kinds of operations are boring and the sooner they're done, the sooner we can get on with the stuff we like. Machines certainly have an important role to play in a professional and amateur workshop but they cannot do everything, especially if you work in solid timber.

The Case For Handwork

When it comes to work that needs finesse; sensitive work like paring joints and planing subtle chamfers and details on to an edge, hand tools give much more feedback than power tools. A plane can take a shaving of less than 0.1mm which allows us to work a surface with complete confidence or take off a bit more here than there. This in its turn gives us freedom to make our work more personal and free of the rigid constraints of the machine. For us, it is the difference between handmade and machine made.

Working wood by hand is usually a fairly peaceful process; though if you've ever been in a woodworking class where ten students are all hand cutting mortices at once, you'll know that by hand isn't always quiet. Still, the process isn't accompanied by the relentless high pitched whine associated with the router, or the continuous hum of the random orbit sander. Working by hand allows you to chat with a colleague without shouting or having to stop what you're doing. There is also something very down to earth about making things happen with just the power of your own body, and your own natural or learned dexterity.  Machines take you away from the immediacy of the experience and dictate how the end result be.

Good machines are expensive and take up valuable workshop space. By way of a contrast, a decent set of hand tools needn't cost the earth takes up very little space. Your hand tools can live quite happily in a 3'x 4'x 3' chest or on a set of shallow shelves. You would be hard pushed to get much more than a drill and a router in the same space.

The ultimate in the hand tools only approach is epitomised by those dedicated to the art of green woodworking. Unseasoned wood works more readily than dry timber and can be cut and carved by very simple tools like knives for example. Take inspiration from Barn The Spoon who can be seen most days in his workshop whittling spoons and other utensils.

Aren't Machines Better?

Well, for somethings yes they are, but for things like final surface preparation they're not; a hand plane is more efficient at producing a beautiful surface than an electric sander. If your only experience of planing is with a dull poorly set up plane, then you'll find the previous statement hard to believe.

Woodworking machines are inherently dangerous, and to mitigate the chances of doing yourself a serious mischief with them, proper training is necessary. Wood machining is a skill that needs to be learned in much the same way that hand skills need time to develop. It wouldn't be outrageous to suggest that there are more hobbyists that end up losing a finger or an eye, than properly trained professionals. We tend to know when we're about to do something stupid and so modify our approach just in case it all goes horribly wrong. It is hard for the beginner to know when he or she is on the wrong side of safe until after the fact.

The Bottom Line

It is true that when time is money and the customer isn't particularly interested in a beautifully hand planed surface then it makes sense to unleash the machines and get the work done as quickly a possible. It isn't enjoyable but it pays the bills. The amateur maker has the advantage of being able to take his or her time without the constraints of running a business, and meeting customer demand and therefore doesn't need to invest in so many power tools.

If you're a hobbyist then invest most of your budget in hand tools and an electric drill but only buy power tools if you have the space to keep them and you're sure you'll make use of them. If you live in London, then the chances are slim that you wont make a nuisance of yourself with your neighbours when you decide to do a spot of midnight routing. On the flip side, you're unlikely to keep anyone awake while getting knee deep in plane shavings. Ultimately, you need to decide what kind of woodwork you want to do and then set up your workshop accordingly, but you shouldn't feel pressured to buy expensive tools until you know what that is.

Further Reading

A book that echoes my sentiments on the subject is Jim Toplin's The New Traditional Woodworker: From Tool Set to Skill Set to Mind Set (Popular Woodworking)He argues the case for hand tools very well and has a really good set of things you can make to help make handwork easier to do.

For a more general discussion on setting up a workshop Jim Kingshott's The Workshop is a good place to start. It is a British book and unlike most American books which assume you have a garage big enough to house two SUVs, Kingshott's book is geared towards the more modest spaces that we have in Britain.