Must haves when just starting out.

[Carl P]

For a book of projects 'Illustrated Furniture Making' by Graham Blackburn ISBN 0709167784 is very good, it assumes hand tools are being used, discusses techniques and different ways of doing the same thing. Has no plans but tells you how to do your own. Starts with a wooden box and goes on from there. It's the sort of book I wish I'd read when I was first interested in woodwork - it would have saved a lot of wasted time!

Cheerio,

Carl

 

[AndyT]

+1 for the Graham Blackburn book. It takes you through the basics, adding new tools and techniques only as needed so you aren't trying to learn everything at once, but you still get to make real projects.

 

[DiscoStu]

I've got a Clarke pillar drill and a Clarke cheap disc / belt sander and both are fine for what they cost.

I'd say that what you need is a project and then buy the tools for that project, then as you move onto another project the tools that you need will become less and less.

 

[philwjones]

buyin what I need when i need it seems a great idea. Yes Mr P that exact set. im off to amazon now to buy the books suggested thanks for your input people, im sure there will be many more questions but you have given me a GREAT start and definately food for thought

 

[morfa]

re the Clarkes chisels - There's nothing wrong with having a 'cheap and will get battered' set of chisels. But as long as they stay sharp, chisels are all much of a muchness (heresy I know!). I know Paul Sellers often champions the cheap chisels from Aldi/Lidl, which are probably the same.

This 'what tools should I buy question' comes up a lot, so I'm just going to copy and paste my list from before:

Second hand tools are the way to go. For hand tools, they're a fraction of the price and equivalent quality to the fancy stuff. You will have to learn to fettle & sharpen your hand tools anyway, so you might as well start with second hand stuff. Doesn't matter if you make mistakes.

As an example a 2nd hand Record or Stanley no4 can be had for £20 off ebay, a Quangsheng (chinese rip-off) will cost you £120 and a Lie Nielsen will cost you £270. You could get most of the planes you need for the cost of one Lie Nielsen plane. So far all the second hand planes I've bought have been working out of the box. Ditto saws. A couple of sensible ebay purchases will net you some decent saws, while new saws will cost you £100s.

Chisels are a bit more hit and miss second hand, there's a lot of heavily abused chisels out there. But modern chisels are generally ok and there's no need to spend a fortune. A decent new oilstone isn't expensive either. Second hand marking tools are all fine as well, you can buy what you need for small amounts of money compared to spending huge amounts for new stuff.

I will second the recommendations to buy:

The Essential Woodworker by Robert Wearing & The Anarchists Toolchest by Chris Schwartz - http://www.classichandtools.com/acatalo ... Press.html

I could give you a rough list, but those two books say it all and much better than I will. Buy them, you don't be disappointed.

As you don't say if you have a workbench, I'm going to assume you don't and say that it's a very important tool to have. Here are a couple of guides on building a standard 'British' workbench.

GS Haydon (of this parish) - http://gshaydon.co.uk/blog/the-workbench-build-begins - posts start there but you'll have to hunt the rest of them down...

Paul Sellers video guide - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD39949332C7FB168

and his blog posts - http://paulsellers.com/2012/06/making-your-workbench/

And this guide as well - http://picnicpark.org/keith/woodworking ... nch-ne.pdf

And this post of mine has lots of useful links in it:

post736527.html#p736527