I think I’m going to need a bigger box.... For the last 6 months I’ve slowly been putting together a basic hand tool kit for people to use whilst on my courses. It’s made up of new and used hand tools I’ve been recommending to new woodworkers for the last few years and strikes a good balance between quality and cost!

September’s tool of the month is the chisel plane!

It’s a very simple looking tool, being little more than a wedge with a blade on top of it. However it’s pretty handy for several tasks such as removing glue squeeze-out, flushing pegs and for getting into awkward corners plus the ends of rebates.

That’s all for September look out for the next tool of the month blog post soon.

This months tool is the router plane!

These days the word ‘router’ either has people thinking about internet connections or loud high speed hand held machinery! (My particular router plane predates both... early part of the 20th century).

Router planes were used for accurately leveling all kinds of recesses for example halving joints, grooves, hinge mortises and stopped rebates or grooves where a chisel cannot reach. Today you can do all of those things and more with a hand held electric router, but sometimes it’s nice not having to wear ear protection and sometimes the router plane is faster to set up!

Router planes have been around for a very very long time and were originally made from wood! Another commonly used name for this tool is ‘Grannies Tooth’ due to its single blade poking out!

Look out for September’s blog post 👀

This months tool is the flush cut saw!

The flush cut saw has a thin flexible blade with teeth that have little to no set, and cuts on the pull stroke like a Japanese saw. It is designed to trim excess tenons, pegs and dowels so that they are flush with the surrounding surface without the saw blade digging in.

I use an inexpensive Irwin pull saw which costs around £10 and uses a replaceable blade, it’s mainly used for cutting off the wedges on Stable Stools like the photo below.

That’s all for July, look out for August’s tool of the month!