Restarting woodwork

While I was in high school in South Africa, I took woodwork as an option, I loved it, and always told myself I would take it up again and make myself a few good pieces of furniture. We did most everything by hand, using handplanes to size the wood, and used hand saws and chisels to cut the joinery. Here is an example of that work, the joints are hand cut hidden mitre dovetails in the front and hidden rabbet dovetails in the back, while not particularly well made, I love using it to hold my cufflink collection:

When I came to Canada in my final year of high school I again enrolled in woodworking as an option, I was surprised that we used machinery to make the pieces, we used veneered ply and solid edging to construct these bedside tables - the most complex joint we used were dados, to this day I have always disliked them, they collect dust in our basement - this is not the type of work I promised myself I would return to:

When my wife, Kristi and I moved into our first house 6 years ago, I started to collect tools, mostly to complete the many renovation projects we had planned, but also with the idea of making good on my promise of returning to woodwork and making a few fine pieces of furniture when the renovations where complete. I did what any aspiring woodworker would do, I bought what I thought was a good table saw, a miter saw, circular saw, and a router and router table - what we all assume we need to build stuff. Truth is, I really don't enjoy using these tools. I am a Machinist and Millwright by trade, I work with noisy machinery all day, everyday - I have no real interest in using machinery when I come home.

About two months ago I picked up a copy of Christopher Shwarz's The Anarchist's Tool Chest, and it was refreshing to learn I was not alone in wanting to build things with hand tools. This book along with Robert Wearing's The Essential Woodworker are my guides in my renewed interest in woodworking. They are both excellent books, I highly recommend them if you are interested in hand tool woodworking.

This leads me to hand tools, good hand tools are hard to come by, something that Shwarz calls "tool shaped objects" in his book, are everywhere - just go to any modern hardware store and you will find them, objects that look like tools, but really aren't tools, made for the DIYer that really just needs a tool for a rough job over the weekend. I have more of these tools than I'd like to admit. For the rough work I've done around the house, they work well enough I suppose, they really are not that enjoyable to use, but they do sort of get the job done.

I started looking at my options for putting together a decent hand tool collection, I looked at vintage tools, something that can take quite some time to do if you want to get decent tools at fair prices. I'm an impatient fellow, I simply am not interested in investing that kind of time collecting vintage tools. I looked at Varitas tools from Lee Valley, while good tools with some interesting features, I was simply floored when I went to a Lie-Nielsen hand tool event last month here in Calgary. The first tool I picked up was a Bevel Edge Chisel, and I was amazed at the machine work and the high level of fit and finish. Lie-Nielsen are making good tools. As a Machinist, the quality of metal work is always something I value, in my opinion, LN tools do not disappoint, some say they are expensive, but I disagree, they are an excellent value when one considers the quality of materials, castings, and machine finishing. To top it off, they have very good shipping rates to Canada, and my experience so far has been very positive as far as service goes, and the tools are just plain gorgeous.