The Beginner’s Hand Tool Kit

A Solid Tool Foundation You Can Build With and On

When you first get started woodworking the tools and acquiring them is a fun and exciting aspect of the experience. But it can also be very daunting as there seems to be so many tools we need just to build the first project. And tools are expensive making the task of acquiring a starting set even more difficult.

This doesn’t have to be true and you will find that a small set of tools can stretch a very long way and get you building quickly. Moreover it will light your path to future tool acquisitions by showing you clearly where a task could be made easier with a more specialized tool. For instance, a chisel can pretty much do anything in woodworking, but using just a chisel for some thing is just plain awful. But the chisel can do it so on that first project you may spend a bit more time with chisel and saw to cut that rabbet and when the next project comes around you invest in a rabbet plane. Slowly you start to build a comprehensive tool kit as the tools are needed.

Here’s the Important Bit

As you add on specialty tools, you also have built the fundamental skills that will allow you to work without those specialty tools and this will come back to reward you when weird situations comes up that only a chisel can tackle. Or strong understanding of the saw, plane, and chisel will shorten the learning curve on a new tool.