I am fascinated by the potential of hand tools, especially handplanes, for crafting fine work. My high interest in hand tools is reflected in my summer woodworking reading list.
Paul Sellers’ Essential Woodworking Hand Tools is a thick and beautifully-presented compilation of information about all manner of hand tools. I’ll start with this book for background on the full range of hand tools for the woodshop, their selection, preparation and use.
My interest in handplanes has led me to using wooden planes more and more and I’ve decided to build some of my own planes this year. David Finck’s Making and Mastering Wood Planes details the construction of Krenov-style laminated planes and I look forward to studying that book and the companion two-DVD set. I’ll also read John Whelan’s Making Traditional Wooden Planes, which describes how to make other styles and types of wooden planes.
John Wilson’s Making Wood Tools falls into a similar grouping and from this book I’ll learn about other types of wooden hand tools I can build for my own shop.
Finally, after all this reading about making tools I plan to read a couple of books about using them to create furniture: Tom Fidgen’s Unplugged Workshop and Simon James’ Working Wood 3.
I can hardly wait until I get to that cabin in the Maine woods. I’m all stocked up and ready for lots of fun reading about hand tools and planning to build and use them.
Find more great Woodworking Books and Plans at the Highland Woodworking website.
Norm Reid is a woodworker, writer, and woodworking instructor living in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains with his wife, a woodshop full of power and hand tools and five cats who think they are cabinetmaker’s assistants. He is the author of Choosing and Using Handplanes: All You Need to Know to Get Started Planing by Hand. He can be contacted at nreid@fcc.net.