This month and continuing next month I will be showing you the kind
of advice I give to students who are about to join our workshop on a
one-year course in cabinet making:
Most of us have a bag of tools
rattling around somewhere in the garage and by all means bring those
with you but you will need to spend quite a lot of money on hand tools.
We usually estimate a tool budget for a young cabinet maker of between
£600 and a £1000 to get you going. You may spend a bit more than this
and you certainly won't spend less than this. My general advice is to
buy as few tools as possible choose them well in the first place and
learn to use them with confidence. There are so many expensive tools out
there that you do not need that will only clutter up your work space
and slow you down . I am going to be talking about a range of saws,
chisels, planes, marking and measuring tools and routers. I have
included routers because although it is not a hand tool the small router
has really become an essential bench tool for the modern cabinet maker.
Any employer would expect you to have your own router. What I won't
include are what would generally be regarded as "shop tools". These sit
in the tool box of the workshop owner and generally come out once every 5
years. They're essential tools for the running of a business but then
not the kind of tool that you might buy in the first year of training.
You might acquire them at a later date but not right now. I'm going to
be talking about the choices you'd have available and suggesting various
brands and models. The best thing would be to come here and try out the
tools that we have in the workshop but if you're coming from abroad you
might find that buying tools, in, for example the USA, would save you
quite a few dollars from the present prices in the UK. Bearing in mind
that tools when you buy them will also require a considerable amount of
tuning and fettling to make them work. Indeed you might take the first 2
weeks and spend it on rather laborious metal work just to get your
tools working to the standard that we need to do fine work. So where
buying a more expensive tool will save you time in tool preparation I
will indicate this.
Let's first of all look at bench planes. A
bench plane is a key piece of equipment to a cabinetmaker. It's used for
flattening components, bringing them down to final dimensions also
removing the planer marks and final fitting of joints. No component made
in a top quality workshop would go out straight from the planing
machine. It would always be checked over and surfaced with a bench plane
before final sanding and polish. You need a medium sized bench plane
usually described in the catalogues as a fore-plane or a jack-plane. The
fore-plane is slightly longer at about 18 inches, whereas a jack plane
can be about 14 inches. Most of the people here would go for the larger
plane. If you are of a relatively slight build I would recommend the
smaller and lighter of the two planes. There are two types of planes
available that are mass-produced - the Stanley and Record. If you were
buying a Stanley plane I would recommend you bought a second-hand one.
If you were buying a new plane I would recommend a Record plane. My
experience with new Stanley bench planes have been rather unfortunate.
The casting on modern planes tend to be so green that you can spend half
a day getting the plane dead flat only to find it continues moving and
is no longer flat in a few weeks time - so you are back to square one.
Record planes aren't much better though they seem to be slightly better
finished and have a nicer blade fitting arrangement. All mass produced
modern planes have plastic handles which I think is a shame as your
hands can get sweaty and the handles can get slippery. You can replace
with Rosewood ones but that will cost you an extra £12.50.
When
you going to buy a plane - be it new or second-hand don't buy it
mail-order - go along with either a straight edge or borrow a straight
edge from the tool vendor and check the flatness of the sole of the
plane. Check by holding it up to a bright light source and resting a
straight edge first diagonally corner to corner and then lengthways down
the centre of the plane. If the plane is curving with the two ends
moving away from the straight edge return the plane straight away to the
salesman. If it's bending away in the centre this isn't too bad as the
sole of the plane can be flattened if the toe and the heel of the plane
are in contact with the flat abrasive surface. With either Record or
Stanley plane we would recommend that you replace the blade with one of
the higher quality replacement blades that are currently available.
Clifton make an especially good blade called a Victor blade that we've
had exceptionally good results from.
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