Woodworking Resources

I’m a somewhat casual woodworker and use a mix of power tools and handtools to build things. This page contains some of what I’ve learned since getting more serious about woodworking in 2020. Hopefully it contains some useful resources if you’re getting started woodworking or want to know more in a specific area.

Handtools

Basic Setup

It can be tempting to buy a lot of tools. After all, they’re fun to try and many of them solve very specific problems that you might face when building projects. I’ve tried (and somewhat failed) to buy tools when I know I’m going to need them for a project. I’d recommend starting with:

  • 1) a few bench chisels of different sizes: 3mm, 9mm, 24mm (which equate to roughly: 1/8″, 3/8″, and 1″).
  • 2) a ryoba saw
  • 3) a 200-375g hammer (something like this)

As far as quality, I would recommend getting a decent (mid-to-upper-mid) set of Japanese chisels, as they’ll last you a long while. I wouldn’t worry too much about the quality of saw or hammer, the cheaper ones work fine. After you’ve been woodworking for a while, you can buy more expensive and specific-purpose saws as you need them.

I’d pick the rest of your tools as you need them for projects. if you plan on milling a lot of your own material, then you’ll need a plane (or multiple) and possibly more types of saws. If you want to make rabbets or grooves, you may want a specialty plane. To start though, I’d pick projects that don’t require milling your own lumber, so you can get some things built before you go down the rabbit hole that is milling.

Two of my most frequently used hand-tools are an 18mm paring chisel and my Veritas router plane. They’re quite helpful for precision joinery. I’d put them on your shortlist to consider purchasing.

Japanese Woodworking

Online:

https://suikoushya.com/ – Takami has a lot of resources online about tools, places to shop/visit in Japan. He also has a youtube channel and instagram with fun-to-watch videos. His school offers 1-month classes in Kyoto, but they are typically fully booked, so you’d have to sign up for the waitlist.
Kezurou-Kai USA This group is dedicated to Japanese woodworking in the US. They have a good number of links, classes, and occasional events.
Guide to chisels This has a good overview of the types/sizes of Japanese chsels.

Books

In rough ranking of suggested reading:
Japanese Woodworking Tools: Their Tradition, Spirit, and Use This book isn’t a how-to book, but rather an overview of the craft and tradition of japanese woodworking. It’s a very interesting perspective and overview.
Simple Japanese Furniture This book offers some simple and achievable first projects that produce nice-looking end results.
Woodworking Joinery by Hand I haven’t personally tried many of the methods in this book, so can’t attest to them personally, but they seem like a good way to approach some of the challenges of creating clean joinery. The techniques span from beginner to more advanced. Some require making jigs, but it has a good amount to offer as far as approaches.
Japanese Joinery This book has good reference drawings and photos of a large number of complex joinery options. Mostly aimed at construction uses, but could be modified and used otherwise. It has no real how-to component, so more useful once one has figured out the basics.
Discovering Japanese Handplanes This book was surprisingly thorough and contains a lot of useful info on planes and how to set them up. I’m not convinced a book is the best way to learn how to do all of these techniques though, so if you can find a workshop first, then use this as a reference, that would be ideal.
The Art of Japanese Joinery This book has a lot of beautiful pictures of joinery. Not the most functional/practical of books, but it’s an ok reference and great-looking book.

Tool Shopping

Hida Tool in Berkeley. If you happen to live in the Bay Area, you’re blessed with one of the best Japanese tool sources in the US. Otherwise, they also do online shipping.
Kurashige Tools Store in Japan, but they ship internationally. I’ve ordered from them several times and the price/quality and shipping has been good. If you’re ever near Tokyo, you can visit their warehouse and check out several floors of tools.

Tool Maintenance

Tool Setup: Many Japanese tools do not come ready to use out of the box. The intention, as I understand it, is to let the craftsperson do the final tuning of the tool to make it work for their specific use-case. Saws typically come ready to use, chisels will require some sharpening and often fixing the katsura (the chisel hoop at the end). Check youtube for good tutorials for this.

Sharpening: I’d recommend picking up a #1000 grit and #5000 grit Shapton water stones and a kanaban (a steel lapping plate) to start with. You can buy the Shapton stones online They’re easy to use and you can do a lot with just those two. If you decide to go down the rabbit hole of sharpening tools, you’ll probably want a #320 for faster grinding and maybe a #8000 and/or #12000 for polishing and burr removal. I like a leather strop as well for removing the burr on my kitchen knives.

There’s a lot of good videos on youtube for sharpening tools of various types and sizes. You’ll see conflicting evidence if you watch enough of them, but keep in mind that your goal is to get a functional tool, not a perfect edge.

Western Style

There is a lot of overlap in joinery between Western and Japanese styles. The problems they are designed to solve are often universal problems of joining pieces of wood together, so it shouldn’t be too much surprise. As such, many of the tools are also similar.

The Anarchists’s Tool Chest is a good overview of Western-style tools. While the author’s humor is off-color (in a boomer kind of way), the content is solid. I appreciate his overview of different tools and their specific uses, as well as his dedication to keeping a minimal set of tools.

In my limited experience, I tend to prefer Western-style planes, Japanese chisels, and Japanese saws, though I use both varieties of all of these tools at times.

Tool Shopping

You can find various used planes for cheaper on ebay. It’s less of a gamble buying on eBay if the seller has a high reputation score.

Lee Nielsen and Veritas both produce some great tools. I have planes from both. Try searching on Reddit if you want to see people debate which one is better.

Wood Finishing

Finding the right finish is always a daunting task for me. That said, some go-to products that I like are:

  1. Odie’s Oil — for when I want a natural look and don’t need a protective finish. There are other similar products out there, that I suspect work just as well. It’s pretty hard to mess up, which I like
  2. Wipe-on Poly – this stuff is pretty easy to apply and fairly protective. It does take multiple coats and waiting between the coats, then a long cure time, so plan accordingly

If you really want to learn a lot about finishes, this book is great: Understanding Wood Finishing by Bob Flexner. It’s basically a textbook about wood finishes. I learned a lot reading it and feel more comfortable selecting finishes now.

In-Person Woodworking Classes

The best way I’ve found to learn quickly has been to have a more expert woodworker show me better ways to do things. You can get a long ways on YouTube, but sometimes in-person is the only way to get a nuanced experience.

I’ve been trying to collect links to in-person classes in the US. I can’t speak to the quality of these courses, but they all look like fun: