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Working with wood is very hands on; it is manual work, even though the woodworker may make use of woodworking machinery and power tools. Because of this, it is imperative for woodworkers to understand how to take care of their tools. This normally means keeping blades and bits sharp, because sharp tools will reduce the amount of ‘hard work’ when processing wood.

In general, rough work is carried out by machine, whereas fine work is done by hand. Therefore, hand tools such as chisels, saws, planes and rasps have to be kept clean and sharp in order to reduce the amount of elbow grease necessary to use them efficiently.

These days many blades are not reusable as are whole tools such as jack saws, although there are still some ‘old school’ carpenters and woodworkers who spend a few hours a week keeping their hand tools in shape. For instance, normally carpenters were allowed an hour or two on Saturday morning by the employer to sharpen their tools’ blades and reset their saws’ teeth.

This no longer happens and I should imagine that many young woodworkers do not even know how to do it. In fact, modern ‘tungsten tipped ‘ blades cannot be sharpened and are made to be disposed of. The blades on machinery are throwaway too.

The tools for cutting wood are naturally very important, but a carpenter cannot make an accurate cut, without first measuring and marking the timber. There are two types of rules, except the electronic varieties. There is the four-jointed wooden rule, which is nine inches long, but which will open up to 36 inches or one yard. There is also the more modern three or five meter self-retracting, metal tape measure.

Most woodworkers use a pencil for marking, because it is simple to rub out, which is vital if the timber is to be stained and not painted. The conventional carpenter’s pencil is oval, not round in shape. Some say that this is because it allows the pencil to draw a narrower line, others say it is because the shape is a more comfortable fit behind an ear.

Carpenters have hammers, usually two or three. A carpenter may have a light-weight hammer for driving small nails or tacks home; a larger 20 ounce hammer for normal nails and a roofing hammer, which has a spike on one end of the head instead of the normal claw. Claw hammers are helpful for extracting bent or bad nails; roofing hammers have a spike so as to make a hole in a slate to take a nail.

Chisels come in several sizes because they are used for fine work. A carpenter would no sooner use an inch wide chisel where he should be using a quarter inch chisel, than a diner would use an axe to eat a steak instead of a knife. However, in order to be supremely useful, a chisel must be as sharp as a razor. If the chisel is sharp, you can actually push it through wood, whereas if it is blunt you will have to hit it with a mallet, which means that you may cut further than you intended to.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with a favourite subject, wood furniture plans. If you are interested in Desk Woodworking Plans, please click through to our website, where we have 14,000 wood working plans.