Skip to Content

Essential Hand Tools for Woodworking

Our philosophy is simple: buy the right tool the first time. Incrementally upgrading is almost always a net losing proposition. These recommendations are "buy-it-for-life" tools.

(Note: If you are working on a strict budget, skip the optional planes and the mortise chisel. If you already own power tools for dimensioning, you can also skip the large panel/rip saws and stick to the joinery saw set).



IMPORTANT!

We are an official distributor for Knew Concepts saws - we are happy to offer them to our students at a 15% discount, but anyone can purchase them at regular price.

Our students also receive a 15% discount from purchases at Lee Valley. When kitting out your hand tools, the savings are significant. Lee Valley carries the majority of the recommenced products below.



Sharpening Supplies

If you’re going to work with hand tools, this is your true #1 priority and you must not defer learning to sharpen properly. It’s the most important skill in hand tool woodworking, barre none. There are a billion ways to skin this cat, but this system is fast, reliable, and keeps you working rather than constantly sharpening.

  • Grinding: A Rikon Low-Speed Grinder paired with a single 180-grit Spartan CBN Wheel from Wood Turners Wonders. You can opt for a variable or full speed grinder, however a lower speed gives you more margin for error and heats a blade more slowly. The difference in grinding time is only significant when grinding a great many irons at once.

    • Warning: Never use factory-stock aluminum oxide wheels. They are garbage, they wear quickly, tend to shatter, and easily overheat your blades.

  • Lapping (Flattening Iron Backs): Buy blue zirconia 6" belt sander belts and lay them flat on a piece of float glass.

    • Pro-Tip: Get a square Magswitch 165lb welder's magnet, clamp it to the plane iron or chisel, and drag it in long strokes laterally down the abrasive. You will lap the back flat at an unbelievable speed.

  • Honing: A 1000-grit Shapton Glass Stone or a Trend Diamond Stone. CBN hand hones from Wood Turners Wonders are also excellent.

  • Polishing: Shapton Glass Stones. An 8000-grit stone is a good stopping point for a finished edge; a 16000-grit stone is an extreme luxury. Alternatively, DMT 0.5 micron spray on an aluminum plate or strop can handle polishing at a lower cost, but with more attention to detail in your technique.

  • Stone Maintenance: Water stones require frequent flattening. The DMT Dia-Flat 95 is the gold standard lapping plate for this job.

  • Ultimate Budget Option: Sandpaper. Lots of it. You’ll ruin it pretty quickly but rolls of adhesive paper are inexpensive, and you can work up to 8000 grit with automotive papers. If going this route I recommend 1000 and 4000 grit in general. You’ll need a flat piece of glass or granite. This will tide you over until you can/choose to fork out for better gear. 

Maintenance

Right after sharpening, maintenance. You must care well for your tools. You need to protect your tools and your sharpening gear from corrosion.

  • Anti-Corrosion for sharpening: Honerite gold. Mix this into your water sprayer to eliminate corrosion on your diamond lapping stone, and rust bits forming in iron particles in your water stones. 

  • Oil: Jojoba oil is my favorite but 3-in-1 works as well. A light rub down with oil every few days at the end of a working session does wonders

  • Air Compressor & Blow Gun: This is by far the easiest way to clean your planes. Blow them clean each day when you’re done. 

  • Protection: Any brand of paste wax works well as a protective layer on your cast iron plane exterior. Wax wears off quickly, so you may consider an on-demand wax to apply as you’re planing, such as plane wax (paraffin wax in a chapstick style tube).  Oil is a more dependable protectant in my opinion - it’s very easy to miss areas on the plane internals using wax. But you will absolutely want wax to lubricate your plane and your saws.

  • Rust removal: Sandflex is a product used to remove corrosion from your iron. I recommend buying all 3 levels of grit and working up through them when removing corrosion. Alternatively, you can use an oil with scotchbrite pads. I would avoid steel wool, it just ends up everywhere. 

  • Heavy rust removal: Balistol is by far the best solution we have found for dealing with corrosion that won't clean up with sandflex.

WOrkholding

You need a bench, most of all. You should build your own if you have the time and interest. The Nicholson Bench and the Anarchist's Workbench are excellent affordable options. If you want to buy a nice bench without investing a ton of time, Sjobergs is the standard, but I suggest finding a Ruobo bench builder. 

There are two premium bench building options I recommend. 

  • HNT Gordon - their bench kit features their holdfasts, tail vise, non-racking jaw vise (hands down the best vises on the market, these two), along with some other accessories. They are pricey but worth every penny - we use them in our home shop. These can be fitted onto nearly any bench.
  • Benchcrafted - marginally less expensive than HNT and requires building a Ruobo, which is an extremely difficult bench to build compared to most others.

You also need things to hold your things on the bench. 

  • Moxon vise: Build a moxon vise from this kit (let us know if you need help!) that can be clamped to the bench.
  • Veritas wonder pups: These hold work flat on the bench and allow you to easily block in boards for sanding.
  • Holdfasts: Veritas surface clamps and screw-type holdfasts are excellent and indispensible for utilizing dog holes on the front of your bench for working long boards, or for holding boards firmly on the face for heavy planing.

Marking & Measuring

  • Marking Gauge: Veritas marking gauge or a vintage wooden gauge. Splurge: Colen Clenton.

  • Combination Square (6" and 12"): High-quality options include PEC, Starrett, or Veritas.

  • Machinist Square (3" or 4"): You need an extremely precise square for tool setup, and validating the squareness of adjustable squares (sometimes they're defective beyond use!) PEC again

  • Marking Knife: Veritas Shop Knife or a standard carving knife. Splurge: Matt Estlea Marking Knife.

  • Dovetail Markers: Veritas 1:6 and 1:8 markers.

  • Veritas 36" Steel Straightedge: outrageously precise and very affordable. Straight edges have near infinite uses

  • Tape Measure: The brand doesn't matter, but only use one brand and product line throughout your shop to avoid compound measuring errors.

  • Dividers: 4" is great for small projects, 8" is a good all-rounder, 12" is useful for larger pieces.

  • Mechanical Pencils: Zebra Pen DelGuard Mechanical Pencil 0.5mm are the best I've found. They are extremely durable, and the 0.5mm point makes clean lines for making cuts as it is slightly narrower than the kerf of a dovetail saw.

  • Lamp: You want a lamp for hand joinery. You need precise control over light. Get the lamp along with the dog hole adapter and you have an easy-to-move lamp right at your bench. 

Boring & Fastening

  • Drills: A vintage egg beater (if you want to skip power tools entirely) or a vintage brace. A brace will provide far more torque than a modern power drill.

  • Augers: Wood Owl Tri-Cut Augers are the gold standard. Only buy the specific sizes you need. (Note: You will need an adapter to use modern augers with a vintage brace). If you're building a bench, you should probably buy both 3/4" and 20mm augers for making dog holes.

  • Hammers:

    • Rubber Hammer: A red/yellow Thor or Iron hammer is great for chopping with chisels without damaging the handles.

    • Small Metal Hammer: For driving nails and adjusting wooden planes.

Chisels

  • Bench Chisels (1/4", 1/2", 1", 2"):

    • Premium/Buy-it-for-life: Veritas PM-V11 or Lie-Nielsen.

    • Budget: Narex (Acceptable, but you will need to put more work into flattening them initially and sharpening them more frequently).

  • Mortise Chisel (3/8"): Essential if you plan to chop traditional mortises by hand.

  • Future Additions: You may eventually want paring or dovetail chisels. Japanese chisels are usually the most cost-effective option for these specialty profiles.

Saws

  • Crosscutting (Wide Boards): Pax Panel Saw.

  • Ripping (Hand Ripping Boards): Pax Rip Saw.

  • Joinery:

  • Tenons: Veritas Rip Tenon Saw.

  • Coping / Fret Saw: Knew Concepts Fret Saw. Do not buy vintage here. Nothing comes close to Knew Concepts. (We carry this fret saw right at the store!!).

  • A note on Japanese Pull Saws: Temple Tools are high quality. However, they are less beginner-friendly as the thin blades tend to be less rigid and more prone to wandering in the cut.

  • A note on Vintage Saws: Like vintage planes, they can be a huge money pit. If you prefer vintage, let us know and we can connect you with a trusted supplier who restores them properly.

Hand Planes

Avoid bargain-hunting old planes unless you are prepared to do a great deal of restoration and buy a few duds before finding a winner. If you prefer vintage, ask us for trusted supplier recommendations.

  • Core Bench Plane (#4, #4 ½, #5, or #5 ½): Pick one. These are highly versatile. The larger your typical projects, the larger the plane you should buy.

  • Trying / Jointer Plane (#6, #7, or #8): The Veritas Custom #7 is our top choice. Any equivalent from Veritas, Lie-Nielsen, or HNT Gordon will perform flawlessly.

  • Block Plane: Veritas DX60 (best ergonomics) or HNT Gordon (excellent front knob control). Budget: WoodRiver is a solid choice, especially when on sale.

  • Router Plane:

  • Shoulder Plane (3/4" or 1"): The Veritas Large Shoulder Plane is exceptional. WoodRiver is fine for a budget option. Splurge: Buy both the medium and large Veritas shoulder planes, plus the Veritas hand jointer jig.

  • Optional Planes (Combination & Shooting): Veritas is the top recommendation for both. Splurge: The massive set of combination blades and the incredible Veritas shooting board.

Joining

You will inevitably need to glue things together. We keep it simple. 

  • Wood Glue: Titebond 3 has a long open time and is extremely durable once cured. If doing many projects, a gallon is much more economical per ounce. 
  • Clamps: We almost exclusively use Dubuque Bar Clamps which can be had at an excellent price in 10 packs .
  • Very nice to have: Veritas Edge trimming plane. These planes are great at cleaning up an edge before gluing. They tend to produce better results than even my best glue line rip table saw blades.