Christopher Schwarz explains the painful path most amateur woodworkers follow as they begin gathering tools:
Get Tools, Any Tools
When I first decided to make furniture, I knew I needed tools. So I went to a 24-hour Walmart in the middle of the night and bought a set of tools that looked useful, including a chisel, a block plane, a level, a coping saw and a miter box saw. I had no idea how to use them, but they looked like things a furniture-maker would own (as opposed to a plumber).The next day I started to make some shutters for our house, and realized I needed other tools. So I went to the hardware store and picked up another pile of junk. This cycle continued for a long time until I decided to start reading about woodworking instead of making things up as I went along.
Obsess Over Statistics
You get every catalog out there. You find every website that sells tools and machinery. You discover tool reviews – wait there’s something better than a Walmart block plane? And you discover statistics. Table flatness, arbor runout, Rockwell hardness, the different grades of carbide.The idea is that if you can process all of these statistics, you will be able to pick the best tools to replace your dimestore tools.
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Buy Jigs to Replace Skills
The next two stages are dangerous because if you get stuck in one of them, you can go bankrupt. During the “jig” phase, you start using your statistically perfect tools and realize there is something missing because your results suck.It can’t be the tool. You did all the reading, and it is the best one out there. What’s missing is skill, but you conclude that what is missing are the jigs and accessories.
Example: Your first hand-cut dovetails look terrible, so you buy a router and an entry-level commercial jig. After weeks of messing with the jig, your dovetails look better but they are so uniform that they look boring.
So you dip back into your statistics phase and read all about dovetail jigs and buy a commercial jig that allows you to variably space your tails. But this jig only has an 18” capacity, so….
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Upgrade & Stockpile
As you become more skilled, you enter the most dangerous phase of all. This is the phase where you find you have some success with a tool, such as a shoulder plane, and so you buy seven examples of it to find the one you like the best. Different sizes, different grips, different makers.You upgrade your benchtop table saw because you can finally understand the benefits of a contractor or cabinet saw. You end up with four smoothing planes, six routers and a huge credit card bill. You start comparing scratch awls and screwdrivers. You divert your online tool purchases to your workplace so your spouse doesn’t notice.
On the bright side, there is hope, or as he calls it the “Great Psychic Break”, followed (for the fortunate) by the “Please, No More Tools” phase of spiritual enlightenment.
