Woodworking Hand Tools: What Each One Does

A list of wood hand tools is easy to find and hard to use: it says what the tools are called, not when you need them. A project answers that question by itself. Every piece starts as a line on a board, is sawn to size, has its joints chopped and its surfaces planed, may be shaped into curves, and ends with a surface ready for finish. The tools follow the same order (see the plate above), and each stage prepares the next — which is why an error at the start, a wandering layout line or a dull edge, shows up at every stage after it.

Each section below says what the tools at that stage do, where power tools do the same job, and which guide covers them in detail. If you are deciding what to buy rather than what each tool does, see how to choose quality hand tools.

Layout tools put the design on the wood: a rule or tape for length, a square for right angles, a marking gauge for lines parallel to an edge, and a marking knife for a line thin enough to cut to. A knife line is more than a mark: it severs the surface fibres, gives a chisel a wall to register against and stops a saw splintering the surface. Everything is measured from reference faces and edges, chosen and marked first. The measuring and marking guide explains how to lay out accurately and why errors add up.

Saws divide the wood. Full-size handsaws rip along the grain and crosscut across it to rough size; backsaws — dovetail, carcass and tenon saws — have a stiffening spine for fine joinery cuts; Japanese pull saws cut on the pull stroke with a thin blade; and a coping saw cuts curves and removes waste inside joints. The skill common to all of them is starting and tracking a cut on the waste side of the line, covered in how to cut wood straight.

• The handsaw guide: rip and crosscut teeth, tooth counts and set.
• The backsaw guide: the three kinds of backsaw and their joints.
• The Japanese saw guide: ryoba, dozuki and kataba.
• The coping saw guide: blades, tension and curves.

Every edge tool in the rest of this list depends on sharpening. A dull edge is slower, and needs force that makes it slip; OSHA’s hand-tool guidance says the greatest hazards posed by hand tools result from misuse and improper maintenance. The kit is small — flat stones or other abrasives in a coarse-to-fine sequence, a way of holding the bevel angle such as a honing guide, and something to keep the stones flat. The method is the same for chisels and plane irons: a flat, polished back, a honed bevel and the burr removed. The sharpening guide covers it in full, including the angles makers recommend and the differences between grit systems.

Chisels cut joints. A bevel-edge chisel pares and chops dovetails, housings and tenons; a mortise chisel is built to be struck and levered in a deep mortise; a paring chisel is long and thin, pushed by hand for fine trimming. A mallet drives them without damaging their handles. Chisel work comes in two techniques — paring, pushed by hand, and chopping, struck across the grain — both working to the knife line from stage 1.

• The chisel guide: chisel types, handles, and which can be struck.
• How to use a chisel: paring, chopping and working to a knife line.
• The mallet guide and the mortise chisel guide for struck work.

Planes flatten, straighten and smooth. The bench planes do it in sequence by length: a jack to remove material, a jointer to make faces and edges true, and a smoother to leave the finished surface. A block plane trims end grain and small parts. Specialty planes cut joints: a shoulder plane trims tenon shoulders, and a router plane levels the bottom of a housing or groove to an exact depth. All of them rely on the same sharp iron and careful setup.

• The hand plane guide: the plane family, cutting angles and which plane for which job.
• How to use a hand plane: setup, reading grain, and planing a face flat and an edge square.
• The plane iron and chipbreaker guide and the router plane guide.

Curves need tools with short soles or no sole at all. A spokeshave is a very short plane between two handles, which follows a curve and takes a cut shaving; the rule on a curve is to cut downhill, reversing at each low and high point. Rasps and files shape where no blade can follow — tight curves, carved forms and reversing grain — from coarse to fine. The spokeshave guide and the rasp and file guide cover both.

The last stage leaves a surface ready for finish. A card scraper — a thin steel plate with a burnished hook — takes fine shavings from grain that a plane tears, and cleans up the marks of rasps and files; a cabinet scraper or scraper plane does the same on larger surfaces. Sandpaper still has its place, following a coarse-to-fine sequence. The card scraper guide explains where scraping fits, and how to sharpen and use a card scraper gives the method.

Many tool families have Japanese and Western versions that do the same job differently. Japanese saws cut on the pull stroke with a thinner blade; Japanese chisels are laminated, with a hollow back, and are struck with a steel hammer rather than a mallet. The order of work is the same whichever you use; the Japanese saw guide and the chisel guide explain the differences.

You do not need every tool on this page to begin. Start with the stage your next project needs most, learn it, and add tools as the work asks for them. The three families most projects need first are covered in the handsaw guide, the chisel guide and the hand plane guide.