Hand Tools for the Dummy Woodworker

Woodworking hand tools

It's been a while since we featured some of the rubbish that makes its way onto the internet from HubPages.com. Shame on us – that's one of the few still-active sources of  internet stupidification, even if contributors aren't rolling in dough any more. That doesn't mean that there isn't still plenty of crap in their "hubs," though; crap like "Woodworking: Complete List of Hand Tools" as envisioned by Kenneth C. Agudo. We'll try not to slap Kenny around much for his grammar mistakes since English probably isn't his first language, although we wouldn't be surprised if he's one of the customer-support people in some Singapore-based call center...

Agudo more or less separated woodworking hand tools into six categories: Layout and Measuring, Boring and Drilling, Driving, Holding, Cutting, and Sharpening. Kenneth explains who might use these tools:

"All of us may have already watched a carpenter working on our house and we were amazed by their skills doing crafts made of wood. Did you sometimes think and imagine you are skilled with that talent-- woodworking? As you can observe the tools that was used by the carpenters are mostly Handtools [sic] which you can buy at any hardware store."

We noticed immediately that Agudo has confused carpentry with woodworking, but not to worry: he has plenty of explanations for you (some of them rather interesting). We'll try to pluck one per category so you're not overloaded...

Layout and Measuring: "[You] will need a foot-rule or a zigzag rule which is made either wood or steel depending on its availability." -- We've never seen a steel folding ("zigzag") rule, thought there might be some out there. Whatever the case, we prefer a tape measure. Boring and Drilling: "The small holes in stones, brick and concretes are drilled manually by hands using a star drill; it is a type of drilling tools with 'x' sharp cutting point which is held against the object to be drilled." -- Maybe Agudo should have mentioned that this is actually a chisel and you smack it with a hammer instead of... what? turning it by hand? Driving Tools: "Wooden mallets are signed for driving wood chisels where steel hammers might destroy the tools." -- Chuckle... you use a mallet for chisels to give you better control, not because you might "destroy" the chisel. Holding Tools: "One of the types of clamps is bar clamp which is used for putting the sides of the boards together while the hand screws are used for clamping the boards together." -- We dunno; we couldn't figure out what Kenneth meant there... Cutting Tools: "Block plane – used in cutting the grain of wood." -- We aren't sure what this means, either, though we do know what a block plane is used for... Sharpening Tools: "The oilstone is practically used to sharpen straight-edged cutting tools like saw, and chisels." -- Last time we looked, saws weren't "straight-edged cutting tools." It takes special tools to sharpen a hand saw, including specialty clamps and files. An oilstone isn't involved...

As near as we can tell, most of Agudo's information is a century out of date, not to mention quite suspect for its accuracy. Some of what Kenneth wrote makes it glaringly obvious that his only exposure to woodworking is that he once "watched a carpenter working on [his] house." Still, he had the gall to try to "explain" woodworking tools, which is all we needed to name him our Dumbass of the Day.

copyright © 2017-2022 scmrak

SE - WOODWORKING