I’ve spent the last 25 years or so as a professional cabinetmaker. Woodworking in general has always been my livelihood and my passion. But gone are the days of commercial production pressures, so now I’m able to enjoy the process of using mostly hand tools. I sold the shaper, the big planer and my beloved table saw. My drill press sits quietly in the corner. I don’t really miss the maintenance on the equipment, and I’m only building one or two commissions each year anyway. Recently I find contentment in hand tool joinery and hand planning wood. I even keep a couple of old Disston saws for sizing rough lumber. All that said I’m not ready to part ways with the power company just yet. Here’s the power tools I still rely on in my mostly hand tool woodworking shop.

Slow Speed Grinder

If you’re into hand tool woodworking, then you’ve got a wooden boatload of sharpening to do. Every woodworker eventually needs to acquire some basic sharpening skills. Once you become reasonably proficient at it, you’ll no longer look at sharpening as a chore but as just another step in the woodworking process. Whatever sharpening method you use, at some point you’ll have to reshape an edge, tune a new tool or grind out a nick, and that’s where a slow speed grinder comes in handy.

Now, I know about the current debate out there about the virtues of standard speed grinders, and their lower price is certainly a consideration. Yet even with premium wheels, standard speed grinders require too much dexterity to keep them from burning the temper out of your expensive tools. Tempering is usually the final step in the heat-treating process. Tempering gives a tool its toughness while keeping it relatively easy to sharpen. With the temper burned off, you’re left with a hunk of useless steel. What about constantly dipping the edge of the tool in water to keep it cool? The rapid heating and cooling can micro-fracture the edge of fine tool steel damaging it. Why put up with the hassle and risk? No matter what type of machine you wind up with, stop grinding when the tool gets hot. Your fingers will let you know. Try and save all your grinding chores for one go, that way you can pick up another tool when one gets hot and let it cool down gradually.

It’s been said before, but invest in some decent wheels for your grinder. Most woodworking stores carry the right kind, but you don’t need the most expensive variety. You do want aluminum oxide wheels with a vitrified bond. Vitrified bond means the abrasive fries [ed.note: friable] off more readily which keeps your tool cool and the wheels mostly unclogged. Also acquire a wheel dresser to clean your wheels when they do become clogged. I use a diamond dresser that’s served me for years. A final accessory I encourage you to make or purchase, is an aftermarket tool rest. Do yourself a favor and take a serious look at the Wolverine jig by Oneway. It’s extremely well built with a large, flat platform for straight edged tools and a socket arm for turning and carving tools.

Lathe

Lathes and grinders go together. Ever tried to sharpen a high-speed steel turning tool by hand? I came to turning later in life. I always kept a lathe in my cabinet shop for turned table legs and decorative finials, but it was never my specialty. Turning became addictive when my wife suggested I make wooden pen sets as gifts one holiday. Everyone loved them and I’ve been turning ever since.

Lathes do much more than turn out bowls and furniture parts. With a little imagination, a few jigs and some accessories you can convert your lathe into a horizontal boring machine. Add a chuck and a buffing wheel and you can polish at variable speed anything that needs it. A wire wheel attached to a chuck removes rust from flea market finds with little effort.

Bandsaw

I consider the bandsaw the perfect machine for a mostly hand tool shop. Because it was the first real machine we were allowed to use in 7th grade shop (yeah, I’m that old), the bandsaw holds a special place in my heart. As I’ve started to move away from building cabinets from sheet goods and more towards solid wood furniture, I find I turn to my bandsaw more and more. By ripping, resawing and milling small parts with a bandsaw, you can go from concept to completion without much set up or jigging. Just layout the piece and work back to the line with hand tools.

Of course you could accomplish most of the functions of a bandsaw with a sturdy bow saw. A coping saw handles small curves quite well and a well-tuned rip saw will resaw given a steady hand and eye. If shop space is limited, then these tools may be your only options.

Small Thickness Planer

When I sold my shop a few years back, my floor model thickness planer went too. You could run that thing all day with no complaints. What a beast. I replaced it with a small 12” bench-top model that works just fine for the volume of planing I do now. I pair it with a 1 horsepower dust collector, and both machines store nicely out of the way when not in use. To be completely honest, I get better surface results with the small planer than with the larger machine.

Since I also sold my jointer, I've been flattening boards by hand. Flattening with a hand plane doesn't bother me at all. Besides, even in my professional shop wide boards didn’t always fit on the jointer and would require hand plane flattening. But thicknessing is another matter. Don’t get me wrong; I’m a huge proponent of the scrub plane. I love the texture and surface diversity it provides, but it’s definitely a journey not a destination tool. No, you can’t have mine.

Only One Router

At one point I think I owned 5 or 6 routers. For some shops that’s just a start. I’ve never really liked the things all that much; too noisy, too dangerous and too hard to collect dust from. But when faced with 100 doors to hang in an office building, a router and hinge template start to look real good. I’m down to one router now, and it spends most of the time hanging upside down in a table. I use it to mill up moldings, shape decorative edges and occasionally to plow stopped grooves in casework. Traditionally molding and hollow and round planes performed these duties. These tools are making a comeback and I hear one outfit is making new ones. That’s just plain cool.

I'm not dead set on it, but that’s my power tool list for a mostly hand tool shop. I love my bandsaw, lathe and slow-speed grinder. I need the lunch box planer. My shop time is limited enough as it is, so why waste time scrubbing down a board by hand? I guess I could do without the router, but why? To me it’s more a matter of convenience rather than necessity. I just wish someone would make a quiet one.

Chris Black, a former longtime Highland employee, now spends most days caved up in his wood shop sharpening hand saws, teaching fine woodworking classes, selling antique tools and manufacturing a line of woodworking hand tools. He lives near Raleigh, NC and would be happy to answer any questions at redscabinet@gmail.com .