A new day. A new year. A new challenge. I have always enjoyed working with my hands. As a kid, it was disassembling the remote controlled car my father bought me for Christmas because I just had to know how it worked. As a teenager it was the stains of engine oil and grease under my fingernails. In early adulthood it was soldering irons and resistors. Now, it seems, wood has captured my imagination.
It started simply enough. There was something I wanted, but couldn’t afford. I thought to myself, “Well then, I’ll just build it myself.” Famous last words for many, I’m sure. I did like most might have, I purchased a power tool and started tinkering. Then, I bought another and another until my small back patio was packed. Eventually, I finished the item I set out to build, but this little fire inside of me was still burning. In fact, it was growing! So, I thought of the next thing to build. Then, the next thing, and the next thing.
I had a couple projects under my belt by this point, but I still felt like I hadn’t scratched the surface yet. I started scouring books, YouTube, reddit, and other sources I could find. Suddenly the allure of the hand tools hit me. Like many, I was initially turned off by hand tools and their archaic roots. However, there was still this curiosity in me that I had to satiate. I found an old Stanley #4 hand plane in an antique store in town. Didn’t look like much, but it was a complete tool with no missing parts. I cleaned it up and sharpened the iron as best I could. I took a few shavings from a scrap piece of Alder and the sound was incredibly satisfying. Little did I know this plane was still not functioning at its peak, but nonetheless…I was hooked.
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