Customer Reviews

Planes and Chisels (Fine Woodworking On)

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This book by Fine Woodworking is focused more on planes than chisels. Most articles deal with handplanes and how to tune them for use. There are many articles on sharpening but using diamond stones or sandpaper on glass were not included, probably because of the books age. Overall this is a good book for someone wanting to learn about bench planes of different types and basic chisel use. An updated edition including recent developments in the resurrgence of hand planes and traditional methods would help this book.

This book presents a lot of interesting information on planes and on various methods of sharpening cutting edges. Despite the title there is not much on chisels here. There is a lot on out-of-the-way types of planes and also a lot on different views on sharpening, including a report of a direct comparison between sharpening devices, like vertical and horizontal rotary devices, wet and dry (vertical) rotary devices, etc. Also stones, natural and artificial, Japanese and American. The last two pages present an, at the time of publishing, unorthodox way of sharpening which looks very interesting, particularly for turners. As the other review says this book no longer presents the very latest in technology, but it is not true that it has fallen very far behind the times, as yet.

The information on chisels is brief but complete as to angles metal and
how to sharpen,it get better when you get to Planes design of and angles of blade I have bought this book to make my own Planes and it gives all the information to do just that.This is a good first book for the new person in wood working and all the woodworking books are great for that.
I have just added another book to my collection and I am happy with the information inside..