Part V., will of course be required.

* * * * *

There are still more tools than those given above, as you doubtless know, but by the time you have become workman enough to need more you will know what you need. Ploughs, matching-planes, and all such implements are omitted, because it is better and usually as cheap to get such work as they do done by machine at a mill. I also assume that all your heavy sawing and planing will be done at some mill. It is not worth while for the amateur to undertake the sawing and planing of large pieces, the hewing and splitting of the rougher branches of wood-work, for such work can be done almost anywhere by machine at very slight expense, and stock can be bought already got out and planed for but a trifle more than the cost of the wood alone.[6]

Be sure to get good tools. There is a saying that a good workman is known by his tools, and another that a poor workman is always complaining of his tools, that is, excusing his own incompetence by throwing the blame upon his tools. There is also another saying to the effect that a good workman can work with poor tools; but it is simply because he is a skilled and ingenious workman that he can if necessary often do good work _in spite_ of inferior tools, and of course he could do the same work more easily and quickly, if not better, with good ones.

So do not think that because you sometimes see a skilled workman making shift with poor tools that you are justified in beginning in that way, for a beginner should use only good tools and in good condition or he may never become a good workman at all, so make your tools and their care a matter of pride. If your tools are of good quality, and proper care is taken of them, they will last a lifetime and longer; so good tools prove the cheapest in the end.[7]

There are some cases, however, in which it is as well not to buy the most expensive tools at first, as a cheap rule will do as well as an expensive one, considering how likely you are to break or lose it, and a cheap gauge will answer quite well for a good while; but this does not affect the truth of the general statement that you should get only the best tools. There are also quite a number of tools, appliances, and makeshifts which you can make for yourselves, some of which will be described. I advise you not to pick up tools at second-hand shops, auctions, or junk shops, except with the assistance of some competent workman.

=Care of Tools.=--Keep your tools in good order. You cannot do nice, fine, clean work with a dull tool. A sharp tool will make a clean cut, but a dull edge will tear or crush the fibres and not leave a clean-cut surface. You can work so much more easily and quickly as well as satisfactorily with sharp tools that the time it takes to keep them in order is much less than you lose in working with dull ones, not to speak of the waste of strength and temper.

I assume that you will not attempt to sharpen your tools yourselves until you have had considerable experience in using them; for sharpening tools (particularly saws and planes) is very hard for boys and amateurs, and not easy to learn from a book. So, until then, be sure to have them sharpened whenever they become dull. The expense is but slight, and it is much better to have fewer tools kept sharp than to spend the money for more tools and have them dull. When you get to the point of sharpening your tools, one lesson from a practical workman or even a little time spent in watching the operations (which you can do easily) will help you more than reading many pages from any book. So I advise you to get instruction in sharpening from some practical workman,--not at first, but after you have got quite handy with the tools. You can easily do this at little or no expense. For further points, see _Sharpening_, in Part V.

It is a good plan to soak tool handles, mallets, and wooden planes, when new, for a week or so in raw linseed oil and then rub them with a soft rag every day or two for a while. If you use wooden planes give them a good soaking. They will absorb much oil and work more freely and smoothly. You can save tool handles from being split by pounding, by sawing the ends off square and fastening on two round disks of sole-leather in the way adopted by shoe-makers. If there is any tendency to dampness in your shop the steel and iron parts of the tools should be greased with a little fat,--tallow, lard, wax, vaseline,--or some anti-rust preparation.

=Use of Tools.=--It is very important to get started right in using tools. If your first idea of what the tool is for and how it should be used is correct you will get along nicely afterwards, but if you start with a wrong impression you will have to unlearn, which is always hard, and start afresh.

If you can go to a good wood-working school you will of course learn much, and if you know a good-natured carpenter or cabinet-maker or any wood-worker of the _old-fashioned_ kind, cultivate his acquaintance. If he is willing to let you watch his work and to answer your questions you can add much to your knowledge of the uses of the different tools. In fact, so far as instruction goes that is about all the teaching the average apprentice gets. He learns by observing and by practice. Do not be afraid or ashamed to ask questions. Very few men will refuse to answer an amateur's questions unless they are unreasonably frequent. There will be problems enough to exercise all the ingenuity you have after you have learned what you can from others.

But the day for the all-round workman seems to be rapidly passing away and the tendency nowadays is for each workman, instead of spending years in learning the various branches and details of his trade, to be expert in only one very limited branch--or, as sometimes happens, a general botch in all the branches; so unless you find a real mechanic for a friend (such as an old or middle-aged village carpenter, or cabinet-maker, or wheelwright, or boat-builder, or carver), be a little guarded about believing all he tells or shows you; and beware of relying implicitly on the teachings of the man who "knows it all" and whom a season's work at nailing up studding and boarding has turned into a full-fledged "carpenter."

If you can learn to use your tools with either hand you will often find it a decided advantage, as in getting out crooked work, or particularly in carving, where you have such an endless variety of cuts to be made in almost every possible direction, but "that is another story." A bad habit and one to guard against is that of carrying with you the tool you may be using whenever you leave your work temporarily, instead of laying it down where you are working. Edge-tools are dangerous things to carry around in the hand and there is also much chance of their being mislaid.

For directions for using the different tools see Part V.

=Edge-Tools.=--Bear in mind that all cutting tools work more or less on the principle of the wedge. So far as the mere cutting is concerned a keen edge is all that is required and your knife or other cutting tool might be as thin as a sheet of paper. But of course such a tool would break, so it must be made thicker for strength and wedge-shaped so that it may be pushed through the wood as easily as possible.

You know that you can safely use a very thin knife to cut butter because the butter yields so easily that there is not much strain on the blade, but that when you cut wood the blade must be thicker to stand the strain of being pushed through. Soft wood cuts more easily than hard, because it is more easily pushed aside or compressed by the wedge-shaped tool, and it does not matter how keen the edge may be if the resistance of the wood is so great that you cannot force the thicker part of the tool through it.

You will understand from all this that the more acute the angle of the cutting edge the more easily it will do its work, provided always that the angle is obtuse or blunt enough to give the proper strength to the end of the tool; and also that as the end of the tool encounters more resistance in hard than soft wood, the angle should be more obtuse or blunter for the former than for the latter. Theoretically, therefore, the angle of the cutting edge, to obtain the greatest possible advantage, would need to be changed with every piece of wood and every kind of cut, but practically all that can be done is to have a longer bevel on the tools for soft wood than for hard. Experience and observation will teach these angles. See _Sharpening_ in Part V.

When you cut off a stout stick, as the branch of a tree, you do not try to force your knife straight across with one cut. You cut a small notch and then widen and deepen it by cutting first on one side and then on the other (Fig. 5). The wood yields easily to the wedge on the side towards the notch, so that the edge can easily cut deeper, and thus the notch is gradually cut through the stick. The same principle is seen in cutting down a tree with an axe. You have only to look at the structure of a piece of wood when magnified, as roughly indicated in Fig. 6, to see why it is easier to cut with the grain than across it.

You can often cut better with a _draw-stroke_, _i.e._, not merely pushing the tool straight ahead, but drawing it across sideways at the same time (Fig. 7). You can press the sharp edge of a knife or razor against your hand without cutting, but draw the edge across and you will be cut at once. Even a blade of grass will cut if you draw the edge quickly through your hand, as you doubtless know.

If you try to push a saw down into a piece of wood, as you push a knife down through a lump of butter, or as in chopping with a hatchet, that is, without pushing and pulling the saw back and forth, it will not enter the wood to any extent, but when you begin to work it back and forth it cuts (or tears) its way into the wood at once. You know how much better you can cut a slice of fresh bread when you saw the knife back and forth than when you merely push it straight down through the loaf. You may have noticed (and you may not) how much better your knife will cut, and that the cut will be cleaner, in doing some kinds of whittling, when you _draw it through the wood from handle to point_ (Fig. 7), instead of pushing it straight through in the common way, and you will discover, if you try cutting various substances, that as a general rule the softer the material the greater the advantage in the draw-stroke.

Now put the sharpest edge-tool you can find under a powerful microscope, and you will see that the edge, instead of being so very smooth, is really quite ragged,--a sort of saw-like edge. Then look at the structure of a piece of wood as roughly indicated in Fig. 6, and you will understand at once just what we do when we cut wood with an edge-tool. You see the microscopically small sticks or tubes or bundles of woody fibre of which the big stick is composed, and you also see the microscopically fine saw to cut them. Now if the edge of the tool is fine you can often do the work satisfactorily by simply pushing the tool straight through the wood, but do you not see that if you can draw or slide the tool either back or forth the edge, being saw-like, will do its work better?

This stroke cannot be used of course in chopping with the axe or hatchet, splitting kindling-wood, or splitting a stick _with_ the grain with a knife or chisel. In these operations the main principle is that of the wedge, pure and simple, driven through by force, the keen edge merely starting the cut, after which the wedge does the rest of the work by bearing so hard against the wood at the sides of the cut that it forces it to split _in advance_ of the cutting edge, as in riving a log by the use first of an axe, then of an iron wedge, and finally a large wooden wedge (Fig. 8).

Practical directions and suggestions about the different _Tools and their Uses_ and the various _Operations_ will be found alphabetically arranged in Part V.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Quoted, by kind permission, from _Turning and Mechanical Manipulation_.

[5] Quoted, by kind permission, from the valuable and entertaining work on _Japanese Homes and their Surroundings_ (copyright. 1885), by Edward S. Morse.

[6] If you are so situated, as possibly a few of you may be, that you cannot get the benefit of modern methods, but must do all the rough work that your grandfathers did, you will require a few additional tools, but these you can readily select from the descriptions given farther on.

[7] There are many reliable makers of tools. Among them the following can be named, and their tools can be obtained almost anywhere: Saws--Henry Disston. Chisels and gouges--Moulson Bros.; Buck Bros. Planes--Stanley; Moulson Bros. (plane-irons); Wm. Butcher (do.); Buck Bros. (do.) Files--P. S. Stubs. Rules and squares, levels, gauges, spoke-shaves, etc.--Stanley Rule & Level Co. Braces--Barber. Bits--Jennings. Knives (sloid)--Taylor. Carving tools--Addis; Buck; Taylor.