Handyman Tools: A Primer For Remodeling & Woodwork

Handyman Tools: A Primer For Remodeling & Woodwork

By Jim MacLachlan

Copyright 2020 by Jim MacLachlan

Published by Jim MacLachlan at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction:

Warnings & Disclaimers:

Key Terms:

Hand Tools:

Toolbox, Tool belt, &/or Bucket:

Hammers:

Chisels:

Measuring:

Squares:

Levels:

Handsaws:

Pry Bars:

Hand Planes:

Hand Sanding:

Clamps:

Other Hand Tools:

Sockets & Wrenches:

Hand Tool Quick List:

Gadgets:

Power Hand Tools:

Drills:

Screw Guns:

Hammer Drills:

.22 Nail Guns:

Saws:

Circular Saws:

Jig Saws:

Reciprocating or Cut Saws:

Routers:

Power Planers:

Angle Grinders:

Sanders:

Attachments:

Detail Sanders:

Palm Sanders:

Belt Sanders:

Stationary Tools:

Grinders:

Stationary Saws:

Tablesaw:

Radial Arm Saws (RAS):

Compound Sliding Miters & Chop Saws:

Bandsaws:

Scroll Saws:

Thickness Planer:

Jointer:

Belt/disc Sanders:

Oscillating Spindle Sander:

Drill Press:

Other Tools:

Benches:

Vises:

Shaving Horse:

Wood Lathes:

Ladders:

Air Compressors:

Shop-vacuums & Dust Collection:

Stock, Material, & Whatnots:

Bandsaw Mills:

Lessons Learned:

Simple Projects:

Afterword:

Introduction:

Walk into any home improvement store & there's a lake of shining tools glittering in a rainbow of colors promising the power to create & repair. More tools & gadgets are scattered among the seemingly endless aisles of materials. From simple screwdrivers to fancy compound sliding miter saws with laser sights, they're bewitching & overwhelming. Which ones do you need? What's the difference between a $5 hammer & a $35 one? What are the differences between well-known brands such as Dewalt, Milwaukee, Ryobi, & Hitachi other than their bright colors & price? I'll answer these questions & teach you how to evaluate hand, powered hand, & stationary tools needed for basic home repairs & woodworking. Some of the countless specialty & other popular tools will be mentioned, too. Not all of them are necessary & some should be avoided at first.

I grew up on a farm where we did most of our own building & repairs. If we couldn't do it ourselves, I usually wound up helping the neighbor or friend that could. While the farm paid for itself, we had a remodeling business to bring in cash, so it was natural for me to get into construction as a living. About twenty five years later, I changed to a career in computers. While the money is certainly a lot better, it doesn't satisfy my creative desires nor do I get a sense of achievement since the server room looks pretty much the same no matter how hard I work. My woodworking hobby satisfies those desires & brings in some extra cash while there is plenty to repair around the farm, so I have to stay current with the latest tools & materials.

My three kids, two boys & a girl all left home with fully equipped toolboxes & the ability to use the tools properly. Those skills have often saved them a lot of time & money as they fix things around their houses. Even if they can't do the job themselves, knowing the basics has helped them hire the right people to do the job. Hiring someone else is always expensive since the smallest jobs can cost a professional half a day. They have to look at the job, pick up materials, dispose of waste, & travel between jobs; a lot of extra time that's hard to account for.

I've taught several other kids woodworking & various aspects of farm maintenance. Most had only a vague idea of what most of the tools in my shop did since their parents didn't do home repairs nor are the Industrial Arts taught at most schools any more. One youngster I taught recently was thrilled with learning woodworking & wants to set up his own shop at home. He asked what tools he should buy first. After teaching & discussing it with him, I thought a short book on the subject might help others.

Throughout this book, I'll mention alternatives to buying new tools. Good tools are expensive, especially when you're starting out simply due to the number needed. Besides being cheap, I've often found better tools & learned more by reconditioning them or using alternatives.

Don't buy out the store! I've known a few who bought all the popular tools using price & the brand name as a guide. Their plan was to gather them all together & then learn to use them as they churned out projects. That logic is hard to resist, but I've never known it to work out well. They were overwhelmed. They didn't know how to use or set them up correctly, so couldn't get the results they wanted. In a couple of instances, they hurt themselves badly. Besides, brand name tools are a good place to start looking, but every manufacturer has made some very bad tools.

Don't rush! It takes practice to learn to use a tool properly & safely. Read the manual, watch videos, & try to get someone to teach you the basics. Make some simple projects. Think about what you want or need to build & each project will help guide you as your skills progress.

Working & storage space are always problems, both in how they're arranged & the amounts devoted to each. Tools & materials that aren't used often get buried or constantly tripped over. Tools have a working area that's larger than the tool itself. To rip a board on a tablesaw, you need at least the length of the board open in front & behind the blade plus some handling room. For a chop saw, the length of the material needs to be on either side of the blade with room to get the material into place & scraps out of the way. Sometimes, the work area can be temporary when the tool is a semi-portable (bench top) model mounted on a moveable cabinet or a base that can be clamped into a vise or work table. But you need to have the tools available & an area set up so you can work. That isn't a simple process as I explain in my short book Building A Shop: Preparing a Practical Workspace.

Price can indicate how good a tool is. Look at mid-range tools first since they'll have the most commonly used features. Most will last for decades, so buying a cheap tool doesn't make sense since the cost of a good tool falls rapidly each year. Expensive tools can have bells & whistles that aren't needed & are too complicated; more pieces to adjust & break. I probably won't use one that takes too long to set up each time if there's a simple, cheap one that will usually do the job well.

Cheap tools often lack necessary features & replacement parts are often unavailable even though they break often. Warranties often mean little depending on where the tool was purchased & what has broken. A drill press I bought from Harbor Freight ate its belts. Not only didn't they stock replacements for the odd metric size, but they couldn't have cared less since belts aren't warranted. They're a consumable. That they were consumed in a few hours due to crappy pulleys was my problem as far as they were concerned.

The ability to set & hold accurate, reliable depths & angles are critical features. Manufacturers try to cut costs by using plastic where metal is needed or use poorly machined parts. No matter the brand, most of the parts originate in the Far East, often from a single source. Some companies have better quality control & a few even make it a regular practice to remachine the parts before assembling them. That will raise the price of the tool, but it's worth spending the extra money on as the tale of my drill press makes clear. Before buying a tool, it's a good idea to make an Internet search on the brand, the type & model of the tool, as well as the word repair &/or fix. Look for forum posts & reviews to find out which to steer clear of & which are worth investing in. Don't buy the latest & greatest tool, buy a proven one.

I didn't bother trying too hard to make things photogenic in this book. I'm showing you the tools I use in my crowded shop, so I just tried to block off the worse distractions. The tools might be beat up, but so am I. We've weathered over the years, but we still work pretty well.

I'll describe tools & sometimes provide brief descriptions of how I use them, but these are not complete instructions. For instance, I often won't mention anything about safety such as wearing glasses or filter masks. That's beyond the scope of this book. If you ignore safety standards or common practices & injure yourself, that's you responsibility.

Warnings & Disclaimers:

READ THIS. I'm serious.

Use of any & all methods I describe or you think I allude to is at your own risk. I may use shorthand or do things that are dangerous. I'm not writing safety instructions. I don't know your abilities: age, strength, or skill level. I'm describing what I do & I have plenty of scars to prove I can be wrong.

Working with tools is inherently dangerous. You are personally responsible for learning the proper methods involved. You assume all risks and accept complete responsibility for any and all damages and injury of any kind, including death, which may result.

Before using any hand or power tool with which you are unfamiliar, consult its operating instructions, and if necessary, seek instruction by a qualified person well versed in its operation and appropriate safety techniques. Even with qualified instruction, it remains up to you to make sure what you're doing is safe. The joy of working with tools, rewarding as it is, is not worth the cost of getting hurt. Please keep safety foremost in your mind whenever you're in the shop.

In simpler words, if you hurt yourself based on anything in this document, that's your responsibility.

By reading further, you agree to the above.

This book has hyperlinks to outside sites & articles. They'll amplify my explanations, usually giving more history &/or instructions. I tried to only use stable, safe sites, but click on them at your own risk. Things change rapidly on the Internet & are beyond my control.

Table of Contents

Key Terms:

All measurements are in SAE units. I live in the US where we still haven't changed to metric, although it's only an illusion in many cases. Manufacturers often use metric sizes that are a close approximation to SAE. More & more often, I find that I have to buy metric sets of tools to accommodate these differences, so twice the amount of money is required & sometimes it's a guess as to which to use. It's a hassle.

I was deliberately casual in the way I wrote this & use common terminology. If you're new to tools & woodworking, this should help you better understand how informal plans & ideas are presented on message boards & in speech.

1" = One inch

1' = One foot or 12 inches

1-1/2 = One & one half inch, the same as 1.5, but decimals are rarely used with SAE board measurements since fractions convert easier & are what our tape measures show. If you don't know how to read or use a tape measure or just need a refresher, here is a decent tutorial from Johnson Level. Brush up on how to add & subtract fractions, too.

Box stores are also known as home improvement stores, places like Home Depot or Lowe's. They'll usually have a wide variety of tools & materials at low prices, but are often quite limited in knowledgeable help. Lumber can usually be picked through thoroughly & carried out by the piece or delivered in larger quantities. They seem to have almost everything, but they often have frustrating limits in some areas with far too much choice in others. At my local Lowe's, I couldn't find 40d or 60d common nails yesterday, but I was bewildered by the variety of construction screws.

Discount houses are often online stores such as Global Industrial, Harbor Freight, or Northern Tool with very inexpensive items that are often of dubious quality. There are a lot of good deals if you're careful, but beware their hype. Their sale prices are usually just their everyday price.

Lumber yards are devoted to the professional construction trade. They usually have limited hardware, but a much wider variety of wood & very knowledgeable help. Lumber is usually loaded for you in quantity without much ability to pick through it. They'll often have a mill for specialty work, too.

Hardware stores have both consumer & some professional hardware. They often have excellent service with knowledgeable help, but their prices tend to be higher than the box stores. Ace & True Value are two chains I'm most familiar with, although the local store I use the most is an independent. It had both the 40d & 60d common nails I was looking for at Lowe's.

Wood: A common board is a construction grade (#2) 2x4-8; nominally 2 thick by 4 wide by 8' long. The dimensions are given in that order & the units are assumed unless otherwise specified. That's only the nominal size of the board, the size when originally sawn. It was then dried which means it got smaller as the water evaporated & the board shrank. It was then planed to even it out, so its actual size is 1-1/2x3-1/2-8' when you buy it from a lumberyard.

Each species will vary in how much it shrinks. Even individual boards will since much depends on where & how it was cut from the log. Sapwood shrinks more than heartwood while knots tend to crack. Wood shrinks more up & down through the grain (radial) than across the grain (tangential) with little to no shrinking lengthwise (longitudinally). Boards are generally sold in even inch widths, every 2 up to 12. From 8 to 12 wide, the boards shrink enough that 3/4 is removed from the board. A nominal 6 wide board will be 5-1/2, but an 8 will only be 7-1/4" wide. The Wood Database explains it well & the Southern Pine Inspection Bureau does, too. Each has different pictures, so I recommend looking at them. Pro Wood has a handy chart of the actual dimensions of lumber here.

Construction grade or #2 lumber is used for framing. It has knots & isn't perfect, but it's generally hidden. It shouldn't be twisted or bowed. Select or #1 will still