Every Time You ____, You’re Losing Money

In many professional shops, it’s common to hear someone spit: “Every time you pick up a hand tool, you’re losing money.”

And in many cases, that’s a correct statement. When I’ve worked in commercial shops, the chisels and planes come out when they have to fix some error they made in machining. They need to make a mortise a little bigger. Or they need to flush up some door stiles or dovetails that were routed incorrectly.

They are losing money when they do the rework. But it’s not the hand tool’s fault.

Also, it’s rare to get hand-tool training in a commercial shop. If you want to learn to use a plane, that’s something you have to pick up on your own.

I once trained a group of six professional cabinetmakers to make chairs. These folks could fit out an entire restaurant in a couple weeks. All were highly skilled, competent and fast.

I told them to bring a block plane to the class, because that’s what we use to make spindles.

They brought five block-plane-shaped objects that were covered in glue and couldn’t cut into a loaf of Wonder Bread.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in a professional shop where hand tools were an important part of the work.

So when I started training people to make furniture and make money, I vowed to integrate hand tools into the weekly training sessions. It starts with a block plane. I’ll hand them a sharp one and show them how to use it.

This, I say, is how it is supposed to work.

Anyone can use a sharp block plane after a couple swipes. And what these small tools can do (when sharp) is impressive.

After we’re done, I show them how to sharpen the plane’s cutter. Then they sharpen it. The whole block plane lesson is about 30 minutes long. Later, we do a jack plane the same way. Then a chisel. By then, the sharpening part at the end of the lesson starts to go quickly.

The overall lesson is: Sharpen your tools before you put them away. And anytime things start to go awry in the shop, my first question is: Have you sharpened that thing?

At some point I decided that hand tools aren’t the problem. It’s sharpening. It needs to be acceptable to stop work to sharpen. And sharpening needs to be fast and simple.

As a result, everyone here has a boot tray under their bench with the same basic setup: