Favorite hand tools

I don't know about everybody else but I like a good old putty knife. I look for ones with good steel that has wood scalesriveted to it, preferably rosewood with brass rivets. Red Devil made a good one years ago and those are fairly common.

My next item is socket handle chisels. Any chisel with a socket handle is bound to be good steel. Garage sale chisels are normally a buck and you would pay $15-$20 for the same quality chisel if it were new. 

My next thing is hammers. I find very few hammers that I actually buy, a good hammer is pretty scarce. I look for a good wood handle, ash or hickory, and octagon shape is a plus. The handle has to be married to the head right.

That's it for now.

Somewhat related is a YouTube channel with which many of you may already be familiar. Here's the link to it on our WC video section that displays the last 15 uploaded videos of popular woodworking YouTube channels:

https://www.woodcentral.com/videos/?c=UC2rzsm1Qi6N1X-wuOg_p0Ng

Latest uploads also available in our feed reader:

https://www.woodcentral.com/freshrss/p/i/?a=normal&get=f_90

He reviews tools and lots of other things by purchasing them himself and creating tests I would probably do if I had the time and smarts. I find his tests informative and his delivery entertaining, as apparently many others do, as his channel is extremely popular. And no worries about him spending his own money buying all hat stuff; he probably makes $10K in TY revenue for every $1K he spends buying products to review. He found a nice niche providing unbiased information for schmucks like me and apparently is having a good time doing it. Good for him.

Sample video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqmUj6huTxc

Added later 42 min 46 s:

@Moses Yoder, Not being a woodworker, I can't speak to most woodworking tools, but Phillips screwdrivers that strip the heads of screws anytime you exceed 1 lb-ft of torque is one of my pet peeves. Coming from an electrical background, Klein has been my go-to for screw sticks. Their hardened heads seem to resist deformation better than others I have used. And they just seem to bite better,  maybe some subtle secret in the geometry of the head? IDK.

Interesting trivia on the design of the Phillips screw. It was designed to slip before the threads would strip. As factories automated, they wanted a self-centering screw head design that would slip or strip before the threads would strip if screwed in using powered drivers. IDK what kind of contraptions were used on assembly lines to power screw before the invention of today's drivers with adjustable clutches, which would solve that problem, so the head and driver were deliberately designed to slip.

There is also a Japanese version that looks very familiar to a Phillips, but isn't. I can't recall what it's called. Anyone?

Added later 14 h 11 min 09 s:

A little investigation shows that they were designed to cam out is not true.
https://obportland.org/the-cursed-phillips-screw
Just goes to show never to believe what you read on the internet w/o a little due diligence. Especially if I write it.

I am working a day job on an assembly line building the bases for these hoods. 4 of us build about 30-40 bases per day. The straiht bases are run in assembly line fashion, the bases with a paneled front like you see here I build offline by myself. I soend about half my time doing that. We buy the front panel and I attach sides, sand the sidejoints flush is a PITA, and then attach the trim. The one I show is a raised panel, we also build these in a Craftsman style flat panel both arched and straight bases. 

The trim is attached to the apron with pocket screws. A 36" base has ten screws in top and ten in bottom, 20 screws in each base and 30 bases per day, do the math on that. There are typicallytwo of us sanding and attaching the trim so that is 300 screws per day I am driving, which is not as much as some factory jobs but it aint to be lightly dismissed either. 

We use square drive screws. It just takes a little bit to get the feel for driving the screw without stripping it out or breaking it. I can't imagine trying to do this with phillips screws, you just wouldn't have enough rip to turn the screw. I personally hate phillips head screws, I think they were invented for ease of manufacturing. Square drive screws have a bit of a learning curve, the bit has to be in line with the head or it will slip. Newbs will go through bits in a hurry whereas a good bit will last me a couple years. I use an air screw gun, the lady that also installs trim uses a cordless gun. 

It may seem boring to do this all day long every day but I build stuff after hours to exercise my creative side and the persoanal interaction and team work is entertaining. Time goes rapidly and it pays the bill and I get to work with wood all day. 

Phillips heads may not be originally designed to cam out.  That would be obvious from their date of birth and whether production drivers existed at the time.  But stuff like drywal screw guns certainly take advantage of that feature to set screws to the correct depth.  I don't really have any difficulty with either Phillips or Robertson (square drive), with fresh screws.  Being Canadian, and living only a few miles from where Robertson's are made, I always just thought square drive was what everyone uses if they aren't using slots.  It is all about the fit.

The classic "it's crap/it's great" product are tap and die sets.  The taps and dies in the cheap units from Asia are often serviceable, the handles never are, and sometimes the die holders will actually hurt you if they snap.

Saw stop is a joke product that seems to be gaining a lot of deserved market share, and apparently the patent protection actually is running out in '26.  It is still possible to just learn how to use a table saw; the actual saws they make preserve a lot of the worst features of the Unisaw; Just pretends the Europeans didn't revolutionize stationary power tools in the 80 (?); preserves the idea that you need way more power in a home of precision saw, than one actually does;  Data not clear on whether a lot of stupid people would not be equally safe if you just forced them to pay an additional 4000 dollars for their saw in the first place.  ON THE OTHER HAND, seems to actually save a lot of hot dogs from having table saw accidents, and of course people also.  You really can't ague with that.

I love framing hammers.  Biggest joke was the idea that a 14 ounce hammer hits as hard as a 21 ounce hammer.  And people don't seem to have got the memo even after an originator of the Ti tool switched to steel due to a non-compete.  Is a 14 ounce hammer better than a 21 ounce hammer when you actually drive 99% of your nails with a nail gun:  Highly plausible.  And the status symbol aspect is also useful.  I still  prefer wooden handles for driving nails, the other stuff is largely for non nailing uses, which now dominate.  A lot of this stuff was predictable if you were into ice climbing where 300 dollar hammers, and technology made an early appearance.  Fancy stuff like aluminum tubes wrapped in carbon, wrapped in glass have been around since, maybe the 80s.  And you could see well into the future of tools, and even the future of gun barrels.

In the 80s, like a lot of early adopters, I fritzed around with planes that took a .0004" shaving, even as people said it was a lie.  But the plane that gets constant use, almost no matter what the project is, is the one that takes a .06" shaving, Usually less, but cutitng like and axe is more generally useful.  The one I use, and as an amateur, probably my only plane that is mostly hand sharpened, and actually getting short in the blade, is a Japanese plane I made with a 10 dollar blade.  I was probably trying to make a finishing plane, and it will finish to an extent. But what it really does well, is knock wood into shape, when I need to do that by hand.  I also have western planes that do that.  But none gets used as much as the one I made 40 years ago.

I also really like a standard Japanese marking gauge with a knife cutter.

I can't really say I like rubber carving mallets, but I use them pretty exclusively for all my heavy chisel work because they are so quiet.  Some tools just get more use over time, and displace other tools.  Pretty much the dominant chisel wacker since the mid 90s.

We each have a favorite hand tool as TomD implies. Perhaps we should stress that the tool you pick up as a new wielder be a good one. And, if you like it, find a backup. 

My one-inch, plastic handled Coast-To-Coast chisel I have had since high school has touched every domicile I have lived in since. It is growing short of tooth now but still lives in what I call my "tool chest".  Sharpened--well, edge shaped--for the jobs finer than 2x4 framing it's a wonder kid. 

Sometimes, fine old tools aren't so great. Our proverbial 16-ounce hammer, even with wood handle, may have a multi-faced dark history; ringing worse than your crying chihuahua it liked to leave pieces of head too. We get enamored of variety. I have several 16-ouncers. My favorite, a woodie, likes to threaten damage to surroundings at regular times of the year. A red plastic and rubber, my wife's, eats palm skin while it grips the steel tenaciously. There's  a 30? 32? framer I can barely lift after a half-hour. And, then, the novelties. The most expensive in my stable has no handle but it was forged by a great and dead japanese forger. I leave you with the explicatives, but for me, humble practicality can be boring.

My grandpa built his cabin at Lake Erie with a mesmerizing handsaw. In an eight-year-old's hands it was beastly long. I knew instinctively Dad had much respect for it while he described its many framing functions. It was perfect for framing but even Dad used a tamer cross-cut. As an itinerant young man, I found hacksaw blades great for fine cutting and a pocket knife the universal cutting tool. Repeated use and sharpening will make almost any tool valuable.

I was born in '67, the boys took shop class and the girls took home ec. Even in those years there were a lot of boys more interested in tech and not interrested in woodworking at all.

Point being, I was taught how to use a table saw by Mr. Phil Berkey as a sophomore in high school. We had shop class in junior high but weren't allowed to use the table saw and then we weren't allowed to take shop class until grade 10 in high school.  Point being, I was taught how to use a table saw. I have used table saws now for the last 30 years professionally every day and never once cut myself on the saw. I did cut myself once with a jig saw about 6 months after I started my first job, that was my only industrial accident. I learned from that.

Point being, I advised my company to replace their beautiful old table saws, huge industrial Delta stuff, two of them, with Saw Stop saws. Why? Because of the people that were never taught how to use a saw. I think everyone we hired so far has been intelligent enough to stay away from the saw if they don't know how to use it. We have taught a few people, we don't use table saws much anymore, but I use it every day on personal projects after hours. When training somebody it is nice to know that if something kicks back and their hand goes into the blade they are not going to lose fingers.In a kick back they may lose testicles but not fingers. 

One young man builds a lot of boxes and he had seen a box I built with a slide out lid and was trying to emulate it. In stead of talking to me about it he figured he knew how to do it. He glued the 4 sides together with groves, the bottom glued in, and then turned on the table saw and holding the box above the blade tried to cut the top edge off the front end for the lid to slide out. He literall held the box with both hands above the blade then lowered it down on the blade. Naturally it snapped crackled and popped and hit the wall on the other side of the shop. Somehow he never got his hands into the blade on that one.

We have two identical Saw Stop saws in the shop and ironically the plant manager I think is the only one that has ever set off the emergency brake.

My favorite hand tools are planes.  I have old ones inherited from my father and new ones purchased from Lie Nielsen.  I made a wall cabinet just for planes:

Agree withTomD -- the SawStop is a God-awful saw that at least won't cut you (maybe).  If you manage to amputate something using a quality European saw then you deserved to lose whatever digit or digits you left on the shop floor.

As a former Bldg Maint Custodian for the Postal Service, I would say a Hammer.

Some of my best days started with a Clerk telling me they couldn't open a Postcon

You've got to love a day when you start it by beating something with a hammer.