Charlesworth vs Coseman Videos

[Mike Henderson]

When I started woodworking, I didn't have any problems about what tools I could buy - I simply could not afford new tools in the LN category. And when you're starting out, there are so many tools to buy. I had to choose carefully, but from tools in the lower priced category. I bought mostly used tools (chisels and planes) and learned to sharpen and set them up. I had good instructors at the local community college. For a saw, I choose a small Japanese pull saw because it was inexpensive and it didn't have to be sharpened - if the blade got screwed up, you just bought a new blade at a reasonable price.

My primary objection when people recommend LN or Blue Spruce to beginners is that I remember how expensive it was to get started. For some people, like me, such advice would have been useless - almost worse than useless - I just couldn't afford it. It's very possible to learn woodworking with medium priced tools, such as older used tools, and it's very possible to do extremely good work with those tools.

The skills you need, such as sharpening, are the same with older tools as for new, modern tools. If you buy LN tools and can't sharpen, your work will suffer exactly the same as if you bought older tools and can't sharpen.

There is no royal road to knowledge, whether that knowledge is woodworking or something else.

Mike

[David Weaver]

I made a comment a few years ago in a seminar that I had yet to see a properly sharpened plane or chisel show up in any of my classes, DC was in the audience and he commented that having taught since 1975 he had only seen it twice.

Well, I guess that says a lot about the student cohort, and a lot about why I have never had the urge to sign up for any class where that level of competency is the target. Perhaps much more likely that you haven't been inspecting that many of the students' tools, because sharpening properly isn't that difficult.

I only do woodworking with one other person regularly. He would never cut a dovetail by hand (a machine fanatic), but I'll guarantee nobody on this board gets sharper edges on their tools. His are no sharper than mine (when sharpness counts), and I'll bet there are scads of folks on here who get about the same sharpeness as I do, where the results are only limited by the abrasive fineness.

If there are individuals in droves who are not absolute rank beginners, and who cannot figure out how to sharpen with as much free domain information as there is available, maybe they should find another hobby rather than dumping their money on single topic courses.

[Jamie Cowan]

I work at tool retailer, and recently spoke with a customer who was having trouble cutting dovetails even after watching Cosman's video. He emailed Rob Cosman about it, and Cosman called him on the phone and walked him through it personally. That's huge, in my book. A lot of people seem to think his saw is priced too high, or that he charges too much for his class, or whatever. I've never taken the class, never used the saw--couldn't tell you. But I certainly can't begrudge a guy for making a living. Have you ever had a customer try to beat you up on price? I'm sure we all think we are charging fair and honest prices for honest work, yet there is always somebody who thinks you're running the table on him. Why doesn't this seem to apply when people are talking about Rob Cosman?

[Pam Niedermayer]

Well, I guess that says a lot about the student cohort, and a lot about why I have never had the urge to sign up for any class where that level of competency is the target. Perhaps much more likely that you haven't been inspecting that many of the students' tools, because sharpening properly isn't that difficult....

I haven't taken that many woodworking classes, and only one building furniture (Homestead Heritage, craftsman rocking chair, in which Stan the instructor definitely had opportunities to inspect and approve my tool sharpness). The other 3 were Odate-san's How to Use Japanese Tools for which we brought no tools; Inomoto-san's dai building seminar for which I used tools supplied; and a very brief finishing class at Homestead, for which I used their sprayers and other tools. So there was only 1/4 of the classes in which an instructor played with my tools (mostly because he was interested in the Japanese tools I used), and he loved them, especially the dovetail saw from LV.

Oh, yeah, and there was a basic woodworking course I took 30 years ago in Boston, for which the instructor specified the types of tools to buy (a very basic set, maybe $100 at most for everything including stone and oil) and taught us how to sharpen, make dovetails, etc. Because of work, I had to drop out after two classes; but he was great, taught me how to make dovetails in part of an evening. Most of my woodworking before that had been refinishing, carving, and carpentry; so I'd never even heard of dovetails before.

Funny, not one of those instructors felt it necessary to specify a best tool in any category.

Pam

[Johnny Kleso]

You will get no argument from me on that. Even if they are my statements with which you do not agree. After all, my statements are ultimately just my opinion and an opinion is proof of nothing.

I have seen so many plane blades ground badly to say 40º and them honed at 25º and they can't figuer out why its still dull..

I think it's OK to say it may take you X amount of time..
You must address the two edges must form the feathered edge and you need to get the correct scratch pattern..
On my sharpening page I give an amount of strokes but this is at the very very end of sharpening to take the feathered edge off..

PAM,
30 years ago there where no best tools...........................
I had wood shop in grammer and a techinical high school and all we had was Stanley tools...
Bback in the 80s you had Good, Good and Pretty Good all made in the USA maybe Japan Not Import, Poland or USA like today

[Pam Niedermayer]

...PAM,
30 years ago there where no best tools...........................
I had wood shop in grammer and a techinical high school and all we had was Stanley tools...
Bback in the 80s you had Good, Good and Pretty Good all made in the USA maybe Japan Not Import, Poland or USA like today

From a local Woodsmith I bought, for the class, a Tyzack 14" backsaw, a Stanley block plane (which I immediately disliked), 4 Marples chisels, a Stanley boxwood marking gauge (excellent), and a black Arkansas. That's all I needed to make perfect dovetails, first time out. I think 4 out of 5 of these tools were excellent.

The other classes I took starting in this millenium, all told, maybe 10 days of classes over 6 years, 2000-06. In 1981 I built a darkroom with those basic tools and an ancient table saw, hardly deserving of the name, it even ate half a finger; but it got done and well. The eighteen year gap from 1982-2000 I spent trying to build a software development firm and had no time for anything else.

Pam

[Ed Looney]

A horse is a tool man uses to aid his work. Properly trained it needs little direction from it's operator and together they can get much work accomplished. However if improperly trained the horse is wielding and hard to control. Now you can still get the field plowed with a bad horse, it is just more difficult. A bad horse needs constant direction to keep it plowing to the last row frustrating the farmer and making his work harder. Likewise a bad saw takes the same constant correction to keep it sawing to the line making the work more difficult. However a properly trained horse once started can follow the row with little or no correction from the farmer. Likewise with a quality saw once started to the cut line takes little or no correction to keep it there.

Would more training (fettling) help the horse? Possibly but some horses are just to dang ornery and should be replaced. The exact same can be said for chisels planes and hand saws. Some need constant fiddling to keep them doing the work correctly and should be replaced.

Most of my growing up years were spent on a farm where I learned that there are some horses that are the best some that are good and some not worth the cost of hay they eat. Likewise I have spent my working career in a shop where I learned that some tools are indeed the best some are good and some are absolutely junk.

The advise I got from Rob was to buy the best you can possibly afford because it is better than buying cheep once and then having to spend again to replace them.

Honestly I don't understand how that philosophy can create any controversy but unfortunately it has.

PS As to what a good tool is like for a beginner well I learned to ride on good horses and bad horses. The good horse was easier and more pleasant in the learning curve. All I can say about the bad horse is that I sat briefly in the saddle before I was ejected from the class. Life experience has taught me to learn from the best because the learning curve is much more enjoyable.

Ed Looney

[Dave Anderson NH]

It seems that this thread has evolved into one on learning. I have taken very few formal classes in woodworking over the years, but one does stand out in both quality and its format. About 12 years ago I decided that I needed to learn how to do woodturning properly. My only previous experience had been in 8th grade wood shop and in those days we did much of the work with scrapers since they were safer and required less instruction on the part of the teacher who was faced with a class of aboout 14. He was a brave soul since I sure wouldn't want to face 14 adolescent boys and try to control them. I chose to go with formal instruction because I knew that I did not want to start off developing bad habits and techniques which later take massive amounts of work to break. I'd been that route before. My new lathe sat in the shop unused right up until the night of the first class though it was difficult to resist the temptation to take it for s spin (sorry).

The class was what I consider to be in the ideal format. It was 3 hours every other Thursday night for 12 weeks. It started out with a talk on tool selection, and yes the instructor had tools to sell and no one was offended. We were allowed to bring our own tools, buy them at the class, or use the ones owned by the school. The next step was learning to sharpen, and then we began on spindle turning with some exercises and a simple short project. Between sessions we were given exercises to do and told to practice during the 2 week break. We came back with problems, questions about technique, and the instructor addressed them both to the full group of 8 and with each of us individually. This pattern continue for the full 6 sessions of 3 hours the first 3 of which were on spindle turning and the last 3 on faceplate turning. Unfortunately, it is rare that schools can generate enough students in a local area that this is an economically viable format. Most often students take a class and are then on their own without and folowup or feedback. I have never taken a better or more useful class.

[David Keller NC]

My primary objection when people recommend LN or Blue Spruce to beginners is that I remember how expensive it was to get started. For some people, like me, such advice would have been useless - almost worse than useless - I just couldn't afford it. It's very possible to learn woodworking with medium priced tools, such as older used tools, and it's very possible to do extremely good work with those tools.

Indeed, if selected carefully, there are many antinques that will work just as well as modern, high-quality one, and in some cases, better than anything that is made today. But, in my view, that's not a reason to specifically recommend antiques to a newbie to the exclusion of Lee Valley/Lie-Nielsen, Grammercy, etc... I have, have tuned, and use many antiques because I like them.

But the knowledge to select a good, workable antique vs. one that is better left for Cracker Barrel's interior decor is a skill, and one many beginners do not possess. Further, learning how to diagnose and correct the usability issues with many hand woodworking tools is a further skill, and just about every antique I've ever acquired needed tuning. And you're right - if you're serious about working wood, you cannot avoid aquiring the skill to properly prep and sharpen edge tools such as plane blades and chisels. That tuning is straightforward with a chisel, but isn't with a saw, a brace bit or a wooden molding plane.

But in my view, it does an extreme disservice to a newbie to even slightly infer that a new high quality tool is somehow not worth it because you can learn to tell the difference between a workable antique with a few issues and an antique that's not serviceable, learn how to specifically diagnose and correct those problems, and spend a good deal of their time doing it. To me, that's considerably adding to the learning curve of a beginner, and worse, is communicating a value system that may not (and probably does not) apply. Many, if not most, of the folks that I have taught to do various things in a WW shop have extreme demands on their time. And while many of them don't make a lot of money, the look that I get when I explain how to find, select, and tune some of these tools (and that is without coloring the explanation with an inferred "I don't recommend this, but...", because I do like antiques) and then build the dovetailed jewelry box that they wanted to make for their wife's birthday is unmistakable. That look is discouragement, without equivocation.

When I tell that instead, they can purchase high-quality new tools that are cheaper than they ever have been in history, that they don't have to buy all of them at once, that they are all returnable if they have issues, and that most of them are usable right out of the box, and a few more require just a very few minutes to hone and put to work, the "vote with their feet" effect is nearly unanimous - most buy a new dt saw, a couple of chisels, a square, and a marking knife, and I usually make them a leather strop.

In other words, I've learned through being extremely, desparately poor, and also reasonably well off, that my priorities are generally not those of the ones coming to me for advice. And I take pains to tell them what the alternatives are. But that doesn't include telling them that they can short-cut both the price and the ready-to-work equation by purchasing garbage from HF, Home Despot, or Sears.

[David Keller NC]

It seems that this thread has evolved into one on learning.

Here's someone that seems intent beyond all business sense on the result for the student - he only takes one student at a time!:

http://www.handtoolwoodworking.com/teaching.html

[Chris Fournier]

Here's someone that seems intent beyond all business sense on the result for the student - he only takes one student at a time!:

http://www.handtoolwoodworking.com/teaching.html

This is in no way a slight to the good instructors out there but having many ties to my regional craft and art community I have watched many many people offer instruction for pay. They don't do it to increase production in their shops, in fact teaching doesn't hamper production at all; their problem is that they can't sell what they produce already so they need to make an income some other way - teaching.

In the world of fly-fishing I have watched and worked for (as a certified casting instructor and guide) shop owners who took up pretty serious teaching roles. Why do they do this? Students are potential fly-fishers and customers and it's back to bottom line retail sense build your retail sales through teaching new recruits the joy of your sport and they'll buy your tackle. Of course these guys wouldn't tell the students this - their line to a man was that they wanted to pass on the joy of fly-fishing to others! They also used their teaching activities to feather their overall status in the community - "I shop at 'X', his tackle is the best..." or "I've booked a guide with 'Y' he really is the best..." Pick an activity and this pattern is repeated ad nauseam.

We need teachers, and we admire many of them, but I wouldn't get too altruistic about why they chose the teaching path. There are exceptions and these are the teachers that really were born and dedicated to teach - they stand out in our lives.

[Johnny Kleso]

I think it may come down to adding a comment to students,

"You can buy the best and never have to buy again or buy mid-grade and maybe in time you will feel the need to upgrade to a better tool... There are many tools a new woodworker needs to buy.. Only you can choose which tools fit your (I'm lost for the correct word to put here) Passion, Budget, Commitment??

[Ed Looney]

David
Actually I think you just unwittingly paid Rob Cosman an extremely high compliment. If Rob can coach absolute rank beginners to the quality of the dovetail joints shown on his web sight it speaks extremely well of his abilities as an instructor. If Rob can take these droves of amateurs and in two days get them to the level where they are more than qualified to participate in this hobby it only establishes his credentials. Take a look at the Cosman web sight and look at the work of his students it will only confirm what the coach can do with the rank beginner of whom who you speak. After viewing the work of these "rank beginners" you just might want to reconsider your opinion on which hobbies they should participate in or how they choose to spend their money.


Ed Looney

[Mike Henderson]

...When I tell that instead, they can purchase high-quality new tools that are cheaper than they ever have been in history, that they don't have to buy all of them at once, that they are all returnable if they have issues, and that most of them are usable right out of the box, and a few more require just a very few minutes to hone and put to work, the "vote with their feet" effect is nearly unanimous - most buy a new dt saw, a couple of chisels, a square, and a marking knife, and I usually make them a leather strop.

I spent quite a while thinking about your comment and why your experience is so different from what I've seen. I think perhaps it's because only people with a certain amount of disposable income are able to take classes from private instructors, such as yourself or Rob. My experience is with people who study woodworking at a community college. From discussions with them, it's clear that they cannot afford tools in the LN or Blue Spruce range. If they were told that those were the only tools available they would immediately drop the classes - they would have no choice.

For many of these people, the cost of the class for a semester, maybe $100 or so, is a major commitment. The school teaches them how to sharpen and prepare planes and chisels during the class so they are able to acquire a good kit of tools for a reasonable price.

When someone asks about tools on this forum, we usually do not know what their financial situation is. Unless they give us signals that they can afford expensive tools, I feel we owe it to them to offer the option of decent quality lower priced tools, especially used tools. Older Stanley planes are very good and chisels by Witherby, Swan and a number of others are quite usable. Our ancestors made some very good quality furniture with those tools, or even some worse.

Mike

[george wilson]

That is what I just said,too,Mike. My best work was done with the tools I mentioned above. They are what I had when I arrived in 1970,and built the large harpsichord,and my inlaid lute with. Haven't posted pictures of the lute here,yet,as they are all on slides. Some have seen it elsewhere.