Ever feel dumb about asking questions?

[Dennis Peacock]

WOW!!!!!!! What a welcome and warm heartedness I've found here. I'm teaching myself about various aspects of sharpening and trying to figure out how to best adjust what handplanes I have to make them work the way I'm guessing as they should. But....I'll keep posting in here and asking away. I can test people's patience sometimes.

[Mark Stutz]

Welcome to the dark side, Dennis. Though I am little more than a biginner myself, the one piece of advice I will add, is to jump in and just do it. (No connection to NIKE ). Pick a small project, and do as much of it with hand tools as you have tools. If tht means using a scrub, jack and jointer to prep the stock, great, but if it means cutting some dovetails by hand (and remember, I've seen you do that!) and smoothign the final surface, that is great too. I bit off a little much with my first project...a hand tool cabinet starting with rough stock and doing everything by hand, but I sure learned a lot and developed a lot of skills in the process. I think a small box is a great place to start. Be warned, though, this slope can be worse than the vortex!

[Maurice Metzger]

See Dennis, the beauty of it is that you've been so focused on whether you're asking dumb questions that you haven't noticed - sometimes we give dumb answers! Wait, that might just be me...

Anyway, enjoy the hand tools, I'm sure with Zahid around you'll get plenty of opportunities since he seems to turn out several planes every weekend.

Maurice

[Larry Gelder]

My biggest hurdle so far in WW is knowing what & how to start a project.

One reason why I asked this forum for willing teachers to tutor the new folks through hand tool projects is that I, and other newbies, would benefit from paint-by-numbers projects, until I/we could walk on our own.

I'm grateful that Harry Jr. answered my request with starting the sawbench project, and now the router project.

[Dennis Peacock]

Well, the good news is that I'm getting more comfortable with using chisels and I actually used my new Dozuki saw last night for the first time. What a world of difference it is when you use a nice sharp handsaw for the very first time. All of my other handsaws are so dull that I couldn't cut "hot butter in the middle of July with them".

[Michael Gibbons]

Dennis, sometimes I ask what I think are dumb questions but the answers usually help me out many times more than I had originally hoped and sometimes answered questions that I haven't even asked yet. Get It?

[tod evans]

dennis, jeff hit the nail on the head...sharp tools! sharper than razor blades, as you know i use rouge on a homemade "power-strop" to bring the edges of my users up quickly. for my antiques i still sharpen with good ol` arkansas stones and hand strop, but any way to get `em sharp enough that the wood curls away in fear is the very first step to enjoying hand tool use. after that even practice becomes fun......02 tod

[Vaughn McMillan]

Dennis, I'm guessing the folks here will be nice to you and your questions, considering you're such a newbie to woodworking and all.

I'm in the same boat as you (minus many of your 30 years of experience). Although there's a good dose of Tim Taylor in me, I find I reach for the neander tools more and more often. I don't post much in the Neander forum, but I do lurk and learn a lot. (It's often the little things I learn...like soot burning off steel at about 400 degrees.)

[Eddie Darby]

I would respond by saying that there is no such thing in the world as a dumb question, and the world is full of dumb answers!

The challenge with asking a question is finding the right answer to that question. I try first to get books written on the subject by a highly recommended author, and that should help to reduce a lot of the questions, then you will have a "mind set" from that book that should help you to narrow down the field of dumb answers to the questions you have left over after reading that book. Of course finding someone who is competent in the field of study and learning from them is invaluable. After a while you will develope your own sense and feel for what works for you and what doesn't work.....then you can write your own book!

Anyone know of a highly recommended book on the use of hand tools?