The Comprehensive Guide to Buying, Using & Refurbishing Old Hand Tools

In this age of modern power equipment, classic woodworking tools can be difficult to find and often even more challenging to properly recondition and tune so they work in the way they are designed. Many of these vintage items are of superior quality and craftsmanship, however, and offer an intangible satisfaction from being more intimately connected to your tools and work.

In this invaluable guide, master craftsman and celebrated founder of the Windsor Institute, Michael Dunbar shares his years of experience with refurbishing, and using high-quality hand tools. Dunbar's in-depth treatment will teach you how to recondition, clean, sharpen, and tune up all kinds of time-tested woodworking tools, such as chisels, saws, spokeshaves, scrapers, braces, bits, files, and planes, with special emphasis on restoring and rebuilding wooden planes. This comprehensive guide is replete with hundreds of detailed photographs and drawings.

If you've ever spent time scrounging through rusty toolboxes at tag sales or hunting for treasures at flea markets or browsing for bargains in online auctions, you'll appreciate Dunbar's wealth of information about initially finding and selecting traditional old tools. In a clear and engaging style, he tells you what to look for as well as what to avoid. This revised and updated edition of Restoring, Tuning & Using Classic Woodworking Tools is great for both beginners and experienced woodworkers, and is an essential resource for the library and workshop of any classic hand-tool artisan.

This book is also available from Echo Point Books as hardcover (ISBN 1648370543).