Hand Tools

 I don't think there's been a decent saw vise on the market in decades.  Sometime in the 60's, most all hand tools went out of favor with the advent of portable, reliable, and relatively cheap electric motors for use in powered hand tools such as circular saws and the like.  Hand saws became so very old school and fell out favor, so the market for them - along with the tools for maintaining them - dried up.

But - because they were so commonly used before, there's been a plethora of old saw vises to fill the void.  With the old school methods making a comeback, and age or wear claiming the life of them more and more, those tools have been getting fewer and fewer. 

Someone has stepped in.  Gramercy Tools is introducing a new saw vise, one worthy of the vises of old.  It looks impressive. 

Based on an old Wentworth saw vise design from the late 19th Century and made from heavy bar (or sheet, depending on how you look at it)steel (not cast) the vise looks to be the only really decent vise available new today.  Certainly it's far above quality wise than any other new vises that I've seen.

One of the most common tools in the arsenal of pretty much every hand tool shop is a shooting board, a couple examples of which you can see illustrated in Fig. 1 that are based on illustrations from one of Charle's Hayward's writings, "The Complete Book of Woodwork".

I don't know how many of these I've cobbled together over the years. Usually from scrap, and often - because I'm usually more worried about the project than how I put together the shooting board - thrown away not long after because I don't take the time to make it properly.

Essentially, a shooting board (or 'chute' board in some lands) in its simplest form a simple fence that allows one to plane an edge or end on on a piece of wood to a known angle, commonly 45 or 90 degrees.  It provides a shelf to place the wood on to raise it so the blade of the plane used is fully exposed to the wood (if it isn't a rabbet plane, the blade doesn't go all the way to the edge of the plane).

 The plane used can be a specially made "miter plane", made just for the purpose - one such as Lie Nielsen's iron miter plane, but usually it is just a standard bench plane whose sole has checked to be perpendicular to its side. 

Rob Hanson (no relation) has come up with an interesting product - one he's been selling through his blog page at the Evenfall Woodworks web site.  You can see his version of a shooting board in Fig. 2 at work with a low angle bench plane.

If you look closely, you'll notice a series of holes in the body of his shooting board.  This is what makes Rob's product devilishly clever - its fully adjustable to different angles.

 I'm impressed.  It's bloody ingenius.

 Having this web site has given me the great privilege of watching and conversing with some of today's finest toolmakers and restorers from their very beginning.  Every story is different, and all of the toolmakers each have their own individual talents and approaches to challenges, but yet all of them seem to be cut from the same cloth. 

Each are fiercely independent, entrepreneurial, and motivated.  And each want to have their own "stamp" on the tool.  Some are more artistic, some more attached to historical preferences, and some - like Mark Harrell of Techno Primitives.com - are simply out to make a quality tool.

Now, Mark - who has been mostly restoring saws until now - has decided to turn his talents towards sawmaking.  The results look stunning. 

Every once in a while I'm asked if I could restore or make a saw for a fellow woodworker. Unfortunately, my current employment situation allows me little time for personal endeavors (like finishing my shop!), much less that for others - so I've had to severely cut back work I do for others.

Gladly, I'm certainly not the only game in town, and my response is invariably to recommend one of the others I know that are in the business. It seems that just a few years ago when I first posted the article about making your own saws, there were only three premium sawmakers with product on the market(perhaps more, it depends on your definition of "premium"). Now - it seems - there are many, many more to choose from. When asked, I usually steer someone towards what I believe would fit them best, and wanted to compile that list in a single location - here, obviously. If I don't mention everyone that's out there, please forgive me - these are only the ones I've had some direct experience with.