Tom Fidgen’s Made By Hand Book: a Review
“Education is everywhere whether you choose to listen and learn it or not.” – Tom Fidgen
Those of us interested in working with hand tools truly live in a golden age. One wonders what the masters of the 17th and 18th Centuries would think of the wide array of tools we have available currently. And more and more,magazines devote at least some of their pages to the hand tool craft. And we have many books available to us that discuss hand tool use and maintenance.
But we have lacked, until now, true “how-to” project books that use hand tools only. Recently I reviewed Joiner and the Cabinetmaker, which includes 3 complete build-along projects. I’ve got to build at least 2 of them. But Tom Fidgen has provided us what may become THE book for those wanting to venture into hand tools. His book, Made by Hand, has all the presentation quality of your favorite coffee table display book while being packed to the gills with solid information on the use of hand tools.
He begins with short discussions of the various tools and what they’re used for, emphasizing those he’s going to use in the book. This is followed by a walk through some of the hand tool appliances (jigs to power tool users) that he uses to facilitate his work. I found his approach to a simple sawing bench hook interesting as he accommodates both western (push) and Japanese (pull) hand saws. In this section he steps the reader through building a light saw horses, using through-tenon construction. In a way, this is something of a warm up for the larger projects presented later.
At this point he starts your apprenticeship. He teaches basic planning, hand tool style. He discusses how the actual approach to projects differs from those of power tool users. This is something which may be the most important lesson as so often those coming from a power tool background come with the assumption that process is the same only you just use handsaws and plane rather than table saws and routers. Not true and this view can lead to much frustration. Tom describes how hand tool slingers layout, cut and prepare stock, cut dovetails, chop mortises, and create tenons in this section of the book. These basics are built upon in the projects that follow.
And projects there are — six of them in all. And no, these aren’t “make a box” projects. Each of Tom’s projects are real furniture projects that anyone would be proud to own. There may be an intended order of difficulty in the presentation but I’d hate to define it. I suppose the first project, a beautiful maple and walnut portable tool chest would be considered the ‘easiest’ of the projects but this is followed by a hanging cabinet with a curved-front door, a Shaker-like taper-leg table with drawers, a small stand-alone bookcase with Japanese-inspired door panels, a fairly complex cabinet with a door on the left side and 6 drawers on the right, and a sideboard with a fairly modern look and several interesting details. My limited brain power has already rationalized where I “need” two of these projects in my house and I’m working on a third. Life is tough sometimes.
If that were all that Tom provided in Made in Hand, I would lead us all in a big round of applause at this point. But there’s more so hold your applause a while longer. Across the Internet the question is asked repeatedly, “What tools do I need if I want to work with hand tools?” And, graciously, hand tool users try to answer that question, which is not nearly as straight forward as it sounds. In the back of Tom’s book, inset into the cover, is a little DVD case and inside it is a first class introduction to hand tool requirements by Tom himself.
Tom brings you into his shop and lays out tools in groups, explaining what they do and he discusses some of the options to fulfill each of the requirements. I really think this last part is the most important as he objectively presents restored flea-market tools, new fancy ones from Lee Valley and Lie-Nielson, and even puts a couple of wooden-bodied planes in the mix. The impressive thing is that this isn’t your average home movie. It’s very high quality, justifying its place in the high-quality book called Made in Hand. The book is available through Tom, Popular Woodworking, Amazon, and elsewhere. Find it – buy it. You won’t be disappointed. Oh…ok, you can applaud Tom now.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to re-read the section on installing knife hinges as I’ve got some to install.
Cheers — Larry
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Excellent review, Larry. I haven’t finished his book yet, but I’m thoroughly enjoying it.