A while back I had a post with a little about what I call our Museum. Here’s a bit more, but just one photo.

I became enthralled by woodworking around 1980. I found a book at a local university library about early French Canadian furniture and that gave a push. We lived in a house which was barely furnished. I like to do things with my hands.

Woodworking at first was a huge challenge. I had almost no tools of any sort. I didn’t have a place in the house to do woodworking. I had a tight budget.

My first tools were the sort of things one would find at a hardware store. Mail order catalogs soon provided a much broader range of tools to choose from. I gleefully chose; I have an unused pit saw stored away—sometimes desire overwhelms reality.

The best source of tools ended up being antique stores and flea markets. The old stuff was better quality and was economically priced. That led me into the tool collecting world where collector gatherings, tool catalogs, and auctions were even better sources.

Early on while learning the craft I decided to focus on woodworking done solely with hand tools. I cheated a bit with an electric drill used for odd occasions (I much prefer a brace and bit). All the sawing, planning, shaping was done with hand tools and I loved it.

The collection broadened to include not just tools I was using but also reference tools and tools a woodworker in the late eighteenth century owned. I fell in love with the plane and all its varieties and that’s what the photo shows. The top plane is circa 1800 English, the plane lying on its side is circa 1800 American made by Nicholas Taber of Massachusetts. That’s the same plane shown in the Museum post. These bits of history are my way of better understanding the common person and their world. The other two planes are early nineteenth century American. One is a special type of sash plane with two blades for sash window bars.

Over the years I made furniture for our home and used some of the same tools and techniques to build our current home. I do less woodworking now, but oh how I still do love it.