Back to the Bench: Restoring & Using Heritage Tools

https://www.mortiseandtenonmag.com/co... ----- Check out our latest course: "Back to the Bench: Restoring & Using Heritage Tools"

If you’re a woodworker, you know the beauty of old tools. You see them stacked on shelves at neighborhood antiques stores, fastened to walls as kitschy décor, or listed on eBay as “Nice Old Hand Planer for Wood.” You may admire their dignity and appreciate their beauty and charm, but these tools were meant to be used. They’re workhorses. And when respectfully cared for, they are still capable of amazing things.

But many modern tool restorers are way over the top. They fuss over minutia and scour every square inch from top to bottom. The patina gets stripped away and the metal has its daylights buffed out, erasing the tool’s entire history in the process. Not only is it tragic, but it’s totally unnecessary.

Join M&T editors, Joshua Klein and Michael Updegraff, as they walk through the restoration of essential woodworking tools you can still find in secondhand stores. In their signature no-nonsense approach, these guys walk through the restoration process of bench planes, hand- and backsaws, chisels, axes, drawknives, drill bits of all types, hammers, marking gauges, try squares, straightedges, joinery and molding planes, vises, and bench hooks. This course is a comprehensive look at all that’s involved in bringing these tools back to life: cleaning wooden surfaces (without ruining patina), rust removal strategies, finishing, repairs, and performance troubleshooting.

Back to the Bench is comprehensive but never tedious. Featuring more than 12 hours of video instruction and numerous PDF resources, this course is designed to help you get your heritage tools back into good working order, just like they were always meant to be.