Tuning Up Your Hand Tools: How to Develop Control Rather Than Applying Brute Force The first few times you use a chisel or hand plane on a block of wood, you probably applied way too much pressure and tried to force the tool to remove wood way too fast. You likely wanted to see immediate progress, but instead you probably ended up with tear-out, an uneven surface, or a chisel or plane that slipped out of the cut and left a nasty gash.
Instead of using your strength to force the cut, think about your body positioning and how you grip the tool. When using any type of hand tool, make sure to grip it in such a way that the handle is seated in the “V” created by your thumb and the knuckle of your index finger, while your remaining fingers gently wrap around the handle. Your grip should be firm enough to control the tool, yet light enough to still be able to feel what’s going on at the blade. When using the tool, always make sure to stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, with your knees slightly bent and your body positioned so that the work is at waist level.
This will enable you to work from your shoulders and arms instead of your back and legs. Start out with a few practice sessions where you simply make slow shavings without trying to accomplish anything in particular. Find or cut a small piece of softwood (I like to use pine or poplar because any mistakes you make tend to show up more clearly than they do on hardwoods), and set a timer for 15 minutes.
Then, place the tool on the wood and slowly push it along the grain to make one long stroke, attempting to remove one long, thin, continuous shaving that peels away like a ribbon (rather than breaking apart into small chips). After each stroke, stop and examine the surface carefully in a raking light, and run your fingers over it to see how it feels. If you tear out the wood or the surface feels fuzzy, it’s likely that your blade is dull or at the wrong angle. If either of these things happens, stop and resharpen or readjust the tool before making another pass. The object of this exercise is NOT to make as many passes as you can in the allotted time and remove a bunch of wood, but rather to make one really nice shaving. You will likely make only a half a dozen or so passes during the entire time period.
One common issue you might encounter as you first start making shavings is that the plane or chisel seems to “dig in” at the starting point of each stroke, making a small “stair step” depression on the leading edge of the board. This is usually because the front edge or “toe” of the sole of the plane or chisel is slightly raised as you apply downward pressure at the beginning of each stroke.
To avoid this problem, be sure to apply downward pressure to the entire length of the sole of the tool as you make each pass, and try to keep that pressure even at the beginning of each stroke. Instead of pressing down on the back of the tool and trying to force it to cut, think of the motion as “rolling” the tool forward and permitting it to cut where it will. It might take a few dozen strokes before this motion starts to feel more natural and less forced. But the sooner you can get to the point where the motion feels like it’s coming from your hand, the better you will do.