These small pieces have been cut and labeled from readily available sheets. Having had them for many years, they get lots of use. They are a quick way to assess small measurements without having to stare and dwell over minute ruler values, or evaluate confusing visual input.

The product is TTC PSS5A 14 Piece Plastic Shim Stock Assortment – 5” x 20” Color Coded Sheets.

(Note that I also put a few thicker wooden examples in the upper photo.)

Some practical examples:

You can slide a shim under a straight edge or square to check how much a piece is flat or out of square. Then, you quickly translate the .004” gap to a few fine strokes with the plane.

Similarly, you can assess the sole of a new plane, or a worn wooden plane sole. 

How much gap of the tenon walls with the sides of the mortise? How far off square is a machine blade?

How much edge of a door frame do I need to plane away? (Or, how much did I goof up?)

Assess the amount of a sharpened curve (or accuracy of straightness) in a plane blade. Get the amount of the appearance. You can remember the appearance visually but also keep in mind the numerical amount for future sharpening.

Evaluate the flatness, or an appropriate curve, of a hand plane. Below: checking the desired inward curve of the sole of a Yoshihiro Yamamoto plane.

There are many other uses! The basic idea is numerically evaluating with the shim stock and relating it to the direct visual assessment. You are adding to your perceptive ability in your work.

Added: 

The fine reader points out (see comments) the less expensive stainless metal gauge sets available. I have long had similar ones (see photo below). Yes, they too are effective and handy, though I do not use them nearly as much. Somehow, I like the separate, colored, multiple in every size, and multi-reproducibility in every size for the plastic ones.

Still, you might like the $7 metal ones instead of the $45 plastic set for your purposes. Amazon, of course.

A humidity meter is something you really should have in your shop. The cost is trivial. A thermometer is combined with most of them, as shown above. This one can fit conveniently on the wall with a screw, or stand on its leg, or grip steel with its magnet. It is about 2 5/8″ x 2 1/4″.

As we all know, wood is always changing as the air humidity changes. We really want to be in-touch, especially with wide flatsawn boards. Fittings and alignments will size up differently in a winter day of 35% RH (relative humidity) in a shop up north compared with a summer day of 75% RH.

Simple and useful. Set up one or more.

These wooden dogs grip a work piece using the rectangular openings in your bench top. They are easy to make and better than anything you can buy. I only use the steel ones that came with my bench over 40 years ago for very tall pieces of wood.

For the frame, use moderately dense wood, 6″ long. The side width is just under 7/8″ to fit in the width of the 7/8″ hole in the bench top. The front-to-back width is 13/16″ which works well in my bench. The corresponding hole dimension in my bench is 15/16″ in its full linear width, and 7/32″ greater in the upper 1 1/4″ of hight.

Alter the dimensional figures for the dog construction to similarly conform to the criteria of your bench.

Now plane the bottom 2 1/2″ to taper to about 5/8″ at the bottom edge. To that now-angled surface, screw in a 1/8″ strip (see the photos just above and below) of fairly flexible wood that is 1/8″ thick and 5″ long.

Now glue a piece of fairly soft wood, such as pine, 1/4″ thick and 15/16″ long, to the top portion of the frame, as you see in the photos. This serves as the contact to the work piece. Also, the sideways hole in the dog frame allows you to hang it up near your workbench, if you want.

These dogs will stand securely up to about 1 3/4″ above the bench surface. This covers 95%+ of the needs.

Make a pair, finish them if you want, and you’re done! Eventually, you probably will need to replace the 1/4″ heads. Cut the original off, chisel the service clear, and glue on a new one.

The dimensions quoted herein are based on the dimensions of my workbench as described. If necessary, adjust your building dimensions using the same principles to make the dogs fit your bench.

Wood will not get dented by these dogs, and they grip securely. You can easily adjust the hight of the dogs to avoid bumping them with the plane of other tools.

These dogs work. 

Here are three tools worth having.

1.

Mortise Master is a cleverly designed way to use your plunge router to make loose tenon mortises. In other words, you simply make a mortise in both wood parts and then add a separate tenon to fit them together.

Does this mean that it will not be a strong joint? No. We well break down this issue in an upcoming post.

Mortise Master has a clever way to keep the mortises laterally centered on both pieces. Just as easy, they both can be set equally off center, or they can be unequally off sided.

The vertical positions are also readily set. The router’s guide bushing sets in the slide plate which is governed by the two metal runners and limited by the screw-held stops on each side.

Work moves quickly and reliably.

It does have a couple of shared limitations. Like most mortising, there is no dust collection. Routers tend to through lots of cutting waste. Also, you cannot, like most basic mortise setups, do angled mortises. That can be done with the Leigh FMT ($) mortice and tenon jig, which takes a lot more learning to use.

I really like this tool! You can get a Mortise Master now for $230 with free shipping. (I have no business/money connection.)

2.

The JessEm dowel joint tool is just great. I have the common 3/8” dowel version. (I will be discussing the grace of dowel joinery in a soon upcoming post.) This very well made tool is accurate, direct and easy to use. You can make small joints or stepwise reposition it to make longer joints.

It has a great precision line up mechanism.

I cannot find a JessEm discussion/demonstration about using the jig to make the dowel holes across the flat face of the board. However, it is straight-forward and I have done it very accurately. 

Well, I do not think I am going back to my years of using the wooden hole jigs to set out and drill dowel holes. 

3.

Leigh makes bench hold-down clamps that I like better than the longtime traditional curved metal holdfast clamps. I never found that even good quality holdfasts grip well without more than a quick bang to set it up.

The Leigh tool bench connection does not set up quite as fast as the old kind, but once it is set up, it quickly grips on and off the woodwork. You simply move the lever at the top. 

A useful help that I think Leigh should supply at the rather expensive cost of this tool: The “speed nut” that fits underneath the bench top can be awkward in some situations. It can also loosen and even drop off occasionally. I made a simple wood piece (about 3 1/2” long, 1″-square thick) with a full-length hole. A framed nut is screwed into the wood. It attaches to the tool’s long screw at the bottom. It holds fast and well.

I have no business/money connection in any of these tools. They are worth your try!

This is, hands down, the best hand-sanding block I have used. What I like best is that the substantial weight, the thoughtfully designed contours, and the 7 3/4″ x 2 3/4″ dimensions combine to give it a purchase in my hands that resembles a small wooden smoothing plane. This feel, plus the outright effectiveness of the tool, actually raise the dignity of sanding. 

It is also very practical. It is fast and easy to clamp strips of 2 3/4″-wide paper, which are produced by three tears across the width of standard 9″ x 11″ sheets. (Here’s how to make that easy.) The clamps grab a strip near its ends so there is minimal waste. You can install multiple sheets and tear them away in succession but I prefer the feel with a single layer of paper. Now is a good time to restate my opinion that 3M is the clear winner in sheets for hand sanding. 

Long accustomed to my cork blocks, I bought the Preppin’ Weapons on a whim, but for all but small-scale work, I now favor them over the corks. I suggest buy different color Preppin’ Weapons to code the installed sandpaper and make jobs move along faster. 

Now for an idea or perhaps a bit of insight into some of what happens at the sandpaper-wood interface. We know that a smoothing plane blade with a straight edge and square corners will promptly produce “gutter” marks on the wood surface, which are slight steps across the width of the board. To eliminate this problem, we sharpen the blade with a very slight curve (camber). This actually makes imperceptible waves that pretty much cancel each other with successive passes of the plane as the peaks of the waves are shaved away. Note that the depth of the blade camber is coordinated with the anticipated shaving thickness. The result is a surface that is, for all practical purposes, nice and flat.

Similarly, imagine a hard block of steel used as a sanding block, especially with substantial pressure. Of course, no one would use that. It would create tiny gutters or steps, and the process of erasing them would just produce new ones. 

The cushion, or resilience, of the bottom surface of a sanding block – cork, rubber, or foam – solves this. With variable hand pressure, we must be producing miniscule waves (probably variably oriented) that get evened out with successive strokes, leaving an essentially flat surface. We never see steps. We intuitively use a little more pressure with coarser paper, inducing more flex in the sanding pad, analogous to coarser plane shavings. Finer sandpaper and less pressure give more shallow waves and ultimately we end up with a nice flat surface.

Coordinated with the area of the contact surface, the flex of the 5/32″ foam pad on the base of the Preppin’ Weapon is just right for producing a smooth and true surface.

This tool gets everything right.

What are the best hand tool and the best power tool in your shop? Just considering this question will give you pause to ponder what really makes a tool great. The answers will help guide you in what tools to buy and what tools to employ in a project. 

For me, the best hand tools in my shop are my full set of blue steel “suminagashi” (or “mokume”) Japanese bench chisels made by Teiichirou (Teijiro) Okukbo in Yoita, Niigata, Japan under the brand name Daitei. A few are pictured above. 

I suppose it is possible (e.g. Tasai) but it is hard to imagine a better chisel than these. They can be made hair-popping sharp, they are the easiest tools to sharpen that I own, and the durability of the edges is astounding. The ergonomics are just right for me, and their beauty is inspiring. “Eleven” stars.

Other candidates were: my Bad Axe backsaws and Lie-Nielsen #4 and #7 planes. These are full of intelligent, functional features and the accuracy parameters are excellent. Honorable mentions: Starrett straightedges because of their core accuracy that forms the basis for accuracy in the whole shop.

A sports team coach knows that when a job needs to get done in crunch time, he’ll go to his best athlete. That player has the composition, inherent abilities, and playing smarts to find a way to get the job done, often in a manner no one expects.

Similarly, a good woodworking tool must start with a great design, usually time-proven but allowing for smart innovation. Then, the execution must be top quality. You do not want a tool that contains frustrating design or construction flaws for which you must constantly compensate.

With that great tool in hand, your confidence is uplifted. You find ways to get things done well that you maybe did not even expect. The bottom line: that tool helps you become a better craftsman. When at all possible, those are the tools to buy and put to work.

So, the best power tool in my shop is the Byrd Shelix carbide spiral cutterhead that I installed in my DW735 thickness planer. The design is about perfect. The rows of cutters are in a true spiral (helix) pattern, and each cutting edge is cambered. Each cutter can be reset or replaced to make use of its four edges. Along with the outstanding qualities of the DW735, the Shelix allows me options in stock preparation that no conventional cutterhead comes close to matching. 

Just like a coach, these great tools allow me to form a better game plan, execute it well, and very often go beyond what I could otherwise do. These tools do not drag me down, and do not need to be questioned and compensated for. I become a better craftsman and I do better work. 

That is the test of a great tool. I suggest keep this in mind the next time you open a tool catalog or visit your favorite drool tool store. 

I often prefer solid carbide center-cutting upcut spiral end mills for router mortising, especially for 5/16″ mortise widths. They come in longer cutting lengths and longer overall lengths than comparable diameter spiral router bits, and they cut smoothly and cleanly. 

The cutting and shank diameters are the same for end mills. This is especially an issue for 5/16″ bits. I do not like to use router collet bushings to reduce the collet diameter. The inserts are not as flexible as a high quality collet itself and so I think they do not grip the bit as reliably as the regular collet alone. A slipping bit is a bad day, so I do not want to place my trust in the bushing set up if I don’t have to. 

That said, for what it’s worth, I think the best bushings, if that’s what you want to use, are from Infinity Tools, pictured below. I do not like versions with fewer slots because they do not seem to be as flexible. 

DeWalt (for my old Elu, which is essentially the same as the current DW625) and Bosch (for my 1617EVS) do not make dedicated 5/16″ collets, as far as I know. 

There is, however, an ideal solution available! Elaire Corporation makes a wide range of router collets diameters for many routers, including DeWalt and Bosch. These are made in Ohio, and the specs and quality meet or exceed the OEM parts, in my experience. 

Check out their selection here. Prices are reasonable. 

Problem solved. Go mortise.

[Usual disclaimer: This review is unsolicited and uncompensated. I have no proprietary interest in Elaire.] 

The Record #146 holdfast has generated some inquiries over the years, so I’ll address the topic in this post. I bought mine nearly 40 years ago, and while still a good tool, I would not recommend it now because there are better choices. 

I like the Gramercy holdfasts, which I have been using more than the Record for more than 10 years now. They fit in simple 3/4″ holes that you drill directly into the bench top. They cost only $39.95 per pair. I suggest buying the pair because it is helpful to use them together when you want a very secure hold to resist lateral force on the work piece. And you will certainly want more than one of these holes in your bench top because they can be used for many other holding tools, most notably Veritas products including Bench Pups, Wonder Pups, planing stops (I made my own out of wood), and their own holdfast.

If you do want to use the Record, you have to decide where to place the metal collar that it requires. This collar allows you to place lots of pressure on the work if you need it, making this the strongest holdfast I’ve seen. The collar is not really too obtrusive (I don’t recall having rammed a cutting edge into it) but it would not be there if I was setting up a bench now. Happily, I installed only one, those many years ago, and the location has worked out well. 

This collar placement allows a work piece to be held where I can chop dovetails over the right leg structure of the bench. It also can work in conjunction with the tail vise and dog system on the right side of the bench. The pad of the holdfast reaches close enough to the front and to the right side of the bench for practical purposes, and still extends about two feet from the right edge of the bench.