The man who is most successful is the one who is best prepared for his work. In beginning to learn how to use woodworking tools, the average boy is very often hampered by the lack of facilities. The place he is to use for his shop should at least have good light. Many of the lines he uses are knife lines, which are harder to see than pencil lines, so that light at least is an essential.

The tools should be as good as he can obtain. This does not mean that it is necessary to have elaborate sets of chisels, gouges, etc., but the cutting tools should be of well tempered steel. It is far better to have a few very good tools than an elaborate equipment of poor ones, such as the boy's ready-made tool chest often contains.

A good workman is one who can do a large variety of good work with a few well-selected tools.

One reason for our having given so much space to knife work was to illustrate this very fact. Very often the carved pieces described in previous chapters are salable at good figures, and from the money thus obtained a supply of bench or carpenters' tools can be bought.

Next to a well lighted place in which to work, a fairly good bench is essential. This can be made by the boy himself, if he cannot secure one already built, but as the construction of a bench presupposes some previous practice with tools, we will assume that our readers receive their first tool practice on a bench already built, just as Harry did.

Several forms of benches on the market are shown in Fig. 87.

The bench to be of any use must have a vise of some description, as very often both hands are required to guide the tool, and the wood must be held rigid.

The old-fashioned screw vise is cheap, and a cheap vise may be made at a cost of half a dollar, by purchasing the screw and nut and making the jaw and guides by hand, but this again calls for the use of a bench. So taken all in all it will pay the young woodworker to save his money and buy a good vise even if the bench is home-made.

This is just where our boys had their first argument; Harry wanted to begin by building a work bench.

"That is where you are wrong," said Ralph. "Perhaps you remember that you wanted to begin knife work by making a paper cutter, and as a matter of fact it was very nearly the last thing I gave you to do. It required all your skill and previous practice to accomplish it. It will be just the same with the bench and vise. You will be able to construct them, but only after considerable experience with tools. You might as well insist on making all your tools before starting to use them or you might insist on going into the woods, cutting down trees and ripping out your own planks for stock. Just wait a minute."

He went into the house and came out with a pamphlet on lumbering, which he opened at the picture shown in Fig 88. It represents the old style of sawing out planks by hand before the coming of the saw-mill.

The man in the pit is called a pit man, the one on the log, the sawyer. This method of cutting lumber was in vogue up to about fifty years ago.

"This," said Ralph, "is what your line of reasoning would lead us back to, so if I am to be your instructor you must leave these things to my judgment, and my advice is to start work with a good bench having on it a good vise."

To let you into a family secret, the boys' work in carving had been admired by several friends and they had worked up quite a trade in making and selling their carvings. From the money they had saved they purchased the bench shown in Fig. 89. It was very well built, having a heavy top of 3-inch maple and a modern quick action vise. The seven drawers underneath were not really necessary, but the boys found them very handy for storing tools, nails, screws, unfinished work, etc.

The space under a bench is very apt to become a catch-all and a nuisance, so as time went on they concluded that the extra cost of this bench was justified, although at the time the price seemed very high. Some of the cheaper benches they looked at are shown in Fig. 87.

The quick action vise was a great time saver, as it could be pulled wide open or pushed back without turning the handle, as in the old screw vises.

A dozen of these quick action vises are on the market, and may be had at hardware stores for from four dollars upward.

This flat topped bench had no tool rack, and could consequently be worked on from any side. At first, the owners kept most of their tools in the large drawer at the top, but later on they made a good sized tool cabinet, which was fastened to the wall and will be described later.

The iron bench stop also proved a valuable feature, as it could be fastened at any desired height by a set screw, or dropped down out of the way below the level of the bench top. When planing thin wood, one end of the board is braced against the bench stop. Ralph found that starting with a new bench had another advantage. It helped his pupil to take good care of the bench. Harry was very careful not to saw or cut it as he might have done with an old bench, and to foster this spirit of carefulness, Ralph gave him for his first problem the making of a bench hook. (Fig. 90.) The tools used in its construction were:

The maple board was first laid out as shown at a, a pencil line being drawn 2 inches from one edge. The piece was placed in the vise horizontally, and both long edges planed straight and true and tested with the try square.

The block was then placed upright in the vise, and the ends planed square with the block plane. This required much explaining and practise, as the block plane has a bad habit of breaking off the farther corner.

Ralph showed Harry how to use this tool safely by planing only part way across the end and then finishing from the other side. Both ends were tested with the try square.

The piece was now sawed in two by using a rip saw on the pencil line, the wood being held in the vise in an upright position.

This made two pieces of stock 12 inches long, one 2 inches wide, the other 8 inches nearly, as the saw cut had removed some of the wood.The 2-inch piece was laid out as shown at b. The marking gauge was set at 1³/₄ inches and from the joint edge—that already planed—a line was gauged on each flat face, and the sawed edge planed to these lines as at b.

It was then laid out as shown at c, two knife lines being squared around the four sides ¹/₈ inch apart. The piece was then sawed apart carefully between these two knife lines, and the ends block planed and tested.

Two ¹/₄-inch holes were bored, as shown at d, in each piece, and countersunk with the countersink bit. This makes a place for the screw heads, so they will be below the surface where they cannot be in the way of tools or scratch the bench.The wide piece was next planed on its sawed edge, and the blocks screwed on. That the bench hook might always be handy and have a definite place of its own, a half-inch hole was bored as shown in the illustration, and it was hung on a nail, set in the end of the bench.

The bench hook is designed to protect the bench from saw marks and the cuts of chisels, gouges, etc. The method of using it with the saw is shown in Fig. 91. Wherever possible, it should be made of hard wood.