Opinions; everyone's got them.

Now last week I admitted to having gone slightly mad with the credit card - and completely forgot that there was yet another book on order, which duly turned up. Made By Hand, Furniture Projects from the Unplugged Workshop by Tom Fidgen. As soon as I ran across reference to it, I was excited to read it - at last, a book of projects written with hand tools in mind. Unfortunately I was disappointed.

You see I have this, quite probably erroneous, notion that a project for making with hand tools should be aimed to get the best out them. Taking advantage of the efficiency that a dedicated tool - like a plough or rebate - can bring to a project. Using designs and joinery that make the best of them. But there I am, faced with lots of stopped housings and grooves again, just like every power tool project in every magazine and book. All of which seem calculated just make you regard the plough as a bog awful tool and where the devil did I out the spanner for the router...? Or at least it does to me. Which is why I was so happy when I thought it was a book of hand tool projects, not just projects built with hand tools. I confess I gave up reading them after the first two or three and just looked at the photographs.

The projects themselves are an interesting selection, and cover lots of techniques pretty well. The tool box design with the built-in shooting board is clever, although where in Hades I could find the hinges I have no idea. Having them all in one picture to get an idea of relative size is very helpful. I'll draw a veil over the actual designs, 'cos not everyone's taste is the same. I will say that the gallery proves that Mr Fidgen is no mean craftsman, but any small table that can be described with reference to Shaker, Japanese and Arts & Crafts is always going to be a challenge to pull off...

But none of that bothers me as much as the basic things, like terminology. Please, please don't describe a short-arsed planing board as a bench hook and a bench hook as a mitre hook - woodworking terminology is confused enough as it is, isn't it? A groove is not a dado, even if you are used to cutting it with a dado head in a tablesaur. And the contrasting wood on a set of winding sticks isn't to make it look pretty - the sticks are supposed to contrast with each other not themselves. It's just totally missing the point and - as you may be able to tell - drives me up the wall. I also fail to understand the point in having 'how to' sections, such as dovetailing, that are essentially someone else's teaching. Just say 'Buy Rob Cosman's DVD' and have done.

I wanted to love it, I really did, but too much of it made me grind my teeth. I'm sure there are loads of folks who absolutely love it and are sharpening their quills to tell me so even now, and that's good (Good that you like it, not that you're going to attack me with sharpened feathers!) I hope it gets more people to eschew their power cords for a change. But it's not for me.

It did get me wondering though, about what happened to the manuscript for a book on making furniture with hand tools called Chisel, Mallet, Plane and Saw written by Tony Konovaloff that John Brown wrote about back in September 1997. Like JB himself, TK was a bit too far ahead of the game then, hand tools still be regarded as old fashioned and past their sell-by-date. At the time he was making furniture entirely by hand in a workshop so small that larger pieces had to be built in two parts and joined with sliding dovetails. If you want to see the quality of work he produced just with hand tools and have The Toolbox Book, then you'll find his gorgeous tool chest detailed therein. Try not to dribble too much...

And finally, while I'm spouting off opinions on stuff I've bought, a small review of the Quangsheng No.3 Bedrock Pattern Smoothing Plane over on UK Workshop from yours truly. And a pretty picture to go with it...