Two weeks ago, Chris wondered about favorite tools that got you started in woodworking. Many share! – Editor
“I vividly remember my first power tool—a Craftsman drill on my 13th birthday! I can still picture me jumping around in excitement. I still have it 50+ years later.” – Rick Bird
“Your jigsaw story has brought back many great memories. My parents bought me mine when I was in seventh grade. I don’t know where my mom came up with the money. We were poor as could be in 1974. I still have mine (I’m now about 63) and it sets proudly on my shop next to my olive green saw I got the summer of ’77. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.” – Douglas Palmer
“I will never forget my first woodworking tool. My father was an engineer with a woodworking ‘hobby.’ He and I would build whatever he thought we needed from shelves to cabinets to sometimes furniture. I envied the Shopsmith he purchased in the summer when I was about 13 years old. It had so many different features. Even at that age, I was permitted to use the lathe to make a few projects. I even made a baseball bat-not major league quality but it looked like a bat. But that is not the tool. That Christmas, I received a scroll saw. I had seen it in the show room when my father purchased the Shopsmith. The sales guy said it was a great ‘beginners’ tool. Little did I know that it was included with the order for the Shopsmith. Now I actually have my very own first woodworking tool. I can’t tell you how much wood I went through that year. Now that I have ‘matured’ to the age of 70+, I have expanded my woodworking arena to include more tools than I ever thought I would have. Thanks for the memory jogger.” – Mark L. Sanders
“When I read ‘an olive green, single-speed jigsaw,’ I couldn’t help but wonder if it was the mate to the first electric drill I had. It was a Sears Companion (see above photos), the less expensive brand to Sears Craftsman. While that drill, given to me by one of my uncles, was and still is a special tool to me, the first special tool was an old hand saw that belonged to my mom’s brother. I have a picture of me, at 3 years old, using it to cut a piece of wood that was propped up on a tree stump behind my grandmother’s house when we visited her in Ireland.” – Ed C.
“My dad was big into model railroading. When I was very little, he had a layout in the garage and was always in there tinkering. I remember so many tools that fascinated me, but your story reminded me of the Craftsman jigsaw my dad had. Shiny and silver. That thing weighed a ton, by my little-hand standards. I would watch in wonderment when my dad used it. Back in those days (’60s) he also had an old-timey hand crank drill. I could play with that thing for hours. I got into model railroading at an early age because of my dad, and I put together a lot of wooden kits. Combined with the wood used for the bench work, working with wood was always something I enjoyed. Funny how it took 50 years to get into real woodworking, but I’m glad I did.” – Robert Hancox
“Way back when I ‘graduated’ from eighth grade in 1966, my uncle Ed gave me a wooden miter box with saw, a square and a hand drill with bits held inside the handle. I’ve made many small projects with those tools over the years, and to this day I still reach for the small square when working on smaller projects, even though the markings are worn and getting hard to see. The square and hand drill have their place on the pegboard over my workbench, and the miter box has its resting place underneath. The saw gets occasional use as well.” – Jim Higgins
“I think I had that same jigsaw (if you are using jigsaw in the sabre saw sense)—see the attached photo from an eBay listing—I don’t think I still have it. Mine was a Black & Decker, and I actually won it in the seventh grade selling magazine subscriptions for my school’s fundraiser. Looking back, I’ve gotta think that my school mates had to wonder why I chose a saw from the long list of prizes you could choose. I also kinda wonder why it was on a list of prizes for a school fundraiser. A couple years later, I asked for and received a Craftsman radial arm saw for Christmas. You could do everything with those (according to the book that came with it). I did rip wood with it using every guard and anti-kickback device it had. I thought I was lucky to get it back then; now I think I was lucky to use it at that age and still have all my fingers. I still have that saw, kinda buried in my shop, a victim of the sliding compound miter saw. I have continued my woodworking hobby over these 48 years, sometimes taking a bit of a hiatus when I was busy raising kids. But I have always come back to it, and now I make gifts for my family, including my grandkids. I never did it as an occupation … maybe that’s why I still love it!” – Todd Teresi
“Teach a child a useful skill and he may just turn out to be a good person. Especially if you stimulate his imagination with something like a jigsaw and a pile of scrap wood. The year I graduated high school, my hometown of Lubbock, Texas, was hit by a severe tornado. (That tornado spawned the development of the Fujita scale.) Large portions of the city were leveled. I spent the summer helping an electrical contractor rebuild his shops, and then we rebuilt his home. I worked alongside two master carpenters. I learned a great deal regarding tools and techniques. I also hit my thumb a few times because I was watching them. It was inspirational to stand back at the end and say, ‘I built that.’ Three tool developments occurred as a result—I will confess I was a tool nut from about age 6: 1)I bought myself a 16 oz. Plumb hammer, which was what the masters were using. Great hammer. Wish I still had it. 2) I bought my father a Skilsaw for his birthday (kinda like giving Dad a baseball mitt, right?). That saw finally gave up the ghost after about 50 years of hard use. 3) I developed a powerful desire to own a proper table saw. One of the masters had a Craftsman contractor saw set up on the driveway. We rebuilt the roof of the boss’s house, stick by stick. This was not a simple hip roof. We had rafters going everywhere. We would measure the distance from ridge to top plate for each rafter. The master would open a little black book, set the proper angles on the Craftsman and hand us a rafter cut to fit perfectly. It was magical. Years later, I did finally own a Craftsman saw. Then I bought my current cabinet saw and never looked back. I think the maker’s motivation is to leave the world a better place. Tools help. Good tools help better.” – Steve Dragg
“Origin stories…something like this?” – John Calcagno
“The jigsaw story brought back a few memories of my own—especially since my father had the great idea of building a size-appropriate workbench and gifting me a ‘Handy Andy’ tool set for my seventh birthday. I used the workbench (and some of the tools) in our basement until I was in my twenties. I kind of wish I still had it.” – Robert Waldbauer
“I grew up in Maine (well, some say that I haven’t yet). My grandfather retired from a lifetime of raising laying hens, and at one time maintained a flock of 30,000. He candled the eggs in his basement and sold them in cartons to locals, and he sold fertilized eggs to other chicken farmers. In that same dank basement sat a mostly unused table saw, and THAT is where I got my start, putting things together with wood. I used his hand drill, with the old-style chuck key, chisels, and, as you portrayed, worked from the scrap pile that he had amassed through the years. That’s where I got my love for woodworking, and I still do ANYTHING I can, ANYTIME I can!” – Dan Willard
“My dad had all the tools a kid needed and taught me to use them, and I’ve now inherited and still use a few. My origin story is on supplies. In the 1950s, most produce arrived at grocery stores in lightweight wooden crates. Many of them were single-use and ended up as trash behind our neighborhood grocery. This was before dumpsters and trash compactors. I would take as many as I could carry on my bike and disassemble them at home. They were nailed together, not glued thankfully, so after pulling and straightening the nails I had wood and fasteners for my own creations. Of course, I later learned that true woodworking rarely involves nails.” – Henry Burks
“My first power tool was also a jigsaw purchased around the age of 10. I spent all my Christmas money and got a deal. Since the hardware store didn’t have a price tag on it, they gave me the three-speed for the price of a single. I recently replaced it with a more accurate and powerful one, but the 65-year-old one still works.” – Marc Webb
“Growing up, I was always a tinkerer. It was the start of the space program, and I kept up with every Mercury launch in a handwritten journal. This led me to several mishaps and near disasters, from finding out how much electricity a 9-volt battery has when you’re trying to build an antenna to listen to the spacecrafts as they flew overhead, and seeing how much power can be released by mixing certain chemicals (the exact formula is not given to protect future generations) while trying to build a miniature booster rocket. All of this imagination and experimentation let me to my earliest woodworking skills. When I was nine years old, my parents moved to the countryside outside of Houston (when Houston was a little town, now that house is near the center of town). I watched the builders construct homes on the empty fields surrounding our house. (There were no other kids in the neighborhood my age yet). The construction workers noticed that I was paying close attention to what they were doing, and when I asked them if I could have any of the lumber, they showed me the scrap pile and told me I could take anything I wanted from those piles. Fast forward: the now 10-year-old started to put all that lumber that I had collected into a project. My father ‘let’ me use his hand saw and one of his hammers, and I started to build a ‘club house’ in our backyard. That was an on-going project for over a year, with new modifications and upgrades constantly being added. It got to the point where my dad, my grandfathers and even the construction workers would come by and give me pointers and suggestions. With the support from all parties, that club house became a 10 x 12 ft. room with a wooden floor, a gabled roof, attic space, two windows, a door on hinges with locking handle, a bed and desk and electricity (via a 100-foot extension cord). The club house survived a hurricane and it survived being moved 14 in. back to our property line with automobile jacks and bricks. Fast forward once again, and as I entered my mid-teenage years my interest went in a different direction and the club house was not utilized any longer. So, I added demolition to my skillset but always used my building skills around the house as I got married and started a family of my own. I started woodworking as a hobby about 10 years ago with simple boxes and picture frames on a workbench in my two-car garage. When I got ready to (semi) retire, my wife let me use the one-car garage (so I would stay out of her two-car garage) as my workshop. I am now making more things for the grandchildren that keep coming into our lives. More important, I am teaching my 6-, 10- and 16-year-old grandchildren how to use that handsaw and hammer and teaching the 3- and 4-year-olds how to sand by hand. I think that I am getting more enjoyment out of watching all of them learn than I ever got from building my club house. Who says that you can’t teach an old man new tricks?” – Almer Engle
“In June of ’69, my dad gave me a hammer and allowed me to borrow his handsaw. I was 8 and built our boxer a huge whelping box with two boards taller than the other two. She had her litter of five pups in that box, the day Apollo landed on the moon. Guess which event was more important?” – Elaine D.
““During woodworking shop in the ninth grade (1953-54), I fell in love with the lathe. The sound of our big planer was mesmerizing. So many of us were trying to build cedar chests.” – Ned Moore
