I walked up to the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on a crisp Fall morning in 2006, excited for my first class on hand tool woodworking. I’d picked up a simple pine board ahead of time as instructed, but when I reached the building I saw a man outside with a much nicer looking board than mine. We got to talking and I learned that his name was Tom, and that he was in the same class. He took one look at the board I was carrying and said “You’ve got the wrong kind there, we were supposed to get clear pine.” Fortunately, he happened to have another board in his car and would be happy to give me. As we walked into a nearby parking garage he laughed about something and I stopped - “Wait are you Tom from Cartalk?” He winked and said yes, and that was our secret for the rest of the class. I love Cambridge.

The class was just what I was looking for. Our instructor, Dan Paret walked us through the basics of building a simple box without using any machines. We cut the wood down to size with the aid of a japanese hand saw. A wooden jack plane helped us flatten each board and reduce it to the right thickness, and we made each one perfectly square using a plane and a shooting board. Finally, we nailed it all together and added rabbets on the top using a solid metal shoulder plane. I loved how simple everything was, and how fulfilling it felt to turn a slightly warped board into a nice flat board with a pile of shavings on the side. Dan walked us through the use of every tool and showed us how he sharpened the blades (he wouldn’t let us touch them while sharpening, which I very much understand). The final box was quite simple, but I have it to this day.

I returned to the class for a second time the next year. Sadly, my friend Tom wasn’t there, but I did see him around Harvard Square now and then and he always said hi. In the class, I decided to focus on making my own wooden plane, so that I could start to work on these sorts of projects at home. I knew I’d be living in apartments for quite a while and wouldn’t have the space for any machine tools, but I just might be able to fit in a small workbench and a few hand tools of my own.