Which of These Items Would You Find in a Wood Shop Class?

Coping saws are the tool you'll be using in woodshop when you need to cut those detailed shapes and curves into your project. They actually date back to the 1500s when fine, flexible blades were first able to be produced. This is not a super easy tool to use right off the bat and will require a bit of practice to master.

There's an old saying among people who work with wood that goes "measure twice, cut once." You need to measure and then remeasure with your tape measure so you don't make a cut you can't undo.

A chisel, or more appropriately a set of chisels, can help you do some old-fashioned wood carving as well as marking the wood for cuts. Not only that, but when you need to clean cuts and joins, they're pretty handy to fit in those tight spaces.

Band saws do a lot of the same kind of cutting a table saw could do, but their strength comes from their ability to do irregular cuts that most other saws cannot. One of the biggest drawbacks of a bandsaw is the actual saw, which is a band of metal, that can stress and break pretty easily (in fact, that's what made them hard to produce after they were invented in the early 1800s).

A claw hammer is the bare-bones most basic tool you'll ever find in a shop. Though hammers are some of the oldest tools in the history of tools in general, claw hammer sonly date back to the early 1500s or so. Arguably, no one needed a claw hammer until they had nails that could be pried out of wood with one.

A handheld metal detector isn't the kind of thing some people expect to find in a shop, but when you're learning about safety procedures, it can be invaluable. If a piece of wood has been used before, for instance, this will help you find any hidden nails or staples.

Though there are lots of kinds of power sanders out there, a simple piece of sandpaper is all you need in a pinch to smooth off a rough edge or surface. Sandpaper has been around since the 13th century when it was made with things like crushed shells as an abrasive.

A utility knife is useful in any trade, but you'll probably find it in a woodshop class where it can be used to score wood, scribe it, and also clean out tight spaces like mortise joints (which may have dust or glue residue).

Every shop class has one of these, whether it's a pegboard or something a little more in-depth. Whatever the case, this is the board that all the hand tools are attached to and need to be returned to just to keep the place neat and organized.

A power drill is the tool you need when a drill press is a little too advanced for what you're doing, or you're drilling in something you just can't put on the press. The added bonus of a power drill is that there are numerous attachments you can swap out from larger sizes to driver bits.

Jigsaw puzzles have that name for a reason as a jigsaw is pretty handy at cutting curved and intricated shapes in ways many other saws can't. The thing to watch out for is trying to cut those shapes too quickly or at too sharp an angle, which can lead to an abundance of snapped jigsaw blades.

A feather board is a tool that keeps your hands away from the cutting blade as much as possible when working with a saw. It applies pressure to the wood you're working with while letting you keep a safe distance from the actual surface being cut.

No work should ever be done in a shop class without first using safety glasses to protect your eyes from wood chips, broken saw blades and more. Some saw blades can move at speeds of up to 50,000 rpm. You don't want that coming near an unprotected eye!

A nail set isn't a set of nails despite the name. They're used to punch a nail into the wood so that they're either perfectly flush or just below the wood surface. The surface can be filled, smoothed and painted, and if it's done right, you'll never know a nail was even there.

A sliding T-bevel looks a bit like a small teeter-totter on a handle and can be locked in place once you've set it to the angle you want, allowing you to easily measure and mark angles from one part of a project to another.

You can do some woodwork without screwdrivers but not a whole lot of it. There are actually over a dozen different kinds of screwdrivers you can use, though usually only 3 or 4 get used most often.

A level is pretty essential to woodworking, especially if you're assembling furniture, to make sure things are flat and even and, well, level. Spirit levels, the kind with a bubble in liquid, were actually invented way back in 1661. Why do they call them spirit levels? The bubble was in spirits or alcohol.

Miter boxes are like an assistant in the woodshop who can hold things exceptionally straight and allow for cutting on perfect angles. You can buy them in hardware stores, but back in the day, carpenters just used to make their own out of scrap wood.

A bencher grinder is a small power tool fixed to a bench that you'd most likely use to sharpen the edge of some tools that see a lot of work and end up dull from overuse. You can swap the wheel for something that polishes also, but that's not super necessary for woodwork.

A rasp looks like an extremely aggressive nail file and, oddly, you can use it for that purpose if you're a farrier and have a horse that needs a hoof trim. In woodwork, it offers some finer control when you're shaping wood by removing excess and grating down corners.

No one should ever even start doing woodwork without a pencil handy. Whether it's scribing the wood, taking down numbers for measurements or drawing a quick sketch of what you're working on, everyone needs a pencil!

Woods warps; that's a fact. It's also cut unevenly sometimes. A jointer can remove the bends and arches in wood and give you a flat piece that you can then smooth out fully with a planer if you want to.

Routers are almost exclusively power tools in the shop these days, but there are non-powered versions that are just not as easy to use. When you're shaping wood like cabinet doors, a router is key for those fast and efficient shaping cuts and edges.

There's no secret meaning behind what a push stick is: it's a stick for pushing. When you need to get in close to a bandsaw or a router or whatever other dangerous tools you're using, push sticks will push that project closer while keeping your hands at a safe distance.

A saber saw is a lot like a jigsaw that's been reformatted. Instead of cutting down, it cuts out. This allows you to use it to get into some tighter areas when you need to trim off an end of a plank or get a wedge out and accuracy and finesse aren't super important to the work.

A block plane looks like a piece of office equipment, but it does have a blade embedded in the underside to allow you to shave off thin bits of wood. You'd use this after you did the main cuts but found you needed a few more finishing touches to get it just right.

A palm sander is just a small orbital sander that adds the power of power tools to the very mundane practice of sanding wood. You can always use a flat orbital sander, a disc sander, a belt sander or a few other kinds.

Clearly a combination square can measure length like any ruler, but it can also measure angles, depth, the center of circles and even give you a decent idea of whether or not something is level.

Wood stain is like paint but preserves that natural look of the wood grain while also sealing it at the same time. It helps protect against water or humidity, which can warp your wood and make it ugly.

Precision calipers are for some serious woodworking that's done right. These help you measure something like the diameter of a drilled hole down to the smallest fraction of an inch — 1/1000th of an inch, in fact!

Tools for creating are important, but so is general shop upkeep and maintenance, which means you need that shop vac to clean up. This is actually more important than you might think, since a build-up of sawdust is not just messy but bad for your lungs and a fire hazard.

A hand drill is great for some tasks, but a drill press is a great addition to any shop class that affords you some next-level control. Clamp down your wood, and you can drill some precision holes of almost any size through any kind of wood.

Wood glue is remarkably helpful for bonding two pieces, say the joints at the edge of a frame, where something like nails or screws just wouldn't work. A lot of wood glue is formulated in a way that lets it fill into gaps so you only need a tiny bit to make a fairly strong bond.

A simple hand saw is one of the old school essentials for a woodshop. Even Ancient Egyptians used these. Sure, most power tools can replace them easily, but you don't always have access to power tools; it's good to learn how to handle the basic version.

Any shop needs safety gloves, but in a woodshop, you're going to want the kind that are reinforced and cut resistant for those times when your hand gets too close to a blade. There could be upwards of a dozen different kinds of power saws in a woodshop, so it's good to be prepared and safe.

A workbench is pretty much essential for any work in a woodshop. Sometimes this will just be a very simple bench, while others might have built-in clamps as well as a power supply or tool storage to make the job a little easier.

When you learn about crosscuts and angled in woodshop class, you'll be doing them with a miter saw. Saw you're making a wooden picture frame, for instance. The joints where two sides meet is probably going to be cut on a 45-degree angle. A miter saw is a perfect tool for that crosscut.

A simple clamp is a remarkably important tool in woodworking. You can hardly glue anything and expect it to stay together without clamping it. Likewise, any assembly or cutting at all that requires a steady piece of wood is going to need a clamp. It makes things safer and more efficient!

Few tools are more common in a woodshop class than the table saw. If you have no other power saw available, you pretty much need this one, which makes cutting larger pieces of wood, especially many pieces, fairly quick and efficient. These kinds of saws were patented back in the 1700s.

Jigs come in many different shapes and sizes but are essentially reusable templates. Some can be purchased from stores like Home Depot, and they've been made of plastic and steel, while a woodworker can also make their own for specific tasks. They'll help you make the same angled cuts or drill holes, for instance.