Stanley Works used to publish a brilliant booklet called the “Tool Guide” that contained miniature posters that offered instruction on setup, care and use of hand tools.
These booklets weren’t just for woodworkers – you can learn to rivet and create a lock edge on sheet metal with these posters. The 38 pages were bound together, perforated so you could remove them and were pre-punched with holes for a three-ring binder.
Last weekend a student in a class handed me a mint copy of the “Tool Guide” from 1968. He was a retired shop teacher and had used them in his classes. What a treasure. I’ve always wanted one, but they can be hard to come by, especially in this condition.
This morning I read the pages that dealt with handplanes. Stanley packs a bunch of good, no-nonsense information into just seven pages. I scanned them so you could check them out for yourself.
Stanley_Tool_Guide_1968
— Christopher Schwarz