If you thought the miniature shoulder plane in GW224:17 was maybe a little too twee to be taken seriously, then this plane is the real deal. It's based on an old Preston design, and is used to shoot shoulders and clean or tweak the floor of a housing.

In my day saws were sold in two flavours: tenon and dovetail. There are other types, sure, but they were few and far between. Across the pond, however, they seem to favour a more exotic system of nomenclature, hence the 'carcass saw' from Veritas.

A few months back this Veritas quick-release tail vise turned up on my doorstep, having been sent directly from Lee Valley in Canada, which wanted to know what I made of it. My first thought, actually, was to shelve my plans to fit a normal tail vise to my bench, as this one can be retro-fitted and would therefore have been the easier option.

With laser-guided plunge routers, high-powered nail guns, muscle-machine handheld planers, and granite-topped tablesaws getting top billing on home-improvement TV shows and in the big-box stores, it's understandable why the humble hand tool is viewed as an anachronism by many builders.

If you use bench planes, your core set should include three tools: a jack, jointer and smoothing plane. Used together, these three tools flatten and smooth surfaces, and perform many other workshop tasks.

Allow me to skip to the bottom line here and say that the Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide is the most thoughtful, accurate and well-made honing guide for sharpening chisels and straight plane irons I’ve ever used. If you like honing guides, you’ll be thrilled by this one. If you don’t like them, this one might convert you.

Step into our shop and see how our tools are made.