Which tools to square small blocks of wood? (Beginner)

[Jacob]

What do you suggest someone without a bench or workshop hooks his shooting board over?

Any table, chest of drawers etc as long as it is braced firmly up against the wall.

 

[Ttrees]

Depending if the blocks are a bit smaller than the width of a no.5 1/2, it would be possible with a shooting board.
If not that would be quite tricky to hold without a bench.
Easiest way for a temporary solution I could think is making some saw horses first and laying down a beam to plane on.
Buy some clamps, f clamps will give the best bang for your buck.
If you can get the wood accurately planed at the size already then a mitre saw with a fancy blade will leave a fairly good surface
You could carry that outside and cut up a bag of them.

If you made some nice sawhorses like what MikeG made recently, they would double up as nice seats tables etc.

Tom

 

[Jacob]

Depending if the blocks are a bit smaller than the width of a no.5 1/2, it would be possible with a shooting board.
If not that would be quite tricky to hold without a bench.......

Depends on the design of shooting board - a long one could double as a bench hook if the OPs workpieces are only 12" max long.
Plane flat on top, plane edges and ends from side. The stop would have to be thinner than thinnest board desired.

 

[samhay]

Perhaps another option would be to use a Cooper's plane? Can't imagine these are easy to find, but if you can fix/hold a longer bench plane upside down, you could fake it.
http://www.handplane.com/60/hand-planin ... items/amp/

What do you use to hold the timber when you're carving?

 

[ED65]

Jof, I too think a plane is your ideal solution here. Planing can be an inexpensive, relatively quick and frankly very satisfying way to do what you need, very quietly too. And it will produce minimal dust, although if you're like me you will be repeatedly amazed at the volume the shavings will take up even working on small pieces.

IMO you don't need more than plane. It is perfectly doable to outfit yourself with a 4 and a 5 for reasonable money, buying new or vintage, but more than a few of us have done quite a bit of woodworking armed with only a no. 4. It's the ideal place to start anyway, if needed you can always get another one in due course.

I wouldn't give too much credence to the ideal that you have to have a proper bench to be able to use a hand plane! And not just for the size of the work you're asking about here either – there's a long tradition of kitchen-table woodworking among amateur woodworkers, going back all the way to the 19th century. But if your kitchen counters have the right shape you can do all your planing there, on a planing board or bench hook of some sort which can be a very simple affair and work perfectly.

Nobody has specifically tackled the end grain for some reason and while you can plane this perfectly well with non-specialist plane like a standard no. 4 you may not need to. You can get what I'm sure would be a perfectly acceptable surface for your needs directly from a hand saw, especially one with Japanese-style teeth as these tend to leave a particularly good surface.

To get very straight and square cuts you can buy or build a mitre box, or simply clamp a guide piece to the surface of the wood being cut and the saw can bear against this as you saw.