Working with wood using hand tools is rapidly becoming a lost art. Most of the critical hand tools one needs are not even available at your local Lowe's or Home Depot. Instead, we have tiny, fancy saws with teeth that can't be re-sharpened by hand, cheap planes with poor-quality steel blades, precious few ways to make a hole by hand, and reliance on tons of fancy sanding equipment and specialized sandpaper for finishing.

There are a huge number of things that are going to be needed from your local woodworker. Wagons, buggies, barrels, bowls, furniture of all kinds. Garden carts. Storage boxes. Spoons. Door bars. Plows. Shoe lasts. Tons of stuff. Infinite possibilities. But you need tools and skills.

First, you'll need to be able to convert trees to lumber. There may not be a lumber mill around, so milling your own is a definite possibility. You'll need some serious saws, like those from CrossCut Saw Company. Don't forget files to sharpen them. You only need the basics if you're just going to support yourself, but you could also set up shop next to a stream or river and build a full lumber mill. Like I said, there are lots of paths for the woodworker.

Once you have lumber, you need to be able to cut it lengthwise and across. So you need a good crosscut saw and a good rip saw. For precise joinery you need precise angles, and thus a good backsaw and mitre box. Hand drill, drills, hand brace, and bits for making holes. Garrett Wade is a good source for a lot of good quality hand tools, and Woodworker Supply has the carving tools and bench vises you'll need. A good dowel maker like this unless you plan on spending all your time doing mortise and tenon or dovetail joints. Chisels and a good mallet. Scrapers instead of sandpaper. Scribing and marking tools because pencils will be in short supply. Squares big and small. Measuring tape. Small hammer up to 5 lb sledge hammer. Really good tweezers and a magnifying glass for splinter removal. A couple of small utility blades, not the box-cutter type but a good fixed blade that can be sharpened like this. A couple of rasps. Medium and large hand planes of good quality. A couple of spokeshaves and draw knives. A really good bench vise like this at a minimum. A set of sharpening files and stones because working with sharp tools is ten times faster, easier, and safer than working with dull tools. You can go nuts, but this list covers the basics.

The key is quality in your tools. Stuff you can sharpen. Heirloom stuff that will last the rest of your life and be passed on to the next generation when the solar panels and batteries are dead and gone, but well after you found out that those DC tools you were counting on were woefully inadequate for production work.

If you're interested in woodworking, you already have some of this stuff, but the rest is stuff you didn't consider because you had power and a supply chain for consumeables like sandpaper, glue, screws, and nails. Primitive nails will be available from the local blacksmith, and glue can be made from a variety of materials, but the rest will be hard to find. You can stockpile some stuff, but it will eventually run out. Best to learn how to do hand-made joinery now while your life doesn't depend on it.

So what's your first project? Make a board from a piece of firewood. Make it smooth (no saw marks). Make it square. You'll learn a lot from that exercise.

Second project: Cut that board in half and join the two pieces at a right angle. Make the angle precise and the joint tight. Lots more learning will happen and a lot of scrap will be produced.

Third project: Join several pieces edge-to-edge to make a surface of some sort. Suggestion: dowels are your friend. Another suggestion: Bottom braces were common back in the day for a reason.

After that, the sky is the limit. You'll probably go back to your normal power tool set for most projects, but at least you'll know what you're up against and can keep your hand in with the occasional project.

I remember back when I was a kid my dad took me onto a construction site for a large residence. I was introduced to the guy that did all the finish carpentry work (doors, windows, stairs, railings, etc.). I was enlisted to help this guy all day for three days running because dad said he was one of the last of the hand-crafters in the field and I needed to see how he did things. I remember some things very clearly:

He had a "tool roll" for every class of tool and would retrieve the necessary roll as needed from his truck. The roll would be unrolled and the needed tool retrieved. When done with the tool, it would go back on top of its normal place in the unrolled tool roll (he had a separate table just for unrolled tool rolls). This way he always knew two things: where to get the tool he needed, and what tools he had used during the day. At the end of the day he would take each tool that had been used and clean it, sharpen it if necessary, apply a bit of oil, and place it back into its slot in the tool roll. Then he rolled up all his tools, put them back in the truck, and went on his merry way. If you're going to go mobile, tool rolls seem to be an excellent system. For my shop, I always do an end-of-day sweep up and tool maintenance thing similar to what he did. A tool, once used, sits around on a bench or shelf until the end of the day. Then it's examined, maintained, and put away properly.