Hand Tool Purist Completes Entire Home Renovation Using Only a Chisel

Craig Andersen of Bozeman, Montana has completed a full gut renovation of his 1,800-square-foot home using exclusively a one-inch Lie-Nielsen bench chisel and a wooden mallet, a project that took four years and was motivated entirely by an argument he had on a woodworking forum in 2021. 'Someone said you can't build a house with hand tools,' Andersen explained, standing in the foyer of what is objectively a well-built home. 'I said you could do it with a single chisel. They laughed. So here we are.' The renovation, which Andersen documented on his blog 'One Chisel to Rule Them All,' includes hand-chopped mortise and tenon framing, plumbing joints that were somehow carved from copper pipe, and electrical boxes that the county inspector described as 'technically compliant but existentially troubling.' 'He chiseled the wire channels into the studs,' said inspector Robert Fay, reviewing the project with an expression of bewildered respect. 'He chiseled the junction boxes. I asked him how he stripped the wire and he showed me a technique involving the chisel corner that I cannot describe because it violates several assumptions I held about electrical work.' Andersen's plumbing is the project's most controversial element. He carved compression fittings from copper stock using the chisel, a technique that has no precedent in plumbing history. 'It leaks slightly,' he admitted. 'But so does conventional plumbing. Mine just leaks with more character.' The original forum argument has since been deleted by moderators, meaning the event that precipitated a four-year, single-tool home renovation no longer exists on the internet. Andersen says he has screenshots. His next project is a garage, for which he intends to use a slightly wider chisel. 'Inch and a quarter,' he said. 'I'm not a purist about it.'