I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand.” — Confucius

When my dad died a couple of decades ago, I inherited a plane.

Before you start asking about how many people the plane seats or how she handles in turbulence, I should let you know that the plane I inherited is the type one uses to shave wood from a board.

I also inherited a set of chisels, a hand saw or two, some clamps, a brace and a set of bits, a Yankee drill, a T-square and various odd-looking tools whose precise functions I have yet to figure out. I think one of them has to do with making rabbits, which seems odd to me, but biology was never my strong suit.

My dad was a very skilled woodworker. He made beautiful furniture, picnic tables, benches, cheese boards and assorted other items out of oak, redwood, maple and something called cocobolo, which is either an exotic hardwood or a state of mind.

When I was home and not otherwise engaged in an important activity such as shooting baskets or setting plastic army men on fire, I’d help dad as he worked on his latest project in the garage, although I use the term “help” in its very loosest sense. Most of my help was holding on to the end of a board variety, or in the nature of running to the hardware store to buy a couple of wood screws or a piece of doweling.

By the way, I say I “inherited” my father’s plane and other tools, but to be accurate, I didn’t so much inherit them as I was elected to clear them out of the garage and find a good home for them. Lacking any other immediately available alternative, I put the tools in a large box and mailed them to myself here on Bainbridge Island.

They arrived within a day or two after I returned from dad’s funeral, all in good shape and none the worse for the wear, which, incidentally, gave me a good idea about how I might be able to save a little money on airfare next time I travel to Southern California.

Since my dad’s tools arrived at my door, they have occupied a safe but undisturbed location in my garage, right between the various Pinewood Derby cars my son Adam and I built over the years and the half dozen or so boxes of children’s Halloween costumes that Wendy says we’ll find a use for someday.

They might very well still be sitting there today, untouched by any human hands other than my father’s had I not spotted a class in Bainbridge Park & Recreation’s winter catalog called “Green Woodworking” taught by Mike Ballou. I looked at the class description, I thought about the tools in my garage, and before you could say Bob’s your uncle and watch your thumb, I was signed up.

Green Woodworking is an excellent and thoroughly entertaining way to learn how to use and appreciate hand tools like the ones I inherited from my dad. Ballou is a very knowledgeable and patient teacher of traditional woodworking skills, and he won’t laugh at you if you split the leg of one of your sawhorses while trying to pull out a nail that you pounded in at a comically incorrect angle. Not that this ever happened to me, of course. Besides, I think the nail was defective. Or the hammer.

Now, when I use my new woodworking skills and dad’s plane to level out a rough crosscut, or when I use one of his chisels to tidy up a beveled edge, I can’t help but think that somewhere my dad is smiling and wondering why it took me so long to appreciate the joy and satisfaction that comes from using simple, human-powered tools.

And if I ever figure out what that weird wooden thing is with the sliding doohickey and the two little pins that I found on dad’s workbench, I’m sure I’ll have discovered the secret to the universe.

Tom Tyler writes a weekly humor column for this newspaper. This is from his “Classics Files” from years ago.