How we research

Starting from real jobs

Guides start with the tasks themselves. Before writing about bench height, we build and use benches at different heights. Before writing about sharpening, we work through the method described on several tools. This is where the practical detail comes from: the order of steps, the common mistakes, what is easy and what is fiddly.

Hands-on experience has limits. One person's workshop is not a laboratory, and we do not present it as testing in a scientific sense. We do not run product comparisons or publish ratings.

Primary sources for facts

For anything factual, and especially anything about safety or the law, we go to primary sources:

• Regulators and government. The Health and Safety Executive for dust, noise, machinery and electrical safety; GOV.UK and the national governments for building regulations including Part P; the Planning Portal for planning questions.
• Standards. The relevant British and European standards, such as EN 166 for eye protection, EN 149 for disposable respirators, EN 60335-2-69 for dust extractor classes and BS 7671 for wiring, through their published summaries and official guidance.
• Manufacturers' instructions. For how a type of tool should be used, maintained and charged, the manual is often the most specific source.

Our sources page lists the organisations we rely on most.

What we avoid

• Forum threads and videos as a source of facts. They can be useful for spotting questions people ask, but claims found there are checked elsewhere before use.
• Press releases and marketing material.
• Invented statistics. If we cannot find a reliable figure, we describe the issue without one.

Regional differences

Our guides are written for the UK. Building regulations, planning rules and some electrical requirements differ between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and we flag those differences rather than assuming one set of rules applies everywhere.

How claims are checked once a draft exists is covered on our fact-checking page.