What I'm about to write is the progression you'd use if you wanted to exclusively use Tinker's Construct- you don't actually even need any vanilla tools at all (though I suggest starting out with a vanilla set of stone tools, it's much easier).
1. Punch trees
2. Create patterns and use those and your wood to make a stencil table, part builder, pattern chest, tool station, and a vanilla crafting table. Refer to the yellow book.
3. Place blank patterns in the stencil table and make patterns for a basic tool set: Pickaxe head, tool binding, shovel head, axe head, sword blade, wide guard, and tool rod. Place them in the pattern chest, which should be adjacent to your part builder.
4. Use some wood planks or sticks at the part builder to get the parts for a pickaxe. Build a completely wooden pickaxe (you could also use flint, bone or cactus for the head if you happened across them). Refer to the red book here.
5. Mine some cobblestone. Build a full tool set with cobblestone heads. Try other materials for the handles and a sword blade. Cobblestone isn't optimal for them.
6. Go on a mining trip. On your shopping list is clay balls, gravel, and sand. You'll need about 2 stacks of each. Stash any metal ores for now.
7. Craft grout with your clay, sand, and gravel. Cook it into seared bricks. Create the parts for a smeltery, and build it. Refer to the black book.
8. Time for another mining trip. This time you need to find lava and either gold, or copper and aluminum.
9. Fill your smeltery's lava tank and smelt either gold or aluminum brass alloy (recipe in the books).
10. While your metal smelts, go to your part builder and make a pickaxe head of any material.
11. Place the pickaxe head on the casting table and pour molten gold or brass over it to make a mold of a pickaxe head.
12. If you have any remaining molten metal in the smeltery, make an ingot cast by pouring gold/brass over a metal ingot, then place that cast on the casting table and pour out the remainder into ingots.
13. Melt down some iron in your smeltery and pour it into the pickaxe head. Complete your pickaxe with whatever handle material you prefer.
14. Go mining again. Now you can pick up diamond, emerald, redstone, gold, and obsidian. You can use these and some other materials to modify your tool (refer to the red book).
15. Once you have enough metal, make 4 iron blocks. You can do this by making ingots and crafting those, or by pouring 9 iron ingots worth of metal into a casting basin.
16. Upgrade your tool station into a tool forge. This grants access to the special tools and weapons.
17. Find materials to smelt alumite alloy and make a pickaxe or hammer with an alumite head.
18. Visit the nether. Your alumite tool can harvest cobalt and ardite, the top tier of metals together with their alloy, manyullyn.
That's it. Now, some tips:
-Once you have your first TC cobblestone pickaxe, make an extra tool station and carry it around on mining trips. Repair on the fly!
-In FTB, bronze makes a nice alternative to iron, and steel is an alternative to alumite.
-All non-metal parts need to be made at the part builder using patterns. All metal/obsidian parts need to be made at the casting table using casts. Except Thaumium. Why? It's magical.
-Villages sometimes have smelteries and partially/fully stocked tool rooms!
-each material has a mining level, mining speed, damage, durability, handle modifier, and material ability. Mining level, mining speed, damage and durability are only used if the material is in the head or blade of the item (including large plates on headpeices). Handle modifier multiplies the durability of the item and only applies when the material is in the handle. Material abilities always apply (meaning sword hilts and tool bindings are excellent places to put materials with a cool material ability, but weak attributes, as none of the other stats will be used).
-in general, metal makes good heads/blades. Slime and metal, and wood make good handles. Paper, cactus, and obsidian are best put on bindings and hilts for their material abilities.
