hand tools

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I will never be a intrinsic neander but .....

I am in the process of building my first dining table out of walnut. It's my first major project out of walnut though I have turned a few small things from walnut. I have the table leg blanks glued up and also glued up a mockup from some construction grade pine. Using my table saw, I converted them all to 29" long octagons. Yesterday I bandsawed the 5" tapered foot on the mockup. In the last year or so, I purchased a Veritas 1" bench chisel, a set of Japanese water stones, a set of Wood River bench chisels, a set of Veritas card scrapers and 3 Wood River planes. I drilled a recess and a deeper 1/2" hole for an adjustable foot on the prototype. I then turned a 3" turned embellishment above the tapered foot. I took the prototype back to the bench. What a pleasure it was to clean up the tapered area using a combination of sharp hand tools instead of trying to sand out the saw blade marks!

In my shop, hand tools compliment the power tools beautifully and have earned their place in it!

[Lee Schierer]

I'm in the same boat as Ken. I like my power tools and frequently use my hand tools for clean up and minor adjustments.

[John Kananis]

Machine started (especially the milling), hand finished - I don't mind the occasional plane mark (ok, I kind of do) but machine marks are... not cool.

[Jimmy Harris]

There's no wrong way from point A to point B. Very few woodworkers are all power tools or all hand tools.

I really try to keep my power tool use to a minimum. I enjoy the process more than the product, so I prefer hand tools. But sometimes the process with power tools is more fun. Like carving with a Dremel! It's as immediate as drawing with a pencil on 3D paper!

[David Carroll]

I tend to have certain jobs I always do by hand and others (like ripping repeated long lengths) I go to a machine if one is available to me.

About two years ago, all of my stationary power tools (except my drill press) went to my son's house (he has a nice shop that I can use whenever I want, it's about 15 minutes away). When I have a project that needs a lot of ripping, I can go there. But the job would have to take me 45 minutes or more, if I did it by hand, to make it worth the drive. Otherwise I just saw it by hand. So far I've only gone over there twice.

I still have a nice set of battery powered portable tools, and a nice old Makita circular saw that mostly reserve for home renovation and construction work.

For fun, I sometimes like to challenge myself with projects that are solely done with hand tools. Further, sometimes I will work with a specific set of hand tools.

As an example, for the hassock pictured, I went out into the woods, felled a small tree red oak tree with an axe, split it with a froe, bucked it with a docking saw, then made all of the legs with a drawknife and cut the holes with a brace and bit. The spindles I made from a drier piece of oak in the firewood pile. There was no plan, no drawings, just put together the way I felt it should go together. No other tools at all. Admittedly, it's a bit rough, but what a fun afternoon! (Note: the seat taping took way longer than the build).

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I do find as I get older and closer to retirement, projects like these give me more enjoyment than building fancy casework using a lot of machines.

[Reed Gray]

Part of my learning curve with hand planes was to run a board through the drum sander, and then hand plane the sanding marks out. Some may consider that cheating, but hey, it works. My power planer leaves a rougher surface than the drum sander, but it might be worth it.....

robo hippy

[steven c newman]

The Dungeon Woodshop has always been a Hybrid Shop....as I will use whatever tool I have that will get a task done..

Machine..or..hand?

There was an old saying long ago..."Don't mean nothing, not a thing"......Use whatever tool YOU have that will do the task YOU need to do. Don't worry about what others might use.

BTW: a piece of single pane window glass works quite well as a wood scraper...and is quite easy to resharpen...just cut a new edge...and, can be cut to match about any profile you might need to scrape smooth....Go easy, though...if you press too hard, you might need a pair of Kevlar gloves...( I never did)

[Christopher Charles]

Hi Ken,

Glad to see you enjoying the slippery slope! Like the others, I'm full-on hybrid, but occasionally do a project full-neander for fun. And I now really like having the skills to do many things that take longer, are unpleasant or dangerous with power tools.

Best,
Chris

[Jim Koepke]

Most of my work is done with hand tools. There is an often used bandsaw in the shop, a drill press and a lathe.

Some thing just don't lend themselves to hand sawing:

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This was planed a bit to get a smooth edge to run against the bandsaw's fence.

jtk