Never thought I would be visiting Neanderthals

[John Dorough]

I am new to woodworking and have never really thought about becoming sufficiently adept at hand work to allow me to think about actually hand crafting a piece. [I have considered neanderthals well above my developmental level.]

A pod cast, The Rough Cut Show, on Bob Vila's site, has really caused me to think otherwise. This show features Tommy MacDonald (a/k/a "T-Chisel") who is an amazing craftsman. He has worked all year on a single project, a "Bombe Secretary." By watching and admiring his work, I have certainly been drawn to hand tools. If you have not seen the podcast, there are over 100 episodes and they are all worth seeing. [I am sure MacDonald is old news to most of you, but for me he is new and exciting.]

I am still in the process of setting up my shop, and soon I hope to post specific questions seeking advice about initial hand tools I should consider to find out if I enjoy the work as much as I now think I might.


Thanks for such a great forum here on SMC.

John Dorough
Ocala, FL

[Hank Knight]

John,

Welcome to the Neander Side (Normites call it the ""Dark Side"). Most of us started with power tools and drifted into hand tools a little at at time. Few of us are purists and most of us, if pressed, will admit to burning electrons from time to time. Hand tools for some reason have the mystique of being "difficult," requiring "great skill." It's true that good hand tool work requires skill, but it's not particularly difficult, and learning the skills is fun.

Many are put off the first time they pickup a plane or a chisel or a hand saw. I was. My dad's 1960s vintage Stanely jack plane was obviously designed to destroy boards. With lots of brute force, I could gouge out great chunks of wood with it. How in the world could anybody build furniture with such a thing? The same with my dad's hand saw: with a lot of sweat and effort, I could get through a board with it, but I could have gnawed my way through in the same time and the cut would have been much cleaner.

My epiphany came the first time I applied a well tuned, sharp hand plane to a piece of wood. Wow! so this is what it's supposed to do - nice even shavings with modest effort, and the surface it left was wonderful to the touch. Cool! The same with the first really properly set-up hand saw I ever used. My dad gave me a brand new dovetail saw years ago. I couldn't cut squat with it. I thought hand cut dovetails were a myth. Then one day a friend handed me his properly sharpened and set dovetail saw. Wow! again. It cut straight and I could follow a line with it. Maybe hand sawing fine work is not out of reach.

The point of all of this is that real hand tools that are properly set up and sharpened do what they are supposed to do and do it very well. That's why craftsmen were able to produce such beautiful work with hand tools for hundreds of years - and still can. All tools have a learning curve, but the curve is not nearly as steep with a proper or "good" hand tool as with a poorly designed, badly manufactured, improperly set up, dull tool. The curve for those is vertical - you will likely never get there. Unfortunately, many, probably most, modern hand tools available on the popular commercial market fall into the latter category. When power tools took over after WWII, people quit using hand tools so the manufacturers quit making them, or at least they quit making the high quality ones people earned their livelihood with for many, many years.

Good hand tools are still available today. They come in two varieties: old ones and new ones. Many very fine old hand tools survive from the time when people really used them to earn their living. They can be put to work today just as they were then, often for not much money and a little sweat equity. It's fun to resurrect a rusty old relec and put it back to work.

In the last twenty years, there has been a resurgence of interest in hand tools. You and I are examples of this trend. In respose to the growing demand, companies are once again manufacturing high quality hand tools. You probably can't find them at your local big box store, but they are available from sources that cater to us neander types. There are also craftsmen who hand make very fine - and very expensive - jewel-like tools that sing when they touch wood. Today, you can find pretty much any kind and quality tool your heart desires if you look.

Spend some time on this forum and you will very quickly be exposed to discussions about which tools are the "best." There is much advice dispensed here about what to buy, and whether one should spend the bucks for a new tool or go with an old one for less $$$. There's a huge amount of information available here about how to sharpen, set up and use hand tools. Take advantage of it. Jump in. You'll like it. But I should warn you - it's addictive.

Again, welcome to the dark side.

Hank

[Don C Peterson]

John,

Welcome to this side of the hill... Ditto what Hank said. Lots of opinions, lots of help, and maybe even a little bit of cheering as we watch you start your slide.

I had not seen "T-Chisel's" website before so thanks for the link.