Hand tool speed i

[James Pallas]

Machine made is not necessarily square and flat. Check out danish chairs by any of the famous makers of the post WWII period, not a straight board in the group typically and not one thing made by hand short of some touch up work with shaves. I make by hand and I can tell you, getting perfect curves by hand is not easy, duplicating things even less easy.

It's very hard to say 'this is this, that is that' and do so in a way that actually covers the broad spectrum. I think Warren's comments cover it very well, things designed for hand tools are best made by hand and things designed for machine tools best made by machine.

I believed it's a little different than just hand and machine. If it was left at that than we should just use machines to do everything but carve and with CNC improving almost daily that goes also. Once properly set a machine can cut dovetails around the clock and very clean every time. Hand tool workers can't compete. Where the big difference comes in is where the parameters change. When working by hand you can go from one dovetail size to another no problem with a jig it has to be reset and checked. If you cut dovetails by eye with few markings experienced hand workers can be very fast. Whether or not that is acceptable is another question in this day and time.
Jim

[Andrey Kharitonkin]

Then let me state the obvious. How to design for hand tools? And then another one. How to design for hand tools that cannot be done by machines?

Dovetails with narrow pins. Turned profiles with sharp edges. Carving with sharp crisp edges. What else?

Will we see the end of woodworking as we know it? With advance of machines will it come down to downloading a design from web and scaling it on computer and feeding it to machine that will be present in everybody's home? Will it survive as a hobby?

[Brian Holcombe]

I believed it's a little different than just hand and machine. If it was left at that than we should just use machines to do everything but carve and with CNC improving almost daily that goes also. Once properly set a machine can cut dovetails around the clock and very clean every time. Hand tool workers can't compete. Where the big difference comes in is where the parameters change. When working by hand you can go from one dovetail size to another no problem with a jig it has to be reset and checked. If you cut dovetails by eye with few markings experienced hand workers can be very fast. Whether or not that is acceptable is another question in this day and time.
Jim

I actually view this very much like buying a suit, there are certain things considerably better done by hand and the result is better for it. There are also things that machines do exceptionally well.

CNC is improving but the best machines are extremely expensive and so the hourly rates charged for them to exist and be profitable, whilst taking on short runs, are quite substantial. So much so that hand work then becomes reasonable and affordable by comparison.

[ken hatch]

I saw another post about power tool v hand tool speed recently. It made me think about it for a while. I have had the pleasure of seeing some very good hand tool workers work. When working in a well equipped shop and working with hand tool methods they can be very fast. I was sometimes amazed at how quickly tasks are completed. Volume production is definitely the realm of machine. One off pieces not so much.
There is a definite separation of methods and also the appearance of finished work. This is evident in the unseen parts of a piece of work. I have seen someone rive legs for a table out of an 8/4 block use a hatchet to rough a taper and plane them in just minutes. It takes skills that I don't have but wish I did.
i know machines are fast and less strenuous. I just posting this to open a discussion about the most productive skills for hand tool work. I have used both hand and power and not firmly in one camp or the other.
Jim

Jim,

I'm a blended shop. I can prep lumber and do at times but the machines are there might as well use 'em if they will work without too much monkey motion. I could easily live without the 8" jointer, I would guess near 80% of the planer prep is done by hand because 8" is too small. The 20" planer and the 18" bandsaw are another story. Yes I could do without but they are really good for the scut work, getting close so the piece can be finished by hand with ease. The table saw is kinda like the jointer, if I could sale it for half the price I paid for it I would but for now I don't really need the real estate and it is occasionally handy. I sold (gave away) all my powered router stuff years ago and have been a happier woodwork for it.

The reason it works for me is I do simple mostly one off builds that are hand tool friendly.

ken

[James Pallas]

We here a lot about benches being made on this forum so I'll use that as an example. If working by hand you read about people working to get their pieces for laminating just right, four square and such. In my way of thinking I would work to get the faces square to the reference edge and if it turned out that I had that but the 6 ft long board was tapered by say a 1/4 inch along those faces I simply wouldn't care. If the glue faces are good and square to the reference edge it's okay. I may take more care with the dog block but not the rest. Once glued up I'll have to straighten the back edge anyway. All of this is within reason and judgement of course.
Jim

[Brian Holcombe]

You can also work the top and reference sides, leave the bottom alone and cut in flat areas for the joinery. Built more like a timber structure than a furniture piece.

Having worked with mainly hand tools for so long, I tend to build in a way that avoids large glue ups. So the best way to save effort is to pick a board that is wide and heavy enough for a workbench all on its own. That saves a good number of hours right there. Same for the legs.

I do the same for furniture, I’m not making glue ups unless I absolutely have to.

There is much furniture from the 18th century made in mahogany, I assume one of the reasons they loved it is that you can harvest huge sections and the wood is dark, two things that make life easier.

[James Pallas]

Brian I agree with all you said. I also would feel the same about a table apron if the apron were thicker on one end than the other and all the joinery is laced out from the face edge and face surface why spend time on the off face. I don't mean grossly so, why take an eight or so off to get to a 64th gauge line.
Jim

[kent wardecke]

Three men four days. According to the Keno brothers that's how long it took craftsman in pre industrial New England to make a high boy dresser. A guest on "The Woodrights Shop" said it would take " a long day" to turn an oak log into a bible box complete with carving, all by hand. Let's compare that to Norm who does 95% of his work in a shop that is equipped with $250k of tools. It would take him two days to make the high boy and he would probably buy carved medallions and fans. The bible box, a 1/2 a day. So empirically machines are 3-10x's faster
I'm not sure what my point was in those examples but some things that are faster by hand: mortissing hinges and locks, chamfors and round overs if you have the right plane, small runs of tongue and groove if you have a #49, small runs of rabbets and dados again if you have the tool, cleaning up seams on a large glue up and making something fit when it's just off a hair

[Patrick Chase]

That all said, there are some times when hand tools can be tedious, like removing a lot of wood by hand planing or making long rip cuts with a hand saw. So I bought a lunchbox planer. It's loud and heavy and creates a lot of dust but it prevents me from having to spend a tremendous amount of time planing by hand to thickness, which I don't particularly enjoy.

If you can you might retrofit that lunchbox with a helical head. It will help with the noise, and makes the dust easier to collect in-machine (not so stringy). I have a DW735 with a Shelix head FWIW.

[Patrick Chase]

Volume production is definitely the realm of machine. One off pieces not so much.

I think this is the key point when it comes to productivity. Many machines are setup-intensive due to the need for jigs/fixtures/etc, and that negates much of their speed advantage for one-off work. Obviously that logic doesn't apply to things like planers where the only setup is for thickness, but it does for many others.

[Patrick Chase]

A few weeks later I was putzing in my basement and came across a hand plane I bought years ago for a buck or 2 and sharpened the blade, my first few test passes were a chamfer on a board that was so much better than what the router did on that project. Been going further down this rabbit hole ever since.

You should try a Japanese chamfer plane. You'll never go back to your router for anything short of extremely high-volume work.

[Patrick Chase]

Matthew, I started this thread with two things in mind, to try to help someone and to try to get some pointers for myself. I'm not sure whether you meant 2 hours for an edge or 2 hours for the first face. If I was faced with either of those situations I would most likely have picked another piece of lumber

...or picked up a rip saw. I'm amazed at how many folks spend hours hogging off material that could be cut off.

[Patrick Chase]

Will we see the end of woodworking as we know it? With advance of machines will it come down to downloading a design from web and scaling it on computer and feeding it to machine that will be present in everybody's home? Will it survive as a hobby?

Ever priced out a CNC router that's large enough for furniture work?

Moore's law doesn't apply to aluminum frames, stepper motors, spindles, etc. The controller has already declined in cost to the point where it's a small fraction of the overall cost, and everything else is relatively stable.

[James Pallas]

...or picked up a rip saw. I'm amazed at how many folks spend hours hogging off material that could be cut off.

Or spend time and calories rip saw 6 boards to make them equal, glue up and then rip both edges once again to get those edges parallel. Of course then only the two edge boards won't have parallel sides.
Jim

[Andrey Kharitonkin]

Ever priced out a CNC router that's large enough for furniture work?

Moore's law doesn't apply to aluminum frames, stepper motors, spindles, etc. The controller has already declined in cost to the point where it's a small fraction of the overall cost, and everything else is relatively stable.

There is something like liquid wood already. I can imagine it can be printed in relatively small parts then.