I'm not so sure, Swingy. The man is QUICK! And have you ever watched that handy Hungarian, Frank Klausz, make dovetails? He's quicker doing up a drawer than a Normite is just setting up his first jig. It's amazing. With Roy's love of woodworking, I think he'd likely go with handtools everywhere.
I use power on my own projects when something is too delicate for handtools. I use power almost exclusively on site for clients because they won't pay me extra for Neanderwork. ;)
-- An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. -- Sir Winston Churchill
I watched him do it today on "The Woodworking Shows" complimentary show DVD. How the heck can he turn his bow saw so quick when he's cutting out the waste between tenons??? I don't have a saw like his, but it's amazing (he probably did some trimming, but that part wasn't show it in the DVD).
Hoosierpopi wrote in news:56500bc8-1010-4578- snipped-for-privacy@k22g2000yqh.googlegroups.com:
You forgot a few "look it"'s. I hope that's just the effect of 1st season jitters.
The Woodworking on a Budget show sounds interesting. The host is given a small budget every show (say $100) and must build his project for that. Leftover money accumulates for bigger purchases. You can do a lot very quickly for $100 in 2x4s.
Hell, he wouldn't use that crap. He's glueup and use real wood, sir.
You take an RCH off the length of a board with a Disston instead of a CMS, do ya? I've tried it with my ryoba, too, and the CMS wins every time. I love that ryoba, though. Got it at Japan Woodworker.
I got this one for $25 delivered (long ago) with a coupon from FWW:
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's the festering version for you, Toy, and Leon:
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Hey, I'm Neander to the extent that all my chisels and planes are kept
Bueno, bwana.
-- An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. -- Sir Winston Churchill
A few years ago at one of TWWS I saw a guy cut around a corner with a bowsaw without rotating the frame. After his presentation I took a look at his bowsaw. It had a 90 degree twist in the center of the blade (for maybe 1/4 or less of the blade length). So using the front section he could cut straight down, the center turned the corner and the rear section cut horizontally. Maybe Klausz did it like that? Art
Maybe so--is was Just Too Easy. When I think about a saw blade bent that way it seems to make alot of sense. I'll another look at the dvd and see what I can see. Thank you for making your post!
In case anyone is interested in this, I'm reporting from the DVD. Klausz uses a bow saw with about a 1 1/2" blade to cut his pins, vertically. Then he uses another bow saw (he calls his "tenon cut-out saw") that has about a 3/8" blade with a 90 degree twist near the end. The twist occurs over several inches. Insert blade into previous vertical cut, push a little, and you're cutting horizontally. Slick.
I saw Klausz cut a drawer at a local woodworking club meeting. The guy was so quick I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so I did both. He spoke about laying out dovetails on graduated drawers by eye, and you could hear murmurrs of "WTF?" To do the same thing with power tools would require jig modifications for every drawer, and they still wouldn't have that hand-cut tiny-pin dovetail look. They simply look better.
It's a little know fact that that's why power tools were invented. They had all of this plywood laying about and no quick way to cut it, so Ben Franklin pulled some electrons out of a cloud and made electricity for the first time. The first power tool was discovered by the guys watching another guy get zapped by some of them electrons while he was using a hand saw. The current running through the guy's body made him jerk so fast that he cut the board lickety split. The rest is history.
For every this-is-why-power-tools-are-faster scenario you could come up with, I could come up with a scenario where hand tools are faster/ better. If you choose plywood batch cutting, I say running off 12' of custom molding to match period molding.
Power tools are just an extension of the industrial revolution's aim to obviate operator skill in favor of cheap labor. There's also the question of cost in outfitting a shop. A complete joiner's shop back in the day fit in a 3'x2'x2' box. Now a guy figures he can't do any work unless he has ten grand in tools - to start. Journeymen carpenters walked around with a roll with their tools inside, often just the blades and bits, and made handles, benches and whatever else was needed on the spot.
We've gained some with power tools, but we've lost just as much because of them. I still wish that carpenters wore corduroy suits so we could see at a glance who was in the brotherhood.
Frank used chisels and dovetail saws, no others, in the classes I helped him with at the American WW Shows in Ontario, CA a decade ago. I volunteered as a gofer. He also did a 3-day seminar on woodworking in Sandy Eggo a few years before that. I had a blast.
Here's the saw he was using for the Am WW Show classes:
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had bought a French-made Lee Valley dovie saw, but _much_ prefer my ryoba for fine cuts now. I need a new hardwood blade for it, though.
-- An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. -- Sir Winston Churchill
don't have one, but in checking out that page I was fairly well shocked to see that Adria offers a 100% money back guarantee for a year. That's confidence in your tool quality, fer sure.
R
I'll buy that only when you can show me pictoral proof where either of these guys has built a complete modern kitchen with their untailed tools, bow saws and dovetail saws, one containing provisions for all the modern conveniences and accouterments expected in today's high end kitchens, and done in a sufficient time and manner to justify the labor costs to make a living at it ... .
... until then, I say horsedookie ... ;)
Sorry, don't buy it. Been hanging in woodworking shops for over 60 years and the tool world has _never_ been more conducive to turning out a higher volume of _quality_ work than it is at present.
C'mom, gimme me some pictoral proof to back up your contention ... I've got more of that on my side than you can wade through in a month of Sundays.
vI saw Klausz cut a drawer at a local woodworking club meeting. The
At last year's Woodworkers Showcase in Saratoga Springs, NY I used a 22" 12 pt Sandvik crosscut saw, marking gauge, pencil, 1/2" chisel, and my eyes to layout and cut dovetails during my presentation... My core topic was how to use reference surfaces and edges to guide your work (e.g., bench top, edge of board). In dovetailing, once you understand the relationships of the parts and cuts the tools used become secondary.
John
PS. this year's show is the last weekend of March. I'm doing a presentation on scrub planes.
We've gained some with power tools, but we've lost just as much because of them. I still wish that carpenters wore corduroy suits so we could see at a glance who was in the brotherhood.
It is very obvious, by the above, that you do not build things for a living.
If woodworking to you is simply banging out 'modern' kitchens, then, sure, you win. Funnily enough, I don't think MDF is wood and I'm still on the fence about plywood being wood. I refuse to call working something other than wood, woodworking - that's just me. It has nothing to do with anyone else's preferences and predilections. You like it, knock yourself out.
If we can't agree on what quality is, than there's no point in bringing up speed. The reason that plywood and 'modern' kitchens came about partly due to a desire for _reasonable_ quality. Primarily plywood and power tools came about for a desire for speed. Speed that only highly skilled craftsmen could achieve. Highly skilled craftsmen are, and always have been, in short supply and they always get top dollar. This does not mesh well with Henry Ford's vision of the new world order.
Wood and working wood has been around for thousands of years. The Romans used steel hand planes. No superior joint has been developed than a hand cut dovetail. Some joints are faster, but there are no better joints, and the dovetail has been around for thousands of years. I've seen lots of machine cut dovetail drawers give up the ghost, but hand cut dovetails stay together far better. You need to trim the pins flush on a dovetail joint, do you reach for a sander? Power planer? No, of course not, you reach for a plane. It's faster, less likely to mess something up, and leaves a better finish. Evidence of hand work is a better finish.
Which brings me to a bit of a tangent. Have you ever done work that came out so well it looked fake? I did a recent patterned parquet floor foyer entrance hall. Walnut and white oak with walnut feature strips, fairly complicated layout to mirror the ceiling layout. Nice. I cut all of the wood by hand and used hand scrapers to remove the backing (fronting?) paper.* I had a friend stop by to take a look and I nearly died when he took a look and asked if it was linoleum. I was kind of pissed when I realized he wasn't joking, then I realized that in a sorta kinda way it was a compliment. The floor was too good
- it did look fake. Luckily God, humidity changes and a dog with long nails has remedied that.
Back to our discusion (or my diatribe, depending on where you're sitting). Where has that quest for speed gotten us? It's gotten us to the point that we've lost tons of information about working wood. Nobody sets out to waste time...well, at least not when working, and the people that came before us were no different. Frank Klausz is legendary nowadays, but talk to him. He'll be the first one to tell you that he's not the fastest dovetail chopper he's ever seen. The guys that did it back in the day did it each and every day, there were apprenticeships (and not this union crap where a carpenter puts up fooking drywall!), masters and journeymen, and they were just as smart as you and me. Your average guy would cut Klausz-speed dovetails, but that came with experience and dedication, not dabbling
Firstly, you are a son of the modern age. If you said 160 years, a) I'd be very impressed and b) I think you'd be singing a different tune. Power tools were the norm by the 1950's. The old ways were pretty much supplanted and lost by then. At least in the US, home of the "it's new so it must be better" mentality. If speed is the only ticket, buy IKEA. Fine cabinets, nothing wrong with them, and they'll last just as long as anything you'll make.
I also think we have different definitions of what the word quality means. From the cheap seats it seems you are confusing quality and mass production begetting repeatability. Mass production is nothing without speed. Quality is independent of speed. Quality is what is left when you take all of the other stuff away, but I kind of gather you wouldn't be into a discussion of metaphysics as it relates to woodworking, so I'll spare you and everybody else.
I'll tell you what, I'll relate a little story about how I came to be involved in woodworking in the first place, and then you can relate yours. Maybe we can trace our differing viewpoints back to the beginning.
I'd dabbled in little projects since I was a pup. Building models and cobbling things together. I didn't own any tools at all. I just used my Dad's. Dad was an orthodontist, ridiculously dexterous with his hands, and meticulous as you'd ever want somebody who was going to be sticking their hand in your mouth to be. I grew up watching him do stuff around the house. Building shelves, boxes, little things. He had no training in woodworking, no shop, no real tools to speak of, other than repurposed dental tools - of which there were hundreds. His only 'serious' woodworking tools, were a power drill and a nice hand saw, couple chisels. From him I learned that skill is in the hands and mind, not in the tools. He earned a pretty penny, and preferred to spend the money on the family, rather than on a shop. I suppose if he had more time, fewer kids and wasn't a one-man band medical practice, he would have had more time for bigger projects and maybe he would have had the de-luxe shop. Woulda, coulda, shoulda - who knows.
Fast forward about ten years. I'm in Cambridge, MA and I'd just finished my finals after a grueling term, and it was a few days before Christmas. I went with my buddy to shop for some presents for Christmas. As we walked around Cambridge and window shopped, I became depressed. All I saw was shit and glitz. I couldn't afford a lot and didn't see anything that I would want to give as a gift. The depression turned into despondency as the night wore on and no presents were bought. This was going to be the worst Christmas ever - wouldn't matter what I got if I gave lame ass presents.
We turned into a weird little mini-mall, for lack of a better term - one of those things where there's an alley inside the building with a number of shops opening off of that. On the second floor we walked by a big glass storefront. The store look unoccupied, there was hardly anything in it, just a few pieces of furniture scattered about. Then I noticed the furniture was different somehow - this wasn't a furniture store showroom. One of the pieces had some wood shavings curled around the bottom of it. This intrigued me, so we went in.
It turned out that that the place was showcasing some of the North Bennett Street School's student work. As I walked up to the piece with the little curlies, a guy walked out from the back of the store, and we started to talk. He walked me through the different pieces in the 'store' - nothing was for sale as far as I recall (_definitely_ couldn't have afforded it!). He showed me some of the stuff that some of the students made, and the progression of work as their abilities increased. First project was a small box for their oil stone, next was a tool box for their tools (this was expected to take the full year or half year to complete), and then on to furniture. He took me over to a chest of drawers and showed off the all wood construction, no metal hardware at all, and the incredible fit of the, of course, dovetailed drawers. He pulled out one about half way and closed it fairly rapidly. I gaped. All of the other drawers popped out the exact same amount. I knew it wasn't a trick, but it still felt like looked like a trick. He explained about using a hand plane to tweak the fit of a drawer, showed me that the curlies were from a hand scraper (I didn't even know what that was).
I left that store _pumped_. I knew what I wanted to do for my presents...I also knew that they wouldn't be ready on time. This is a tradition that I carry on to this day. ;)
I have all the power tools. I have Festool out the yin yang (wish I got into them years ago when I was more concerned with being an 'active' contractor), and all the other power tools that you would imagine a designer/builder would have with a going concern. The tools were and are mine. I did not supply tools to guys working for me, and I take care of my tools, so most of them I still have. I also have a nasty addiction to garage sales, auctions and eBay, and simply find it impossible to pass up a good deal. I've picked up panel saws, bandsaws, old iron from the 40's and 50's, etc., etc. I have way, way more power tools than I need.
I also collect antique tools. I use antique tools on a daily basis. I bought a tool collection from an estate sale - that guy had some eye and had been collecting for years. So I got several workshops full in one fell swoop. It was kinda, sorta 'cheating' I guess, but hey, the price was right! So from that one purchase I have literally hundreds of hand planes. I have pretty much the complete Stanley catalog, with a few notable (read expensive) exceptions, tools that would fit right in with Rob H's quizzes, coach building tools, pretty much any woodworking hand tool you could think of. These old tools bring me far, far more enjoyment that any power tool, and I bought some of my Festool stuff dog collars and chew toys. My favorite chisel is from
1837, beautiful little thing. I have a ~100 year old Two Cherries chisel that I picked up when I bought a ship carpenter's tool chest. That thing holds an edge like you would not believe. I sharpen all my other chisels two of three times for one sharpening of the Two Cherries.
So of course I'm spoiled. I have advantages that few people have with my tool collection. I have pretty much the exact tool I need, no matter what I am doing. I have the dedicated molding planes sitting on a shelf that cut one specific profile. I pick it up and it's ready to go.
So you can tell I'm a tool junkie, by now, and I have an arsenal of both hand and power tools at my disposal. I am not the fastest person with either, and I pick my battles. But when I'm looking for quality, and people are paying for it, we both enjoy it more when the hand tools are broken out.
R
More on the floor scraping (if anyone hasn't fallen asleep by now).
Normally I would have just sanded off the paper, like everybody else, but that clogs paper and I wanted to try something a little different, so I used the scrapers. I was planning on writing an article about it for a little historical flavor for one of the flooring trade journals
- I just never got around to writing the article. I have a bunch, so I tested and compared the Stanley 12, 12 1/2, 70 box scraper, 80, 81,
82, 83 and 112 (I wish I had the 11). Surprisingly enough, or maybe not surprisingly at all, the 70 box scraper was the winner. I guess that should be no surprise because it was designed to remove paper labels from wood shipping crates so they could be reused. Hand scraping was a _lot_ of work. I would not want to do that everyday, but it was not all that much slower than sanding it off and having to change paper on the machine a couple of times. Granted this was a small foyer, and there's no way in hell that scraping off the paper on a larger floor would make sense unless you were looking to punish someone. I still ended up sanding the floor as I don't have a
74...I've never even seen a 74, but I would liked to have tried it out to see how it would have performed.
I design and build everything I do. I used to just design, when I was first starting out. Designing without building is just as bad as building without designing.
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