Corner of My Mind wrote:
| Morris Dovey wrote:

|| I found it helpful to learn to work with hand tools before I bought
|| the power tool to do the job faster. It wastes less wood and
|| perepares you to use the power tool more safely.
|
| That's interesting, I would have thought power tools used up less
| wood because you could make more precise cuts.

That was my initial thought, too - so I started out with a RAS ("does
everything" g), a bandsaw, a shaper, and a drill press. What I
discovered was that 90% of the mistakes were complete before I
actually realized that I'd made a mistake, and that 90% of the time
the mistake called for a "board stretcher" or an "unsaw" for recovery.

When I backed up and forced myself to learn to use hand tools first, I
began paying attention to the grain and how different woods responded
to being cut. The most-used tool in my shop today is a CNC router -
but for those jobs in which I have any emotional investment, I still
pull out my chisel roll, a plane (or three), and a scraper to clean up
things my eyes can't see but my fingertips tell me aren't quite right
yet.

When I moved back from hand to power tools I discovered that I'd
developed a better sense of what would "work", higher standards and
expectations, and an inclination to consider what I'd experienced
using hand tools before I fired up the power tool.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html