On Jan 30, 4:17*pm, Swingman wrote:
On 1/30/2011 2:53 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 12:41:01 -0600, *wrote:

Methinks the lad would quickly grab for a tailed tool or two, or more ....

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 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.

OK ... that takes care of a few drawer SIDES. Now, let's get all that
plywood batchcut ...

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.

R