On Jan 31, 3:59 pm, Swingman wrote:
On 1/30/2011 10:36 PM, RicodJour wrote:

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.

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 ...

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 ****ed 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 **** 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.