Bill Houghton, sunny in Sebastopol, CA
>When our son did our garden fences and gates last Spring, we used a regular mortise lockset in the main gate, knowing that I'd have to adjust the gate a couple of times. With the rainy season here, the gate started to bind again. The first adjustment, a few months ago, was beveling the lockset side of the gate; this time, I had to remove material from the strike plate side (otherwise, I would have had to move the faceplates on the lockset side). Our son had glued and screwed an astragal on the strike plate side, which effectively made an 11/16" deep by 1-5/8" wide rabbet that I had to make 1/8" deeper, to give clearance between the two gate parts.

It's been years since I used the 10-1/2 that my uncle repaired for me, so it took me half an hour to sharpen it, but then I had a good time planing the gate, during which time, I was trying to figure out how it could have been done accurately with power tools. I guess I could have clamped on a fence to guide a circular saw or router; saw would have left a pretty rough surface, and I've learned over the years that removing even just 1/8" of material that wide is not easy with a router. Any other approach that I'm missing?

I'm not a purist - a lot of electrons have been sacrificed over the years on this house - but I remain convinced that hand tools give capabilities for certain operations that power tools can't touch.

Side comment: rabbet planes are sure good at telling you when your sharpening stones have gone hollow...