Right tools make the work SO easy (rambling)
Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA
>Years ago, whenever I tried to put a point on a 1x2 garden stake with a hatchet, I would make a hash of it - could never get a pointed end.
A while ago, I picked up a single-bevel hatchet (like a side axe, but without the offset handle), and have found that, with this and a little more understanding of how to hold the wood, I can do a righteous point faster than I could cut it on anything less than the neanderbuddy if it was set up (I usually leave the blade untensioned, so the hatchet is still faster than the n.b. in practice). And this with a right-handed hatchet, when I'm not right-handed.
In my callow youth, I explored becoming a carpenter. At that time, the list of required tools include a single-bevel hatchet, and the Audels books described its use in loving, albeit brief, detail - though I was too dumb to understand why the single bevel was important.
All of this leading up to saying that the use of proper tools makes a difference, and often increases hand tool efficiency to the point of refuting the "power is faster" argument of the electron-burners; but much of this has become obscure in the generations between my father's and my children's.
I wonder if new union carpenters are still required to carry a single-bevel hatchet in the toolkit?
