Hand tools

Re: Hand tools

Jack Guzman from Maine

>I never enjoy using a table saw or a router.The noise interferes with the blues music I'm trying to listen to and they both even scare me sometimes.They as well as other power tools are things I have learned to endure to reach a result.The dust is annoying and bothers my already damaged lungs.If I had my way I wouldn't use any power tools.But alas,I have to earn cash to survive in this money driven world that we have created.I could go on for alot longer but I'm tired.

Good question Stephen.---Jack

Both-tonight's example provided

Bill Tindal, E.TN

>For the woodworkers I know woodworking is about making stuff. I'm retired and I am in the situation you described. What gives me pleasure is getting something accomplished and in use.

It is not a choice of one or the other for me, or any other woodworker I know. I use what ever I have at hand that does the best job given my skill level. I have been building some light fixtures for the kitchen tonight. The table saw was used to cut the miters and the shooting board was used to fit them, as an example. tonight I used the table saw and jointer as well as chisels, fine tooth cross cut saw, block plane,marking knife, shooting board, a bunch of clamps, titebond glue, sandpaper, sanding block, hammer, brads. Last night add band saw and router to the list.

This sort of mix is typical of the people in the club that make stuff.

I can and have stood in front of our big thickness planer more hours than any tool we own. I can shove lumber through this machine for a lot longer than I can stand the stress and tedium of dovetailing. But in fact, in the circumstances you describe I don't do any one thing for very long when I don't have to because nothing gives me pleasure for hours on end. Many things give me pleasure for a few hours or minutes at a time.

That's too easy. Is this a trick?

David Barnett - SW Florida

>...handtools. That's what you wanna hear, right? That first long shaving from a newly tuned plane... ssssssnnick! That's the money shot, yessir. Sweet finesse. Off the grid.

But...

...there are those days when the restless beast stirs feral, when I just gotsta get down and do 'the BAD thang' with my screamin' 'lectric angle grinder. Show that chunk o' sugar maple who the daddy! Y' know?

Both for me too....

John in New Mexico

>Some tools are extremely well suited to a particular task whether they be power or hand and these are a pleasure to use.

John

Re: Both-tonight's example provided

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native, Presently Away

>What produces the most felicitous results, using power tools or using hand tools?

-Handtools.

What tools bring you pleasure and don�t mind using for hours on end?

-Scrub plane, sharp rip saw, sharp hatchet.

A tool screaming or a tool singing?

-I hate a screaming tool. The last 'lectric router I had I gave away just to be rid of it, I once bought a lunch box planer and sold it for 1/2 price two days later just to be rid of it. I used my tablesaw for the first time in several weeks for about 10 minutes and instantly regreted the decision to use it, but since I knew it was to be for only a few minutes I went ahead with the task at hand.

Not what is more profitable or more efficient or more productive but what would you rather do? If you could do woodworking with no regard to actually making money how would you like to spend your time woodworking? Time, cost of materials, overhead, buying more tools, none of these things matter (well you can always justify buying more tools), which path would you choose?

-Timberframing and boatbuilding. I am getting thoughts together to make a small boat here real shortly. What I really want to do is find a big log and and "carve" it out using primarily hatchets and adzes, tho I think I'll build the 6 Hour Canoe first as I am in a hurry to get on the little puddle of a pond behind my house. I have little desire to make furniture and surfaces smooth as glass are really not my thing either. Not saying that I don't like nor appricate them, but unless I'm going to use for a writing surface than the surface left by a fine set scrub plane suits my fancy just fine for the most part. My interests lie more in the primitive vein.

Matter of fact I've really taken an interest in stone axes lately, I can't imagine how well or poorly they worked. Would obsidian make a good axe/hatchet? What stone was used, and where they sharp as we know sharp? I'd imagine that in different areas of the world different stones where used. The only tool that I cannot fiqure out to make from 'Nature" would be the saw family. Perhaps sharpenened teeth from certain animal jaw bones would work.

T.O.

Re: Hand tools

MikeW

>Short of using a bandsaw for most of my resawing of veneers--which brings me pleasure to do (process and result)--it is mostly hand tools.

P truly love to make moldings for fun even when I have no project in mind. In fact, often I'll see architectural moldings in a magazine or book and set about replicating them using mostly H&Rs and plows. Most end up in the scrap bin because I'll only do a two foot piece. Some I save for a while because they interest me.

Rebates, grooving. Making panels, mortises and tenons. For a single piece of furniture it is a quick and certainly more enjoyable process by hand for me.

Take care, Mike

Would obsidian make a good axe/hatchet?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>It would probably be sharper than edge steel, but the edge wouldn't last as long. This is why American indians gave up glass for steel.

Pam

Terrible impact resistence...

John in New Mexico

>It'd probably work ok for slicing operations though, if you could get an edge that was uniform enough in geometry to cut a ridgid material like wood. My limited understanding of it is that napped edges are better suited to working with flexible materials and small ridgid objects.

John

Re: Terrible impact resistence...

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Don't know, bet they'd reveal a little marrow here and there. Wooden items indians had to make bows and arrows, tent stakes and pegs, a few flat boards for babies. Anything else?

Pam

Native American Woodworking tools

Adam Cherubini, NJ

>The native american's chief woodworking tool was fire. Don't know that they could actually fell a large tree. In my travels, it seemed that their stone tools were primarily scrapers. You can't maintain a low bevel angle (or they didn't) on a stone tool. They had small stone or bone knives with low bevels for cutting flesh.

Adam

P.S. Otherwise, I think their ways are fascinating and a mystery to us. I suspect we actually know very little of the pre-historic people who flourished here before europeans arrived.

A few other things

Stephen Shepherd in the State of Deseret

>travois, mortar & pestil, war clubs, canoes, houses & armor (Pacific Northwest), boxes, totem poles, tobacco boards, riding quirts, spear handles, root digging tools, hide preparation tools, religious items, saddle trees, loom frames among with many other things made of wood. Then there is foot, medicine and fuel from trees.

Stephen

Stone tools

Stephen Shepherd in the State of Deseret

>Obsidian will give a good edge but tends to be brittle. Flint or chert would probably make a better ax.

I have a small knapped blade that is about 2 inches long and serrated along one edge and cuts wood nicely, albeit a wide kerf.

When I found it in southern Utah I wiped the dust of the edge and opened a wide slice in my thumb, guess it was my price for finding it.

A sharp point on a pump or bow drill pierces wood quickly.

Stone tools don't lend themselves to flat work but then the Native Americans didn't have much of that unless it was split from trees e.g. the Indians of the Pacific Northwest.

Stephen

In love with my hand-cranked CNC machine.

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

>Hi Stephen

This is the hand tools forum, isn't it?

I think a more interesting question would be what percentage of members here read or post on the noisy forum. While I have and use power tools, they are my apprentices, and prepare the way for hand tools. I keep this process as short as posssible. The only power tool I actually enjoy is the bandsaw, but then I consider this mostly a hand tool anyway.

Favourite hand tools? Probably a paring chisel, but frankly I enjoy any tool that is involved in creating a shape or joint under my hand. I think that I am really going to enjoy those Aurio rasps I am ordering.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: Hand tools

Michael Recchione

>That's an easy one for me. I do woodworking as a hobby, so the only way to do it that makes sense is the one that gives the most pleasure. For me, that's hand tools all the way, except for the lathe. Why not the lathe? I don't think there's much difference in process between using a lathe that's powered by a treadle versus one that's got a motor. The lathe is probably the quietest power tool - you can't even hear mine running. And the interaction with the lathe is essentially a hand-tool process.

I have no deadlines, and while the end-product is somewhat important, the process is infinitely more important for me. I can buy furniture.

Missed your calling, Stephen

Hank Knight

>Stephen, if you don't work in the marketing business, you missed your calling. You could make a fortune designing questions for telephone surveys.

"What tools bring you pleasure and don�t mind using for hours on end? A tool screaming or a tool singing?"

Do you really expect an objective answer to that question?

Re: Hand tools

Kokomo Ron

>I know of no more pleasurable experience while working with wood than to use a drawknife or spokeshave to shape it. I can sit at a shaving horse for hours and use these tools to work wood... making chairs, and stolls and benches

Ron

For Me it's About The Project

Thomas Skaggs, Foothills of Mount Level

>I guess I think in a little different terms. What gives me the most pleasure is the project itself. Seeing it taking form from design to finish is what gives me pleasure. Tools for me are the means to that end.

Woodworking is a tactile and fullfilling pursuit for me regardless of what tool I am using. Perhaps hand tools do provide a little more zen experience but all and all it is the project at hand that challenges my mind and my hands and gives me satisfaction.

Tom

Course, Medium, Fine ..and a Request

Jim Shaver - Oakville, Ontario

>Derek,

I agree as well, how many post here and the power side? I for one can not get past the process of using both power and hand tools in persuit of a completed project. For me it's about a combination of processes that involve very much the terms, Course, Meduim and Fine (Thanks Chris).

In each application I can find a power and hand equivalent, it's sometimes an easy choice, but I do find most of my course work is power based, and more hand tool focused as I do medium and fine.

I also find it confusing how little completed work is presented on this forum vs the main message board....we all complete work right? I would enjoy seeing more of that work on this forum.

take care,

Jim

Re: Hand tools

Greg B�tit, Vergennes VT

>Ron your post is exactly what I was going to say after I had read through all the responses already posted. Any excuse to sit on the shaving horse is OK. I just love it. The lathe is fun, too- but not like working on the shaving horse.

My latest excuse you might find interesting. My four grandsons (9,8,7 & 5) are visiting from Kenya. Pepe is busily making bows and arrows for them. I've made bows before but this is my first time for arrows.

I have a nice red oak log, and the arrows are coming out pretty well. Any slight bow in the grain is easily bent straight once the piece is worked to 3/8" diameter. I'm having fun using hide glue and turkey feathers for the fletching, too. I might have to do some surfing to see how it's really supposed to be done, but really I'm quite pleased with these arrows. The boys are too.

The nine-year-old, Dave, is a walking encyclopedia. He noted that Masai and native American arrows he's seen have the feathers tied on. I told him that hide glue is a pretty old discovery, and I wouldn't be surprised if some tribes in either in Africa or America used it.

It makes me wonder how they made arrows in the days of Robin Hood. Oh great. Another interest. I need to retire.

greg

Re: Hand tools

David W Dougherty

>I am a violin maker and I use hand tools for the lion's share of my work. I don't do so to be anachronistic or to make any kind of statement. I just trust my hands more than I trust machines. I also prefer a quiet, dust-free, and relatively danger-free environment. YMMV on the danger-free part! :)

I do use some power: I have a small band saw that I use for resawing, cutting out neck blanks and, when I'm too tired to use a bow saw, for rough cutting plates. I also use a power grinder (well, that is until I build my "bicycle grinder" based on Don Webers bicycle lathe highlighted in last month's PWWM). I own a small drum sander that I'll occasionally use for thinning rib stock when the lengths are really short (i.e., too short to hold down for proper planing).

I have a friend who also builds instruments and he employs power at almost every stage, even when using power is ten times more awkward than the equivalent power tool (e.g., palm sander vs. a well-tuned scraper). He is constantly trying to convince me to add power, but I just prefer to work the way I do.

Re: Hand tools

Kevin French, Antrim, NH

>There's nothing like handplaning a piece to fit, -prefectly.

Besides as someone here put it, 'I can screw up slower with handtools.'

My Electric Drill

Todd Hughes

>I used for years an old hand crank Post Drill that had been converted to run off an ancient electric motor that most probably came off a washing machine. The motor was mounted on a board with a hinge on the end so that its weight kept the belt tight, fly wheel replaced with a big hand made wooden pully and the hand crank taken off.The chuck was advanced by turning the top wheel and you always had to be careful not to get caught up in the pully. I'd turn it on and it was like it was a thing alive with the motor jumping around and everything making just the neatest sound while slinging drops of oil around. I just loved it.

.... I bought it an estate sale of an old long closed blacksmith shop and I never tired of telling visiters to the shop that it was the best $5 I ever spent.

... I used it to drill hundereds of holes and never felt I needed anything else but finaly a neighbor shamed me into buying a modern drill press [from the 1940s -50 !]

I still have the old drill and maybe one day if i ever build another shop I will mount it and use it again. .....Todd

Re: Early Hand tools

Stephen Shepherd in the State of Deseret

>Earliest documented use of hide glue among Europeans is 8000 years ago and adze with a glued on head. Paleo Indians used hide glue for securing spear and other projectile points with sinew.

Few tribes in NA glued their feathers to the shaft but rather lashed the ends with sinew covered with hide glue mixed with wood ash and or pigments. They would glue their points in together with the sinew treatment. Pitch was also used to protect the sinew and glue. The pitch was also conbined with wood ash. Hardened shafts were added to the sometimes lightweight arrow woods for durability and weight, fixed with glue or pitch.

Harpoon points and other points ment to come off their shaft after impact were temporarly held with sticky sinew or pitch.

English were glued and of course the glue back then was usually hide glue. And I am pretty sure the Europeans never used tangential fletching but I could be wrong.

Stephen

Way cool

Kokoo Ron

>I have never made arrows. Have to give it a try>