Dimensioning by hand

[G S Haydon]

Ah Jacob, as blunt as ever!

Sadly the nuance of the discussion is quickly lost. There is a balance to be had.

If I were making a chest of drawers I would pick out my best material for the carcass, cut to size, plane and make. I would then move to the drawers. I wouldn't get all of the material out in one go.

So too with a door. I would get rails and stiles out but might choose to leave the panels if there was a chance they were to be left over the weekend and not installed into a door.

On making volumes of parts, or inventory, most modern settings shy away from it. You regulate your production by a bottleneck. No point making finished parts in volume if they can't be installed or sold. It's about a steady flow across everything. That's not to say you only mortice one door stile at a time, that would be stupid. Rather if you had 8 external doors you might make them in batches of 2. This allows others to be involved in the flow of work.

There should be no delay in processing, if a business can't set a machine or use hand tools to work small batches it's likely because it's not very good.

I was told a story of guy who bought a CNC, he was told at the time that he had an inventory problem, too many finished parts everywhere. But he was convinced that if he could make more parts in less time he would be able to reduce costs. He went bankrupt as he made even more inventory with no extra money coming in.

To your average weekend woodworker I would recommend breaking a job down. Making a table? Get out the legs and aprons, plane and join, glue up as appropriate. Same if it requires a drawer, then the top. I hope I've made some sense.

 

[D_W]

To your average weekend woodworker I would recommend breaking a job down. Making a table? Get out the legs and aprons, plane and join, glue up as appropriate. Same if it requires a drawer, then the top. I hope I've made some sense.

that makes sense for several reasons, though I can't comment on how it would work with power tools.

one of the reasons that it's nice to work through stock bits at a time when working by hand, well, two, is that the finished bits don't need to be adjusted for warping, etc. Whatever occurs after making something like a case side, it'll come out in the wash with assembly, but it may not be quite so convenient if processing all boards to thickness and then trying to make case sides.

Aside from actual physical fatigue if working on a hundred board feet of timber (as in, doing fractions of a project rather than trying to stage each part all at once), the other nice thing is staging area. To stage everything and assembly everything at once takes more space than completing parts and putting them off to the side and then assembling the parts.

Just the matter of dealing with a couple of hundred feet of linear wood at once and not missing a piece here or there dimensioning is a pain. That kind of workflow is the result of sort of the "sketch up and workstation" society in hobby shops. As if you get a cut list and then need to stage the entire volume at once as if you're in a factory. It's also detrimental to wood selection and discernment which is fatiguing itself - also done better on quality work a little at a time.

I can't speak to a paying shop aside from having worked in a large cabinet factory - nobody was idle anywhere in the plant waiting for workflow. Ever.

 

[G S Haydon]

I would work just the same if I was a weekend guy in the garage with machines. I'd want to focus on defined stages. Why worry about drawer sides when the carcass isn't built? Leave it until you're going to use it. A Weekender might only manage a drawer a weekend.

Get out all of it and in six weeks time when you're on the last one, find out the wood's all to cock or the bottoms have cupped?

 

[Jacob]

Hi Graham hope you are well.

...... There is a balance to be had.

Well yes variations are allowed!

If I were making a chest of drawers I would pick out my best material for the carcass, cut to size, plane and make. I would then move to the drawers. I wouldn't get all of the material out in one go.

I'd do it all in one go, but selecting as you say. The planing would be one long op.....etc.

So too with a door. I would get rails and stiles out but might choose to leave the panels if there was a chance they were to be left over the weekend and not installed into a door.

ditto as above

...... No point making finished parts in volume if they can't be installed or sold.

Agree. Though maybe you could have some stuff sawn to size in anticipation of future orders

It's about a steady flow across everything. That's not to say you only mortice one door stile at a time, that would be stupid. Rather if you had 8 external doors you might make them in batches of 2. This allows others to be involved in the flow of work.

8 at a time, every time. So much faster!

There should be no delay in processing, if a business can't set a machine or use hand tools to work small batches it's likely because it's not very good.

Batch size according to the order book, or anticipated order book.

........
To your average weekend woodworker I would recommend breaking a job down. Making a table? Get out the legs and aprons, plane and join, glue up as appropriate. Same if it requires a drawer, then the top. I hope I've made some sense.

Yes makes sense. But just two ops for me - Table tops I'd do as one batch as they are likely to be very different from the underneath. Rest of table including drawers as another.
100% markup is the key. Miss a mark and make a mistake. All pairs marked up making sure edge marks are pointing opposite ways etc. Once marked up you are on auto pilot. Rod to hand for any checks. Can't go wrong!

PS One essential is a black/white board so you can see your whole cutting list from the workbench. e.g. that your 8 doors would have 16 stiles in opposing pairs. Easy to check the stack you are working on.
I usually mark it up with nominal sizes in inches, to be sawn to, and precise finished sizes in mm. e.g. "Glazing bars 10no 27" ex 2x1", finished 44x15mm" (that'd be a period copy typical size)

 

[D_W]

I would work just the same if I was a weekend guy in the garage with machines. I'd want to focus on defined stages. Why worry about drawer sides when the carcass isn't built? Leave it until you're going to use it. A Weekender might only manage a drawer a weekend.

Get out all of it and in six weeks time when you're on the last one, find out the wood's all to cock or the bottoms have cupped?

precisely. Along with the issue of design/plan or measuring mistakes. they don't occur building incrementally by hand and preparing the parts to fit what's already there.

I found something like a two part case with doors and a back extremely aggravating when working with machines earlier on. You cut out all of this stock and try to organize it and then there's a mistake somewhere in the plans, or something is cut a tenth short and what to do with the rest? It's too much like working at a day job keeping track of lists, and looking at dozens or 100 separate parts when what you really want to do is build.

It's also a lot easier to get the general idea and proportions and then figure out the details mid process when you can actually see all of the things you're doing. The less accurate one is with trivial details, and organized (and I am clinically bad at it - my talent for doing things other people wouldn't do comes from having a clinical omission of basic function in some cases that others would find routine), the easier it is to work as you're describing.

this doesn't maybe work well with clients who might want to see a CAD or drawing of what you're doing without much flexibility, but who needs to worry about it.

This skill then transfers outside of woodworking - that you'll often want to make something and only have a general idea of the specs but work to finish after critical details seem more intuitive in hand.

Even just aside from that, what's more satisfying, building a pair of drawers from scratch in a weekend and seeing all aspects to discern and maybe improve future drawers, or dimensioning 40 drawer sides to do other steps later? I sure would prefer the former by miles.

 

[G S Haydon]

8 at a time seems faster but when processes are linked and you're working in a team it's much, much slower. Everybody is waiting and errors are hidden. It's a 19th century way of making things.

Process these days are designed to flow with small batches. I'll sign off now

 

[Jacob]

8 at a time seems faster but when processes are linked and you're working in a team it's much, much slower. Everybody is waiting and errors are hidden. It's a 19th century way of making things.

Process these days are designed to flow with small batches. I'll sign off now

I tend to work on my own. Not at all sure how I'd organise a team over your 8 door example.
One interesting teamwork (?) detail I've sometimes noticed on old work is knife marks only on one face of a component and the other sides in pencil. My theory is that the knife marks were done by the gaffer from the rod and hence correct and indelible, to be picked up with pencil marks added by the bench joiner. Could be wrong!

 

[thetyreman]

I tend to work on my own. Not at all sure how I'd organise a team over your 8 door example.
One interesting teamwork (?) detail I've sometimes noticed on old work is knife marks only on one face of a component and the other sides in pencil. My theory is that the knife marks were done by the gaffer from the rod and hence correct and indelible, to be picked up with pencil marks added by the bench joiner. Could be wrong!

maybe the pencil lines were temporary and the knife lines were the final lines used, interestingly paul sellers uses the same system of marking out, the pencil lines are mostly a visual guide so you know where the joints are going.

 

[Jacob]

Even just aside from that, what's more satisfying, building a pair of drawers from scratch in a weekend and seeing all aspects to discern and maybe improve future drawers, or dimensioning 40 drawer sides to do other steps later? I sure would prefer the former by miles.

I wouldn't be doing 40 drawer sides unless I had orders including 20 drawers. In which case I'd be very happy to do them all in one batch including "the other steps" - it'd be very profitable!
I like doing multiples in any case. It seems so obvious to me that if you are going to design and get set up to make one of anything you might as well make a few more whilst you are at it and have everything sorted out.
In fact it's how most things are made. One off's are rarities - usually prototypes.

 

[Jacob]

maybe the pencil lines were temporary and the knife lines were the final lines used, interestingly paul sellers uses the same system of marking out, the pencil lines are mostly a visual guide so you know where the joints are going.

Marking knives aren't intended for marking, in spite of the name. But they are for cutting a line e.g. for a clean tenon shoulder, or in this case for making an indelible and precise line - with the rod as the visual guide.

 

[Ttrees]

Makes the edges a bit more delicate than leaving a pencil line on my timbers.

 

[thetyreman]

Marking knives aren't intended for marking, in spite of the name. But they are for cutting a line e.g. for a clean tenon shoulder, or in this case for making an indelible and precise line - with the rod as the visual guide.

they are good though for cross grain cuts, definitely helps a lot, rods are incredibly useful too, I've used a rod a lot since you mentioning it, saves so much time.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

On making volumes of parts, or inventory, most modern settings shy away from it. You regulate your production by a bottleneck. No point making finished parts in volume if they can't be installed or sold. It's about a steady flow across everything. That's not to say you only mortice one door stile at a time, that would be stupid. Rather if you had 8 external doors you might make them in batches of 2. This allows others to be involved in the flow of work.

Interesting point of view, and whilst I largely share it for cabinet type products, and others, I'm not sure breaking jobs down like that works every time. I recall several large jobs where we worked differently. One in particular, amongst others, sticks in my mind. Myself and a friend had a commission for an Edinburgh golf club to build twenty five mahogany dining chairs in a pattern based on a Georgian 18th century style including cabriole front legs and curved rear legs. A huge pile of mahogany half filled the workshop which was all cut up and machined as fast as possible into the basic constituent parts of rear and front legs, side, front and rear rails, X pattern stretchers and centre bosses, back splats and crown rails. We dimensioned enough parts for twenty seven chairs and processed and jointed each part. So, for example, we set out and morticed the square blank, marked the cabriole profile, bandsawed the shape, turned the foot, spindle moulded the cabriole off a template, and refined with hand tools fifty four cabriole legs in two batches, 27 left and 27 right. After completion they were all stacked up ready for the next stage.

The same happened with all the other parts so that we basically had neatly separated piles of components ready for putting together as sub-assembles which was done in batches of, for example, twenty seven sets of front legs to front rail, back legs to back rail, and so on until all twenty seven chairs were assembled. In truth, 25 chairs were first rate, one chair was a bit iffy and the twenty seventh was pretty ropey, but all the chairs were solid. I wanted to get them out of the workshop fast to prevent overfilling the available space and we did so through putting together the sub-assemblies of four to six chairs one after another, chucked them into the back of the van and shipped that batch a few miles down the road to the polishing shop.

I never did find out what happened to the two extra chairs over the twenty five ordered. I think the guy I worked with to get the job done took them home, but I could be wrong, ha, ha. I was certainly pleased to see the back of them but the job I recall was a pretty good earner. Slainte.

 

[D_W]

I wouldn't be doing 40 drawer sides unless I had orders including 20 drawers. In which case I'd be very happy to do them all in one batch including "the other steps" - it'd be very profitable!
I like doing multiples in any case. It seems so obvious to me that if you are going to design and get set up to make one of anything you might as well make a few more whilst you are at it and have everything sorted out.
In fact it's how most things are made. One off's are rarities - usually prototypes.

"get set up" is a power tool philosophy.

If you're going to get out a marking gauge, a pencil and a chisel, those are things you more or less do in about 10 seconds, it's not "getting set up".

if you're going to use a mortising machine, a table saw, and whatever else where you set a fence and do a test cut or whatever, then suddenly that makes sense.

What's not addressed here from actual experience is my comment about cutting 200 to 600 linear feet with a handsaw accurately without doing anything else. I would estimate that's something like 200 minutes of continuous cutting. A solid half hour of cutting and doing nothing other than moving pieces, I have done. I would have to see someone else do it and have good results before I believed it - even a half hour, because there are so few people working by hand to understand setting up a tempo that can be kept.

You could cut tenons for half a day without any issue but a wandering mind would lead to problems. To cut something like 8 or 15 tenons, no big deal. to cut 50 or something, it would become a problem.

Nothing suggests to me that anyone on this thread is doing any of this. Not that nobody is doing hand work, but that most of the advice being given (aside from richard and graham) is just extrapolation "I think I would do it like this if".

Anyone doing work for a specific project will have a gaggle of mortise and marking gauges, they'll be set to a common setting for parts, so there is no setting anything up - it's picking something up, and perhaps if doing something that will use most of the bench, putting the stuff in a drawer and getting it back out.

Giving bad advice doesn't really help anyone. What will newbies conclude. They can't cut several hundred linear feet in a row so hand tool working is bad. doing things that don't make physical sense is one of the biggest barriers to people actually working by hand - outside of just trying to take power tool ideas over to hand work and thinking "this is too slow this way!".

 

[G S Haydon]

Apologies, Jacob! I forgot my manners! I'm very well thank you , hope you're doing well. You've lost none of your energy. Perhaps we could hook you up to the national grid to solve the energy crisis

 

[G S Haydon]

Richard, that sounds like a great project! I've only ever made a couple of very simple chairs for a client and done a few repairs. Cabriole, I'd need a lesson or two.

I think it depends on how many are in the team. There is a dreadful way that I can explain the benefits of one piece flow, but I understand that in a one or two person craft setting the benefit is harder to see and it's not always appropriate. It's an interesting process though and has made us more efficient and removed some of the stress.

 

[baldkev]

I dont have a scrub plane, just a couple of number 4s, a couple of 5s and a few block planes etc

As a site carpenter, most of my planing is with a makita powered planer or the block planes. In the workshop ive got a 12" p/t.
Ive never even tried to dimension a project by hand, probably wouldnt do a good job at it either
Thats not to say it isnt viable, because no doubt someone with that skill and 'feeling' would be able to do it fairly quickly, but as a paid job, i think youd need a thicknesser to be competitive.
In the old days building houses must have taken years?!? I can't imagine how long jobs would take using just hand tools

 

[Jacob]

I dont have a scrub plane, just a couple of number 4s, a couple of 5s and a few block planes etc

As a site carpenter, most of my planing is with a makita powered planer or the block planes. In the workshop ive got a 12" p/t.
Ive never even tried to dimension a project by hand, probably wouldnt do a good job at it either
Thats not to say it isnt viable, because no doubt someone with that skill and 'feeling' would be able to do it fairly quickly, but as a paid job, i think youd need a thicknesser to be competitive.
In the old days building houses must have taken years?!? I can't imagine how long jobs would take using just hand tools

One thing that made hand tool use easier in the past was that timber from the mill would be available in a wider variety of sawn sizes. That immediately could cut out (literally!) a lot of physical work.
It's not that difficult doing stuff entirely by hand but not likely to be competitive, as you say. The main thing is to use your cutting list and reduce sawn stuff to handleable sizes before planing. In fact you'd usually do the same if machining, so it's not exactly a radical departure!
In any case hand tool skills are essential and many small shops will do a mixture of both, depending on what they are making.
There are stories of amateurs planing up long lengths of stock in imitation of timber yard PAR. But whether by machine or hand plane; DON'T DO IT! That way madness lies!

 

[D_W]

I dont have a scrub plane, just a couple of number 4s, a couple of 5s and a few block planes etc

As a site carpenter, most of my planing is with a makita powered planer or the block planes. In the workshop ive got a 12" p/t.
Ive never even tried to dimension a project by hand, probably wouldnt do a good job at it either
Thats not to say it isnt viable, because no doubt someone with that skill and 'feeling' would be able to do it fairly quickly, but as a paid job, i think youd need a thicknesser to be competitive.
In the old days building houses must have taken years?!? I can't imagine how long jobs would take using just hand tools

there's definitely not much of a case to make here about people paying for hand work vs. people doing it as a hobby. As the former, I know of exactly one person who only works by hand and he has a niche more or less among a huge area of woodwork - custom and production - in picking up jobs or parts of jobs that are cheaper for him to do by hand. For example, if you have a production run of CNC decorative work, but one part of the work isn't doable by CNC, then the run will land in his shop and he'll do the work. or if there's a run of CNC or jigged work in a power tool shop that ends up with a consistent error, he'll end up fixing that work, and from time to time, small runs of one off (especially curved or carved) elements where his quote will be lower than another shop.

As to folks doing a lot of it as a matter of daily regular work - I couldn't make a case for it either. I can make a case that it's not that hard to learn, it's pleasant and you could certainly build yourself out of space to put things in a matter of a few years working entirely by hand.

The context for the hand worker here was more in tune with getting the right stock from the local mill, close to size and the quality you want. That option really isn't there at this point. The nearest local *good* saw miller to me is over an hour.

to put it differently, relatively accurate starting lumber went from being the territory of the miller to the shop owner, and I'm sure the reason was economic as shops got powered. It's always economic.

 

[whereistheceilidh]

One thing that made hand tool use easier in the past was that timber from the mill would be available in a wider variety of sawn sizes. That immediately could cut out (literally!) a lot of physical work.
It's not that difficult doing stuff entirely by hand but not likely to be competitive, as you say. The main thing is to use your cutting list and reduce sawn stuff to handleable sizes before planing. In fact you'd usually do the same if machining, so it's not exactly a radical departure!
In any case hand tool skills are essential and many small shops will do a mixture of both, depending on what they are making.
There are stories of amateurs planing up long lengths of stock in imitation of timber yard PAR. But whether by machine or hand plane; DON'T DO IT! That way madness lies!

...is 'in the past'a key phrase here? Timber used to be cut/dimensioned by hand frequntly as often little else was available in small operations. Folk had the skills to do it. But could I suggest that the wood was better, & more carefully seasoned, & this made converting large lumps of wood into what was needed rather easier than it is now.