Hand-Tool Phobia

[Jelly]

Both as a 'lurker' and now as a member, I've come across a lot of comments which are either anti-handwork or which perpetuate (or possibly result from the perpetuation of) myths about the difficulty of using handtools.

I'd be interested to hear the reasoning from both sides of the divide... (and the middle ground too come to it).

I'm in an odd position, in that I personally choose to avoid powertools like the plague, as a reaction to working in a manufacturing environment where they dominate, sometimes beyond the point of common sense... I do however appreciate them for high volume work for exactly the same reason.

I read a post in which someone said that creating jigs and attachments for their powertools satisfies their "inner design engineer" which struck a chord, as I never can pass up the chance to work in the fitters shop or toolroom and learn their craft... It's fascinating. (For my sins, I wanted to be a patternmaker when I was younger; However, a helpful careers advisor pointed out that there were fewer and fewer press shops left, and even less doing work that needed hand tooled dies)

 

[Steve Maskery]

Hi Jelly
You make a very interesting point.
I have a reputation of using jigs for everything. I don't, of course, but it is commercially advantageous to go along with the image
Learning a hand-skill, in just about any field, whether it be a craft like woodwork or an art like painting or playing an instrument, is one of the most intrinsically rewarding activities man can do. It's innate in us to create.
The hand-v-machine debate has gone on since the days of the Luddites, and will probably continue until the end of time.
Personally, I think it depends on what you priorities are. Is your aim to produce something of high quality, no matter how it is produced, or is it to produce something which is hand-made and it doesn't matter if it is quite flawed?

Perhaps the ideal is to produce something very high quality which is handmade. David Savage springs to mind. Unfortunately I'm not in the same league. So until I am, I shall have no qualms at all in creating my works using a mixture of the hand-skills I do have and the benefits of the jigs I have built to remove the guess-work.

More power to our elbows, I say. As well as our power tools.
S

 

[Scouse]

I learned with hand tools exclusively and have never used a machine professionally for that reason, although I am fully aware that my timber suppliers don't process their lumber via a couple of blokes and a pit! The hand tool learning experience is longer than power tools, I would suggest, but the skill built up and knowledge of how wood as a material works makes the investment in time worth it if productivity is not your ultimate aim: time, production volume and machined competition do make fully professional hand tool work a niche area though. I am lucky enough to be in a very low volume high quality area of woodwork, so it hasn't been a problem up until now...

A confirmed Luddite (see my sig. below!), I find myself looking at bandsaws for the first time in 25 years working for myself, due to a recurring shoulder injury, not caused by but exacerbated by hand rip and resawing, and I have to say I'm not enjoying the experience. I guess I'll use it for the rough donkey work when I eventually take the plunge, but no more than that.

So I guess there are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. :|

 

[AndyT]

As a hobby woodworker, hand tools are my first choice - I don't want to spend my leisure time as a machine minder. But there is no need to be dogmatic about it - I have a table saw which I use for initial breakdown of boards. I'm just not that interested in making it do everything else - it's a nasty, noisy, dusty thing.
If I want to make a door, I'll do it by hand - but for a commercial production run of kitchen units - no I wouldn't.

Where I think people do miss out is by not having the choice. There can be times when it is actually quicker and more efficient to use a plane or a chisel than it would be to use a powered router or a belt sander, provided you have the tools and some idea of how to use them.

 

[Jelly]

Where I think people do miss out is by not having the choice. There can be times when it is actually quicker and more efficient to use a plane or a chisel than it would be to use a powered router or a belt sander, provided you have the tools and some idea of how to use them.

Ahahahaha! We have a situation like this at work.

The bloke who assembles the casements for sliding sash windows has to ensure that the external (brickwork facing) surface is level, the machine shop however is allowed a .75mm tolerence on this self same face of the components so he can be faced with a pair of 1.5mm steps.

However, he doesnt have his NVQ level two in joinery and thus according to the SOP's may not use a hand plane... as a result He has to sand up to 3mm (5/32" ish?) of material off, this consumes up to three respirator filters a week, and a powered reciprocal sander every four months!

ISO 9001 paying for itself right there - Not!

 

[AndyT]

That's just crazy! Not only for blocking a simple solution, but for having a method of construction that can end up with a faulty product.

 

[No skills]

Where I think people do miss out is by not having the choice. There can be times when it is actually quicker and more efficient to use a plane or a chisel than it would be to use a powered router or a belt sander, provided you have the tools and some idea of how to use them.

Ahahahaha! We have a situation like this at work.

The bloke who assembles the casements for sliding sash windows has to ensure that the external (brickwork facing) surface is level, the machine shop however is allowed a .75mm tolerence on this self same face of the components so he can be faced with a pair of 1.5mm steps.

However, he doesnt have his NVQ level two in joinery and thus according to the SOP's may not use a hand plane... as a result He has to sand up to 3mm (5/32" ish?) of material off, this consumes up to three respirator filters a week, and a powered reciprocal sander every four months!

ISO 9001 paying for itself right there - Not!

Absolutely bonkers. Do people working close to him also wear masks when he's doing this?

 

[RogerBoyle]

Where I think people do miss out is by not having the choice. There can be times when it is actually quicker and more efficient to use a plane or a chisel than it would be to use a powered router or a belt sander, provided you have the tools and some idea of how to use them.

Ahahahaha! We have a situation like this at work.

The bloke who assembles the casements for sliding sash windows has to ensure that the external (brickwork facing) surface is level, the machine shop however is allowed a .75mm tolerence on this self same face of the components so he can be faced with a pair of 1.5mm steps.

However, he doesnt have his NVQ level two in joinery and thus according to the SOP's may not use a hand plane... as a result He has to sand up to 3mm (5/32" ish?) of material off, this consumes up to three respirator filters a week, and a powered reciprocal sander every four months!

ISO 9001 paying for itself right there - Not!

Not to be argumentative but the companys SOP's are written by or for the company using ISO 9001 as a guide it is simply up to the company to amend the SOP that prevents him using a hand plane and make it irrelevant the fact that he has no NVQ qualification for such a simple menial task ...
I would point out the cost savings over the course of a year (material and labour) to the Head honcho I guarantee it would change LOL

Roger

 

[Jelly]

The QC is extremely strict, so I'm certain its not resulting in defective products*. But the overcomplicated assembly both increases waste and moved the bottleneck of changeover times in the machine shop downstream to preparation times, rather than eliminating it...

The slider prep area is its own cell, shoved in a free corner so the sanding is at least suitably away from other people.

It's a really good, if extreme example of how hand-tool-phobia can be limiting, though in this case its institutionalising it that created the issue.

*(At least not reaching the final customer; rumour has it that someone built a greenhouse by slowly aquiring windows rejected due to glazing faults or handling damage for a notional price)

I may have to ask why certain components are given greater tolerences than others, as there must be a practical reason and possibly an interesting one at that.

 

[Jacob]

Surely if he isn't able to use a hand plane then he is completely unskilled as a joiner and is in the wrong job.
Hand plane and saw are the basic tools.

 

[AndyT]

Surely if he isn't able to use a hand plane then he is completely unskilled as a joiner and is in the wrong job.
Hand plane and saw are the basic tools.

Yes but we don't know if he can use a plane or not - only that he is not allowed to.

The problem as described is that he has no formal qualification in using the plane, and a qualification is needed as the quality control system will have a general rule in it somewhere to say that nobody must use any tool or machine without having the appropriate qualifications.

He may be as skilled with a plane as the best of us!

From the sound of it, the system of work is designed to lower the level of skill as much as possible so they don't need to employ people with an all-round understanding of joinery work, including selection of appropriate tools and methods! That could well be a false economy, which I think was the OP's point.

 

[RogerBoyle]

LOL sounds like your company are bit confused as to the rights and wrongs of it ...or rather somebody within your company is :roll: :roll:
He can use a powered Machine with respiratory protection but cannot use a simple hand plane ... that is an insane and very costly mistake for any company to make :shock: :shock:

Back to the original OP

I have always used a mixture of both hand and Machine tools
Simply put I use both as and when I want and when the job in hand demands it
there are times howver when time constraints do force me to use the quickest methods and in the case of 2 or 3 tenons then I will do them by Hand (mortices are always done by machine though LOL)
in Batch production I will use either the Spindle or the Woodrat regardless of time constraints LOL as I find cutting anything 20 or more times by hand extremely boring :twisted:

I believe that each member will have thier own preferences and idiosyncrasies and what suits one would drive another up the wall

Roger

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I'm sure that there's a simple solution for this problem. The QC procedure could be ammended to read, "....hold appropriate qualifications or demonstrate suitable experience....". Suitable experience in setting and use of a jack-plane could be taught in a morning, if necessary.

Tight QC is appropriate if the consequences of failure are severe, for example if life and limb are jeopardised. The consequences of failure in this case are that the sash casement does not pass final inspection - nobody's health is endangered (except by clouds of wood-dust).

QA is a wonderful thing, but like almost anything else in life, it can be applied over-zealously.

 

[mind_the_goat]

Does he have a suitable qualification to use the power tool sander then ?
This does sound like following the letter rather than the spirit of the guideline. Is there no one in the company who could teach the use of of the plane or simply get him to demonstrate he does know how t use one, or does the company believe this opens then up to increased risk of litigation should he cut himself?

 

[tomatwark]

The QC is extremely strict, so I'm certain its not resulting in defective products*. But the overcomplicated assembly both increases waste and moved the bottleneck of changeover times in the machine shop downstream to preparation times, rather than eliminating it...

The slider prep area is its own cell, shoved in a free corner so the sanding is at least suitably away from other people.

It's a really good, if extreme example of how hand-tool-phobia can be limiting, though in this case its institutionalising it that created the issue.

*(At least not reaching the final customer; rumour has it that someone built a greenhouse by slowly aquiring windows rejected due to glazing faults or handling damage for a notional price)

I may have to ask why certain components are given greater tolerences than others, as there must be a practical reason and possibly an interesting one at that.

The QC can't be that good if your machinists can only machine within 0.75mm, any machinist who left a step that big either does not know what he is doing or could not careless as whoever wrote the 9001 documentation gave him a get out.

If you are doing batch work any machinist worth his money would have a set of set up parts to make the set up quicker and a note book giving any measurements he needed.

It must be costing a fortune to sand sashes to fit that way when the should fit from glue up with a light sand to remove any marks ready for painting.

Tom

 

[siggy_7]

I'm a career engineer although sadly a desk-based one, and woodworking for me is a hobby rather than a business. I completely understand that a lot of people take great pleasure in hand craft techniques, and enjoy the peace and purity that an absence of power tools brings to them as well as the physical nature of techniques like planing a board flat by hand. As a hobby though it should be about what you derive pleasure from. I personally would much rather spend a couple of lunch hours adapting a jig idea I've seen, a morning making it and then using it to do a specific task. I like tinkering with dial gauges and feeler gauges to get a machine set-up spot on. Quite often I'll grant you this whole process is not very time efficient - certainly for the first job. But then I have something which I can quickly set up to do that same joinery task again and again - with a guaranteed, repeatable accuracy (which is of course always checked for accuracy with a vernier calliper). When I have a lot of rough material to process, I love running stock through my planer-thicknesser and ripping with the table saw, and detest the idea of going red in the face with a hand plane to do the same job - physically lazy yes, but then sloth is the mother of invention. I can start at 7 in the morning, keep on until 10 at night, and aside from sore legs from standing all day I'm not that physically fatigued (my neighbours probably hate me though!).

Like I said at the start - hobbies should be about what you derive pleasure from, this is just what I enjoy. I accept I'm a bit strange, but that's ok - I've come to terms with that. Doubtless I am not very "skilled" as a woodworker, but as a tinkerer of machinery I can produce things to a decent quality that I find acceptable, and do these things repeatably without the frustration of having to re-make and adapt things because my joints don't fit. Aside from an occasional fine adjustment or edge-chamfer with a block plane, or a bit of final hand-sanding, my work never really sees a hand tool and that's the way I like to work. Each to their own - variety is the spice of life and all that.

 

[adzeman]

I don’t understand some of the posts on the use of hand tools versus machines is it some form of competition?

Most joiner’s shops have machines the Joiners that they employ come with their own hand tools.

 

[Jelly]

I don’t understand some of the posts on the use of hand tools versus machines is it some form of competition?

Most joiner’s shops have machines the Joiners that they employ come with their own hand tools.

In terms of what people enjoy using, to some extent it seems to be; Though commercially the two go together seamlessly to make the most efficient process possible.

From my background, I've always seen machining to be something of a seperate art/science/skill, certainly as the machines get bigger this becomes true; It seems as though there are plenty of people who enjoy developing these skills as hobbyists too

 

[Jacob]

.............I completely understand that a lot of people take great pleasure in hand craft techniques, and enjoy the peace and purity that an absence of power tools brings to them as well as the physical nature of techniques like planing a board flat by hand.

It's easy to mystify it, but I think phobia is the right word, or perhaps just fear of making a bosh of things - which we all do anyway especially beginners

..... But then I have something which I can quickly set up to do that same joinery task again and again - with a guaranteed, repeatable accuracy (which is of course always checked for accuracy with a vernier calliper).

Absolutely the same with hand woodwork and I use a vernier caliper too

When I have a lot of rough material to process, I love running stock through my planer-thicknesser and ripping with the table saw, and detest the idea of going red in the face with a hand plane to do the same job

Wouldn't argue with that, but there are many times when hand tools are the best way.

........ Doubtless I am not very "skilled" as a woodworker,

Practice practice!

 

[siggy_7]

It's easy to mystify it, but I think phobia is the right word, or perhaps just fear of making a bosh of things - which we all do anyway especially beginners

For some people, phobia is probably the right word. For me personally, it definitely isn't. If I had the patience and inclination to learn hand techniques, and I thought I'd get something out of it, then I would. But it doesn't. The main reason I use machines is because I prefer them - I like fiddling about with set-ups, and I like going out into my workshop and making a ton of noise. I'm in a minority here which could be argued as a bit peculiar and I know that, but it's just what I enjoy. If I spent a while practicing, I'm sure I could learn to mark out a tenon and cut sufficiently accurately to a line with a tenon-saw, or learn how to hand cut dove-tails, or all sorts of other joints. But whilst I respect the technique, I would not personally get anything out of learning it for myself.

Wouldn't argue with that, but there are many times when hand tools are the best way.

Surely in the context of a hobby, the "best" way is that which gets you the results you desire that you enjoy the most? For professional work of course you can calculate the "best" way by considering up-front investment in learning techniques, cost of buying and maintaining tools, time to do an operation and define its quality by tolerances. In the context of a hobbyist, I don't think most of that applies.