Slowing down

[Marc Casebolt]

I'm new to this neander way of working. As a reformed power tool junkie, and trying to go the total neander way when I can, I find it hard to slow down. What I mean is, for instance, the project I'm on now would be complete by now with the power stuff, but I'm still prepping the boards, and working out the joinery.

Don't get me wrong here, I don't want to go back, and I'm having more fun with this than I have in a long time. I really like learning new skills. I actually have planed the sides of my material flat and parallel by hand!! (hey it's a big deal to me).

What I need to learn is to take my time. I find myself planing as fast as I can and making mistakes. I try to hurry up when starting a saw cut, and getting it going off the line. I need to find a way to drill holes square to the surface. Lots of stuff to mention, I'll leave it at that.

As time goes on I find that I am getting better at being careful, and checking myself before any damage is done. I'm sure that in time a more even pace can be achieved, but for now I'm fighting my learned tendency to go as fast as I can. I hope this makes sense.

Anybody else make the same transition to hand tools and have this problem?

Thanks,
Marc

[Robert Rozaieski]

You can work fairly quickly using hand tools, however, you need to change the way you think about processes. For instance, before you go planing evey piece of lumber for your project to four square, take a step back and ask yourself if it's really necessary?

Do you work to a cut list? Again, you can work much faster by hand by not doing so. Instead, work off of your actual piece to gauge parts. Don't measure. Put your rule or tape away and gauge instead.

Have a board that's 6¾" wide but your plan calls for one 6¼"? Ask yourself if you really need to rip it down ½" or if you can instead simply use the full board width.

In many cases you may find that you are performing unnecessary tasks simply because when you worked by machine, the use of the machines required you to perform the extra steps. Rather than trying to do the tasks at machine speed, you need to do only the necessary tasks or do them in a different order. Another example is only planing one side of each board prior to gluing into a wider panel instead of both sides. Then after your glueup, you plane the whole unplaned side of the panel flat. Planing this side only once instead of twice (before and after glueup) saves time.

Train yourself to think differently and you can work faster.

[Eric Hartunian]

I will add one thing... You can't go full neander without a pretty comprehensive set of tools. No kidding here. If you are like most power tool guys, you might have one smallish joinery saw, and maybe a block plane. If you try to jump into pure hand tool work like this, you will be frustrated. This is how I started out, and until I acquired the right tools for the job, I did not make much progress. If you don't believe me, try ripping a board with a tenon saw, and you will quickly see what I mean. Best of luck and keep at it. These skills take time, but as you progress, your work will go much faster. (although, if you do this for fun, who cares if it takes all day???)

Eric

[Dave Samborski]

Marc,

I'm right there with ya.
I've been trying hard to be patient with my projects too. Tough, especially when my job requires my speedy work.
Then I come home and try to take my time. Tough transition.

Good luck,
Dave

[RickT Harding]

I've run into the same feeling, but I just step back and enjoy the pace a bit. I do programming by day. Things on computers are so fast paced, go go go, need it faster. The reason I really enjoy the neander woodworking is that it's quiet, paced, and physical.

What's funny is the other day I needed to chamfer a TS ext table I've been working on and felt like just using my hand planes vs the router. After getting a good chamfer on there with my freshly tuned MF low angle block, I realized it went a lot faster than I thought and I wasn't sure if I could have setup my router, set the depth, dust collection, etc and gotten it done as quickly or not.

[Joe McMahon]

Marc,

I'm right there with ya.
I've been trying hard to be patient with my projects too. Tough, especially when my job requires my speedy work.
Then I come home and try to take my time. Tough transition.

Good luck,
Dave

Dave it is the journey, not the destination. When you embrace that philosophy, things will go much smoother and projects will not only have your skill in them, your pieces will now have your soul as well. Enjoy!

Joe

[Jim Kountz]

Im experiencing a similar thing. Im doing cabriole legs for the first time on a lowboy project and I noticed the other day while rasping and filing that I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I just stopped and asked myself what hurry I was in. From then on I didnt have that feeling of "gotta hurry and get done" but rather a feeling of enjoyment from the quiet in the shop and also thinking more about what I was doing. The last two legs went alot better and turned out nicer than the first two.

[David Keller NC]

Marc - One comment here is that the discovery of the Philadelphia Book of Furniture Prices (published in 1772) gives some clues to just how fast hand-tool only furniture can be constructed. Historians have been able to back out how long it took an average journeyman to make a particular piece by the published price in this book, an average day's wage of the time, and the standard hours worked per day (typically, 6 days a week for 12 hours a day).

There's some controversy as to what the average pay of a workman of the day was, but even with the most conservative estimates means these guys were very, very fast. After looking at a lot of antiques, I think the reason is exactly as Robert mentioned - surfaces that didn't show on the finished piece were very roughly dimensioned to size, but not finish-planed, and the joinery inside the case was kept to a minimum - it's unusual to find full dust boards and drawer stops inside a case of drawers, for example.

[Robert Rozaieski]

Marc - One comment here is that the discovery of the Philadelphia Book of Furniture Prices (published in 1772) gives some clues to just how fast hand-tool only furniture can be constructed. Historians have been able to back out how long it took an average journeyman to make a particular piece by the published price in this book, an average day's wage of the time, and the standard hours worked per day (typically, 6 days a week for 12 hours a day).

There's some controversy as to what the average pay of a workman of the day was, but even with the most conservative estimates means these guys were very, very fast. After looking at a lot of antiques, I think the reason is exactly as Robert mentioned - surfaces that didn't show on the finished piece were very roughly dimensioned to size, but not finish-planed, and the joinery inside the case was kept to a minimum - it's unusual to find full dust boards and drawer stops inside a case of drawers, for example.

Yeah, some of these estimates absolutely amaze me. One that really sticks out is an estimate I read from Mack Headley that a Newport bonnet top chest on chest like the one pictured would have taken approximately 744 man hours. Based on what was believed to be the typical 6 day/12 hour work schedule that works out to just over 10 weeks to complete. I challenge even a modern power tool shop to turn this piece out in that amount of time. Given the amount of work that simply cannot be done by machine on these pieces, it's doubtful many would be able to.

114439

[Marc Casebolt]

Thanks for the advice, and it's good to see that I am not alone in this.

Hand tools have always been a part of my work, and I started this little adventure with more than a few of them. And I have added to my tools massively over the last year or so (just ask my wife!) It's the transition to total hand tool work that is making me a bit nuts at times. I am trying to design projects that will only use the tools I have, but even then I find myself looking for a better way. I recently had to stop what I was doing to make a frame saw to re-saw some 8/4 stock. It's things like this that I really like to do. This weekend I made the nicest dovetails I've ever done, so there are rewards to be had.

If I slow down I can work accurately, but I find myself ramping up the speed without even thinking about it and that is where I run into trouble. It's getting better as time goes on, and new skills are learned. It's that whole journey/destination thing I need to keep in mind.

Thanks for putting up with this rant,

Marc

[RickT Harding]

Need to find the right music to put on it sounds like. Less up tempo rock, more BB King in the woodshop :D

[Mark Roderick]

This is a highly individualized thing, at least from my perspective.

I get a lot of enjoyment from the process of woodworking - my haven from the world - but I also get a lot of enjoyment from producing finished pieces. For the best overall experience I need to get these two things into balance, and the balance changes over time.

I definitely enjoy putting that final perfect edge on a board with my #7 jointer plane, but I'll rip on the board on my tablesaw first.

I could cut perfect dovetails with a router, but at this stage of my life I like to cut them by hand.

I flatten tabletops using hand planes alone. Maybe if I did enough of them this would get tedious and I'd haul them to a shot with a wide abrasive surfacer.

I mainly crosscut boards on my radial arm saw, but for fine pieces I shoot a perfectly straight edge with my low-angle jack.

I've never owned a powered jointer, preferring to get the first flat edge using quiet hand planes. But on my most recent project I was spending a huge amount of time jointing boards, one after another, and I realized that jointing by hand has become somewhat tedious for me, expecially on narrow boards, and I could have saved hours and hours with a powered jointer. So I think I'm going to buy a 8" or 10" Grizzly jointer and adjust that process vs. product balance.

This weekend, I put the most beautiful "raised panel" edges on the top of a box using just a low-angle block plane, something no machine in the world could do nearly as well. Fine shavings, no noise, perfect results. That was a real joy both in the execution and the speed.

So again, it's a personal thing. As others have said many times, I'm sure the great masters of the past would have used machines for repetitive tasks if they'd had the chance. Instead, they had these things call "apprentices"!

To each his own, thank goodness.

[James Owen]

Need to find the right music to put on it sounds like. Less up tempo rock, more BB King in the woodshop :D

If your taste in music runs toward the Classical, then try some 17., 18., or early 19. Century chamber music (Vivaldi, Albinoni, Corelli, Couperin, JS Bach, Telemann, Scarlatti, etc.); it does the trick for me. If you really need to slow down, then Gregorian chant is one solution....

[Marc Casebolt]

Music, what a great idea.

At my old shop I always had something cranking away on the stereo. I have no music at all in the new shop, so will give that a try. Nice and slow tempo just might help.

Thanks,

Marc

[Larry Fox]

I am actually quite happy to read this post. I have some new responsibilities at work and my kids are coming into the activities phase of their young lives and I want to be a very active participant in that as opposed to a spectator. These two things combined mean that something has to give and that right now is shop time. I primarally use power tools but have been slowly migrating my work to be biased towards this side as I have found it more satisfying. However, I find that I am constantly fighting the "gotta get this done and there are not enough !@#$@!@! hours in the day" feeling. Sometimes a post like Jim K's serves to refocus.

Oh, and on the music, you are much more likely to hear any random Tool song racing it's way around my shop than Vivaldi which might explain some things. :)

[David Keller NC]

"I've never owned a powered jointer, preferring to get the first flat edge using quiet hand planes. But on my most recent project I was spending a huge amount of time jointing boards, one after another, and I realized that jointing by hand has become somewhat tedious for me, expecially on narrow boards, and I could have saved hours and hours with a powered jointer. So I think I'm going to buy a 8" or 10" Grizzly jointer and adjust that process vs. product balance."

I think you may have a rude surprise when your jointer arrives. It's true that it can be a faster way to roughly joint boards, but at least on my DJ20, it's not the automatic, almost-finished result that a power planer yields. In particular, it has the potential to really mess up an edge (though it will be perfectly square if the face has been jointed flat), and I've always found that it requires hand work afterwards - it's straight, but there's a lot of scallop marks to take care of.

You might have better results than I have with a more expensive machine equipped with spiral cutters. In my case, though, aesthetics dictates that I remove all traces of machine use, so I didn't thiink it was worth the extra dough for the head upgrade.