Why are you a Neander?

[Jim Matthews]

Like Matthew, my freetime is after dark. The planes and handsaws make little noises that I like, but don't ring through the house.

Chopping dovetails is another story.

As with other Neander-tools on this board, I use power equipment in the garage, on weekends, when I can open the outer doors.
I shudder at the expense incurred for those few minutes versus the cost to set up for the majority of my time.

I exchanged a great deal of money to make sure I never resaw by hand again. *UGH*

[Mark Roderick]

I really enjoyed reading all these responses. Each is a little different yet all are alike, and similar to my own experience.

I use hand tools because:

--- I enjoy the peacefulness and quiet.

--- I love the feel of a sharp blace slicing cleanly through wood.

--- Sharpening and using hand tools gives me a greater sense of achievement that I get from using power tools.

--- I can achieve much more accuracy in my woodworking.

--- The accuracy and the flexibility of hand tools gives me feel of mastery over the project, translating into calm.

Nevertheless, I absolutely use power tools. I've always used a power planer and I plan to buy a power jointer now that I've jointed enough wide boards by hand!

Like many others, I started woodworking when I inherited some tools from my grandfather, who was born in 1899. I still use his Delta benchtop table saw and a cast iron drill press that was built who knows when and will last forever. I've achieved greater hand tool skills than he had, but I wish I had a third of his skill at furniture design.

[Jared McMahon]

I've ranted about this is another post or two, but here's the short version:

I live in a townhome and have to get any non-trivial changes approved by my HOA. I had every intention of using power tools but the power in my garage can't accommodate them. After a long time going back and forth with the HOA about installing higher amperage circuits, I got fed up with the red tape and decided to go the handtool/neander route. This has the added benefit of being able to do more work at odd hours, as well as store lots of smaller tools vertically, whereas machinery would take up quite a bit of floor space. And since my workshop is a one-car garage shared with a dog kennel and a bunch of patio furniture, floor space is at a premium.

I don't know if this is inverted sour grapes, but I really enjoy working with older tools and older technology, making wispy shavings, and being able to focus down on the small details and get them just the way I want them using my own two hands.

[Johnny Kleso]

Truth is I am not a neanderthal the same as the power tool users are not all techno geeks..
Seems SMC like the name better than Hand Tool fourm, I'm just a woodworker that uses the best tool I an afford to do the job..

I would bet there are very few hand tool pruest on the fourm if any at all..

[Georg Zudoff]

I would like to tell one more reason to use hand tools. Yesterday I went to my garage were I hope to dimantle a wooden pallet. I've took from home small rip saw with no any thoughts to use it - I have a sabre saw in garage.
But I've didn't took into consideration the weather - about +5 Celsium degrees.
So what I get. In the process of installation of sabre saw blade (you know, there is a nut for hex key) one blade was crashed. I've took another - this one was crashed too.
The third blade, of course, was crashed as the first two blades.

I understand that here in Ukraine the people try to spend less money and to buy cheapest and not always good tools (these were made in China and cost for me near $ 2,5 - local street price), but all blades worked fine when the temperature was near +12 Celsium degrees.

So I took my hand so and go on...

The hand tools will work every day and any time and not inlfluenced via weather.

My apologises for the language mistakes.

Georg Zudoff

[Dhananjay Nayakankuppam]

I use a bandsaw with some regularity. A jointer and corded drill see occasional use and a router sees next to none. Having said that, why do I use hand tools?

In no particular order....
1) Because I am not a professional - I only have to justify my time to myself and am not trying to put food on the table/make a living/any of the arguments that make efficiency trump effectiveness and curiosity.
2) Noise - hate the power tools. Can't listen to music.
3) Slower, more contemplative pace. Let's me be comfortable and happy. See point 1.
4) Can see the wood for more than another pallet of raw material like so much pulp or cement slurry. For me, that is easier with hand tools, more difficult with power tools.
5) Space - need a bench and a couple of tool cabinets. That's it. Power tools devour space like Godzilla going at Tokyo.
6) I'm clumsy. I know bleeding on your work is good but I manage that fine with chisels and saws. The good thing is it stays at the ritual offering to the Gods level and does not escalate into a full-blown orgy of blood letting. Oh, and table saw tables are at just the right height for kickback to fling a piece of unyielding wood at the more yielding parts of my body.
7) I develop some skills with my hands. With power tools, it feels like a more cerebral exercise, while my feeling self is relegated to merely pushing/pulling.
8) I get some exercise - given my slow descent into middle age and beyond and my increased resemblance to the Rock of Gibraltar, anything that makes me move a little more is good.
9) I can usually recover from my mistakes with hand tools. Machines made mistakes happen too fast and go too far.
10) And the number 1 reason to be a Neander - you can fondle your tools happily (no spellchecker could catch that one...). Brass and wood calls to be held, but a cast iron behemoth has all the aesthetic appeal of a Mack Truck.

Cheers, DJ

[bob blakeborough]

I am a newbie who started out with nothing but handtools on the brain. I wanted to learn something that in my mind was functional yet artistic. I wanted to complete something and say that it was built exclusively by my own 2 hands without any assistance from anything that wasn't 100% my own skill or screw up. I must admit now that I am seeing the benefits of power tools for certain jobs for sure, especially just starting out and being impatient enough to want to complete some small projects quickly just to feel like I am seeing faster progress. I still have the goal of doing everything by hand that I can do with a power tool though.

I guess I am saying that I aspire to be 100% electricity free, but I don't not feel the need to be strictly a purist through and through just yet!

[Paul Incognito]

I'll play...
It's interesting to read other's take on this. Here's my story:
I've been employed as a carpenter all my adult life, so over the years I've gotten pretty good with the power tools. When I first found SMC I checked out this forum and it seemed interesting, but not really of value. I had some planes in the shop that were given to me 10-15 years ago that have sat on a shelf all that time. I decided to blow the dust off them (with a compressor, of course), sharpen them as best I could and try this out.
You know what? I sucked at it. I didn't know how to sharpen at all, had never heard the concept of flattening the back of the blade and certainly didn't have a clue that a flat sole was helpful. So I decided to muddle along and maybe I'd learn something.
Fast forward to today. Yes, I still use my power tools, but learning how to use the hand tools has made me a better carpenter. I've learned that sometimes going a little slower is actually faster, and that there is always another way to do a task. My eye-hand coordination is better, I can get my edge tools sharp, have learned how to sharpen and use hand saws and I get more excersise pushing a plane or sawing by hand than pushing wood through a table saw of planer.
Then there's the peace and quiet. That's nice too.
I'll always have to use power tools and air guns at work, but it's nice to be learning a quieter, more peaceful way to work when I want to.
Thanks for bringing up this topic, it's good to reflect on the why sometimes instead of focusing on the how.
Paul

[Edward Miller]

I started with a shop taking up half the second bedroom in a 40-year-old condo in Chicago; power tools were simply not an option. A couple years later, I've now got the space for some power tools, but I really don't feel that my enjoyment would be increased by having them. So, it started out as a necessity; now, I enjoy my quiet, it's a good way to get exercise, and the chance of my losing a finger are low.

[Neal Wells]

As a full time blacksmith for over 30 years, I have been a living anachronism anyway and many of my tools are over 100 years old. Don't see any reason to modernize for woodworking.

[Jack Dickey]

I love the lack of noise and speed , we seem to live life at 200 miles an hour and it's nice to just slow down ..

Much easier on the wallet to find old tools and refurbish them your ownself and then use them ..

I was born 250 years too late ..

[Dan Andrews]

I have a lot more fun and get more satisfaction out of making shavings than sawdust.
The more I learn to sharpen, the more I enjoy my hand tools.

[Jonathan McCullough]

This is a very good observation from Paul:

I've learned that sometimes going a little slower is actually faster, and that there is always another way to do a task.

Ever seen a workman track out of a house to use a lunchbox table saw, cut a piece, go back in, fit it to his work, go back outside to the table saw, nibble a bit off, go back in, discover he's taken too much off, swear like a sailor, go to get another piece of wood, and repeat the process over and over again, all because learning how to saw to a line with a hand saw would "just take too much time," or learning how to sharpen a plane iron and use a block plane seems impractical and time consuming? I watched a professional do renovations like that on the ground floor apartment of a Brownstone in Brooklyn while I waited for someone to join me where my car was parked. The workman certainly looked industrious, and I remember thinking to myself, wow, that's really hard work.

[Bobby O'Neal]

Add this to the list...

I just realized that you can keep your glass of sweet tea right on the bench without getting sawdust in it. Maybe if you're sawing, you set it on the other side of the bench.

[Mike Henderson]

Generally speaking, humans react positively to the aesthetics of objects rendered by the hands of others. The attention lavished on a handmade object shines within the object - gives it a bit 'o soul. The translation of intent through the hands guiding the tools gives the object personality - the maker expresses something unique in the result. Electrons are not the dividing line, but hand guidance is closer to one. Jigs, including fences, for example, eliminate the element of "hand." A bandsaw, while powered, allows for lots of "hand" (See Maloof). Jigs make for certainty and ease, but a piece made exclusively by such methods will often be rather sterile. In short, tools that allow for "hand" in the work, allow for very direct expression and for a dialogue in the creative process between the maker and the piece. A jigged effort is a dictation and not a dialogue - a predetermined result is imposed upon the medium - wood - as though each piece were plastic and interchangeable ("hand" work leaves room in its dialogue to deal with each piece of wood's distinctive characteristics and personality).

I've thought of that, also, but then I encounter a problem. When the item is finished, how is anyone to know whether it was built by hand or by machine? If I'm good with my hand tools, there's little to let the viewer know how the furniture was made. I may choose to leave marks, such as scribe lines for dovetails and thin pins, but only someone who knows woodworking will know that they mean "hand made". In fact, we do these things to mark the furniture as "hand made".
What's really important, in my opinion, is the design of the furniture. Is it pleasing, functional, and unique - no matter how it's made? That's what we should concentrate on, not whether a power tool or a hand tool was used to cut a board.

And, sadly, good design is what's often lacking in furniture. Most woodworkers want to concentrate on the process (being a craftsman) because that's so much easier than being a designer.

Mike