Tools vs skill

[John Coloccia]

As one with limited tools and even more limited skill, I could not go without a router plane. I think I use it just about every time I make something. I bought a shoulder plane some time ago and I think I have used it once, mainly because I use the router plane in its place more often. If I do not saw a straight enough, I used a shooting board, a router plane, etc. to get me back where I need to be so I can move on. I wish I could put things together right off of a handsaw, but I can't and might never will. But for me, I like tools and using another hand tool is part of the fun.

Andy

That's OK. I can't smooth anything out on the spindle sander or belt sander to save my life. I usually end up with all sorts of bumps, dips and gouges. I have to resort to shop made sanding blocks to really get it right. It's been years and I've just never gotten proficient at it! I see other people with complex shapes just take them over to various spindle sanders, belt sanders, etc and get exactly what they want. I cringe when I see that because I know I'd end up with just another piece of firewood. I'm also pretty sure that there are people that have seen me attack these same sorts of curves with edge tools and rasps, and wonder how in the heck I can carve that stuff, and wouldn't it be just SOOOOO much easier to take it over to the sander and do it like that? I think there must be some wiring in the brain somewhere that determines this sort of stuff.

[Tony Wilkins]

Brings to mind that George Carlin joke about driving:

'Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?'

Judgments like this are human nature, I guess. Perhaps it is obvious to every reader here, but my point has been simply to let any newbies know: No one should think twice about whether it is "cheating" or somehow "less than" by using power or sandpaper or a specialty tool or a slower wood removal process, etc. Make stuff and have fun.

Carlin - man I miss his wit - but "I saw like old people &#%@, slow and sloppy"

[Graham Haydon]

'Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?'

Love it!

[Chris Griggs]

I love router planes. You can have mine when you pull it form my cold dead hand. Even though its not my preferred way to trim tenons anymore, I love it. It is always the ace up the sleeve, not only great for stopped work but helpful anywhere I need to be bailed out becasue of my poor paring skills. I use it in in lots of places where others say to just use a chisel.

No one should feel bad or judged about their methods of work.

The most efficient method is the one the works the first time. Having to remake an entire component is almost always slower. People should use what ever tool they want/need to get there. To me discussion about things like sawing to lines and not relying on tools/methods that might be slower is about personal goals surrounding the development of skill and efficiency. My buddy Paul who I'm working on my workbench 2.0 can attest to just how slowly and anally I work. The "craftsmanship of risk" is something I need to constantly push myself to embrace in even the smallest way (I love certainty much more than risk), but forcing myself to take risks and make mistakes has been very helpful to me. That's just me and my personal reflection/experience/goals, but given how beneficial taking more risks has been to me, I do encourage others to consider how risk might help them in the long run...but that's all it is, a consideration. obviously, whether or not they do is totally up to them and their desires.

[Brian Holcombe]

I'll share my recent experience, I'm building box frames for a local artist who is also a good friend. The inner frame which attaches to the canvas stretchers are simply made with half-lap joints, then the outside is rabbeted for the external frame to attach.

Normally I prefer to creep up to the fit, but in this case we're talking about a total of 240 fits (8 per frame). So, to save my sanity I'm sawing to the line. When I do the glue up I dry fit first and so far, worst case scenario I've had to slide a veneer into the fit to tighten it up.

The moral to my story, if you use a lot of oak, walnut, maple, cherry, ect, keep some veneer on hand of each wood, it comes in handy for fixing small errors.

[Chris Griggs]

I

The moral to my story, if you use a lot of oak, walnut, maple, cherry, ect, keep some veneer on hand of each wood, it comes in handy for fixing small errors.

You can say that again! Much to my surprise, one of the biggest contributions my bandsaw has made to my shop is providing me with an endless supply of shims and veneer for making repairs.

[Daniel Rode]

I believe that most craft-like skills can learned and mastered through effort and practice over time. But as a part-time woodworker, I don't have the time to concentrate on getting really good at everything. So I compensate. I pick and choose what I think is important and/or enjoyable and concentrate on those things. For the remainder, I find work-arounds. Maybe I use a specialized tool, or a power tool or even buy a pre-made component.

For example, I do rough dimensioning with power saw, jointer and planer. It's fast, accurate and familiar. This allows me to spend my limited time using hand tools on joinery, fitting smoothing and some shaping. The router plane is a little bit of both for me. It's a tool for automation but not a power tool. In fact, I'll be using it primarily to cleanup after power tool work.

Money is also a limiting factor. These tools are not an investment for me, the are an expense. I'm fairly new to hand tools and so I only have a small (but growing) number of tools to choose from. Sawing to the line is a nice idea but first and foremost, one must have the saw, then learn how to use it and finally, saw to the line of a tenon.

I think some thought should be given to woodworking goals. My main goal is to make things from wood, furniture mostly, as a hobby. I'm not a tool collector, I don't rehab tools unless I have to, and I have no goal to work exclusively with hand tools. I've made the choice to incorporate hand tools because they work better in many cases than the powered alternative and I enjoy the quiet intimacy they foster.

On this note, I'm making tables and these tables have mortises. Above all else, I want clean well fit joints so that my tables are strong and attractive. That priority affects my other decisions, like chisel and saw vs stacked dado and router plane.

[David Weaver]

Cosman's got his thing. I have some of his videos. They're quite good, actually. I think he's a great teacher. Where I draw the line, generally speaking, is criticizing one method over another. I run across this in the guitar world BIG time. I've started using CNC to help in the shop. There are lots of people out there that think you just stick in a piece of wood, push a button, and out pops a guitar. Well, even if that's how it worked, so what? It's still my design. My ergonomics. My sound. That ISN'T how it works, btw. It's more like you get some rough parts that still need a lot of handwork, fitting, etc...not a whole lot different than pushing a router around one of my templates, only it does the pushing and I can be off doing other things that really benefit from hand work.

All of the misinformation in the guitar world made it confusing for me when I was a buyer of guitars and had not yet begun woodworking. At this point, if I ever want to get another guitar and don't decide to make one myself, I will go to several stores and play guitars off the rack and buy whatever is reasonable quality and sounds good. I've gotten several high-dollar guitars from known makers that were duds because I bought into their explanation of all of the virtues. By far, the loudest and most pleasing (not necessarily two things that go together, but in this case they did) acoustic guitar I've ever had was a $699 guitar that was branded washburn USA about 20 years ago. No clue who actually made the guitars for them, doesn't matter. The biggest letdown was a martin d28 that had perfect looking wood. the best acoustic guitar I've ever played has a bolt on neck - it's under my bed now. It was the kind of guitar that you'd figure for the price that you'd not get a bolt on neck, but it is made top shelf. I don't know if they use CNC, but I understand collings does and collings gets huge money for some fairly plain guitars - I haven't ever seen anyone complain about their tone or how much life they have, though.

George and I have talked about this stuff a little offline. I only have a perspective as a buyer. If I ever become a buyer again, I'll will have much plainer guitars, and could care less if one guy bends one side and another guy bends the next. Or if it was from a smaller one-man shop like yours, you can remove the bulk of the material with a boat propeller if you'd like, as long as the guitar plays well and sounds good.

CNC may have gotten a bad name at first because of some of the SAGA/Samick/Cort or whoever was making all of those guitars that had a huge square heel that nobody gave appropriate attention to getting rid of.

It's sort of like ugly wood. If I could get an ugly wood guitar really cheap that sounded great, I'd be on it.

To switch the subject a little about losing members, I think warren summed something up elsewhere about woodworkers 200 years ago, that by the time they had technical competence, they also had design competence. I think lack of the latter causes people to peter out in the hobby.

[Brian Holcombe]

I would argue that the perceived competence in design of the layman was actually just them fallowing suit of the taste makers. As a woodworker of the time you probably apprenticed at a shop and took up their house style which was a combination of industry trend and the master craftsman's personal taste.

Much like today, I'm sure woodworkers who work for the majors are heavily influenced by what they're building. Similar in design fields such as architecture, the overwhelming style of the past 100 years was created and evolved by a handful of architects and in 200-300 years when the extent of the their influence is mottled by time I expect that architects and craftsman will look back and think that they all had an inherent ability to create wonderful design work.

[David Weaver]

I would argue that the perceived competence in design of the layman was actually just them fallowing suit of the taste makers. As a woodworker of the time you probably apprenticed at a shop and took up their house style which was a combination of industry trend and the master craftsman's personal taste.

Regardless of whether they were just doing what they were supposed to do back then, they could've designed elements that could be pleasing to the eye. Some of that is a matter of opinion, but there are levels of design where it becomes less opinion and if you polled a group of people a better design would always win as more attractive (be it proportions, lines, etc that create the issue).

As amateurs, we don't really have much design influence taught to us, we wait for sketch up plans or something to copy, but designing something tasteful that doesn't have an element or two where people go "ew, that doesn't look right" is not something most woodworkers can do, and it's not very well taught because what's taught to newbies now is what sells, I guess.

I don't know anything about architecture, but I'd imagine the goals now are much different than they were 200 years ago, and aesthetics does take somewhat of a back seat to other things that garner subsidies, future tax breaks and grants.

[Brian Holcombe]

I understand your position, but mind you, a lot of people today are emulating what they consider great design, much as was done back then.

Nakashima, Maloof, Krenov, Mogens Koch, Hans Wegner, Greene and Greene, Mackintosh, Wright, Stickley and Morris are just some of many who have used exposed joinery in their design work and who have had a great influence of what's being created today.

My opinion is that people want to see it, done subtly, because it helps to reassure them that the piece is of sound build. In the days when the federal style was the preferred style the country had not gone through the industrial revolution, which largely served to destroy the consumers confidence in what was below the surface in what they're purchasing, so the consumer was dealing directly with the shop building their furniture and could see first hand the kind of quality invested in it.

[David Weaver]

Yeah, with the exception of maloof, I consider most of that stuff pretty nasty -the kind of stuff people might build in another forum on here when they go nuts with a hollow chisel mortiser or a multi router. Esp. stickley, Grossy and Grossy, krenov's tall and skinny chests of spalted wood and little utility (though they don't look like mortiser run amok) and nakashimas hunk-o-expensive-wood-for-big-price..There's not much that was designed to be made with mixed in metal structural parts or designed to be made in the machine era or industrial design era that looks like something I'd want to make.

I do like maloof's chairs, though, but have no interest in ever trying to make a copy, and I have no regard fo other peoples' intellectual property when it comes to building something for myself. I'll build whatever I want.

I'd imagine my grandparents were of the generation where you verified that a local guy did what you paid for by pulling the drawers out and looking at them, and eyeballing to make sure that the joinery appeared to be glued or pinned and not screwed or worse. They were the last generation in my family to commission any nice furniture, my parents have had a good eye and bought stuff that is close to 200 years old and that has very thoughtful work and design. I'm not sure who clued them in, but they have picked well - I don't even know if they'd have had the same option my grandparents did as the idea of a local guy making nice furniture was probably dead by then, and the new thing in town was the unfinished furniture place that built stuff (very plain stuff) in house that you could sand and stain yourself.

We are overrun here with watered down "amish" furniture designs that are sometimes made by amish and sometimes not. Some of it is reasonably decent looking, but most of it is blocky with poorly finished parts on it somewhere (bandsawn parts on chairs that you can tell they were bandsawn, etc) - it's not the quality of furniture my grandparents bought, but I'm sure in relative terms its less expensive. It's main virtue is that it is mostly wood.

[Daniel Rode]

I'm no expert in furniture or any other type of design. Despite my lack of knowledge, it's something I'm quite interested in.

There are aspects of design that are very subjective and others that are more universal and general. I very much like some of the elements Stickley used and the overall designs but I've never wanted a copy of any specific piece. The same for G&G. The tables I'm building now are very much in the Stickley style but I drew them up without referencing any particular design of his. I happen to enjoy building then and having them in my home.

I find Amish, country or similar style furniture to be utterly unattractive. Despite watching Norm build Shaker stuff for decades, I still don't like it. However, I can appreciate the best of it for it's simplicity, proportions and utility.

I think balance and proportion or most often the key but they are just tools. One can design attractive pieces by following the "rules" or by breaking the same rules. I don't however believe that there is a right or wrong in design. Design is the visual language. Are we judging the intent or the execution; the message or the grammar? In addition, furniture often has a practical element. A dresser needs to provide storage for clothes and a bookshelf should be able to hold books. I can objectively determine that bookshelf holds books and doesn't tip over but it's a whole lot harder to determine if it's aesthetic design is successful. What did the designer intend and how well was that executed?

The last and most subjective point is whether it's attractive or not. FLW was mentioned earlier. I love the aesthetic and the ideas that drive it but I wouldn't want to live or work in anything he designed. I appreciate his work as art. Similarly, I love the design of a classic highboy but I don't want one in my home.

Again, I don't know much but the discussion is really interesting.

[David Weaver]

The Amish take on shaker style is like fattened up and rounded off. I guess that's a utility thing, if you've ever been in amish folks' houses (not talking about woodworkers, just amish folks in general), the appointments are pretty spartan and there may be a couple of pieces of floral furniture mixed with 1980s oak furniture bits.

I don't intend for anyone else to agree with the stuff I like, just stating it as a matter of discussion. The things made 200 years ago on the plainer side (e.g., a watered down chippendale chest with tasteful mouldings top and bottom) are very nice things to build by hand, and can be built very crisply without a bunch of hassle from styles that were intended to be made in a factory. They're a nice alternative if someone is coming up uninspired with a lot of the modern dovetail overload, displayed end grain, etc. stuff.

[Brian Holcombe]

Much of those I've mentioned, with exception to the professional amateurs, designed in the classical canon (classical proportions). Dislike the style if you prefer, but it is good design and worthy of classification of such. I admire the 18th century masterworks along with French Art Deco, ect, doesn't mean I want to build or own them.

Examples of pieces designed or built in the last 100 years that I find enjoyable;

3990310c9ea923de451031e25d15084a.jpg
1019560_l_s.jpg
R14012289032608_s.jpg
GeNa0192_l.jpg
HThoyzSNmEtjOFDVbTp36w_m.jpg