How many professional woodworkers using no power tools? ....

[george wilson]

I am starting developmental work on a power spokeshave!!! I'll sell it to LV when it's ready.

[John Coloccia]

I am starting developmental work on a power spokeshave!!! I'll sell it to LV when it's ready.

Actually, George, I've been fiddling around with the idea of attaching an ultrasonic transducer to things like spokeshaves and chisels to see if they'll cut better and with less force.

There, now I've let the cat out of the bag.

[Brian Holcombe]

it all depends on ones training and efficiency. it also depends on what you are making. some items are designed to be made by hand while others are designed machine work and there are separations within that context whether CNC or conventional.
there are also the priorities of how one wants to lead their life(lifestyles) and personal satisfaction in what one wants to achieve
there use to be an ignoramus on knots who use to bring this subject up continually about money and making, but he never lived the life( he spent his working career in a non productive role in a government sponsored role). he made a few things that were not that great
ron

By hand and by CNC are likely the only way to complicated forms. I have a set of stools made by CNC, the legs rather than being round are an elliptical shape that tapers evenly in thickness and width over the length of them. They would really only be able to be made by spokeshave and by CNC. There is no lathe or tablesaw/router turning these out without a lot of specialized jigs and so forth.

[ron david]

By hand and by CNC are likely the only way to complicated forms. I have a set of stools made by CNC, the legs rather than being round are an elliptical shape that tapers evenly in thickness and width over the length of them. They would really only be able to be made by spokeshave and by CNC. There is no lathe or tablesaw/router turning these out without a lot of specialized jigs and so forth.

glad to see that there is someone who isn't living in the dreamland of mechanized spokeshaves!
by hand and by CNC. the workmanship of uncertainty and the workmanship of certainty - David Pye defines the two.they are really 2 different ways of doing it; they(the product) may appear to be the same to the untrained eye. the sensitivity of the handmade piece vs cnc would be quite apparent to the trained eye. they can both fully due the job that they were made to do, but this is not about that
ron

[Larry Edgerton]

Interesting discussion, I just read it all through. Thanks to all that shared their point of view.

Me, I love hand tools but there is a direct link from my power tools to my refrigerator that requires that I be plugged in. Even if I want to make that choice it would not be a possibility. I do admire the few that can make it work.

Again, Thanks

Larry

[Greg Berlin]

I find that for one-off pieces of furniture, hand tools might be close in time in regards to joinery if you consider set up time of a machine, test cuts, etc, but milling the wood is another story. I can mill every piece I need for a project in the amount if time it takes me to hand cut and hand plane 1 of those pieces by hand. Nice for the experience and I enjoy doing it time to time when I don't feel like the sound of planers, jointers, and saws running and dust flying, but I highly enjoy doing joinery by hand and tbh find it much easier to wrap my head around than using a machine. The machine requires adding and subtracting fractions and number and test cuts and jigs and extra thinking to figure out. Hand tool joinery is just layout, cut with a saw a chisel to those lines. The end. I just find it much simpler in my simple mind to figure out how a piece is going to go together. The fact that I have to design and make jigs for most joinery tasks on power tools turns me off. Sorry got carried away there. My point is, if I'm mass producing the same table over and over again, then machines win by far. If I'm making special to order furniture of different sizes every time and having to create special jigs and machine setup a the entire way, then hand tools might win out.

[Greg Berlin]

I also wanted to add one more thing: I'm a member of Paul sellers woodworker masterclasses he does online and in the videos he skips through every monotonous detail (like doesn't show him cutting 16 mortises after he's shown one) but I'm still astonished how fast he can make the projects. He will sometimes have a prototype made to show, a finished piece, and working through the project again to show. He also hosts live classes for weeks and travels to promote his classes and it always gets me thinking that I'm amazed how quickly he can finish a project from start to finish (granted the milling is done by machines). Projects that take me months to finish sometimes he can do is a few days. Just an observation.

[Jim Koepke]

I also wanted to add one more thing: I'm a member of Paul sellers woodworker masterclasses he does online and in the videos he skips through every monotonous detail (like doesn't show him cutting 16 mortises after he's shown one) but I'm still astonished how fast he can make the projects. He will sometimes have a prototype made to show, a finished piece, and working through the project again to show. He also hosts live classes for weeks and travels to promote his classes and it always gets me thinking that I'm amazed how quickly he can finish a project from start to finish (granted the milling is done by machines). Projects that take me months to finish sometimes he can do is a few days. Just an observation.

After you have done it a thousand times like Mr. Sellers you will likely be able to knock them out quickly.

Part of getting it done is doing it for 8 to 10 hours a day every day. I may get a couple of hours into a project before something else needs attention.

Sometimes focusing on the technique helps. One of his videos on spoon carving gave me some ideas that helped speed up my spoon carving.

jtk

[ernest dubois]

"Professional", does that mean someone who enjoys the benefit of, among other things, meals and a somewhat ordered, at least functional living environment, provided for them, constructive, consistent and continuous blocks of time exclusively reserved for his/her pointed woodworking activity, and holidays and weekends free to themselves?

[David Weaver]

Professional just means making a living, and the implication here is enough of a living to not be struggling and not be working 100 hours a week. Also, making a living off of your work only, and not teaching classes, writing books about every project you make or some such thing like that. So far iirc we've got Warren and a guy who makes chairs.

[ernest dubois]

It's no wonder you have so few. I'm reminded of what Krenov wrote, though maybe he falls outside your categorization as a writer and teacher, but we can maybe assume he was referring to the time in his carrier before that unfortunate turn, when he said to the effect, "there was always someone carrying the other end of the board…"

I find a certain angle of the topic at hand real interesting, I'm just not sure if anything I could add is related, on top of coming to it at this late stage of page 9. So, I was just looking for clarity beforehand.

[David Weaver]

I can't remember what I thought I'd see when I posted the topic (in terms of numbers), but I expected to hear about a few guys, even if they had names we never heard of. Guys who do restoration or who build period pieces or chairs, but only two so far.

I selfishly want to see those people work, those who have made a living doing what they're doing, because I think (well, I know) they work fundamentally differently than the guys who write books and teach classes.

[Joshua Hancock]

I would think that, based on their videos Wolfe and Douccette use primarily hand tools. However I have seen a power jointer and band saw in some videos. For the most part it seems that their joinery is done by hand.

[dan sherman]

Based on the criteria given for this thread, I can see very few people(if any), making what I would consider a real wage ($25+/hr) using just hand tools! Dimensioning lumber, specially harder species would take to long.

[Warren Mickley]

Based on the criteria given for this thread, I can see very few people(if any), making what I would consider a real wage ($25+/hr) using just hand tools! Dimensioning lumber, specially harder species would take to long.

I think you are living in Fantasyland or Disneyland or something. Less than 25% of workers in the United States make the kind of money you are talking about, Dan. The median wage for workers who operate woodworking machinery in Illinois is 11.96 per hour. 90% make less than $21. If everyone made a "real wage" maybe it would not be worth very much. I get a chuckle out of amateurs who fantasize about running a woodworking business.