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

[Mike Henderson]

Perhaps what this disagreement is about is production furniture as opposed to custom furniture. In my mind, there's no doubt that production furniture HAS to be made with power equipment in order to meet the price points. While this isn't "furniture", there's absolutely no way someone can build kitchen cabinets by hand, heck even by machine, and compete on price with factory made cabinets. And the factory made cabinets are "perfect". Absolutely on size and absolutely square. But when you see them being made, everything, including the assembly, is done by machine (big machines).

For a one off piece of furniture, a lot of it can be made by hand, especially if you're getting "artist" prices for the furniture.

Mike

[John Coloccia]

1 shilling is 12 pence (1s=12d)
20 shillings is 1 pound (20s= 1L)

The table pictured cost 3 pound and 12 shillings or 72 shillings. A days wages was 4 1/2 shillings. Mahogany furniture was quite a bit more expensive than walnut or cherry.

Thanks, Warren. Wow...2 1/2 weeks pay for a small table. A barrel with a table cloth tossed over it doesn't seem so bad, though now I'm wondering how much coopers charged for a barrel!

[David Weaver]

Mike, you're right, I'm not conditioning this on beating power tools at production furniture. I'm more curious about how many people actually make a living and have pushed themselves to really be able to use hand tools as efficiently as possible, and then on top of that, whether it makes a difference in what such a person prefers for tools (and how that might affect advice to someone less skilled).

But I was genuinely curious, too, to find woodworkers who are making a living at hand tools, partly because I secretly hope that I'll get to see some span of their work so that I can learn from how they do work.

George's work in the CW video was a good example - he's doing super accurate work with hand tools and with a good rhythm/work rate. When we see some of these bloggers demonstrating tools, or the guys who are "make a few projects, write a few books" types working, if I had to work at the rates being demonstrated, I'd never have switched to mostly hand tools.

I wouldn't say it's so much of an idealistic thing, it's a tactile satisfaction or satisfaction of an itch and need to break a sweat kind of thing. The feeling you get when you leave the shop and your hands and shoulders and legs feel like you have done something. It's something I didn't get as a kid, because all of my jobs back then required breaking a sweat and getting literally exhausted, but I appreciate that combination of all things together working with hand tools. The ability to keep the work in front of you, to work the wood instead of setting up machines, to let elements of whatever's being made be limited by only what your eye can see or imagine, or what you can make tools to produce. If I were a power tool worker (which I was entirely when I first started), I'd have no tools in my garage by now - I'd have quit.

[Chris Fournier]

Woodworking with handtools may be a cult thing but it shouldn't be a religion. Look at the oldest of American woodworking shops, they had machines. Just because you like woodworking by hand doesn't mean that a patron or client is willing to pay you to indulge yourself to do so. That is the realm of the hobbiest - a sweet realm indeed - do what pleases you.

I have made a living using handtools, I've made musical instruments, custom furniture, built ins, fishing nets, and fly rods. I have never chosen to slave over a handtool for money when a machine tool could make me money. I have never shied away from using handtools when it made sense.

I am a woodworker, not a handtooler. Truth betold I am a fabricator which means I make stuff and employ any method that works.

[Derek Cohen]

David, thank you for starting another interesting thread. There are lots thought-provoking comments. However I think that "who" uses handtools professionally takes us down a blind alley. Questions such as that tend to polarise all into for and against. Not helpful.

The questions I would pose to all include .... Why use handtools? What do hand tools teach one that power tools cannot? Where is there an advantage in using hand tools? In other words, what can we learn from hand tool use to make us more accurate, more sensitive, more aesthetically-orientated woodworkers?

The issue of speed is partly relevant. I know that I would rather use a jointer to flatten a large, heavy and hard length of Jarrah than a scrub plane and jointer plane. I can do the latter - did for many years before I purchased the power tools - but I am not a masochist. Similarly, I'd rather resaw on a bandsaw to a desired thickness than scrub away with a plane, since that is such a waste of timber. Does working with hand tools limit the wood you can or will use?

I'd like to believe that working by hand has made me more aware and sensitive to the qualities of wood - preserving or highlighting the figure - but I doubt that a good machine-orientated woodworker should be any less aware than a hand-orientated woodworker.

There are indeed a number of delicate operations that are better executed by hand than power - and this is partly the reason many of us use hand tools. Beyond this it begins to become more of a life style event, a choice of method, which we justify. The related question here is, "which power tools would be grabbed by a woodworker if they could be transported back in time to the 18C?". Would they recognise that power would limit them in some important manner?

Regards from Perth

Derek

[John Coloccia]

The questions I would pose to all include .... Why use handtools?

I use hand tools when they make the job faster, better, or significantly safer. For example, when I make the scarf joint on my guitar necks, I straighten and clean up the joint with a block plane, free hand. Why? Because no matter what power tool technique I've tried, I haven't found a way to nearly approach the precision I can achieve by hand. It's just a difficult joint to precisely make on a machine.

Much like Chris, I never considered woodworking to be a hand tool vs power tool thing, and IMHO that's a truly bizarre way to look at it. I just go into the shop and make stuff.

[David Weaver]

Yeah, i don't think this is a hand vs. power tool question until it comes down to my personal preference for shop satisfaction. But that's a different matter, and why I separated professionals. Professionals work differently than amateurs due with power tools, and if there are any other than warren with hand tools, I'd suspect they work different than amateurs.

There is a reality, I was thinking about this last night since this topic has really become a bunch of pondering, and my thoughts had to do with folks I know as professional woodworkers here. One has gone to taking classes (l believe) and then teaching them here. I don't know that person that well. Another is a sibling of a restaurant owner we know. He bought a bunch of tools, probably on liquidation, and has hired a few employees and has been making a go of it for several years. The work looks like no hand tools work, it's coarse things like restaurant tables for bar type settings (complete with pour on finish). Nothing wrong with that work if it pays.

What I was more curious about, though (or maybe my thoughts are slowly evolving as this thread goes on - what is that, question creep?) is what it looks like when a professional woodworker is working on the clock, how is it different from what I do, can I learn something from it, and does it affect tool preference vs. what I call the tool show preference (that being showing a heavy plane on easy wood so that the user perceives the best tool as the one that seems the most effortless on wood).

What I didn't intend is for the hand tool woodworkers to be pigeonholed into doing something suitable for power tools (commodity production type stuff, etc). Warren, my apologies if I'm talking about you too much or supposing what you do - but you're it, I guess, until someone else comes up who fits the description - but anyway, I sense warren can do joiners work, restoration work, carving, mouldings, cabinetwork, turnings, ....many things where something specific is needed and it may not focus on the ability to remove several cubic feet of wood from something that is low value.

Derek, I agree with you about hand tools affecting wood selection. When I was power tool only, I wanted the wood that worked most like metal (that's how i'd summarize it), that had sharp corners - I bought a lot of hard maple. I don't buy much hard maple now. It looks OK quartered, but that's about it, and it's not that easy to find it quartered in quantity. Cherry is pretty much the local staple. I also used a lot of plywood early on and troubled over dadoes and such that just barely fit together. I don't care much about that stuff now, and I like joints that are closed just like everyone else, but I don't needle over it - they just need to be handsome. To me, it's put more emphasis on design because there is freedom to do anything you'd like to do. I really hated fiddling with dado blades on a TS and setting up jigs to try to get perfect fits to whatever the plywood thickness of the week was back then!!

So, anyway, niche oriented with hand tools and not adversarial vs. power tools.

[Zach Dillinger]

The questions I would pose to all include .... Why use handtools?

Derek

I use them because the tool itself and the techniques necessary for working quickly (yes, just as fast or faster than power tools when talking about one-offs and not having a power tool mindset when using hand tools) make a visual difference in the character of the project for the work I'm interested in. If I made something that was originally made by machine, i.e. A&C, modern stuff, etc., then I would probably use machines. When trying to make good looking, accurate period pieces, even the method for thicknessing (if you thickness the workpiece!) makes a huge difference in the overall success of the piece. Power tool surfaces and perfect fancy dovetails just look weird to me on period reproduction work.

[Zach Dillinger]

That particular table cost 3 pounds, 12 shillings in April 1796. Part of the cost was the mahogany and the tilt top mechanism with brass latch. I doubt it was made in 9 hours. At that time the Dominys valued their labor at 4s 6d a day.

A tea table without the tilt top was about 1L 14 s or 1L 4s. A mahogany stand (small diameter table) was 16 shillings and a cherry stand was 10 shillings, maybe 2 days labor.

In the 18th century furniture was usually priced according to the time it took a journeyman to complete the work on his own.

Warren, you mention the tea table without tilt is roughly 34 shillings, while the table under discussion is approximately 72 shillings. Do you know if the 34 shilling tea table in mahogany? Do we have a solid way to estimate material / hardware / profit margins for these pieces? Perhaps Kirtley's scan of the Philadelphia price book?

[george wilson]

Did you guys read my post #55? That's how apprentices were NOT paid. They were paid the cost of feeding them and clothes. At least they were for sure in the Netherlands. This is like getting your kids to work free for you.

[Kees Heiden]

Yeah my forefathers weren't afraid for a bit of slavery. But still they could do some astonishing work at reckless speed. I always like the example of the build of the "Zeven Provincien", a war ship, in 1665: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_s...%C3%ABn_(1665)
They build this ship in Rotterdam in 8 months! There were 100 man working on the warf. Of course, they got support from other companies in town who were supplying all kinds of stuff, but there were several of these ships under preparation at that time in Rotterdam, because we were at war with England. So the whole town must have been bussing with activity.

They are now recreating the ship, started in 2008 and they are far from finished yet, despite all the powertools they have. Nothing like the thread of war to get busy.

[Tom M King]

I don't think I've ever had a thought process that included an either/or option or power tool or hand tool. I have many of each, do this for a living, but just use what is most efficient for getting the job done with the best quality. For instance, when putting up wood siding, I'll use a handsaw. Marking the board with a preacher eliminates any concern about whether the corner board is plumb or not, and I can make the cut with a handsaw accurately enough so that there is no gap, but you can still move the board with a finger. It's too much trouble with a power saw to achieve this kind of accuracy at every joint the first time. A lot of people think you put the board in a wee bit long, but that will open up the joint underneath too many times, so it's better to fit perfect first go.

I'm not the one that Warren was referring to about making some 18th Century reproduction windows, but I did make a run of 43 sash about a year ago. Type of wood needs to be factored in too, as I talk about the time it took. The wood was Long Leaf Heart Pine milled in 1830 to start with, and remilled into the parts we used. If you haven't worked with this wood before, think Yellow Pine with case hardened cell structure. It is completely stable though, after having seen many seasons of movement. Every piece stays straight, when you get it straight. Grain was all fairly close quarter-sawn.

I made them to be exact reproductions of the one complete original we had. After I got into the job, I was able to repair about a dozen of the originals that had some pieces broken, by substituting the new pieces for any broken, or rotten parts.

It always takes a lot longer to do something the first time, than it does after you have a number of repetitions completed. At first, even after I had the machines set up to suit me, I couldn't complete more than one complete 9 light sash in a day. There are 22 mortise and tenon joints in a 9-lite, and each one needs to be hand fitted, even when using power tools as much as possible. Wood cost for each sash ended up to be about $75. The Foundation and I agreed on a price of $750 for a 9-lite sash. I'm including price, since the discussion is about doing this for a living, and I'm getting to the part about using only hand tools.

As I got into the job, I got the processes dialed in to the point that I could make 2-1/2 9-lights any day, and some days completed 3. The 4 and 6 lights went comparably faster.

When I got to the point of only having one left to build, a friend asked me if I had made any completely by hand. I hadn't even considered it, but decided to do it for fun. I had repurposed an old sash plane that I got off of ebay for 16 bucks to exactly match the ovolo profile of the originals. I had repurposed that plane because at first I thought I would need to clean up any milling marks left by the custom made router bits. As it turned out, the Whiteside bits cut so cleanly that it was not needed.

The wood had already been milled to rough length, exact thicknesses, and straightened. I completed the one handmade sash in a day. I had the handwork processes dialed in that were used in combination with the power tools. A couple of mortising machines, using the power tool method, saved most of the time for the 22 mortises, and there was some extra time running the ovolo, and rabbets with hand planes. Being my first time, I could have, no doubt, gotten some faster, but I'm pretty sure I could not have completed more than the one sash in a days work, or at least a normal length day.

So comparing the 2-1/2 sash on a slow day with power tools, and 1 sash with hand tools, it gives some sort of a time comparison for making sash. I have made them before out of White Pine, and Walnut, which goes a lot faster, and easier anyway, than with the fragile grained old Heart Pine. There is no making an interference fit joint with Heart Pine.

I expect the crew building the old ship today, could build a second one considerably faster than they do with the first one.

[Kees Heiden]

I expect the crew building the old ship today, could build a second one considerably faster than they do with the first one.

It is their second ship. The first one was the Batavia, and there was an aborted first attempt to build the Zeven Provincien. But you are right of course. The crew is completely different. Back in the 17th century it was a well oiled organisation, used to build ships and with the extra thread of the English to put some extra effort in. The modern crew is mostly learning stuff. They have a few professionals and a bunch of "apprentices", kids who are in college and who are learning trades, or jobless people looking for a new direction in their life.

[Frank Drew]

To Derek's question "Why use handtools?"... when Tage Frid was a young apprentice in Denmark (as George notes, this means he was subsidized by his master), for his first job actually working wood -- after months just doing scut work around the shop such as setting the woodstoves in the mornings and sweeping up in the evenings -- he was shown an enormous pile of rough sawn boards and was told to prepare them to specific dimensions, all by hand, ripping, crosscutting and planing to thickness. The latter operation took the longest: He'd plane one surface straight and true then scribe around the edges to the desired thickness, then turn the board over and have at it on the second face. He said the whole thing was backbreaking and took him months to do, he wouldn't ever want to have to do it again, but he did learn a great deal about working wood, its characteristics, etc., and that proved invaluable for the rest of his life, both as a woodworker and teacher.

I'd have to see that tilt-top table done in 9 hours start to finish, by one person, to believe it. The base alone with a turned column, profiled and shaped feet dovetailed to the column, tilt mechanism... well, I'd take my hat off to the craftsman who could do that, but I take the point that you get really good, and fast, at something if you do it all the time.

[Dave Anderson NH]

One thing to note here folks in addition to the preparation and simpler work carried out by apprentices, furnituremakers didn't always do the complete job. In the Uk where there was a well established coterie of specialized trade shops and in the larger colonial North American urban centers a large proportion of the work was subcontracted. On something like a pedestal table a turning shop might have done the pedestal and a carver done the claw and ball feet and the carvings on the legs and pedestal. Seating furniture was sent out to drapers (upholsterers) and gilders did the gold leaf on finials and cartouches. When it came to Federal style furniture, much of the banding, paterae, and other inlays were purchased from shops that specialized in this type of work. Baltimore was a huge center with almost a dozen inlay making shops. There were also specialized finishing shops.


Today as hobbyists we, and often the professionals too, do almost everything from start to finish. Rarely does anyone farm out part of the work except maybe for upholstery. I think this is often a mistake. I can carve, but not well, and I really don't take a lot of joy doing it, so on an important piece for my wife I should probably send it out. Unless your ego is involved and you need to say that it is solely you work I think this is a valid approach.