What's Not Known

And I am talking about what woodworkers new to woodworking don't know starting out.

I'm not really a hand tool enthusiast, but an enthusiastic maker that works primarily with the hand tools he's worked with for over sixty years and has no plans to change a thing. Why? Because Paul Sellers is good at using them and is considered something of an expert. What many do not know is that I'm just as experienced and competent a machinist as I am with hand tools. I once used machines in my day-to-day business ventures and developed production lines I enjoyed too; these businesses were on a one- or two- to five-man scale. Nothing massive or factorial, just common sense. More important though, and so worth noting and comparing: after my sixty-one years of daily hand tool woodworking, I learn something new about the hand tools, the work methods, and techniques every day. Much more than that, the reality of my working with hand tools means that I know the depth and breadth of the woods I work with far more because of the handwork. You simply cannot get this by machining wood. It doesn't happen because it can't. No one gets the kind of information I speak of as long as a machine is processing the wood in your stead. Once you understand that, you understand you will need to start on the learning journey. You simply cannot gain the diverse experiences from machining wood, and neither can you read about it or look at pictures or videos, etc., to gain such experience. Only hand tool woodworking delivers the goods, and this usually gets dismissed by those from all other camps.

I am never trying to be divisive when I say things like this. The issue for me is anyone drawing a comparison, thinking machining is the same thing, only a more advanced way, when they, in 98% of cases, never actually mastered any one of the hand tools or techniques hand tool woodworkers use. It might not take a lifetime to glean the information I speak of, but it does take repeated working of all the different types of tools and woods because within every tool and every species there are remarkable differences where the wood or the tools affect one another very differently. This exchange means that we , the hand tool woodworkers, engage with our work in radically diverse ways. We rely on what we feel when we plane and saw and chisel. Passing your wood into the jaws of a thickness planer takes zero sensing of any kind. The power feed pulls the wood in and pushes it out for the machinist to catch. Nothing sentient about it. For us, the hand tool worker, woods change within any given distance. You can never gain such intimate detail of character and workability by simply feeding the wood into a cutter head of any type. So there you are. That's the reality that is rarely, if ever, really considered by machine-only makers and advocates. Simply put, you never know the wood by simply pushing it into a machine or pushing the handheld machine types into the wood, and it's this distinction that makes the difference between a machinist and a hand tools maker.

But you see, we want and focus on developing this sentience in our work life. We don't want substitutes for skill; nothing that stands in our stead. We even want the unpredictability of it, like the challenge, and then too the risk of it, and the call to mastery. Without this, woodworking is dull and predictably boring. There is almost nothing to consider without the sensing of the wood through the hand tools we use. Additionally, there are still so many things to consider with the cutting edges delivering information as we work with hand tools. Even in the end results, though they might look identical, possibly, are intrinsically incomparable.

And on another tack. Using terms like scary-sharp was a more attention grabbing strapline (tagline USA), like a fun piece of trivia; the man coining the term achieved no more than the ancients had done for centuries before, and salesmen selling equipment use it all the time because it grabs the mind. If tools are not essentially surgically sharp, you might as well just go and use machines where the blades are traded out and sent off for resharpening the carbide tips and cutters. What was accepted for the previous few hundred years still proves the same for us today. In an age when almost everyone has no knowledge of how to sharpen anything, developing a sharp edge to a knife can certainly put you on a pedestal; it was nothing more than a substitute distractional term to entertain. It's the same with micro-bevels and such. They're mostly just cute terms and something to say. Any bevel between 25-30 or even 35º cuts well, and you'll scarcely, if ever, tell the difference with one or two bevels up against one another. Also, I vary my cutting edges for different tasks, and I never ever grind my chisels on any kind of mechanical grinding wheel. The no-grind method of old is the fastest and unfussy methods for non-commercial methods, such as we need at the bench in a few seconds, and it delivers exactly the same level of sharpness and cutting ability.

Did you know that despite my still learning about my hand tools and such, the half a dozen machines used predominantly in woodworking take no more than an hour per machine to learn just about everything you need to know about machining wood? And that most of your time will then be spent considering how you must use them as safely as possible. After that, you become a jig and guide maker for each project. Is that really the woodworking you wanted when you started out? For some, that will be the case, and then there are the others. Those who want the high demand of woodworking mastery

I was introduced to a man in a cafe recently. The wife, who I knew, introduced her husband as "a woodworker too." It soon became apparent that he was disdainful about anything unmachined and described himself as a "biscuit addict and a domino fan!" There was an immediate cut-off with glazed-over eyes at the mention of hand tools. I try not to waste my energy on such and switch topics as best I can. Their blindness is not my concern. To do what I do the way that I do it, you have to want it wholeheartedly. You must volunteer into it. There is no substitute, and without that, you will never do it and thereby know any of the gain of it. Running a marathon is never done by bus, and whitewater kayaking demands total concentration. There is no distancing yourself from the cutting edges of hand tools to cut the pins to fit the tails and the mortise to the mortise hole.

Getting others off the conveyor belt to adapt, adopt, and end up as truly skilled makers is and will be the ultimate measure of my objective and success. If anyone intersperses their day with the use of machines, I am fine with it, I do not mind at all. I think machines are handy pieces of commercial equipment, but 98% of new and even seasoned woodworkers around the world will never own even a single machine. Think high-rise dwelling, inner-city complexes, social housing piled one on top of the other, and then, simply, the poorer majority of the world. My woodworking style embraces the demanding work of hand tools for a dozen good reasons I am always ready to give. What about better physical and mental health, developing patience and fortitude, mastery in skilled workmanship? There is, of course, much more to it than any of that. How about fulfillment and satisfaction, sharing your space with your young children, an apprentice you are helping to shape, and giving others the hand tools you are using to do their own work with...'off the devices, wood in the vises.'

My being good with hand tools is not in question, and neither are many of the operations I perform any faster using all machine methods. The only way to really test this is to run everything in parallel, which I don't have time to do. Fact is, machine methods might even be slower, more dangerous, more isolating, and then just plain dull and boring. In my view, most people can gain mastery in hand tool woodworking within a year or two. I have found that a 14" bandsaw makes the heavy cuts in hardwoods like oak easier and less tedious. It's there in the background, taking its small footprint. Not compromising; nice!