If you spend any time on social media you'll get the idea that to be a successful woodworker you have to use hand tools. You get the idea you have to do things by hand and only use hardwood... blah blah blah. That if you use plywood or power tools you're not a woodworker. For a while, I believed them. One look at woodworking articles and you'll see so much about using hand tools. It was quite demoralizing. But on digging deeper I started to see sites like Woodworking for Mere Mortals. I had my spirits lifted.
Recently Steve posted a video about whether or not using a CNC machine was cheating. In the video, he sneers at the sneerers which I like because the above sect that worships wood are a little tedious. They remove your hope when you mess up and yet they would have made the same mistakes as us. They exude a holier than thou attitude when it comes to woodworking which turns me off. It seems they want me to worship them rather than learn from them.
The truth is that the use of power tools, plywood or even CNC is not proof that you are a bad woodworker. This article puts forth my two cents worth on the debate.
In my post The obligatory hello page I mention that I spent most of my working life in IT. IT is a precise industry with everything worked with the fingers on feel. The only thing holding a screw in a laptop is more often than not a brass grommet jammed and glued into the plastic. As such using force and big screwdrivers is a foreign concept. The point I'm making is that different jobs have different muscle memory requirements. An IT guy getting into woodworking is different than say a meat worker or farmer or tradie. As such tools start to make a difference.
As an ex-IT guy, my muscle memory is precise and so hand tools became annoying. My sawing was atrocious with never a straight cut found, let alone the physical effort needed to saw. Cutting with a circular saw is easier and less time consuming. It means I can get stuck into making stuff rather than expending too much energy making cuts. Hand tools in my case are a liability rather than an asset.
Is it cheating? Is using a drop saw to cut a piece of 4x2 cheating rather than learning how to use a hand saw to achieve the same task? Let's understand this one immutable fact, technology exists to solve a problem. The problem in my case is getting accurate cuts that don't force me to use a tonne of processes to get wood straight. I suck at planing. I can't ever seem to get it right and I'm not even sure I will ever get it right. If I can do other things that lessen my need for a planer then I already see that as more profitable. Did I cheat? No, I did the task right in the first place... I'm hoping. This removes the need to fix things up. This is something the hand tool brigade don't mention anywhere in their propaganda.
Power tools save time. I work a variable length day now as a postal worker, thus I could have lots of time or sweet stuff all time. This is something I need to take into account with any hobby I choose. How much time can I put towards it each day? Hand tools will use so much time that I'll give up much quicker. Who wants to spend the rest of the day cutting stuff by hand when power tools do the same thing in a fraction of the time?
Now you have to understand something here. I'm not lambasting hand tools. There will always be some need for hand tools but if it's wasting time then it's a waste of time.
In my experience power tools are a godsend and I appreciate them a lot. There's not a lot I haven't made without them.
Some examples are:
Sure, you could use hand tools but not as fast. Sure, I could take the time to learn to do things with hand tools. It's possible I'd gain great satisfaction in doing it this way. To tell the truth, though I gain more satisfaction in completing projects.
If you're new to woodworking then chances are you're freaking out about what tools to get. Take a step back and take stock of the following:
Then, and only then head along the path you want to take. If you want to go the artistic route then hand tools are a great approach. Art often takes a long time and more often than not you need to gain new skills to advance that art. If you're like me though you want to make stuff and get better at making that stuff. You may end up with a side hustle out of it. If this is the case then power tools are the way to go. Most of the time it's not about the construction process. It's more that its construction is complete.
Don't let some snob on social media tell you that you are not a true woodworker because you use power tools. Don't let them tell you you aren't a woodworker because you use plywood. You can't make some of the stuff out there with other woods.
In essence, woodworking is what you make of it. Woodworking is all about making stuff out of wood. If you only want to plane a piece of wood showing us how good you are at making shavings then knock your socks off. If you're being honest though that's NOT woodworking, that's making a mess.
This post is a repost from my personal Tumblr blog found at https://woodenwookie.com. I am Wooden Wookie and I am the writer of all these posts. Also, these posts have been reposted at https://medium.com/@WoodenWookie/.
