Woodworking Using Hand Tools
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed
Woodworking using hand tools may be completely new to you if you are a modern day woodworker. Most people avoid hand tools at all costs. They think that they are outdated, less accurate and slower than the modern day machines. This simply is not true in most cases. This article will provide you with some facts about using hand tools in your every day wood working projects.
Hand tools are safer. This is a major reason to consider using hand tools. Woodworking machines with their sharp blades move pretty fast. You can have an accident and lose a finger or hand before you know what happened. You can be as careful as you can be but it only takes one small slip and you are off to the hospital or worse. Hand tools can get you hurt but the injury is normally not as severe. When you are operating the tool you usually have more reaction time to stop before it gets out of hand.
You can use a smaller work area with hand tools. Table saws and planers take up a lot of room. It physically takes more space to operate your home shop with machines. Starting out with hand tools you can start in the corner of your garage and be just fine.
Hand tools are in some cases faster than machines. You may find that hard to believe but sometimes it is a lot faster to use hand tools. Sure if you are cutting out one thousand boards for a wood factory you cannot touch that with hand tools. However for the guy at home doing one single project by the time you set up your machine, adjust the fence and make a test cut you will be done and going on to the next step by using hand tools.
It costs less to get started woodworking using hand tools. Starting out with woodworking machines that are of any quality cost a lot of money. Even though you can spend plenty on high quality planes and saws the fact is you can start with a few tools and get your project done without breaking the bank.
Hand tools make less noise. This is one reason I choose to use hand tools. There is something to be said about planning a board and hearing the blade smoothing the wood.
Achieve greater precision using hand tools. Early on when using my table saw it was very easy to cut a little too much off my project. I have thrown away many a good-looking piece of wood because of some small mistake. When I use my hand tools it is much easier to sneak up on my mark and not overdo it.
I choose to use hand tools as much as I can. For myself it is a more sensible way to work with wood. The best system for most would be some sort of combination of hand tools and machines. Woodworking using hand tools is hard work. The rewards are worth it for me.
Technorati Tags: tools, woodworking, woodworking using hand tools
Related Tags: No Tags
Possible Related Posts
