I just returned from the 5-day precision with hand tools workshop taught by Garrett Hack. ?He is clearly a world-class designer, craftsman, and teacher. The class included the making of a splay-legged table with the plans available from the January-February 2004 issue of Fine Woodworking magazine.
I have a lot of nice power tools, but always considered myself weak in hand tool sharpening and use. ?I do not "need" hand tool skills to make cabinets, but I am more interested in also making finer pieces where these skills are of particular value.
One other thing I was interested to learn was in what situations I could accomplish a certain task better and/or faster using planes and chisels compared to the fancy machines with both at my disposal.
For the making of the tapered legs, I could cut the pieces nicely with a bandsaw and get them close to final on an edge sander, but with a plane, I could better fine tune and get a better finish. ?No risk of rounding the corners like with hand held sanders, and faster than sanding. ?Ready for finish without sanding at all.
For the top with 2 boards glued together, a nicer fit with a jointer plane on the edge to get the boards to fit together for a glue up compared to the power jointer. ?
For the top, machines are the way to dimension and a shaper will quickly to cut the bevels underneath the top where the cut is even across the surface, but the smoothing plane gives a very nice final finish. the aprons, so fast to use a perfectly sharp and dialed in smoothing planer over sanding through the grits and faster! ?A very nice way to remove planer marks than sanding.
I think this will help me when working with panel doors. ?Getting the connection perfectly flush can be achieved with a wide belt, but with a good plane, you can do some initial work before the wide belt if not instead of it, and with planing, no dealing with cross grain scratches to sand out, and with less time.
I was impressed how nice the end grain can look with the use of a block plane and how nice it works for softening edges
The shoulder plane was very nice to get dialed in. ?If I have a rabbet not exactly right, the shoulder plane will be the way to go rather than setting up a router or shaper etc. ?Amazing control over amount of material removal in general.
Anyhow, I am still happy to have power tools, but I think I will be sanding a lot less often in the future and saving time with certain tasks.
