I use hand tools for the majority of my woodworking, which is mostly making Windsor chairs and replicating parts for my perpetual 1800's farmhouse restoration. Although I had a little childhood background in carpentry, I became interested in hand tools out of a need to replicate trim and other features of my house. I had a shaper at the time, but did not feel like having knives made, so off I ventured down the molding plane road. I ended up fabricating a fair amount of trim and a few window sash, all using hand planes. Through this process, I gained a tremendous amount of respect for the folks that built my house and their abilities as craftsmen.
It takes skill and knowledge to use power tools to create beautiful things out of wood. I think it takes a much broader base of skill and knowledge to create beautiful things out of wood using only hand tools. You can purchase a ready to use shaper, with ready to use knives and run a "borg" special piece of lumber thru it and get a nice, finished piece of trim. You don't have to understand much about wood selection, grain, sharpening, planing technique, etc. because the machine performs almost flawlessly in even the toughest of circumstances. That modern machines perform so well is a testament to human ingenuity but it also means that not much skill can produce a highly refined product.
It takes skill and knowledge to use power tools to create beautiful things out of wood. I think it takes a much broader base of skill and knowledge to create beautiful things out of wood using only hand tools. You can purchase a ready to use shaper, with ready to use knives and run a "borg" special piece of lumber thru it and get a nice, finished piece of trim. You don't have to understand much about wood selection, grain, sharpening, planing technique, etc. because the machine performs almost flawlessly in even the toughest of circumstances. That modern machines perform so well is a testament to human ingenuity but it also means that not much skill can produce a highly refined product.
To some degree, the point about knowledge and skill is academic because isn't the goal to produce beautiful things? I think so, but it is noteworthy that perfectly executed creations tend to lose out to imperfect creations in a beauty contest. Great music is almost never in perfect time. A computer can render piano notes perfectly, but the music is lifeless unless the programmer goes to great effort to introduce variations that stray from perfection. Furniture made to precise patterns using machines that guarantee uniformity generally lack something in the eyes of many, mine included. Machine cut dovetails look like machine cut dovetails most of the time - nice, but sterile.
I use hand tools because I am in awe of the human capacity to create nearly flawless things using hands and other senses. I like the fact that my turning skills get better as I replicate 90 spindles for a staircase and that the staircase looks better (to my eye) than one containing balusters produced on a lathe with a copy attachment, even with the obvious imperfections. I relish plaster walls, even cracked ones. One of my mentors was a WWII pilot who flew for a major airline and refused throughout his career to use an autopilot. He would laugh and say the autopilot flies perfectly, but “I need the practice.” He was the smoothest, best pilot I have ever flown with, whether he was flying a B747 or a Pitts Special. He flew less precisely, but gave a better ride than the autopilot.
When I make a windsor chair, I strive to make every spindle and turning exactly the same but they never are. The chairs each have character. Sometimes I really like a chair’s character and sometimes less so, but each is unique and interesting because of the variation. I like the flexibility I have to modify on the fly because the wood commands me to. I value people who can program machines to do amazing things, but I am even more impressed by a concert guitarist who sits down and flawlessly plays a 10 minute piece of music or a great turner who seemingly effortlessly knocks out a beautiful bowl or spindle, reacting on the fly to the variations in the medium.
I appreciate too that once a craftsman can perfectly square a piece of wood by hand, he may choose to use a planer or a jointer because it is more expeditious or he simply doesn’t feel like doing it by hand. I break out the compound miter saw when I go to replace siding because it is faster, but my sawing skills would improve if I did it all by hand. They could use improvement and I probably should.
I believe we humans value things that represent hard work and mastery of a medium. Why else would the Mona Lisa be a priceless work of art, when an exact machine made reproduction, which by all appearance is exactly the same as the original, can be had for hundreds or maybe a few thousands?
