| Good to know! But now we're talking about fundamentally different things. The posts you were replying to had this to say: >If I had to earn a living making furniture or any kind of carpentry, I'd definitely use power tools. >[T]here is something very satisfying of doing a rabbit plane or using a low angle block plane that isn't felt when sanding. >The point is to to do something that is not easy. Something that takes time. No one is denying that for the actual profession of carpentry, furniture-making, etc. a power tool is a superior option. Those commenters were sharing subjective experiences of satisfaction in learning a manual skill (and there I will have to disagree with you; I think using a hammer and chisel or hand saw to cut a straight edge is more physically difficult and demanding than doing the same with a table saw). A professional cabinet maker is not a hobbyist, and needs those power tools, and in previous eras those many planes, to make a living. But that's not relevant to gatekeeping; for someone just getting started, it would be much easier to buy a small set of hand tools rather than everything that would be required for full automation. >He has a top of the line Saw Stop table saw and he rents a small commercial building to do his woodworking in. He also is very tepid on the idea of a Saw Stop for a beginning hobbyist [0]. I would argue he rents the commercial building more as a studio space; he only looked into it after quitting "woodworking" as a profession and deciding to go all-in on YouTube. Before that, he was working out of his basement, as I'm sure you know. https://www.rexkrueger.com/articles/2020/11/30/the-riddle-of... |
Doing woodworking with neolithic tools, with 1700's era tools, with WW1 era tools, or with modern power tools satisfies all of these requirements. It takes time, it requires skill and mastery in all cases. OP is saying that woodworking with power tools doesn't qualify in this regard, which is false and I find very annoying and I consider gate-keeping.
I'm not saying Rex is recommending a Saw Stop, I'm saying when he has to get work done he uses whatever tool he thinks is the right one for the job.
> I think using a hammer and chisel or hand saw to cut a straight edge is more physically difficult and demanding than doing the same with a table saw
Well of course it is. Building things from wood isn't the same as the steps to do it. You can chew the wood with your teeth and if you are skilled you will end up with a piece of furniture that will last generations, or you can use a table saw and build something that falls apart in an hour. And vice-versa. Woodworking is building things out of wood. Being better at woodworking means you build better things of the wood, not being more impressive when people watch the video of how it was made, which doesn't exist and nobody wants to see. If you are a professional you also have to worry about building good things efficiently (in time and other resources like materials and wear on tools). If you are not a professional you are free to be inefficient but that just means you are measured entirely by the end result. If one way or the other is a more fun path for you to take then of course do it that way, whether it's power tools or not, but if your goal is just to spend time sweating over wood without worrying about the quality of the final product we fundamentally don't agree on what the point is. Crawling is more physically demanding than walking, and crab walking is harder than crawling, and rolling is harder and more physically demanding than crab walking, and dragging yourself by your teeth without using your arms or legs is harder still. Why do you still walk?
To quote Kenny Powers, “I play real sports. Not trying to be the best at exercising.”
To build something as 'simple' as a stool or a table you have to understand how the wood will move, how the forces will be applied to the piece in years (hopefully decades) of use and how it will wear or weather, how to make it so that wearing doesn't degrade or ruin the piece, how to build it to be strong when resisting those forces but not overbuilding it so that it is needlessly heavy or wastes wood or is ugly as a result. You have to make something that will be attractive and somewhat stylish, at least to someone's idea of what is attractive and stylish. Woodworking isn't cutting a straight cut, it's building furniture that serves it's owner for a very long time and is loved and passed on through time. It's building the things that Rex finds and shows us why they have held up and are still being used 100 or 200 years later, and that people will want to have in their possession at all. Who cares how you cut the boards? How is that even a consideration? Do it how you want, it couldn't matter less and nobody should care (and nobody does).