Sunday 31 July 2011

The First Steps Upon A New Path

OK so are you ready for this.  Yea you guys all six of you following the blog (thanks for that by the way) you ready you ready.  I don't think your ready...yea that's better.

Alright enough of the silliness and on to some serious stuff.  First off is the announcement I hinted to last time, I have decided to use only hand tools when building furniture. GASP.  Yes shocking isn't it considering I have some many power tools and love them all dearly.  So why the change you ask?  There's a lot of reasons and no one definitive answer.  The big reasons are these; working as a carpenter I NEED to use power tools, cutting 2x4 with a handsaw while possible and good for the arms is not practical, so using power tools at work has to stay the same, but I am not under huge time crunches so I can use the power tools and this offers a nice change from work.  The second reason is that of noise, hand tools are quiet working in a basement shop i feel bad making all that noise with a table saw not to mention that I have to wear hearing protection.  With hand tools I can listen to my music and only worry about the sounds of Rage Against The Machine and Soundgarden disturbing the family.  Finally and maybe the most important is that I find hand tool usage way more rewarding.  Life is a journey and so to is building furniture.  So if I use power tools its more like rushing and not as fulfilling as using a hand tool, it important to take life slow and enjoy and relish in every moment of it.  So there you have it I am now off on this hand tool journey of mine I hope you tag along.
Old Shop

New Shop

On to other things this past week was an interesting one in my work world.  On what was easily the hottest day of the summer thus far I built a deck for some family friends of mine.  The original was an old and dangerous rotting poorly built pressure treated deck.  Now after 7 days roughly they have a lovely much larger cedar deck.  The deck is the first one I built with out the supervision of a boss and it went fairly well.  I have built a deck before and I am a more then decent framer so I knew I could get it built.  But the deck is not perfect and I definitely made some mistakes.  I have learned from these mistakes which is what matters and I now know things that will be important when I build my own deck soon...I think I here the ipe being delivered.




So what's next for me.  Well there are some changes obviously going on in the shop this week and I have a lot of loss ends to tie up at work before I start anymore projects.  Stay tuned to find out more.  If you are interested in hand tool wood working I recommend two websites to visit.  First is http://www.theunpluggedwoodshop.com/ Tom Fidgen is a hand tool only woodworker here in Ontario Canada and does some amazing things.  Second is Shannon Rogers over at http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/ and his hand tool school, you can join up and learn a lot of traditional techniques as well as belong to an amazing community.

Till next time cheers
Hans Christopher.

2 comments:

  1. Wow. I have just been going through the same mental process that you have just finished; transitioning away from large power tools to recover some space to work. In fact here is my whine:

    http://nolemonsnomelon.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/changes-on-the-wind/

    I will follow you with interest to see how your journey goes.

    Did you actually sell off your big stuff?

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  2. No I did not sell of any of my big stuff. I did not have any large machines. Portable table saw, mitre saw and thickness planer are my largest machines and I have kept them. I kept them because they will be useful in my job as a carpenter.

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