Are hand tool skills still Relevant??

Are hand tools and the skills to use them still relevant or even required in this day and age?

I would argue the knowledge it takes to maintain them, use them with accuracy and the lessons you will learn while using them will hold you in good stead for the rest of your woodworking career.

Why? Because when you build a house you start with a proper foundation.

The act of bringing a chisel, plane iron or any other tool that requires a polished edge to meet a polished edge that gives you that beautiful smooth slicing action is a skill within itself. Also, in my mind there is no better feeling than using a tool you have brought to a cutting edge to add precision in the production of a piece of furniture or even the recessing of a 75mm Butt hinge while hanging a door and that 1/4 inch router is out of reach.

The skill of being able to shoot in a door with a jack plane or smoothing plane will easily transfer over to the use of a power planer and will inadvertently make you more accurate with it. As I see it, the reason for this is simple. When using a hand plane it forces you to take your time, who knows, maybe even read the grain a little. While using the hand plane you can feel where your weight is being transferred to. A bit too much to the left or right on the sole of the plane and the edge of that door or the boards you maybe jointing will run out of square. After every couple of passes I would always recommend a square placed against the side of the door or the board to make sure it’s staying square and true. Now imagine you have just gone straight on to a power planer. You have the capacity to plane off 3-4mm at least in one pass. And while completing this pass you have put too much pressure on the left side of on the sole of the planer. That’s means to square up that door edge you have to try and keep that planer square while running it on a bevel you have just created. Add on top you are reducing the width of that door by squaring up the edge and will be leaving you a 4-5mm gap all the way around the door instead of the 2mm gap which makes it so pleasing to the eye when standing back and checking out your finished work. Me, personally even after the use of a power planer I will still run a smoother over the edges to clean up the planer block marks.

While cutting a tenon with a tenon saw you would score the shoulder with a knife and bring in that crisp knife wall to work to. While setting out the cheeks this could be done with a mortise gauge. Again, giving you that precise line. Now you will go about cutting your shoulder line with the tenon saw. However, instead of using that saw to cut the cheeks you may opt for splitting the grain back from that cheek gauge line and then carefully using that honed chisel too pare down to the crisp defining lines of the cheeks. Yet before doing this, would you not check the way the grain is running to make sure the split with chisel will not encroach upon the gauged cheek lines or worse case still, go beyond it and into the tenon itself.  Would it not force you to think about the type of wood you are using? Sapele splits very differently to European Redwood. After all this consideration. Maybe you would go back and pick up that old tenon saw after all.

Made you think though didn’t it?

Power tools and machines are awesome. Yet the true precision in the use of any hand tool, power tool or machine is by the person who has the knowledge to set that tool/power tool/machine to the parameters they require with a degree of precision that has become a habit to them. In my career this attribute was drilled into me by the use and maintenance of the hand tools and skills to use them for our trade.