[masraum]

Originally Posted by rwest

Amen,

I have both power and hand tools; they both have their place.

I was in charge of making wooden trophies for our woodworking guild’s annual show and a newly retired gentleman who had bought a shop full of high end power tools volunteered to help out. We were working on them in my shop one Saturday and we had the shape cut out and needed to clean up edges. I pulled out a hand plane and he let out a big laugh and said he would use a power sander- I took two passes with my plane and handed it to him... next day he ordered a hand plane! Sander would have taken several grit changes and several passes per grit and likely would have rounded over edges and left a less than straight edge.

I also find that since I do woodworking as a hobby, the journey can be more important than the destination, so I sometimes choose a slower process for the satisfaction of mastering a skill.

Rutager

I will occasionally do something with a hand tool because it would take far longer to get X tool out and setup and then perform the action and then clean it all back up and get everything put away.

I suspect there's a big difference between a huge shop where everything is permanently setup and sitting there waiting for a flip of a switch. Also, for a pro, if you've got to perform an action 10, 20, 50 times, then it may be faster and easier and more consistent to do that action on power tools.

I enjoy knowing how to use the old stuff, and can then judge, if I have the hand tool and the power tool and I know what each can do and what I need to get done, which tool will do the job better and/or faster.

If I had to cut wood flooring, for a room or two and the flooring was 3.25" TnG, and I had to make 500 cuts, it'd probably be faster to get the table saw or circular saw setup and make those cuts. If I had to make one cut on one board then it might be faster and easier to use a hand saw.

And as you said, sometimes the journey is a big part of it as well as the finished product.