If you've browsed around the internet woodworking message boards for any length of time, you've likely stumbled upon a question titled something like "What are the advantages of a hand tool only shop". Maybe you were the person who posted the question. Last night, as I sliced my finger wide open while wiping the honing oil from the edge of a freshly honed plane blade, I was suddenly reminded of one of those advantages. Had I made this mistake with a table saw or jointer, I could have lost the finger, or worse.
But that go me thinking, that there are so many advantages that go overlooked. Now I'm not going to try to convert you to a full blown, hand tool toting, selling off the Unisaw to pay for a collection of Clark & Williams planes and Wenzloff saws neander. Believe me, there are times when I wish I had a band saw (ripping through 50 feet of 2" thick stock by hand comes to mind). But there are important lessons to be learned in some of the "grunt work" type tasks that need to be done as part of each project.
I'll give you an example. Let's say you're building a simple side table. Not too difficult a task, right? So you buy your lumber, rough cut your parts to length on your chop saw or radial arm, rip them on the table saw, four square the material with the jointer and planer, hog out the mortises with the hollow chisel mortiser, then you decide to hand cut the tenons as you don't have a tenon jig. You mark them out, then start cutting. However, you find it difficult to get straight square shoulders and cheeks so you cut everything fat and then spend an hour adjusting each tenon to fit.
Next you move on to the drawer and you know this can be tricky so you are very careful to mark your cuts clearly. You start by cutting the tails and you saw some straight and some not so straight. You mark the pins from the tails, confident that this will fix your previous errors, then carefully saw on the waste side of the line and again, spend a couple hours paring the dovetails to fit. You dry fit the drawer and it holds together ok, but there are some gaps in the joint that you don't particularly like.
The problem that keeps recurring in this example is the builder's seemingly "cautious" practice of sawing fat and paring to fit. While this may seem like a good way to get tight fitting joints, it adds a lot of time to the process and rarely results in consistently tight fitting joints. The issue is the builder's discomfort with sawing right to the line. To address this discomfort, they saw fat and then pare, which results in inconsistent joint surfaces.
The solution to this problem is to saw straight to the line. However, when one does 95% of their sawing with power and guides (fences, miter gauges, etc.), they don't have the practice or the comfort to do so. This is where hand tool users have an advantage. When you have to do all your rough cutting with hand saws, you have no choice but to practice your sawing. Sure, you can still saw wide of the line and plane to the mark, however, this takes time and, in the case of planing end grain, often results in damaging the piece. The answer is to saw to the line.
When I saw my rough stock, I consider it practice for more critical cuts. When I crosscut, I want to do the best I can to make a straight, square cut so I don't have to adjust it later. I have a shooting board, but I'd rather not plane end grain if I don't have to. Similarly, when I rip a board to width, I follow the line as closely as possible. I don't want to make gross adjustments to the edge, I just want to clean up the saw marks.
Based on this, I do have advise for all of you machine users out there who want to improve your skills with hand cutting joinery. Do more hand sawing. Being able to saw to a line is a skill that takes practice. If you don't do any hand sawing but joinery, you won't get enough practice hand sawing to saw straight consistently. There are a few tricks, like scribing your layout lines with a knife or awl rather than using a pencil, but these do not gaurantee you will saw straight, they just help guide your starting cuts.
So here's my homework for you. Practice your hand sawing skills. I'm not asking you to rip 100 board feet of 8/4 oak, but there are opportunities for you to practice in almost every project. Make your rough crosscuts by hand; these cuts are quick and easy but provide a great practice session for sawing to a line. The final length is typically adjusted later in the project so if your cut is not perfect, it likely won't matter later. Another place to practice your hand sawing is with your secondary parts like case backs, drawer sides, drawer guides, etc. Crosscuting and riping these parts by hand is great hand sawing practice. Most projects have at least some secondary parts not visible after assembly. An added plus is that these secondary parts are typically a softer wood like pine, cedar or poplar so hand sawing these parts is not as daunting a task as ripping through sugar maple.
Start doing more hand sawing like this on your next projects and I gaurantee you will be tracking a line better in very little time. Of course the real benefit of this will be the improvement you see in your hand cut joinery. Your tenon shoulders and cheeks will be cleaner and straighter, your dovetails will be straighter and tighter and you will do much less paring, which saves a lot of time. In short time, you'll be going from the backsaw straight to joint assembly, which should be the ultimate goal in hand cut joinery. Keep practicing, it is achievable.
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