6 ms·

I like it from the standpoint of kids not being afraid of power tools. Plenty of adults would never do woodworking because the tools seem too scary. Teaching ki

I like it from the standpoint of kids not being afraid of power tools. Plenty of adults would never do woodworking because the tools seem too scary. Teaching kids that power tools don't need to be scary as long as they're used safely is a worthwhile output on its own IMO.

mathiaspoint 1y ago
You don't need power tools for most of woodworking anyway. That's a ridiculous excuse to avoid it. I've built furniture and framed buildings almost entirely with hand tools.
- gerdesj 1y ago
  Quite right until you discover a router ...
  - MarkMarine 1y ago
    Router is a very dangerous tool, and it will steal from you the joy of creating profiles by hand with moulding planes, one of the most rewarding things in woodworking. This book is a great guide: https://lostartpress.com/products/mouldings-in-practice?srsltid=AfmBOor2bkkSNlMPy969Hl9ZCg7ymM7kMxDJVUZUHY0_18zAvarm3ckk https://lostartpress.com/products/mouldings-in-practice?srsl... You can get by quite well with a rabbit plane and 3/8" hollow + round and 5/8" hollow + round places. I prefer the HNT Gordon Planes, beautiful hand made planes from australia: https://www.heartwoodtools.com/hntgordon/hollow-and-round-plane https://www.heartwoodtools.com/hntgordon/hollow-and-round-pl...
    - IAmBroom 1y ago
      Yet you still probably wear clothing made by industrial looms, using machine-spun thread, instead of retting your own flax in a pond... A bit half-assed, wouldn't you say?
      - ted_dunning 1y ago
        Treasuring the sensation of making art by hand does not imply somebody is a Luddite in all respects. I enjoy hand-crafting small circuits but am glad to use my cell phone to take a picture of the result. I love riding a bicycle but use a car to go 30 miles when needed. There is no contradiction to be had here. Just different purposes. Sometimes simple joy is the priority.
    - gerdesj 1y ago
      I own spoke shaves, multiple jack planes, and the rest. My garage is quite literally a torture chamber of devices that a medieval sociopath would dribble over. I'm perhaps not quite so distracted by a well rounded fillet in a cast iron or steel body as you appear to be! I love all materials and the ingenious ways we have found to fashion those materials. I only recently bought a router because I had to cut a wide and deep rebate in a door to fit a finger handle. Doing that with chisels is possible but a bloody nightmare. An over enthusiastic wack or allowing the grain to take over too much would have needed a potentially ugly repair. I speak en_GB so when I say router (spinning power tool) and router (IP packet shuffler) they sound different. I've just taken a look at that page you linked and may have to dump my browser cache and try and forget where I saw the link ... 8)
      - MarkMarine 1y ago
        I have the opposite experience with a router. I use mine when I need to, but I find using the correct hand tool far easier to control. If I had to do what you were describing I’d chisel the vertical cuts with a hand chisel so I had nice clean edges and I would hog out the material with a router plane. This one is my favorite: https://www.lie-nielsen.com/products/1-71-ct-large-router-planes?path=joinery-planes&node=4169 https://www.lie-nielsen.com/products/1-71-ct-large-router-pl... The moulding plane book I linked really opened my eyes to creating profiles. I’ve had to match multiple non standard profiles cut into different mouldings, window sashes, mutton bars, etc in the old house I live in, and that would be impossible without cutting a custom profile for a shaper. Seems like a huge waste of effort to cut a tool steel profile for a one off when I can just grab a couple hollows and rounds and make literally anything. Check out the maker of HNT Gordon using his planes. https://youtu.be/fHsEjiXv0c4?si=jyXdUilNnCtH7Xci https://youtu.be/fHsEjiXv0c4?si=jyXdUilNnCtH7Xci He actually has a different technique than the one in the moulding plane book I linked, and I like the book technique a lot more. It’s foolproof
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  I started with power tools. Moved to hand tools for a year or so when I moved houses and still had my table saw, etc. in storage. Now that I my power tools are back in the garage — I can't quit the power tools — right back relying on them. I just couldn't plane quite as nice as my joiner (and certainly not in one pass). And sharpening the hand tools... I earnestly want to do more hand-tool woodworking. I keep thinking that, as I get older, I'll eventually full in on hand tools. But at 61 years old ... not yet.
daedrdev 1y ago
I feel like you want to teach that they are dangerous and can be used safely when careful. A woodworker I know almost cut their finger clean off despite having years of experience.
- gerdesj 1y ago
  A British magician called Paul Daniels managed to slice some fingers on a table saw. He had been making his own tricks gear for decades. Safety thinking can slip - you only have to cock up once when you are pushing an amorphous mass into a blade spinning at say 3000 rpm and lose concentration. Table saws, band saws etc and the like are dreadful. My wife manages to make a simple drill/driver somewhat dangerous to the point that I have to sometimes fake a reason why husband should take over (yes I am very careful - she's generally sharper than the tool in question!)
gerdesj 1y ago
"Teaching kids that power tools don't need to be scary as long as they're used safely is a worthwhile output on its own IMO." True but real safety first thinking is not something that a purchasing decision will fix. I have a scar on one of my fingers that was caused by a broken broom! How bloody naff is that but it bled like buggery and a 1" flap of finger flapped for a while and needed stitches at A&E (for Americans - that's where you pop in and a few hours later pop out, all patched up without a credit card being involved). I wasn't wearing gloves. I am a first aider, H&S rep for my company (my company - I care about my troops) and so on. I was sweeping my drive with a broom with a hollow metal tube handle and it partially snapped and hinged and caught my finger and partially sliced a lump. Oh and I am the fire officer and even my house has a multi page fire plan. I own a plethora of torture devices - a table saw, multiple chain saws, chisels and the rest. I have skied for four decades and drive a car/van/lorry. Safety first thinking doesn't mean that you escape all of life's efforts to kill you but you do get a better chance of avoiding damage. A power tool that promises safety might be missplaced. However, this one does not missrepresent itself. It does what it does and it does it well. For me, I will be digging out the hand cranked jigsaw when I show the grand kids how to chop off their fingers: A fret saw. However that thing looks like a great introduction to dealing with power tools.
WillAdams 1y ago
The best advice I ever got re: power tools from an old shop teacher was that before throwing the switch and powering up a machine, to count to 10 on one's fingers under one's breath while reviewing every aspect of the planned operation, and all the forces involved, reminding oneself that one wants to be able to repeat the count in the same way after the switch is turned off. That said, I think it's best to maintain a healthy respect for, and even to a reasonable degree to be afraid of the machines and the forces which they can exert.
drewcoo 1y ago
> the tools seem too scary They are too scary. Consider table saws. SawStop built its brand on not cutting fingers off, which is scary enough. But it turns out that kickback causes a lot more injuries and that's not really addressed well by any tools. https://www.sawstop.com https://www.sawstop.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulvP8Vv9SrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulvP8Vv9SrE There ought to be a market for MEs to design power tools that are safer for consumers. So where is the obviously-named "KickStop" table saw? Maybe the decline in the middle class makes that market too small to consider such improvements.
- MarkMarine 1y ago
  The saw stop creator patented and tried to license his tech (not make a saw,) the major manufacturers didn't want to pay the license fees. I sort of get it, for actual job sites using dimensional lumber you're going to have the saw in bypass the entire time because the wood is wet, making the safety moot so the market is there for hobbyists but not pros. First thing the "pros" do is remove the guards. I've never seen a guard on a jointer or a shaper at a pro shop. The products fit the demand in the market.
  - mauvehaus 1y ago
    I'm a pro. I'll agree about guards on a table saw. The ones we get in the USA are without exception crap. I haven't used a Wadkin or European style saw. I can only assume that as much as they must cost to make, there's some merit to them. A riving knife is a really nice feature and I wholeheartedly recommend leaving it in. Shapers are a mixed bag. If you're running enough straight stock making moldings, you've probably got enough featherboards and/or hold downs if not a power feeder set up that you'd really have to try to get hurt. For smaller jobs or curves work, it's a tossup, but yeah, a lot of it gets done without a guard. Jointers I'm going to disagree with you: I pretty much refuse to run without a guard. Except for rabbeting, I haven't found a good reason to do so. I have done so in other shops, usually on machines so old that the guard was lost 50 years ago and is irreplaceable. Generally though, if I don't see a guard on a jointer in a shop, I'm pretty wary about what else might be being treated a bit too casually. A guard on a jointer is an easy win with very little downside.
hammyhavoc 1y ago
The first step to respecting power tools or firearms is fearing what they can do when mishandled.
ordu 1y ago
> I like it from the standpoint of kids not being afraid of power tools. I'm personally cultivating my fear for power tools. I consciously work on it so I wouldn't get used to them and wouldn't stop being afraid. Fear makes me more attentive, more careful, it forces me to think first and to do next. To stop myself when things go not as planned and think again. It is almost impossible to distract me while I'm cutting wood or whatever I'm doing with a power tool. I'm afraid of the tool, I wouldn't let my attention to switch from it while it is powered. It is funny, that psychologists believe that fears is a bad thing that must be eliminated. At least all I've talked about fears believed in that. But fears are good, they come with a danger detector included, and they are hard to ignore. > Teaching kids that power tools don't need to be scary as long as they're used safely is a worthwhile output on its own IMO. I believe, that either "to use safely" or "not scary". There is no middle ground. Though it maybe just my own way to the safety, maybe others know other ways. > Plenty of adults would never do woodworking because the tools seem too scary. The fears that stop you from doing are probably bad, but from the other hand, before using power tools you'd better learn how to do it safely. I learned all of them from experienced people, who demonstrated me how to do it properly, watched me and explained me what I'm doing wrong. So, maybe, they are right.
- starkparker 1y ago
  > I'm personally cultivating my fear for power tools. I get what you're saying, but to get there you have to willfully conflate an irrational fear of unknown consequences with a rational fear of known consequences. The barrier for many adults to power-tool use is the former, which blocks them from acquiring the latter.
  - ordu 1y ago
    > The barrier for many adults to power-tool use is the former, which blocks them from acquiring the latter. I don't know such people, and I don't know any research of the motivation of such people. But I can suggest an alternate hypothesis explaining their behavior. They just don't want to deal with power tools, have no interest in acquiring the skills, and they use their fear to explain their unwillingness causally. A lot of people didn't even try to learn how to use musical instruments, and oftentimes they explain it by their tone deafness. But a good ear is not something people are born with, it is a result of training. Genes probably play their role, but for the most people it all boils down to practice. They didn't practiced, they cannot know about how good their ears are, but they use tone deafness as an excuse. What is really happening, they are not interested enough, or lazy, or have not enough time, but they use their inability to sing karaoke perfectly as a sign of tone deafness and as an excuse to not learning how to play music. Tone deafness as an excuse is better than others, because it doesn't allow for persuasion, it is a full stop. The fear of power tools seems to me like that. So my hypothesis, this fear not the reason, but an excuse. I'm sure it is not true for some people, at the same time I'm sure it is true for some, the question is how many people use it as an excuse. I don't know, but I'd bet that more than 50%.
hooverd 1y ago
You should maintain a healthy fear of power tools. They're like big cats. You can be familiar, but never get too comfortable.

mathiaspoint 1y ago

You don't need power tools for most of woodworking anyway. That's a ridiculous excuse to avoid it. I've built furniture and framed buildings almost entirely with hand tools.

gerdesj 1y ago
Quite right until you discover a router ...
- MarkMarine 1y ago
  Router is a very dangerous tool, and it will steal from you the joy of creating profiles by hand with moulding planes, one of the most rewarding things in woodworking. This book is a great guide: https://lostartpress.com/products/mouldings-in-practice?srsltid=AfmBOor2bkkSNlMPy969Hl9ZCg7ymM7kMxDJVUZUHY0_18zAvarm3ckk https://lostartpress.com/products/mouldings-in-practice?srsl... You can get by quite well with a rabbit plane and 3/8" hollow + round and 5/8" hollow + round places. I prefer the HNT Gordon Planes, beautiful hand made planes from australia: https://www.heartwoodtools.com/hntgordon/hollow-and-round-plane https://www.heartwoodtools.com/hntgordon/hollow-and-round-pl...
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    Yet you still probably wear clothing made by industrial looms, using machine-spun thread, instead of retting your own flax in a pond... A bit half-assed, wouldn't you say?
    - ted_dunning 1y ago
      Treasuring the sensation of making art by hand does not imply somebody is a Luddite in all respects. I enjoy hand-crafting small circuits but am glad to use my cell phone to take a picture of the result. I love riding a bicycle but use a car to go 30 miles when needed. There is no contradiction to be had here. Just different purposes. Sometimes simple joy is the priority.
  - gerdesj 1y ago
    I own spoke shaves, multiple jack planes, and the rest. My garage is quite literally a torture chamber of devices that a medieval sociopath would dribble over. I'm perhaps not quite so distracted by a well rounded fillet in a cast iron or steel body as you appear to be! I love all materials and the ingenious ways we have found to fashion those materials. I only recently bought a router because I had to cut a wide and deep rebate in a door to fit a finger handle. Doing that with chisels is possible but a bloody nightmare. An over enthusiastic wack or allowing the grain to take over too much would have needed a potentially ugly repair. I speak en_GB so when I say router (spinning power tool) and router (IP packet shuffler) they sound different. I've just taken a look at that page you linked and may have to dump my browser cache and try and forget where I saw the link ... 8)
    - MarkMarine 1y ago
      I have the opposite experience with a router. I use mine when I need to, but I find using the correct hand tool far easier to control. If I had to do what you were describing I’d chisel the vertical cuts with a hand chisel so I had nice clean edges and I would hog out the material with a router plane. This one is my favorite: https://www.lie-nielsen.com/products/1-71-ct-large-router-planes?path=joinery-planes&node=4169 https://www.lie-nielsen.com/products/1-71-ct-large-router-pl... The moulding plane book I linked really opened my eyes to creating profiles. I’ve had to match multiple non standard profiles cut into different mouldings, window sashes, mutton bars, etc in the old house I live in, and that would be impossible without cutting a custom profile for a shaper. Seems like a huge waste of effort to cut a tool steel profile for a one off when I can just grab a couple hollows and rounds and make literally anything. Check out the maker of HNT Gordon using his planes. https://youtu.be/fHsEjiXv0c4?si=jyXdUilNnCtH7Xci https://youtu.be/fHsEjiXv0c4?si=jyXdUilNnCtH7Xci He actually has a different technique than the one in the moulding plane book I linked, and I like the book technique a lot more. It’s foolproof
JKCalhoun 1y ago
I started with power tools. Moved to hand tools for a year or so when I moved houses and still had my table saw, etc. in storage. Now that I my power tools are back in the garage — I can't quit the power tools — right back relying on them. I just couldn't plane quite as nice as my joiner (and certainly not in one pass). And sharpening the hand tools... I earnestly want to do more hand-tool woodworking. I keep thinking that, as I get older, I'll eventually full in on hand tools. But at 61 years old ... not yet.

daedrdev 1y ago

I feel like you want to teach that they are dangerous and can be used safely when careful. A woodworker I know almost cut their finger clean off despite having years of experience.

gerdesj 1y ago
A British magician called Paul Daniels managed to slice some fingers on a table saw. He had been making his own tricks gear for decades. Safety thinking can slip - you only have to cock up once when you are pushing an amorphous mass into a blade spinning at say 3000 rpm and lose concentration. Table saws, band saws etc and the like are dreadful. My wife manages to make a simple drill/driver somewhat dangerous to the point that I have to sometimes fake a reason why husband should take over (yes I am very careful - she's generally sharper than the tool in question!)

gerdesj 1y ago

"Teaching kids that power tools don't need to be scary as long as they're used safely is a worthwhile output on its own IMO." True but real safety first thinking is not something that a purchasing decision will fix. I have a scar on one of my fingers that was caused by a broken broom! How bloody naff is that but it bled like buggery and a 1" flap of finger flapped for a while and needed stitches at A&E (for Americans - that's where you pop in and a few hours later pop out, all patched up without a credit card being involved). I wasn't wearing gloves. I am a first aider, H&S rep for my company (my company - I care about my troops) and so on. I was sweeping my drive with a broom with a hollow metal tube handle and it partially snapped and hinged and caught my finger and partially sliced a lump. Oh and I am the fire officer and even my house has a multi page fire plan. I own a plethora of torture devices - a table saw, multiple chain saws, chisels and the rest. I have skied for four decades and drive a car/van/lorry. Safety first thinking doesn't mean that you escape all of life's efforts to kill you but you do get a better chance of avoiding damage. A power tool that promises safety might be missplaced. However, this one does not missrepresent itself. It does what it does and it does it well. For me, I will be digging out the hand cranked jigsaw when I show the grand kids how to chop off their fingers: A fret saw. However that thing looks like a great introduction to dealing with power tools.

WillAdams 1y ago

The best advice I ever got re: power tools from an old shop teacher was that before throwing the switch and powering up a machine, to count to 10 on one's fingers under one's breath while reviewing every aspect of the planned operation, and all the forces involved, reminding oneself that one wants to be able to repeat the count in the same way after the switch is turned off. That said, I think it's best to maintain a healthy respect for, and even to a reasonable degree to be afraid of the machines and the forces which they can exert.

drewcoo 1y ago

> the tools seem too scary They are too scary. Consider table saws. SawStop built its brand on not cutting fingers off, which is scary enough. But it turns out that kickback causes a lot more injuries and that's not really addressed well by any tools. https://www.sawstop.com https://www.sawstop.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulvP8Vv9SrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulvP8Vv9SrE There ought to be a market for MEs to design power tools that are safer for consumers. So where is the obviously-named "KickStop" table saw? Maybe the decline in the middle class makes that market too small to consider such improvements.

MarkMarine 1y ago
The saw stop creator patented and tried to license his tech (not make a saw,) the major manufacturers didn't want to pay the license fees. I sort of get it, for actual job sites using dimensional lumber you're going to have the saw in bypass the entire time because the wood is wet, making the safety moot so the market is there for hobbyists but not pros. First thing the "pros" do is remove the guards. I've never seen a guard on a jointer or a shaper at a pro shop. The products fit the demand in the market.
- mauvehaus 1y ago
  I'm a pro. I'll agree about guards on a table saw. The ones we get in the USA are without exception crap. I haven't used a Wadkin or European style saw. I can only assume that as much as they must cost to make, there's some merit to them. A riving knife is a really nice feature and I wholeheartedly recommend leaving it in. Shapers are a mixed bag. If you're running enough straight stock making moldings, you've probably got enough featherboards and/or hold downs if not a power feeder set up that you'd really have to try to get hurt. For smaller jobs or curves work, it's a tossup, but yeah, a lot of it gets done without a guard. Jointers I'm going to disagree with you: I pretty much refuse to run without a guard. Except for rabbeting, I haven't found a good reason to do so. I have done so in other shops, usually on machines so old that the guard was lost 50 years ago and is irreplaceable. Generally though, if I don't see a guard on a jointer in a shop, I'm pretty wary about what else might be being treated a bit too casually. A guard on a jointer is an easy win with very little downside.

hammyhavoc 1y ago

The first step to respecting power tools or firearms is fearing what they can do when mishandled.

ordu 1y ago

> I like it from the standpoint of kids not being afraid of power tools. I'm personally cultivating my fear for power tools. I consciously work on it so I wouldn't get used to them and wouldn't stop being afraid. Fear makes me more attentive, more careful, it forces me to think first and to do next. To stop myself when things go not as planned and think again. It is almost impossible to distract me while I'm cutting wood or whatever I'm doing with a power tool. I'm afraid of the tool, I wouldn't let my attention to switch from it while it is powered. It is funny, that psychologists believe that fears is a bad thing that must be eliminated. At least all I've talked about fears believed in that. But fears are good, they come with a danger detector included, and they are hard to ignore. > Teaching kids that power tools don't need to be scary as long as they're used safely is a worthwhile output on its own IMO. I believe, that either "to use safely" or "not scary". There is no middle ground. Though it maybe just my own way to the safety, maybe others know other ways. > Plenty of adults would never do woodworking because the tools seem too scary. The fears that stop you from doing are probably bad, but from the other hand, before using power tools you'd better learn how to do it safely. I learned all of them from experienced people, who demonstrated me how to do it properly, watched me and explained me what I'm doing wrong. So, maybe, they are right.

starkparker 1y ago
> I'm personally cultivating my fear for power tools. I get what you're saying, but to get there you have to willfully conflate an irrational fear of unknown consequences with a rational fear of known consequences. The barrier for many adults to power-tool use is the former, which blocks them from acquiring the latter.
- ordu 1y ago
  > The barrier for many adults to power-tool use is the former, which blocks them from acquiring the latter. I don't know such people, and I don't know any research of the motivation of such people. But I can suggest an alternate hypothesis explaining their behavior. They just don't want to deal with power tools, have no interest in acquiring the skills, and they use their fear to explain their unwillingness causally. A lot of people didn't even try to learn how to use musical instruments, and oftentimes they explain it by their tone deafness. But a good ear is not something people are born with, it is a result of training. Genes probably play their role, but for the most people it all boils down to practice. They didn't practiced, they cannot know about how good their ears are, but they use tone deafness as an excuse. What is really happening, they are not interested enough, or lazy, or have not enough time, but they use their inability to sing karaoke perfectly as a sign of tone deafness and as an excuse to not learning how to play music. Tone deafness as an excuse is better than others, because it doesn't allow for persuasion, it is a full stop. The fear of power tools seems to me like that. So my hypothesis, this fear not the reason, but an excuse. I'm sure it is not true for some people, at the same time I'm sure it is true for some, the question is how many people use it as an excuse. I don't know, but I'd bet that more than 50%.

hooverd 1y ago

You should maintain a healthy fear of power tools. They're like big cats. You can be familiar, but never get too comfortable.