If you’re looking for the quickest way to start a fight at the meeting of your local woodworking club, then this episode is for you. Today we’re surveying the most hotly debated topics in the woodworking world. And no… “tastes great” vs. “less filling” is not one of them.
Advertisement
Ok, so I vote that you change the name of the show to Modern Pot Stirrer Podcast. lol. And as someone who does his fair share of stirring, I love it!
Great insights Dave.
marc
What a cynic you are, Dave! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on these issues. A few comments on the controversies you mentioned:
The Domino: The only mortise and tenon joints I have ever done were cut by hand (I’m a relatively new woodworker and this is NOT a large number). Even from my quasi-galoot perspective I have to disagree with your line of reasoning on the woodworking foundation argument you present. By this same argument, we should be using hand rip saws instead of table saws and scrub and jack planes instead of planers and jointers to better understand the grain of our stock. Of course some few do argue this, but these arguments were largely settled decades ago because of the reality of the need for increased productivity with labor savings. Computers (e.g. calculators in math class) have presented similar challenges. Advances in technology always allow us to take short cuts which, although seemingly a house of cards to worried contemporaries, open up new possibilities for subsequent generations. Thus we can stand on the shoulders of giants.
Those who choose the older, better established techniques do so because they value their hard-won skills, or they value tradition, or they value the process as much as the product, or any number of reasons over what they see as pure accuracy and efficiency to the neglect of … whatever they value.
East versus West handsaws: I think this is not an acrimonious controversy because hand tool collectors and users generally just want more tools and are perfectly content to buy and try as many models as possible (myself included). There have been a few instances on forums where I have seen the Japanese versus Western chisel debate get a little heated, usually over the hardness/brittleness tradeoff of Japanese steel. My current favorite hand tool controversy is bevel up versus bevel down planes. Microbevels on chisels and A2 versus D2 versus O1 steel are also in the running, although as I said, a general lust for tools keeps these debates pretty sedate among the hand tool crowd.
Thanks again,
Josh
TESTIFY!!! Brother Noftz!
It is insane that so many “woodworkers” look upon the craft
with such a religious bent. Almost everyone I know, save a couple professionals, view their workshop as a sacred sanctuary away from all trials and tribulations.
This gives me yet another bullet to add to the “Shop Rules”–
“No pompous, conflict driven attitudes allowed**.”
>
>
>
>
**except mine!
Hi Josh,
I think you misunderstand the point I am making with regards to the Domino. It has nothing to do with suggesting that everyone should use hand tools instead of power tools in their woodworking. In fact, the whole thesis of this episode is that these kinds of debates (power tools vs. hand tools, left tilt vs right tilt, etc) are silly.
The Domino is a seductive machine. A beginner sees it and thinks, “if I just buy this tool, I can make perfect mortise and tenon joints. No effort required.” After all, woodworking is easy if you have all the tools from Norm’s shop, right? We only struggle because we don’t have the correct tools, right? Wrong. A Domino will cut nicely fitting mortises, but it won’t tell you how to properly proportion the joint for maximum strength. It won’t tell you how many Dominos you should use in the joint. All it does is cut a hole. You still need to have a sound fundamental understanding of the mortise and tenon joint to use it properly. Beginner’s don’t understand that, and they won’t learn those fundamentals while trying to use the Domino. When their joints fail, they’ll just assume the tool doesn’t work properly. When you learn to cut the joint in a more traditional way (and I don’t care if you use a tenon saw and mortising chisels or a jig on your tablesaw) you take the time to do your research and learn how to design the joint properly.
If you ask a coach from any professional sport what the most important thing to practice is, he or she will say “fundamentals.” You need to constantly practice your fundamentals. The teams that win championships have good fundamental skills. You’re not going to get drafted into the NBA if you haven’t figured out how to dribble yet. I think new folks entering the hobby should have some patience, take their time, and learn the fundamentals. You don’t have to build a highboy as your first project. Building a simple cutting board is a great way to practice basic skills: jointing boards, gluing up panels, flattening panels, finishing, etc.
Dave
Dave,
I couldn’t agree more about the two sides of every argument. I’m a self-proclaimed fence sitter, I love watching both sides and venturing from one to the other.
While I think it’s important to stand strong for something, there’s nothing wrong with swaying from side to side to make sure your feet aren’t just stuck in cement!
You make some great points in your discussion of the domino. In an age of quick and easy everything, understanding why something as neat as the domino is so efficient can be lost. Not to mention, as you point out, a lot of beginners gloss over the fundamentals and therefore never build a solid foundation.
And as I’ve found, that solid foundation of a mixture of hand and power tools makes everything that much better…not easier…but better.
Keep stirring the pot and I’ll keep sitting on the fence!
I’m with you, Dave, I never thought you were advocating a hand tool only approach. I was using stock preparation with hand tools as an analogy to say that there are fundamentals that are often overlooked (grain orientation, movement, and appearance in this case) because power tools allow us to ignore them if we choose to do so. Sure, glued up tops and panels might not be organized as well esthetically because a power sander doesn’t care about reversing grain, but the end result will be largely the same as the guy who used a infill at York pitch or a hand scraper. Any domino user will go through the same trial and error approach as anyone with a hollow chisel mortise or a router jig or a ¼” mortising chisel. If they under-build their joint, it will fail and unless they’re flakes or are huffing their mineral spirits they’ll try it a different way or go read up on it. If they blame their domino for a failed joint, they would likely always find a way to shift the blame away from a mistake on their part (what we in the business call externalization). I may be mistaken, but I think that the unsophisticated beginning woodworker with a lot of cash to burn is a rare animal and the instance you describe is an outlier. Their strategy in life is probably always to buy the best and hope that will substitute for a bit of elbow grease and will not likely be deterred from this approach until they max out their credit cards. I’m with you 100% about easing in with circumspect tool purchases and learning the fundamentals. But, I think even the domino can allow you to find out about mortise and tenon fundamentals if you are so inclined. Not everyone is and that will never change, but that’s their parent’s fault, right?
You know, I listened to this podcast yesterday evening in the airport, and I was thinking the exact same thing as Josh (in his first comment). It seems a bit inconsistent to advocate “fundamentals” over the Domino to a newbie, when most people don’t hesitate at all advocating other short-cutty power tools over hand tools.
I’m happy to see a resurgence of hand tools in the woodworking world, because too often it seems like the tools recommended to a beginning woodworker are almost always power tools rather than hand tools. To be honest, I’m a bit jealous because I have neither the money nor space for power tools, and besides, they don’t sell any here. So I try to make the most of my neanderthality.
P.S. And you forgot to even mention hand tools vs power tools in your list of controversies! To me, that trumps table saw tilt.