Working Raw Wood – Hybrid Style
I have an itch. It needs to be scratched. The source of my itch is the woodworker who recommends to every newbie that they run out and buy a jointer, planer, and table saw BECAUSE, until they do they can’t work with unfinished lumber and/or create furniture. People who say these things are unfettered by the reality that there are those creating fine furniture with nothing but hand tools. They aren’t phased by the fact that much of the contents of everyone’s local antique store was made with hand tools.
So, I don’t want to talk to them. Rather, I want to talk to the newbies whose questions about how to get into woodworking are being answered by these guys. I’ll say clearly, if you have unlimited room and money, buy one of everything. Learn how to use each tool. Decide for yourself, after a few years of doing it, which method(s) you want to use to create what you want to create. The only “right” way to do woodworking is the way that makes you happy.
On the other hand, if your shop is small like most of us and if maybe, just maybe you actually have to think about how to spend your money when getting into a hobby, maybe what follows will be of use to you. If nothing else I will have scratched my itch.
The boards in the photo came to me as rough timbers that were part of shipping palettes that were delivered with piles of electrical parts strapped to them. A friend of mine brought them by. I wish I had a photo of what they looked like before I worked on them but I didn’t get the idea to present them until I’d gotten them to this state. Imagine, however, rough-cut wood with a bunch of dirt and grime on them. I couldn’t even tell what kind of wood they were because of the dirt.
And so the first step was to remove the dirt, using a stiff brush I have for brushing rough lumber. I even dragged out a brass brush as one of them was really yucky (a technical term). Regardless of how you prep your wood you don’t want to skip this step as dirt and gravel are hard on blades – any blades.
One thing you need to understand about me is that while I advocate the use of hand tools, I don’t work with them exclusively. I own a table saw. I own routers. I own the cheapest lunchbox planer on the planet. I’ve got a lathe; I’ve got a drill press. I’ve got a bunch of powered sawdust-makers (sanders) too. I simply choose to use them as little as possible as it’s just no fun and I can get better results with hand tools. But I’m not beyond using them if the situation arises. But notice that I don’t own a jointer. Never felt the need for one.
And so while some would run to their jointer with these squarish (they were far from square when I got them) pieces, I put one on my workbench and grabbed my #5 jack plane. Using it and my #7 jointer plane, I faced two sides and brought them square to one another. With a flat side opposing a non-flat side in each direction, I could shove this piece of wood through my el cheapo Delta planer. I repeated this sequence for all 4 boards. The total time required to get them to the point you see them in the photo was 16 minutes and a few seconds, but who’s counting? Hmm…I guess that would be me. In the end, I have 3 cherry and 1 maple posts that are 4S (surfaced on all sides) and it required very little time.
Now clearly you could lop 10 minutes off this time with a jointer -a jointer cost many hundreds of dollars and takes up a bunch of square feet in a shop. Wow! Are you REALLY in that big of a hurry? Is ‘how fast can we do it?’ the single criterion for determining methodology? Does it make sense to be told you can’t build furniture and/or use unfinished lumber unless you own a jointer? I don’t think so. BTW, if you look at that photo again you’ll see the most common use for my table saw. Ah…the itch has been scratched. Thanks for listening.
Cheers — Larry
Full Chisel Blog
Logan Cabinet Shoppe
Renaissance Woodworker
Tom Fidgen's Made By Hand
Village Carpenter
Wood Whisperer
Fine Woodworking Magazine
Popular Woodworking Magazine
Wood’n Bits
Larry,
You are spot on with this post. What new woodworkers are led to believe is that if you employ ‘old methods’ you loose money and clearly aren’t an efficient woodworker. I think this comes from two sources:
1.) the tool industry, obviously
2.) a society that believes even a one man operation must work like a production facility.
In the end they loose the enjoyment and pleasure of the process you just described above.
Sweet find, BTW. Cherry and Maple all from pallets. I love it.
Also, that has to be the greatest picture ever used in a woodworking blog post!!
Larry,
You’re forgetting the time it takes to possibly move the jointer into a place where it can be used, putting on hearing and breathing protection, hooking up the dust collector, and then putting it all away. In a small shop none of the big power tools have permanent homes and often have to be moved into place to be used. Let’s not forget that if you are looking at making anything other than paint grade furniture, that power jointer is going to leave a lot of tool marks that need to be planed away or (gasp) power sanded off. What sounds more efficient to you? Just my two only slightly biased cents
Shannon
Agree on all counts, Adam. The odd thing is that most of the guys held up as ‘gurus’ in our hobby spend a lot of time with hand tools in their hands. There’s a disconnect somewhere.
Agree also on getting cherry from palettes
I couldn’t believe it when he brought them. I looked at them through the dirt and couldn’t identify the wood as it was too dark for the birch or maple I generally see and the grain wasn’t right for oak. Nearly fell over when I started removing the dirt. The maple piece is in the worse shape and all have the normal nail holes but I’ll be able to get some good wood out of them. He’s going to bring me more. Hope they’re cherry 
Cheers — Larry
Shannon, you’re absolutely correct – I did bad arithmetic. In fact, the 16 minutes I required did include rolling out the planer and putting it away. And you’re also right about the jointer/planer marks. Darn, and I thought the power-tool zealots were saving so much time
One added advantage is that I got the wood in the first place because I give the guy who found it for me big bags of shavings that he uses to start his woodstove. He particularly likes handplane shavings for that
Cheers — Larry
[...] I’ve completed. It’s an 18th Century, Seaton marking gauge, made from cherry palette wood. Popular Woodworking published an article on these marking gauges and it provides instructions [...]