Wonderful Wood

  As I was surfing the net I stumbled upon a site for Connor Wooden Bicycles.  

   I never stop being amazed at just how cool a material wood can be.  We all admire fine furniture, wood carving and other uses of wood all the time.  Wooden boats are a favourite of mine as are airplanes made from wood.  Recently I watched a Youtube video on the Mosquito airplane for at least the second time and though I knew what they were going to say I enjoyed the video and continue to admire the plane and the folks that made them.

 The wooden bicycle also knocks me out.  It looks to me as though this could be a source of reliable efficient transportation if a production company were  to take up the design and production ideas.  As with the Mosquito airplane, there are more people around with woodworking skills and tools than metal working skills and tools.

  If you doubt the strength of composite wood all you need do is check out the video on the Handlebar page.

  As a second small footnote,  look in on Tomsworkbench.com and see what he has to say about Tormak and the sloyd knife.  The Sloyd knife that Tom is talking about comes from Sweden and as luck would have it they are well known  to Canadians, I guess it is a northern people  thing.  I have the exact knife in Tom’s blog but also have others of different sizes and shapes,  the knives come very sharp and are easy to sharpen when the time comes.  The best news is the knives are all very reasonably priced too.

Five Hand Tool Myths - by Megan Fitzpatrick

   The internet is filled with videos, websites and blogs dealing with any subject that you can imagine.  Part of what I do is surf the net looking for things to share with my readers and recently I found an interesting and short blog entry from Megan Fitzpatrick.  I eagerly read everything that comes from Popular Woodworking Magazine and have held subscriptions to their paper publication in the past.

   Ms. Fitzpatrick makes a very good case for hand tools vs. power tools and she does it with out getting all bound up in the romantic mythology of hand tools.  Often I find the "hand tool" (Royites) a bit tiresome ( though never Roy himself) and sometimes a bit righteous  but the beginner hand tool instructions talked about in this article ring true to my ear.

Point One:   I make cutting boards, many, many cutting boards.  For something like that, hand tools are slow.  But...for many other "One Off" projects hand tools are as fast and as efficient as setting up power tools.

Point Two: she is right.

Point Three:  hand tools require skill to get started and to keep sharp but....power tools can't make a bad design good, or hide poor craftsmanship.

Point Four:  usually we don't take the time to make the mark precise and so the tool can't make the cut, it is not the tools weakness, it is ours.

Point Five:  I did some math, she is right.  The good hand tools I own will last to be inherited  by Grand Children and I own and use hand tools that I inherited from my Father and Grand father.  That is not the case with power tools.  In the long run hand tools are the better value.

Think about it.  I would not want to give up my band saw and would never make cutting boards by hand but....lots of other jobs can be done by hand and I am reaching for planes and chisels and hand saws more all the time.