I may be showing my ignorance by asking this question but I have been pondering it for the past few days and decided to get it off of my chest –
How much different should a hand-cut joint/joinery look from the same type factory/machine made joint/joinery?
Now, I feel better 😉
Thanks,
dlb
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The undisciplined life is not worth examining.
Replies
as different as you want it to look.
What constitutes for you "machine made"? Use of a router? Tenons cut on a tablesaw?
There's so much gray area here that it makes the definitions quite useless IMO. Every type of joint has a whole spectrum of possibilities. If you're not familiar with his ideas, read David Pye for a somewhat different take on the issue.
David Ring
http://www.touchwood.co.il/?id=1&lang=e
what david said....Pye delineated craftsmanship philosophy as being essentially the difference between workmanship of risk vs workmanship of certainty (factory manufacturing)too bad he never experienced WallMark or the borg-stores eh?Eric
In general "factory" joinery is screws and dowels. Ultra high end "factory" made and comercial shop made using machinery will have cleaner mortices and more consistant clearances. You will never see tool or reference marks on comercial stuff either.
Really, asside from one amazing morticing machine I've seen, the tools used in a production enviroment are the same as what is used in most garages..... just bigger and faster.
And yes, yes, yes, I know there are many of you hand tool guys that will challenge my above statements, but I said "consistant" not better ot tighter, or straighter.
Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
Mike,With all due respect, did you ever try the "Spell Check" button ?
It will keep you from apologizing every time you post something.
I want to repeat, with all due respect !C.
Yea, I know. But the spell check dosen't work unless I disable Norton Security. Before I made that my signiture I had people pointing out my mis-spellings often. Now no one says anything. They just assume I am an uneducated Redneck. Not too far from the truth either. Although I do have a BS.
And to answer the poster again. Hand made joints can fit as well as, or better than, an machine cut joint, the main difference is consistancy. For example on a hand made project all the joinery will likely fit differently, some tighter requireing a mallet, and some looser. One part will not likely fit somewhare else because it was trimmed to fit perfectly to its mate. Well set up machines will produce the same joint with the same clearances every time. I have reciently started using CNC services for my case work, which is far more accurate and consistant than common machinery produced joinery. I am blown away at how much easier assembly is. When we make the dados and rabbits in our own shop there is some small variations in the fit. For example while feeding over the dado if I push down a little harder in one spot than another the depth varies. If the fence deflects a bit the width changes. Based on experience, all of these variations are factored in when I set up these cuts, so during assembly every thing fits. Well the CNC makes absolutely perfect joints and can keep the fit clearance to .002 (or whatever you want) on every part. During assembly every thing just fits together so smoothly that I can't describe it. It is damn near impossible to make a mistake on the CNC. As I said before little mistakes are easier to make with standard shop machinery. With hand work mistakes are the norm, not the exception. But hand made joinery is a lot more flexable. If you gouge the mortice wall, no big deal just cut it a little wider and make the tennon to match. If you realise that the angle of an angled tennon is off, no problem use planes and chisels to fix it and make the necessary changes on the mating piece. These little mistakes on a machine would be disasterous. It could mean that a days worth of work is ruined. Which brings up a interesting observation I made with hand work. Because everything happens slower I catch mistakes sooner. I might not catch a bad tennon fit untill after I machined all the parts using machinery, but with hand work that would not happen.
I seldom use hand tools except for finishing anymore. The very importaint exceptions are complex joinery that would take hours to set up on the saw or router. Each method has its advantages. If you look at the top furniture makers you see a combination of machine and hand work. Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
It is damn near impossible to make a mistake on the CNC.
i wish the guys who run the CNC in my shop knew that! LOL
i just read something about shaker woodwork a day or two ago that made we think of this thread. it said that certain pieces although very similar had a mass produced quality about them if they were, in fact, made for sale. the pieces used in the village had a more handmade quality. i would have liked to see some examples for a side by side comparison. anyway, thought it was interesting.
LOL.
What problems have yall had. It seems to me that the most frequent problems are software related, or stupid mistakes like not activating the vacume and not "skinning" small parts. I ask because I am looking at getting a machine in a year.Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
I work on a lot of new furniture, most of it from the Orient (China, Malaysia, Viet Nam, and Indonesia). Depending upon style, most of it has tool marks and non-interchangeable parts, joints can be sloppy, finishes rough, layout lines, and obvious errors (DAMHIKT). This is not cheap furniture, either.
I dont work on manufactured furniture so I can't really comment on that. My observations are based on work in my shop and at various trade show and classes I have attended. It sounds like you were working on cheep stuff to me.Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
our CNC problems have been an even mix of software problems and stupid human error (that is to say, the errors of stupid humans) a problem that we have is that the company i work for hires people to operate the machines, and trains them to do so, but doesn't teach them about how to work wood. this results in people writing programs to make a tabletop in which the last action is a crossgrain profile cut. inevitably there is tearout, and they spend hours tweaking the program when all they have to do is rotate the piece or the cut sequence 90 degrees.
in the right hands CNC is a marvelous tool. in the hands of a tool it isn't so marvelous.
at least that's my 2 cents worth.
-pjw
The cross grain issues make a lot of sense, I could see that happening. I know that good CAM programs will account for a lot of those issues. The system I am looking at will automaticly dado first then cut small parts leaving an "onion skin" then cut the rest out and cut athe onion skin last. Basicly it does understand the issues with wood. Never the less machining solid wood definately requires more operator intuition. I have been getting cold feet about this machine lately. I suspect a visit from the sales guy will cure that.
Hah ha.Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
May I just point out, as one who regularly obtains his wood by recycling old or ruined pieces, that in my experience, factory made joints invariably are well executed, dowelling joints being ignored. They almost always however are glue shy, having I guess been assembled at speed by low grade workers being exhorted to ensure that clean up is kept to a minimum.
I have found this to be so even in what here in the UK might be regarded as high end factory made items. At least it makes knocking them apart so much easier.
Thanks to everyone thus far for the responces. To carry this issue a little farther, I would like to refine the question. My concern is not stylistic, as in dovetail spacing layed out by hand vs. consistently spaced dovetails as produced by a factory machine. One of my concerns is the technical quality of the joinery. For example, a mis-cut on a M&T joint produces a gap between the tenon and mortice at the sidewall of the mortice. Likewise a slightly off angle dovetail cut which requires filler. Or a little more extreme example: if you make your own (un-turned) dowels and place them in a drilled (round) hole.
No matter how hard we try to produce high quality work we will make 'mistakes' and then the question becomes, "How much of a mistake do we attribute to the work being hand-made and how much of it do we attribute to slopiness?"
This then leads to another question, "What is acceptable to the customer if you say that you are making all joinery by hand?"
Enough said and thanks for putting up w/ me.
dlb
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The undisciplined life is not worth examining.
A mistake is a mistake, regardless of whether one uses machine or hand cuts a joint.
There is nothing endearing about poorly cut, gappy joinery.
Part of craftsmanship is making repairs that both look good and result in sound joinery.
Hand cut joinery can be every bit as accurate as a machine made joint. If you feel that your handwork isn't up to par don't blame it on handwork in general.
Charles, is it necessary to crap on him? The question was how different could it LOOK when compared to machine cut joint- if he is referring to machine made dovetails as in Brookman Dovetailer and the rest with one or two exceptions the answer is obvious at a glance.Philip Marcou
dlb further refined his question in 33101.7. There he implies that hand work will appear to be inexact. Charles' response, although shaved to a point, was on target. To ALL:
Discussions of this sort would be enhanced a thousand-fold if visuals were included. It is really impossible to intelligently discuss the appearance of things that are born in our imaginations.
33101.8 in reply to 33101.7
A mistake is a mistake, regardless of whether one uses machine or hand cuts a joint. There is nothing endearing about poorly cut, gappy joinery. Part of craftsmanship is making repairs that both look good and result in sound joinery. Hand cut joinery can be every bit as accurate as a machine made joint. If you feel that your handwork isn't up to par don't blame it on handwork in general.
I agree 100% w/ what you have stated. Your highlighted statement above is a goal to strive for. I have slowly come to realize that in order to make better joinery, you are going to have to make mistakes AND (1) learn how to correct them (2) learn how not to repete them.
The beauty of this forum is exactly what is taking place here and in a thousand other threads - the well intended feedback from experienced woodworkers willing to share with those williing to accept and implement their experience.
I do appreciate everyone's responces to my questions and hope that others are motivated to try to produce higher quality work, whether by muscle or machine!
dlb
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The undisciplined life is not worth examining.
The finest 18th c work I have ever seen doesn't look machined to me, either in terms of overall finish quality or in the esthetics of little inconsistencies. In my opinion, there are a lot of modern craftsmen attempting to emmulate machine made joinery with hand tools. While I stand in awe of their skill, I generally don't like the work, especially when its an 18th c reproduction. Putting 18th c reproductions aside, I think there should be a noticeable difference between hand cut joints and machine cut joints, but the difference shouldn't be mistakes. One way to look at it is like a painting vs. a photograph. When an artist paints a scene or a person, he'll sort of fall in love with it- learn every detail of it. Through his heart, the scene is interpretted. I think that way about furniture and joinery. There's only so much I'm willing to do to a piece of tree. And in some ways, I'd rather you not be able to forget that this is something that was once living.Now as far as gaps in mortises go, I'd like you to be very careful about your defintion of quality. Hand tools may not be able to easily produce the piston fit of a machined mortise and tenon, but I can make a good case as to why the looser or less consistent hand cut joint is the better one.I think you asked about customers? I make a big deal about my joinery but I don't think anybody cares. Well, woodworkers care a lot, but they don't buy my furniture. Adam
One of my concerns is the technical quality of the joinery. For example, a mis-cut on a M&T joint produces a gap between the tenon and mortice at the sidewall of the mortice. Likewise a slightly off angle dovetail cut which requires filler. Or a little more extreme example: if you make your own (un-turned) dowels and place them in a drilled (round) hole.
You assume machines are somehow full proof. They are not. It is just as easy to make gaps or other errors with electric powered machines if your set up is not spot on, your stock is not four square, etc.
Second, well used hand tools will make joint faces as good or better than a machine. Do not assume that because hand tools are being used, faces will not be flat or square, etc. Shooting boards, planes, etc., make refined and tight joints fully equal to those large electric machines can produce.
As for dowels, a dowel plate is the perhaps the best way to make your own if not turning, and the result is quite round and accurately sized.
Most woodworking joints are "over-engineered" for the purpose. For example, even if a mortise has some defects in its walls from say some paring mistakes with a hand chisel, such that the glue/tenon contact area is diminished my a third, that's still going to be one strong joint. Cosmetically, you want to spend your attention on the shoulders, so that their is no gap, but strength-wise, there's a bit of room for inconsequential error.
DB,
Whether a hand made piece is executed with motor-assisted or purely muscle-driven power is irrelevant, as there is skill in setting up and operating motorised tools just as there is in using the more primitive kind of tool. The skills are just a bit different (but not that different, as they all involve accurately selecting, shaping and fitting bits of wood together into a thing of utility and beauty).
It is easy to imagine a handbuilt piece that is indistinguishable from a piece made by automatons in a factory. There may one or two design details that only handtools can accomplish (today) but we are kidding ourselves if we think these are hugely significant. This is heresy to many chisel-fetishists and their ilk; but there are always flat-earthers, chaps with blind faiths and an associated dogma.
The essence of hand made is that an individual conceived, designed, planned and executed the piece. He/she may have used motorised as well as muscle-powered tools, as they all used that persons skilled hands to make them do their thing well, rather than a CNC machine driven by a furniture design program.
It's the fact that an individual person made an individual piece, from start to finish, that defines "handmade"; not some error (such as a sloppy dovetail) or deliberate artifice (such as a dovetail scribe line).
Lataxe
I use all sorts of tools- With my hands-
In reply to the amended question of:
"What is acceptable to the customer if you say that you are making all joinery by hand?"
Lets take a one off small cabinet on stand:
Method 1) All stock has been face jointed on a tailed tool run through a thickness planer, Dovetails cut with a router jig , shelf dadoes plowed out with a table saw or or dovetailed on a router table, Legs taper/shaped on a bandsaw cleaned up with and oscillating sander and Random orbit sander to final smoothocity.
Method 2) Non(electronically)powered tools used to four square stock, cut dovetails, dadoes, Tapers etc. and card scrapers used to attain final smoothocity. nothing invented after 1865 used in this process.
I submit that they are both handmade.
Method 2 is "Handmade in old world traditions"
Method 1 is just as reliably called handmade.
Both have the potential to have sloppy joints etc. Both can be masterpieces.
Now go to a hand tool forum and you will definently get a different answer. I think this is a function of the context.Woodworkers pine for the "good old days" and romanticize this old technology. A customer wants a piece that was individually made "by hand" from a skilled artisan.
Oh and the reality of the situation:
Cabinet maker number one has steak and sushi on saturday night and Cabinet maker number 2 has beenie weenies every night if (s)he can afford a can opener :)
As somebody else aptly put it - as different as you care to make it look. That is the advantage, and the curse too.
And let me clear up this crap about there being a 'gray area.' There most certainly is not. Hand cut joinery is made by a woodworker with saws and chisels in his or her hands following a layout also executed by hand. If you flipped a switch, you did not execute a handmade joint.
My hand cut joints don't look like joints other people hand cut. I don't expect them to.
I am not a fanatic about "quality." The way the finished work comes out is the way it comes out.
I am not a fanatic about not using power tools otherwise if the wood was shipped by truck the finished product would not be hand made.
It's the human touch that adds value.
It's the human touch that adds value.
Not necessarily, Omah. Like beauty, value is in the eye of the beholder. I have yet to meet a customer who cares if my drawer boxes (for example) or assembled with dovetails - or brads.
I'm sure that there are a few who would care, but until I meet them, I gotta pay the bills - lol
As Adam said in an earlier post, much of the 18th century furniture has pretty ugly joinery. I've always felt that those guys were much like most of us today. They were trying to make a living and accepted "close enough" for the out-of-sight parts of their work.
Edited 12/14/2006 8:56 am by Dave45
dlb,
I guess my initial response to your question would be, "no difference". If I cut two identical joints, one by hand, the other by machine I expect the job to end up the same regardless of method. There may be some differences in tool marks but they should fit equally as well. I don't feel that one way is superior to the other from a quality stand point. It's more a question of craftsmanship and proficiency in executing either method.
The factors that govern my choices as to which way to go are based on the most efficient way to accomplish the task. If I have one or two joints to cut chances are I'm whacking 'em by hand. If I have multiples then machine set-ups make the most sense. Depends ultimately on the specific situation.
There is a romanticism about "hand-cut joinery". No doubt about it. If someone specifies it and is willing to pay the labor then by all means.
-Paul
What's a CNC? About $20 grand. An acronym for "computerized numerical control" or some such. Basically, a router bit whose position in space and direction of travel is controlled by a computer and an elaborate method of moving it in several axes. What, you don't have yours yet? <G>
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
I am waiting for Norm to turn up with one on his show. Then the idea that every home shop obviously needs one. I wish I knew how many "assistants" he has doing set-ups and test fits with all of his machinery before he runs that one piece through for filming.
"I wish I knew how many "assistants" he has doing set-ups and test fits with all of his machinery before he runs that one piece through for filming."
No assistants. Fine Woodworking had an article about the making of "New Yankee Workshop" a few years ago. Norm is the only woodworker. The video crew is very small; my memory is that was made up of the camera man in the shop with Norm, and Russ Morash, the producer/director, and a sound and recording engineer in a small room next to the shop.
"No assistants. . . . Norm is the only woodworker."
Well, OK, he may be the only "woodworker", but I bet he has at least a few elves to clean up the sawdust and cutoffs, put away the tools after each use, find pencils, etc. (If only I could get a few for MY shop!)
Mike HennessyPittsburgh, PA
I guess the term "woodworker" should be broadly applied when it comes to Norm !C.
Looks like no elves at New Yankee Workshop. Webcam sequences at 1 minute intervals of the filming of each project are available at http://www.newyankee.com/yankeecam.php Scroll down to see the listings for both next year's and this year's shows. I scrolled through portions of a couple of the shows and it looks like Norm is the only one handling tools, materials, etc. I did see someone else vacuuming early in the morning. At times it looks like Norm is the only one working, the others are relaxing, talking, etc and waiting for Norm to get to next sequence to film.
Please don't ask me to dig it out, but about several months back one of the wood magazines had an article about ,Norm, and his shop. Whatever we watch being made is actually the second one made. The first (we don't see it) is really a kind of practice piece so that any flaws. mishaps or whatever are not what the viewers get to see. The article wasn't clear about what becomes of the original. Personally I'd like to hear Norm let loose with an occasional AHH, CRAP !, or better. At least I'd feel like I wasn't the only one blanking up at times.
Do we really want to start a debate about the tool belted one ?
Somebody else is probably making the project before hand so he can learn how to do it !C.
If you don't want to start a debate about Norm why make a comment such as "Somebody else is probably making the project before hand so he can learn how to do it !"
Almost every NYW episode I've seen has Norm showing the "prototype". Would that I could charge enough for a piece to make a practice run first - lol
I used to work with a metal worker who was a true artisan. John used to say that 3 was his favorite number to make of an item. The first to figure out how to do it, the second to practice, and the third to do it efficiently. Much beyond the third one and he lost interest because the challenge was gone.
John frequently made panels and other parts for prototype and show cars. He didn't use much power equipment, the english wheel was his tool of choice for shaping panels. The ratio of his time spent working with power equipment was probably less than most cabinet makers. But his objective was for the part to look like it came out of a factory and he always succeeded. So I don't know where that fits into the current discussion - should it be categorized based on how it was made or the final appearance.
Norm has said the prototype normally goes to his producer!
A bad day woodworking is better than a good day working -- yes, I'm retired!
The producer must have a woodburning stove in his basement, no ?C.
Hey! Come on guys....
While it's lots o' fun to bash The Tool-Belted One, how many of ya (hobbyist) woodworkers started butchering wood because of him? Hmmm???
Now, I'm an adherent of St. Roy, and I've been know to pull the chain of some of y'all tailed apprentice pilots every once in a while, but I really do think that there's room for both here in the woodworking world. Ya know, the important thing is that ya had fun making yer project and it turned out the way ya wanted it to.....not necessarily how ya got there......Beste Wünschen auf eine Fröhlichen Weihnachten und ein glückliches Neues Jahr!
Tschüß!
Mit freundlichen holzbearbeitungischen Grüßen aus dem Land der Rio Grande!!
James
James -
I totally agree with you about Norm being the inspiration of many a woodworker - at all levels. Years ago, I would watch him do something and think "Aha, so that's how it's done". Now, I often think "Ok, that's interesting, but I do it a little differently".
I don't know when it was taped. but on a recent show, I saw him use a pin nailer instead of his trusty brad gun. I must confess to a certain smug satisfaction on my part since I had "graduated" to a pin nailer a couple of years earlier - lol.
If St. Roy is Roy Underhill, I gotta disagree with you. His show is definitely entertaining, but all that shoving stuff out of the way or working on the floor just drives me bananas - probably because I find myself doing the same thing far to often - lol.
Lost all interest in the tool-belted one when he hired someone to make his cabriole legs for a table he was making. I look to David Marks or Marc Adams for inspiration and knowledge!
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