9 thoughts on “Imagine How Much Faster Norm Abram Could Do This With Power Tools”
When I was in jewelry school, a few of my classmates were Japanese and had immaculate hand skills. Not to paint with too broad a brush, but there is something very Japanese about attention to detail and taking the time to make something of beauty.
Thanks for sharing the link. It's such a pleasure to see artisans still crafting.
I would think jewelry school would be self selecting for good hand skills? Related funny anecdote- a friend and former student who helps me in the lab was over a few weeks ago. I was working on something delicate and she remarked, in a more polite way, something to the effect of "you have really steady hands for an old guy". I was repairing cameras in high school, and I guess I never let my fine motor skills slack off, always something to assemble. This week, I'm fixing the missus' iPhone.
Yeah, not to engage in racial or national stereotypes, but it seems as if the Japanese, when they decide to do a thing, do it really, really well. I've read that some Japanese woodworkers will sharpen a plane after every cutting stroke, which means removing and resetting the iron each time, a very finicky job. I believe they have a national program to recognize these old skills and designate practitioners as "living treasures." Seems right.
At one point I wanted to make some "coopered" cabinet doors that curved inward, which meant I needed a curved-bottom plane to shape the glued-up boards. The trickiest part was grinding the iron and cap so that they worked correctly, but it worked pretty well.
The master craftsman in the vid uses planes with a very low angle in relation to the work to make that final end-grain shaving. What a beautiful thing to see.
When I was in jewelry school, a few of my classmates were Japanese and had immaculate hand skills. Not to paint with too broad a brush, but there is something very Japanese about attention to detail and taking the time to make something of beauty.
Thanks for sharing the link. It's such a pleasure to see artisans still crafting.
I would think jewelry school would be self selecting for good hand skills? Related funny anecdote- a friend and former student who helps me in the lab was over a few weeks ago. I was working on something delicate and she remarked, in a more polite way, something to the effect of "you have really steady hands for an old guy". I was repairing cameras in high school, and I guess I never let my fine motor skills slack off, always something to assemble. This week, I'm fixing the missus' iPhone.
Yeah, not to engage in racial or national stereotypes, but it seems as if the Japanese, when they decide to do a thing, do it really, really well. I've read that some Japanese woodworkers will sharpen a plane after every cutting stroke, which means removing and resetting the iron each time, a very finicky job. I believe they have a national program to recognize these old skills and designate practitioners as "living treasures." Seems right.
Thought you'd get a kick out of this one. Sharpness is all.
Not that hard to make your own….
<img src="https://handtooljourney.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/p1-krenov-plane-parts-picture.jpg" />
At one point I wanted to make some "coopered" cabinet doors that curved inward, which meant I needed a curved-bottom plane to shape the glued-up boards. The trickiest part was grinding the iron and cap so that they worked correctly, but it worked pretty well.
The master craftsman in the vid uses planes with a very low angle in relation to the work to make that final end-grain shaving. What a beautiful thing to see.
…but, you're not a divider?
Give me a fucking break. You'd have an easier time grinding precision optics by hand. Impossible.
Wait, what?
Beautiful stuff. "Talent does what it can, genius does what it must"
Nice video. Wish instruction like that had been available when I was doing serious woodworking.
The travisher looks deceptively simple, like a violin and bow: anybody can pick them up and make noise; making music takes a little practice.
Oh, and do not make the mistake of looking at old planes on eBay. Oh my there are some wonderful things there for very little money.