Heard a guy at the lumber yard say something that stuck with me

I was picking up some maple veneer plywood yesterday and this older cabinetmaker was telling his buddy that he never uses a tablesaw for delicate work because the sawdust hides tiny chipout. It hit me how many times I've sanded for an extra hour fixing tearout I didn't catch right away. Anybody else find yourself over-relying on power tools when hand tools or a different approach might save time?

2 comments

2 Comments

nina_clark16d ago

Ha! So power tools are just fancy ways to hide our mistakes, huh?

pat_park16d ago

Isn't that kind of selling them short though? I mean sure, some of us use power tools to cover up a wobbly cut or a misdrilled hole. But really, they let us do things our hands just can't. Like try cutting a straight line with a handsaw through thick plywood, good luck with that. A circular saw or a jigsaw isn't hiding a mistake, it's making a straight cut possible in the first place. Same with a power drill putting a screw in at a perfect angle without stripping it. Tools don't hide our mistakes, they just let us work faster and more precisely than we could with muscle power alone.