Hand tools vs power tools

Garden tools

I spent some time this week clearing and weeding the rose beds in the gardens of the nursing home with a couple of elderly residents.  Both were ‘men of the land’ and had spent their lives with their hands in the earth.  I was really only there to encourage them to take a break every now and again.  In reality I was not needed at all, they were in their element and knew exactly what they were doing.  At one point Monsieur P straightened up and commented that I should get a couple of strapping young lads to do the job as it would be finished faster then with a couple of old men with dodgy hips.

“Ah, mais vous avez les savoir-faire” (translation – you have the know how) I reasoned.

“Oui” he shot back as quick as a cricket “si beaucoup de savoir-faire, ons sait plus quoi faire” translation – so much know-how, we don’t know what to do anymore.”  Except working with wood and gardening.

Then Monsieur D joined in,

“But look at the tools you give us to work with, these are rubbish, see this blade here should be sharp, and the handle is too heavy for this job.  My tools, they are adapted, I have everything I need chez moi.”

“Well then, I will ask the Patron (boss) if I can take you home and you can collect your own tools.”  Off I went and did just that.

“And what did he say?”

“Oui! when would you like to go?”

‘Tonight for example” hope and excitement were brimming in his eyes.

“I think it will have to wait for monday.”

That little conversation got me thinking about the relationship that people have with their tools.  So often, we meet people around here, usually older ones who love to show us the well they have dug, the wooden summer-house they have built,  the pump they have fashioned, the ‘chemin’ they have laid, the vast and enviable vegetable garden or orchard all of which they have planted with their own hands and simple tools.  I would love to learn to be self-sufficient like that, to be so in tune with nature and basic well-loved tools in my hands that I could fashion anything I needed.   I think I am think I am turning into a bit of a Luddite although I’m not sure I would survive without some electrically powered assistance – the washing machine for instance or this computer…

Below are extracts from a thought-provoking and poetic essay entitled ‘Hand tool reflections’ by Jan Sturman.  It is found in the classic book called ‘The hand sculpted house’ by Ianto Evans, Michail G.Smith and Linda Smiley.

‘I get a sense of profound satisfaction from hand tools that I never find with power tools.  Entering the tool shed, my hands automatically reach for my favorite chisel, the ax, the hatchet.  A need just to touch, caress.  I heft the three-inch-wide slick found rusting in an old barn, the blade chipped, the handle socket all mushroomed where some idiot whacked it with a hammer.  I carried it home like a sick animal, ground the burrs, buffed off the rust, carved a handle from a piece of maple, and sharpened the edge.  The slick came alive for me, sings in my hands, shaving off thick wood curls.  I love to look at it, hold it.  I never feel that with a power tool.  My hand never reaches out just to touch those dead weights of plastic and metal on the shelf. (…)

Carpenters were once craftsmen who knew how to make, adapt and tune their tools to reflect their individual needs and quirks.  Carpenters are now machine operations, factory workers without the factory, assembling modular units.  The pride in craft is lost.  No longer do we use tools of individual character, but mass-produced tools designed and marketed to the lowest common denominator.  Tools that are unadaptable and too complex to repair oneself.  The life cycle of a power tool is but a few years with  the years diminishing due to built-in obsolescence. (…)

No doubt about it, power tools make some work easier.  Ripping a half-inch off a 4×4 with a table saw takes a lot less time than doing it by hand.  But I noticed a strange difference in my body on days where I predominantly used hand tools compared with days spent directing power tools.  I can work far longer with focus, joy, and grace using hand tools: at the end of a nine- or ten-hour day I may be tired but never drained, while after five or six hours in front of a machine I am exhausted; although I spent fewer of my own calories, the juice of vitality has been sucked from me.

Why?  The power these tools have to do me harm depletes me.  My body – afraid, tense – on full alert turns subtle flexibility into rigid, tense muscles.  Reflexes slow, the mind falters, mistakes happen, blood flows.  With tense bodies, the chances of strains and wrenched backs are far greater than with a body that all day is being given a gentle aerobic  and stretching workout by using hand tools.  Maybe that’s where the extra vitality comes from.  When my cells are regularly flooded with fresh blood-carrying oxygen and nutrients, my body responds with more life to give.

Then there is the decibel fatigue from the loud screeching noise that permeates every building site.  More and more, this is the predominant reason why I choose hand tools over machines.  Our ears, attuned to a lover’s sighs, falling rain, friend’s laughter, wind whispers, are not adapted to cope with loud frequent noises.  We want to withdraw into a shell of numbness, deaf to the world.  I want to work in an environment where my timid senses emerge in the silence to partake of creation, where the flow of conversation or thought remains free to meander, explore, and fall again to silence, not censored, interrupted, broken by machines (…)

I am no purist, my power tools, well used, cared for, will continue to be used, although with less frequency as I discover again the joy of using just my body to propel tools to do their magic. (…)

I lift a plane, sharpened and tuned, and lay it to the wood.  Then somewhere in the infinite realm between my hand and the tool, alchemy happens.  Flesh, steel, wood combine in motion, and I am graced with translucent ribbons of shavings curling through my fingers, setting free the scent, revealing beauty.  A gift.’

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