Reply To: Hand tools only?
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I have a band saw and find it incredibly useful but I have space, even in a shop smaller than 5x3m, and the convenience of having the shop at the bottom of my garden. The reason I bought one (and am on the lookout for a planer/thicknesser) is because I loathe milling timber by hand. I do it when I have to, or when it will take me longer to set up the band saw than it will to rip the board with a hand saw, but I get no satisfaction from it and want to avoid it altogether. It’s doing the joinery by hand that I love.
My band saw actually broke just last night so is out of action until I can source replacement parts. It’s a pain but not the end of the world – I just took a hand saw from the rack and used that instead. I was only making a dozen or so cuts in thin stock so didn’t take long. The machine would have done it quicker because I’d done loads of similar cuts at the weekend so the right blade was already installed. All I needed to do was tension the blade with the quick-release lever, turn the machine on and run the boards through. When using the lever, however, one of the tensioning components sheered itself in half rendering the machine utterly useless. Hopefully replacement components won’t be too expensive or take long to arrive!
Personally, my approach will be using machines for milling components, then hand tools for all the joinery.
George.