WWA Info Exchange

So yesterday, my iPhone recorded 8,000 steps while at work. So what?, you might think. Well, I didn’t take a walk but instead worked in the shop all day. On a typical day in the shop without a walk I get around 4-5k steps and a couple thousand more before and after work. So what was different yesterday? Hand tool woodworking.

My current project is a Moravian workbench as built by Will Meyers. Will’s video teaches how to build the bench using classic hand tool techniques. Although I have a full suite of woodworking machines, I know that some day (if I live long enough) it will be unsafe for me to do machine tool woodworking. So I am working on improving my hand tool skills (It’s much more difficult to cut off your finger with hand tools).


So how does hand tool woodworking increase my step count? Ripsawing long tenons. The bench design utilizes tusk tenons to secure the long stretchers to the legs. Each tenon is 10 plus inches long. Ripsawing with my trusty Diston #12 appears to have contributed approximately two steps per saw stroke to my step count. Now, there was also some crosscutting cuts with a panel saw as well, but somehow I don’t think that it contributed as much as the long rips.


My upper body work out continued with boring out the void space in the corresponding mortises.


I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised at how being out of shape accompanies the loss of a perishable skill, but I remember being better at this in days past. When I was a youngster, my father taught me woodworking using hand tools because I was too young to safely use the machines. So it somehow completes the circle to prepare for the day when I return to hand tool work for the same reason.


PS. Hand tool work is much more dependent upon the keenness of the tool’s edge (as well as your own). So another essential skill is sharpening those edges, again something best done before the need becomes obvious.

PPS. I just finished cleaning up the leg assemblies with a smoothing plane, file and sandpaper and discovered that I had accumulated 14,881 steps for each assembly!

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"There is no path to peace, peace is the path."
Mohandas K. Ghandi

nice Tom. Im guessing you wont have to go to the gym that work bench will give ya all the workout youll need

Tom, funny you posted this. I belong to a big shop and was thinking how many steps I use on a typical 5 hour day there.

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"To all those who work come moments of beauty unseen by the rest of the world." Norman Maclean

My daughter had a "step meter" once that I borrowed and I averaged 10,000 steps a day in the work shop for a ten hour day. Also every time I had a back surgery or hip replacement I would gain 25 to thirty pounds by the time I got active again .As to sharpening your tools There is the story of two men in a tree cutting contest to see who could cut the most trees in a day. The one man worked straight through the day. The other man took a break every two hours. At the end of the day the man who took the breaks had cut twenty percent more trees. When asked how he did it he replied:" Every time I took a break I sharpened my axe!",