Wood has always been popular as a building material, because it was plentiful and easier to work than alternatives like stone. However, man has always required tools to work wood efficiently. First axes and then chisels and later on saws and drills. Between 250 and 150 years ago, during the Industrial Revolution, early wood working tools, amongst others, were mechanized. A 100 years or so ago they were electrified. The first electric drill was manufactured about 100 years ago.
Power tools, as they later became known, really took off in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Power tools became affordable for even infrequent use, so hobbyists began to buy them too. Nowadays, most households have a few hand and power tools, normally a hand saw, a hammer and a power drill.
Other power tools are normally for professional or serious hobbyist use. These power tools may be driven by petrol, but are normally electric. The range of power tools varies from cutting and drilling to polishing, although there are dozens of varieties in between these definitions.
Some of these machines are hand-held and others are fixed. Examples of fixed wood working machine tools are the: bench drill press, the bench saw, the belt sander and bench grinder. Typical hand-held power wood working machines are the: power drill, orbital sander, chain saw and the router.
A further development in technology over the last ten years or so is the prevalence of the rechargeable power tools. These are extremely popular for site work, because it means the elimination of extension leads and generators. Typically, each power tool will have two batteries, one in use and one on charge.
However, a further sophistication, if you purchase all your rechargeable power tools from one manufacturer, is that the batteries of all the tools fit all the tools. That is, they have been standardized. This is very useful if you have three of four power tools.
Power tools can make the job go more quickly and more easily, but they can also have the opposite effect. My father was a carpenter and I remember when he went to work with a canvas bag full of hand tools. None of them were electrically driven, even the drill was a brace and bit. He could carry everything he required in that bag to do any job he wanted to do on any house or roof.
Nowadays, my nephew, also a carpenter, has to have a van to take all his power tools to work. He is just as capable of doing everything on any house or roof but he can do it more quickly. The skills of the two generations are not the same although they intended at the same results. My father’s tool kit included a whet stone to sharpen his chisels and he regularly reset his hand saws. My nephew has boxes of replacement blades and buys throwaway Jack saws by the dozen.
However, power wood working machines require a different set of skills because they work at a higher speed. You can make a bigger mess of a job more quickly and more easily with power wood working machines.
Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with a favourite subject, bench woodworking plans. If you are interested in Desk Woodworking Plans, please click through to our site, where we have 14,000 wood working plans.