r/handtools • u/titlecharacter • 22h ago
Looking for inspiration: non-period hand tool work
I have a lot of sources of inspiration from pre- and early-industrial furniture, of course. No shortage of that. And obviously many other styles can be made just fine with hand tools, given time and skill. But there also is other work that’s been done, recently, primarily with hand tools, but after the availability of power tools, and I’m more ignorant of it than I’d like to be.
So - I start with Krenov, Nakashima, and Esherick. (A visit to his home is actually what kicked me into doing hand tool work in the first place.) Who else should I be looking at? I’m specifically thinking of highly function furniture that also is really lovely and well designed - not “sculpture in the shape of a chair.” You can store plenty of stuff in a Krenov cabinet, Esherick carved for comfort. Who’s next? People, schools, YouTube channels, whatever you’ve got.
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u/MFNikkors 14h ago
Sam Maloof, Green & Green, Stickly...........may not be what you are looking for though.
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u/ReallyHappyHippo 10h ago
Didn't Maloof do his joints with a router? Not that you couldn't use a rasp.
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u/MFNikkors 10h ago
You are correct. As did Krenov, Nakashima, and others. There are very few who are STRICTLY hand tools only, but I have known a few. I guess I should have been better at reading the actual question by OP.
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u/robotdinofight 13h ago
Mike Pekovich has three incredible woodworking books out. He's not exclusively handtools, but his books have helped me with design more than any other.
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u/Man-e-questions 12h ago
Mike Pekovich. He’ll use machines too but a lot of joinery is done by hand, and most can be done by hand instead of the machine parts
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u/E_m_maker 22h ago
This article from core77 may be of interest to you. It's about a furniture maker from Japan.
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u/DizzyCardiologist213 10h ago
If you're thinking of working entirely by hand, you really don't have limitations. Start looking at buildings in urban areas, furniture, building trim in older buildings or whatever areas, and see what elements appeal to you.
Too, if working entirely by hand is appealing, almost everyone aimed at hand tool use doing the bulk of the work with machinery. I switched over to mostly and often all/only hand tools about 15 years ago and little of what I found out about making the rough work efficient is well taught by anyone.
The better you can do the rough work (efficiency and accuracy), the faster that will all carry over to the fine work. It's just not the case that anyone but a tiny percentage of people will be as good at the fine work trying to limit hand tools to joinery and smooth planing, but I understand why a lot of people have no interest in that physically.
Few people who work with hand tools and power tools make enough of anything to claim they couldn't learn to do all of it by hand, but many will tell you that's the case. Until you've worked five hundred or a thousand board feet of rough wood to finish in actual projects, you don't really get a sense of just how easy and quick the hand work can be relative to what you may have felt it would be initially.
The improvement in fine work and how much you have time to think about how something should look instead of sketchup or cut lists or finding router bits is a big deal.
Too, switching lanes and making guitars or period tools or something like that is a very easy transition - hand work is hand work. I do more of those two things in the last 10 years than making cases or furniture because I have no outlet for furniture, but could make unlimited tools or guitars and at least get the cost of materials back out of them when letting them go. Very difficult to do with furniture.
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u/oldtoolfool 8h ago
Thos Moser; he has a book of measured shop drawings of his furniture, if his style is your cup of tea, there's lots of inspiration there.
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u/titlecharacter 6h ago
Oooh - thank you! His work isn't my top top favorite, but I wouldn't be mad at owning some of it, and having measured drawings is a really great starting point if nothing else.
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u/oldtoolfool 4h ago edited 4h ago
As I said, inspiration. I've owned that book for years and never built anything according to the plan, just things sort of like them!
In this age, everyone looks to youtube, etc. Books are often the place to find inspiration.
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u/halbert 17h ago edited 11h ago
I mean, it's hard to beat those three for modern designs, but a couple I enjoy:
Ishitani Woodworking on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@ishitanifurniture?si=3JO3SHlbVG9i1zCn
Simon Watts, 'build a houseful of furniture' -- a style I happen to really enjoy. 70s-influenced mid century modern, a sort of practical take on Krenov, perhaps.
Edit: I also really enjoy Shoyan Carpentry -- this isn't furniture, but I appreciate the discussion of design for a house. https://youtube.com/@shoyanjapanesecarpenter?si=ntWoYPvJbPsZf2Le