Hand tools give you back your life. Honest.

Working as I am with no power tools, everyone asks the question 'why are you not using a so-and-so, then you'd save time/effort/etc?'

Hah!  Time is relative, you know.  You might think you're saving time, but in fact you're just spending the same time on doing more stuff.  Being busy, fitting more in to the day, rushing about, multi-tasking, clock-watching, and all the stuff that makes people have ulcers.  Not that you can spend or save time like it's a commodity - it's just a way of measuring movement between objects and is an abstract concept.  Time I shut up and got on with the rant.

Erm, anyway...

Hand tools make you slow down.  You have to work slowly because there isn't an engine buzzing away at 5000rpm.  You have to think more about what you're doing, and you gain more appreciation of the task, the materials worked upon, and gain a more sympathetic eye.  You have to or you bugger it up and have to start again, which'll probably happen anyway if you're like me.  And as cultivating an certain attitude towards one aspect of you life rubs off on other aspects, in theory, hand tools make you more appreciative, reflective, sympathetic, relaxed, and all the other things you get from years of practising Tai Chi without paying for classes at the local leisure centre and having to make insipid chit-chat after class.  Including cramping up a lot.

Why do people think that power tools are better then?  Because with a power tool, you can finish a job quickly.  Sort of.  At least, that what I was taught to think until I started using proper hand tools.  Jobs have become things to get done so you can then spend time doing something you enjoy, like watching telly.  Rush, rush, rush.

Problem is, in order to do more, you need a machine to help.  Machines as we know them (like powered drills, strimmers, etc) have only been around for 150 years or so at a push, and have not had the time to evolve like hand tools have over millennia, and this means the materials worked upon have had to be altered to fit the machine.  Hand tools have been altered to fit the person using them and the materials worked upon.  So instead of local green wood for example, carefully seasoned and worked sympathetically, you get dry-as-a-bone pine timber that warps, splits, goes rotten overnight, and has to be treated with God knows what to be able to last.  This is because someone invented a combine harvester for trees, which could chop a lot of trees down, as long as they resemble pencils.  To saw loads of timber very quickly, it has to be dry because tools working at high speed get clogged with anything resembling green wood.  Result? B&Q (or Gedimat over here) and all it's bollox.

So why all the rush?

I think that the reason this is so nowadays is that people have had their time divided into "work" and "leisure" for them, with "work" being the unpleasant bit you do to be able to enjoy "leisure".  Bit like working overtime to be able to afford a holiday.  All well and good, apart from the fact that the time spent working is a hell of a lot more than the leisure time, and if you spend most of the time looking forward to something else, you don't live in the present and you have no life.  Better to find leisure in work, or make them the same thing.  Get a decent hand tool that fits your hand and body, and work on materials as you should do, without rushing, and you have no work or leisure, just life.  'So he says sitting in front of a computer drinking home brew', I hear you cry.  Well, all things in balance - I scythed the field (a wee bit, anyway - horses do most of the work) today and have sawn and split a load of logs as well, so there.  The home brew's a bit stronger than normal as well.

Bloody industrial revolution started this all off with it's manufactories, silly tea sets with frogs on and steam whistles.  It became more profitable to make standard items in huge quantities by machines and people were convinced that the methods and materials that had evolved over thousands of years were no good.  Why spend all your time scything when these new combine harvesters mean the field gets mown in a tenth of the time and then you can have the time off?  Pity that there was no time off because to pay for the combine harvester you have to work longer hours and all those people who did the mowing are now call-centre gimps trying desperately to sell you a bag o'shite to meet a pointless target to win an extra five minutes break time which they then spend on trying to wrestle an extra KitKat out of a dispensing machine, setting off the tilt alarm, alerting Security and getting an Official Verbal Warning ('I have to tell you that if we have to give you another Verbal Warning, we will have to step up to a Written Warning, Mr B, all over a 60p chocolate bar.  Also, what do you do that takes so long in the toilets?' 'Digging a hole to freedom, boss.'), or on the dole saving up for that once-a-week 8 tins of Viborg Pils for four quid.  Bit Thoreau-ist, this.  Sort of.

Here's a relatively lucid example: we're chopping our firewood in a woodland with hand tools.  'Pourquoi are you not using a chainsaw?' people ask.  Say that I did use a chainsaw.  I'd get a lot more work done, and then could have the rest of the day off to do... what?  Sit in a sunny woodland and have a picnic?  What do you think we're doing now?  If I used a chainsaw, I'd not be able to hear the birds, the wind in the trees, be able to chat to my wife, look out at the view, or anything that would be a pleasure.  I'd be hot and sweaty in the massive nylon padded chainsaw pants, deafened by the engine, blinded by the fumes, my nerves would be in jitters from the vibrations, I'd end up cutting wood that was too big or cut too much of it because I could, I'd be risking serious injury, and it would be too much like work.  Use a hand saw and suddenly you're back in the woodland with all the nice things associated with it, getting bigger arm muscles and an appetite for a massive tea as an added bonus.  I'd also have to work to earn money to pay for the chainsaw and all it's accoutrements, the fuel, etc, and get a bad back in return.  A decent 3ft saw costs £60, chainsaw costs £470. The chainsaw is a machine, the saw is a tool.

Machines increase your work, tools enhance your life (as long as they're decent ones, that is).

I should reply "why the hell do you use a chainsaw?"

Better than chainsaws here.

How to keep warm and fit in 9 easy steps.

1. Post a message on-line asking if anyone has wood to chop on a 50:50 share.
2. Get a reply from a lady who says "yes, but you might want to have a look at it first."
3. Go to the woodland to see 6 acres of devastation where various contractors have clear-felled pine, bulldozed it into huge piles and left it to rot.  There is also a lot of dead oak standing about looking precarious.  The wood is on a steep hillside.
4. Turn up with a handsaw and a billhook and start work sawing down trees and sawing up trees.
5. Get a "bit tired" and decide to call it a day, then spend another half hour carrying the metre long 10 inch thick oak logs to the car.
6. Ask the time and discover you've been working at it for 4 hours non-stop, which explains why your arms ache a bit.  This is one of many advantages of refusing to have a clock - you get more done and you turn up on time for everything*.
7. Split the sawn wood 50:50 with the lady who is surprised you didn't use a chainsaw.
8. Come back with a mere metre cubed of logs.
9. Eat a whole packet of pasta, finish the wine and go to bed.

Yes, it's Mount St Helens, but it gives you an idea.  Just add a goat or two.

It would take us about 2 hours to chop the wood down the chemin (see earlier post), which yielded about a metre cubed, so taking travel time out of it and having to give half away, it works out the same.  It would be better, of course, if we could just chop wood in the huge woodland at the bottom of our field but the owner has a reputation for being a bit of an arse...

Oh well, still beats a gym subscription any day of the week.  Except when it's raining.

*Not having a watch means I always over-estimate how long I will take to get somewhere and end up on time, whereas if I had a watch, apart from constantly looking at it for no reason, I would think I could leave and get somewhere in half an hour and would be late because something would inevitably cause a delay, like a bus driver having one of those mystery tea breaks exactly half-way to your destination where he stops and reads his paper for 15 minutes while being perfectly aware that everyone on the bus is wanting to get to work/is bursting for a pee/is trying to catch a plane/etc.  I got the earlier bus and am now having a cup of tea with plenty of time in hand in a mock-Italian/American cafe with loud upbeat music, quiet downbeat clientele, drinks in paper buckets and pastries for giant people.

A new hobby

I have to repoint the gite, shift the rubble from the gite wall and sort the drainage out, plaster inside the gite, clear the sweetcorn and cucumbers, dig over the potato bed and sow green manure, build rabbit hutches, go to a sawmill and get wood for the gite staircase, paint our bedroom, finish the loft insulation, skim the beer, and collect haws and berries for jam and sauces.

So what did I do today? Sat in the hangar and carved a spoon of course!

Split a small log of lime (I think) wood and trimmed it with an axe, then spent all afternoon carving it with a spoon knife and a sloyd knife from here.

Very hard work, so it was!  The wood was very hard due to being dry as a bone - my hands kept cramping up and I am sporting a few more blisters.  Will do green wood next time.  Even a fancy anthropometric grip and a hook on the end.  Rubbed down with fine sandpaper (not too much though, as you can see) and soaked in sunflower oil.

Back to the (Y)UK to stock up on...

Scythes, spoon knives, dried foods, seeds, TEA (thank GOD), socks, billhooks, hand drills, paint that works, beer, stodgy food, and hangovers.

Great to see friends and be able to talk without sounding like Borat ("Hello, I am English, sorry, I not speaking French good, I desire to purchase a wood with no treatment please thankyou"), but the busy-ness and crowds did me in.  And the endless upbeat music everywhere.

Portsmouth sucks.  Nice Thames barge just out of view though.

Gluts

Mushrooms everywhere - K's cooking pate as I write this.

Tomatoes like you would not believe - this is the third picking this week!

Melons!  Now you see it...

...now you don't!

Belch.

Gite progress!

We got back from the UK to find a nice new floor!

New walls going up upstairs* as well:

Also new oak lintels as the old ones were rotten:

Last but not least, the wall's done!  I deliberately made it wobbly so it matched...

Next is clearing away rubble, digging French drains, making the run-off go away, repointing and then seeing if cracks re-appear.  Decided not to do underpinning yet - it might cause more trouble and if it does need it then we can always do it later on.

* As soon as I have made the stairs... chunky, so they will be.