Tuesday 28 September 2010

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.

8 comments:

  1. sounds like the old entropy theory; the speeding up of processes and 'streamlining' of tasks only increases the entropic value of the job in question- hence my being able to buy 500 cotton buds for only 10p, all of which snap when I try to use them.
    computers speed my job up, which means I produce more, NOT that I get more time to myself, and consequently the value of what I produce is greatly diminished.
    result? everything crap in the world.

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  2. What's the answer?
    Make your own computer out of stone.

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  3. Just been reading Cape Falcon Kayak's blog with the usual jealousy and here's a quote from a spawny get on the other side of the world:
    "That's the funny thing about time, there is always enough time to do the things you DON'T want to do, but never enough time to do the things you DO want to do."
    Like catching crabs in his kayak... I hate him.

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  4. Cracking post, Benn. Difficult to make eggs out of an omelette, though.

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  5. I love the fact that those saw-makers make special musical saws. And there was I thinking crap buskers went to Homebase.

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  6. Back to vegetables next posting, I promise.

    After the "dogs have eaten my chickens" entry, anyway...

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  7. http://smallnotesisland.blogspot.com/2011/01/myth-of-efficiency-or-entropy-my-dear.html

    me on a pretence-trip

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