Why I say no to wood working with power tools

I am grateful of every opportunity to use my hands and I find wood working a natural fit for giving me endless possibilities to do just that. When it come to power tools though, it is different game.

I remember making a nuisance of myself as a 4 year old pottering about the cowshed, digging in the big garden we had to make things from mud and ‘pretending’ to help our live-at-home Man Friday when he maintained the car. I graduated to “repairing” my small tricycle and then my cycle all the way to college. All this much to the chagrin of my parents and grandparents. Just like kids had scraped knees, I had cuts on my fingers from all my tooling around.

And now I have a monster of a car, and it’s chhota bhai the Bullet to play with. Not to mention the home improvement projects I keep working on.

While I have felt this need to engage my hands for long, I read recently about the connections hands have to the soul. The beautiful piece by Elena Barnabe spoke about how hands help you to deal with pain. They are the antennas of our soul. When you move them they send signals of caring to the deepest part of you and your soul calms down.

The Covid-19 lock down gave me ample time to explore ways to keep my mind and hands engaged. Woodworking was a natural fit, especially when I saw one of my friends’ take it up. I started with spoon carving, graduated to making ladles, small spoon, a scoop and a flat spoon – all out of foraged or waste wood.

When I am hacking away at excess wood while creating a spoon, or carving out the spoon bowl a tiny layer at a time, I loose track of time and space. I do not notice the world grow darker in the steady ‘thwack!’ of the axe. Nor do I notice the birds going quiet as I scrape with my knife. I do not even realise hunger or thirst most of the time. It is only my hands, working with my head to decide where the axe strikes next, how hard and how deep. And my soul gazing in wonder at what is emerging from that labour of love.

Peoples hands tell you more about them, than any other part. Everything that is made by hand is made with the heart because it really is like this: hands and heart are connected.

I think the tactile feedback you get from petting an animal, kneading flour, grasping rocks, playing with mud, working with wood, hammering a nail, is just unparalleled. It cannot be replaced by anything. It connects you with you and you with the universe in so many ways. And I can tell you it tries to heals too.

Power tools, while very convenient, just cannot give the satisfaction of working with hands. They make too much noise to make your mind grow numb and they make everything too fast. The slowness of working is one of the biggest attractions of working with simple hand powered tools.