I could cut tenons on the old tablesaw that lives in its cave in my shop… if I made a fancy "tenoning jig". I could reach for the ear protection, the safety glasses, and (if I were smart) a respirator to save my lungs from the sawdust spewing from the Whirling Blade of Death™ that could easily take off a finger or a hand, or end my life… ask Robert Frost…

Or I could grab this beautiful, 18th century, brass back saw.

Skip the ear protection, and the lung protection, and the eye protection, and cut the tenon. No significant danger to my hand, which fits perfectly into its handle (all five fingers… I might add), which must be similar in shape to the joiner’s hand who first used it over two centuries ago.

Woodworkers have been using essentially the same tools to do the same work with the same materials for thousands of years. Far from being obsolete, these tools are still quite capable of producing the finest work under the direction of skilled and patient craftsmen.

I can be grafted into this living tradition of woodcraft that spans the bounds of history or I can turn my shop into a factory. I can employ the skills that have taken thousands of hours to develop, or I can invest in “foolproof” machines that eliminate the need for my hard-earned skills.

If I wanted to be a mass-manufacturer, it would be to my advantage to buy those machines and increase the quantity of the product coming out of my shop... to spend less time worrying about the quality of the work and more time thinking about the bottom line.