Ugh... I have had horses and chucked hay... as someone who very deliberately chooses hand tools to the exclusion of power tools entirely in my work, I have no problem with busting out a rumbly little motor with some clever arrangement of blades and forks and whatnot.
pretty saw handles.
Aren't they tho? While I am proud of the aesthetic I've got going, I don't like lumping myself in with artists as it feels like a slight to them. They make pretty things to be pretty and enjoyed in a much more creative/additive fashion. I make things I'm going to use and try to make them as pretty as I can without interfering in their function by taking the stuff that shouldn't be there away until I've got the shape I like.
Ah shaddapayoface. Your saw handles bring joy to people that like that sort of thing. You’ve worked at a skill to make something be useful and look pretty, just ‘cause your focus is on the former doesn’t mean the latter becomes meaningless.
Well, I don't mean that it isn't pretty, I'm saying if I got a big hunk of wood and started in on it with my chisels and rasps until I made a bust of the woman's head (plus her pretty neck and shoulders and collarbones) then I would be rightfully proud as an artist, but as a craftsman it's a different sort of process and goal.
I value the ability others have to pull a picture or concept or feeling out of their head and faithfully imbue some sort of material or materials with enough of that conceptual essence that it evokes the same sort of emotion in those who view it.
So to me it's like taking a pile of sawdust and reassembling it into desired form.
I'm actually finding a piece of wood which contains certain minimal dimensions, appropriate grain orientation, and workability so I can take the extra wood and turn it into sawdust and shavings. I keep doing this with big coarse tools being swapped for finer edges and smaller kerfs until I get close enough to my target that I have to sneak up slowly on the shape or risk anything from an unsightly mark and broken lines, up to complete failure of critical supporting elements while crafting or worse: in use.
Assembling various bits of scrap and hardware like I did to make a sliding moxon vise or figuring out how to make both quick release handles usable while holding a saw is tricky, it's satisfying as hell to use, and it's useful as hell for making other stuff... but it isn't remotely pretty.
Spending tons of time on a vice you're going to be accidentally hitting with saws, chisels, dragging material across, and so forth... it would be a flamboyant waste of time and good materials when I just need it to be quick and easy to open/close and capable of clamping a piece of stock vertically without letting it slip around.
The handle side of a tool though, it needs to be friendly and inviting, familiar enough that you aren't thinking about the way the tool kinda bites into the side of your pinky or a rough edge irritates your thumbnail, but designed such that your natural efforts produce the desired type of material removal in the desired location with as little strain or risk of injury as possible.
The handle on a chisel, plane, saw, file, drill, or any other such tool is an area where you'll never regret luxuriating a bit on the finish and shaping, while the adjacent sections are often used either to steady or briefly maneuver the tool, so a sleek satiny finish and clean shapes are going to be noticed there as well.
Once you've got those covered you need to make sure there aren't any likely points where a crack could carry through the grain while working, or fail due to normal use without any damage at all, the same goes for any mounting locations where hardware will pass through or into or across, and what sort of stresses that will induce on the wood.
THEN, with that stuff out of the way you should go ahead and look at the shape you're working towards and plan out extra room to apply artistic touches like nibs or horns or even stuff like chip carved detail work.
I've been basically skipping that step entirely and trying to produce a sleek and functional shape while playing with the proportions and alignment of the different curves to show off interesting grain patterns and be incredibly satisfying to hold and use. They're silky and light with very deliberate weight balance and almost look too delicate because you produce better cuts when you have an easy relaxed grip instead of trying to crush the life out of it.
Plus, no matter how well I can get the rest of handle formed, sometimes you misalign something when test fitting and end up with a stuck saw bolt and no simple way to free it, resulting in shit like the marred edges of the top bolt hole.
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