You don't need power tools for most of woodworking anyway. That's a ridiculous excuse to avoid it. I've built furniture and framed buildings almost entirely with hand tools.
I started with power tools. Moved to hand tools for a year or so when I moved houses and still had my table saw, etc. in storage.
Now that I my power tools are back in the garage — I can't quit the power tools — right back relying on them. I just couldn't plane quite as nice as my joiner (and certainly not in one pass). And sharpening the hand tools...
I earnestly want to do more hand-tool woodworking. I keep thinking that, as I get older, I'll eventually full in on hand tools. But at 61 years old ... not yet.
Treasuring the sensation of making art by hand does not imply somebody is a Luddite in all respects.
I enjoy hand-crafting small circuits but am glad to use my cell phone to take a picture of the result. I love riding a bicycle but use a car to go 30 miles when needed. There is no contradiction to be had here. Just different purposes.
I own spoke shaves, multiple jack planes, and the rest. My garage is quite literally a torture chamber of devices that a medieval sociopath would dribble over.
I'm perhaps not quite so distracted by a well rounded fillet in a cast iron or steel body as you appear to be!
I love all materials and the ingenious ways we have found to fashion those materials. I only recently bought a router because I had to cut a wide and deep rebate in a door to fit a finger handle. Doing that with chisels is possible but a bloody nightmare. An over enthusiastic wack or allowing the grain to take over too much would have needed a potentially ugly repair.
I speak en_GB so when I say router (spinning power tool) and router (IP packet shuffler) they sound different.
I've just taken a look at that page you linked and may have to dump my browser cache and try and forget where I saw the link ... 8)
I have the opposite experience with a router. I use mine when I need to, but I find using the correct hand tool far easier to control. If I had to do what you were describing I’d chisel the vertical cuts with a hand chisel so I had nice clean edges and I would hog out the material with a router plane. This one is my favorite: https://www.lie-nielsen.com/products/1-71-ct-large-router-pl...
The moulding plane book I linked really opened my eyes to creating profiles. I’ve had to match multiple non standard profiles cut into different mouldings, window sashes, mutton bars, etc in the old house I live in, and that would be impossible without cutting a custom profile for a shaper. Seems like a huge waste of effort to cut a tool steel profile for a one off when I can just grab a couple hollows and rounds and make literally anything.
