mo,
My experience is that hand tools used with skill are significantly more efficient than power tools in irregular material -- hewn, twisted, etc. and can be more efficeint for some operations in regular, green material.
Rolling timbers hurts that efficiency (hand tools or not). For a tenon, you would saw the shoulder, then chop and/or split off the waste with the shoulder cut still up. finish off with slick, chisel, or plane and you're done with that side.
As for handsawing the shoulder, the beauty is that you don't ever have to fix a sloppy shoulder cut by paring end grain. not ever
If your material is nice and flat and you are good with your circular saw, cut the line and you're good. But make a bad cut and your'e spending more time fixing it than it would have taken to make the cut with the handsaw in the first place. This happens a lot if the material is squirrelly at all or if or you scribed the shoulder so the cut isn't exactly 90 degrees. I have personally spent 5 minutes fixing a shoulder cut that was good at the surface but left 1/16 or so at the bottom of the cut more times than I want to admit. Do that on both sides and you've spent 10 minutes (plus the time to make the cuts with the circ saw).
For comparison -- you can cut completely through a southern pine 8x8 with a good sharp handsaw in 3 minutes. Paring end grain is for the birds -- it's a huge time sucker.
As for chopping with an axe vs drop cutting or other tenon cutting methods -- it may not be faster, but it's more fun and safer.
As for housings -- We've had router vs. axe races and it was about even. I'm better now with the hand tools than I was then, so I'd say I am faster with an axe, chisel and slick than I am with a jig and router. I would say that it is safer and healthier to use the hand tools. I would also say that a stray axe mark is more forgivable than a stray router mark.
Hand tools are not faster than a jigged router on blind or closed housings, but I hate them anyway and try to design them away when I can.
THE primer on the use of hand tools for joinery is Sobon's Build a Classic Timber Frame Home.
I'm looking forward to other peoples comments...
