6:4. Hand tools vs power tools
See note in 6:3 for an idea about how, in typical american homes, shop space would be a problem for amateur woodworkers hoping to buy power woodworking tools
Notice in the section 4.3 that Popular Homecraft
reports on the rapidly expanding use of power tools in the 77,000 home workshops
reputed to exist in America as the 1920s decade closes.
(Where
this figure, 77,000, comes from is a mystery. It is an example,
unfortunately, of just another undocumented claim, a claim that I
hope in the future that I can document with a more solid source
than simply "recent figures indicate".)
Arthur Wakeling's running
account in Popular Science Monthly in the 1930s shows that by 1938,
there are 500 local chapters registered of the National Homeworkshop
Guild:
To see what amateur woodworkers might be reading, click here
Arthur Wakeling and the
Formation of the National Homeworkshop Guild in the 1930s
In addition, to see how the Sargent Combination Plane -- sometime called a "multi-plane" -- was being marketed in the 1940s and 1950s -- and see the 1940s version the Sargent manual, click here. With the emergence in the 1950s of an affordable router for amateur wooddworkers, combo-planes were no longer a required tool for making profiled edges, which -- basically -- meant that only dedicated hand tool users would be regular users of them.
Woodworker's Manuals # 8: Authors
of Woodworker's Manuals Advocating Homeworkshops for Boy's in
Woodworking Courses
(Under
Construction)
