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A History of the Amateur Woodworking Movement
A Decade-by-Decade Narrative of Amateur Woodworking in America From 1900 to 2000
Introducing the Website
An Online Book -- Raymond McInnis -- Amateur Woodworker
Home Contents Appendices Authors Documents
Glossary Intro and Glossary Annexes
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Narrative Chapters
Chap 1 Chap 2 Chap 3 Chap 4 Chap 5 Chap 6 Chap 7 Chap 8 Chap 9 Chap 10 Chap 11 Chap 12
Headnote for Manuals Manuals by Decade
1900-before 1901-1910 1911-1920 1921-1930 1931-1940 1941-1950 1951-1960 1961-1970 1971-1980 1981-1990 1991-2001 2001-later
Introduction to an Online History of Woodworking
under construction - be patient, please -- this section is difficult to organize
Overview of This Introduction
In a History Woodworking, What Issues Standout?
First, an awareness of woodworking's different knowledges.
By addressing the matter of woodworking's "different knowledges" my concern is to my audience. Why? Because I think that readers be aware (roughly, at least) of the writer's goals: what are a website's intentions, especially a website with the term "history" in its title?. In a nutshell, this website is for the reader
(1) who may at first only be curious, and then get caught up because of interest in topic with which he/she is not familiar and seeks to read more, or
(2) who may be looking for specific details about a woodworking tool, a woodworker, a piece of furniture, and so forth, that is, someone with a definite goal.I hope that both of these information seekers will find things on the website.
The website's different knowledges are, roughly defined,
(1) Experiential (or, sometimes, "Practical") and
(2) Scholarly or Academic.(My Preferences I prefer the meaning that I think Experiential implies, compared to the meaning that I think is implied in Practical. For me, experiential, connotatively, expresses more directly how that deep knowledge of woodworking is generated; i.e., through "experience". True, esperience is "practical", but the term "practical", for me at least, fails to inject the idea of aesthetic sensitivity into a woodworking setting that experience does. Likewise, I prefer "scholarly" over "academic", because, for me, scholarly suggests a certain analytical approach to a specific topic.) Read more here
Take "5,a ", above, for example, Vintage Woodworker's Manuals, what I am calling the "ethnographies" that woodworkers themselves have written. Above all, these manuals exhibit a desire to transmit the "experience", "values" and "aesthetic ideals" of one generation of woodworking to the next generation. Naturally, these experiences, values, and aesthetic ideals are repetitive, repeating truths and methods about woodworking practices of previous generations, but the manuals themselves transmit these older traditions dressed out in the latest technological advances, changes in fashions in furniture, or -- if written for the industrial arts -- the latest pedagogical practices. For me, these texts are treasures to be celebrated: the the 1881 manual, Wood-Working Tools: How to Use Them , for presenting to the world the first concept of the "instruction sheet ", for Ira Samuel Griffith, for Herman Hjorth, for Walt Durbahn, for John Gerald Shea, or for R J DeCristoforo for a half-century of writing . And these names constitute a short list. There are, without exaggeration, hundreds of woodworkers manuals !
The "experiential" knowledge is contained in the "texts" that woodworkers have themselves written, their "practical literacy" contained in the woodworker's manuals and related documents that, in an academic world, would be labeled "ethnographies", but in the woodworkers' world are, for one, the key given by the master craftsman to the newbie that unlocks the door, maybe to a career in woodworking, but more likely, opens a door to a satisfying leisure-time activity.
Second, I come to a history of woodworking as an "insider". That is, with my over four decades experience as an amateur woodworker, I have acquired a set of woodworking skills that allow me to capture a vision of woodworking (or, a woodworker) from an insider's perspective, of what "doing woodworking" actually comprises. In the scholarly world, the label scholars would attach to my approach to history is that it is "ethnography", i.e., "an observation study of the woodworker culture from the inside".
Simply to have an image to go along with "ethnography" I have captured off the webb a vivid book cover of the subject
(Ethnography's etymology comes from ethnos, meaning "people/race/nation", and graphein, meaning "written/description". Because of its usefulness as an enabler to capture the settings of a particular context, as a style of research, over the years, it has acquired a range of meanings. For example, contemporary usage frequently invokes "ethnography" to characterize empirical research from a variety of information collection techniques, which often rely on extended interaction the researcher and his subject of research. I remember, years ago -- in my other life -- reading often about the anthropologist Clfford Geertz's "thick description", the term that he used to emphasize the richness and depth of ethnographic data, but which later, colloquially, became "telling it like it is" or "insider knowledge". Ethnography's objectives are to understand and explain the social meanings and activities of in a given "field" or setting, and -- in its method -- involves close association with, and often participation in, specific settings. Broadly, different methods of data collection are used, including unstructured interviewing, partipant observation, personal documents, vignettes and discourse analysis. In this way, ethnography often embraces what, awkwardly, might be called a "triangulation of methods".)
But this website is more: as well, I come to this History as a scholar, and with that cloak, I am aware of the larger focus, a focus needed to observe how, in our culture, woodworking develops "in parallel" with the society in which it operates.
(2) Chapters as Historical Narratives
These "historical narratives" -- there are twelve chapters, with each subdivided into eight smaller sections, dedicated to narrower topics. It is in these sections where I try to answer such questions as
What conditions, i.e., social, political, economic, technological, aesthetic, were needed before amateur woodworking took off? Or, "Why did the role journeyman cabinetmakers decline and finally disappear?" (The journeyman cabinetmaker was part of the "guild system", introduced from Britain in the 17th century, but -- largely because of the so-called "factory system" -- never destined to flourish on American soil. The "narrative" for this topic is here. )
How "Academic" Scholarship Contributes to a History of Woodworking
From my academic background, I have acquired a familiarity for using the body of knowledge generated by the communities of scholars, often called discourse communities, whose work relates somehow to woodworking. If this knowledge is appropriate, I capture it for the narrative sections, or, if appropriate, the Appendices. (The appendices cover a multitude of topics, almost 40 -- the impact of electrication; the development of the fractional horse-power motor; home-ownership and woodworking; the home-workshop movement, the list go on -- not easily integrated into the narrative chapters, but help to answer these questions,
Selecting Herbert Cescinsky as one of my models (as a scholar of the history of furniture) for this history of woodworking
At the beginning of the last century, Ira Samuel Griffith , a professor of technology -- with a PhD, a rarity in those days -- at Bradley Polytechnic Institute, who got his interest in woodworking from being a journeyman carpenter. A career that interwined with the latter part Griffith's is Herman Hjorth, a talented "giant" figure, who cast a large shadow in the areas of woodworking education that he pursued.
(3) The Glossary of terms associated with woodworkers and woodworking
Extensive definitions of a wide range of woodworking terms, including their historical origins. My glossary is under construction, and keeps getting larger, something that tells me that it never will be complete. In the boxes with letters are links to pages where numerous terms are defined (or in the stages of being defined). Below the "letters" boxes, are the links of the vertical list of terms which lead to pages where these terms are given extensive discussion -- including, when possible, images in contemporary settings.
Links to Definitions and Historical Accounts
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Woodworking as Critical Thinking
(4) Appendices :--
Narratives and images that explore topics related to woodworking's history
Appendices deal wth topical issues special to woodworking history, incident to the main inquiry, but sit outside the narrative. Example: between 1916 and 1936, two decades, after electrification , perhaps no story is more appropos than one that accounts for the appearance of the fractional horse-power motor , the emergence in the latter part of the 1920s of the scaled-down power tools for woodworking , and then, starting in the early 1930s of the formation of the National Homeworkshop Guild , a national organization of over 500 chapters nationawide. .
Appendix 1: Memoir of Forty Years of Woodworking
Appendix 2: The Morris Chair as an Icon of Amateur Woodworkers
Appendix 3: The Evolution of the Tilt-Arbor Table Saw
Appendix 4: A Century of Woodworking Manuals (under construction)
Appendix
Appendix 6: Evolution of the Woodworker's Cutting Edge
Appendix 7: Creativity and Woodworking: Is woodworking "process" or "product"? (under construction 6-22-07)
Appendix 8: The Newbie Woodworker's Guide to the Anatomy and Physiology of Wood (under construction)
Appendix 9: Defining Industrial Arts
Appendix 10: Furniture Styles
Appendix 11: On the Origins of the Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts StyleAppendix 12: The Aesthetic Movement 1875 - 1885
Appendix 13: Defining Modernistic Furniture Design for Amateur Woodworkers in the 1930s
Appendix 14: Stanley Tools (Corporate) How to Work With Tools and Wood, 1927, & 1952
Appendix 15: Woodworker's Manuals in Public Libraries
Appendix 16: What is an Amateur Woodworker?
Appendix 17: Editorial Advisors
Appendix 18: On the Origin of the Radial Arm Saw
Appendix 19: The Impact of Electrification
Appendix 20: Notes on the Project Method
Appendix 21: History of the Fractional Horsepower Motor in America
Appendix 22: Hans Goldschmidt and his Shopsmith
Appendix 23: The 1920s and 1950s: Two Pivotal Decades in Amateur Woodworking
Appendix 24: From Production to Consumption: Does the Deskilling of the Handicraftsman Mean the Degradation of Labor?
Appendix 25: Notes for Piece on Modernism, Modernization, Modernity, Antimodern
Appendix 26: The Evolving Concept of Leisure
Appendix 27:Home-Ownership's Central Role for Amateur Woodworking
Appendix 28: Parallel Nature of Cookbooks and Woodworker's Manuals
Appendix 29: George C Kelley and Ray L Carter Develop the Router
Appendix 30: Notes on the Home Workshop Movement
Appendix 31: Directory of "Notes" on Colonial Revival Movement
Appendix 32 Directory of "Notes" on the Arts and Crafts Movement in America
Appendix 33: Woodworking as Reflective Thought: The History of Critical Thinking in Manual Education (Redirect to Glossary)
Appendix 34: Notes on the Democratization of Taste, The Domestication of Culture [under construction]
Appendix 35: Woodworking's Three-Legged Stool:-- Craftsmanship as Spirituality, Creativity, Culture
Appendix 37 - Notes on the "Art Chair" Theme
Appendix 38: Impact on Furniture Design With Emergence of Vernacular/Organic Architecture
Appendix 39 --Directory of British Arts and Crafts Movement
(5) Selected Primary Sources :--
Again, this history is "Document Driven"
(a) Vintage Woodworker's Manuals (or the ethnographies of woodworkers themselves)
(b) Catalogs of Old Hand-Held Tools and Bench-Top Machines, Plus Miscellaneous Materials Hard to Classify
(c) Historical Documents :--These are numerous "texts" -- currently over fifty -- that, in the setting contemporary to an era, give a voice to woodworking at that time and, today, help us understand today conditions about woodworking that prevailed in earlier decades.
I tell my history of woodworking from the perspective of people and events contemporary to the period being discussed.
Already, I have uploaded several primary sources -- see link above -- on my website, and, to get better control of them, have listed and annotated them on a separate page .
A lucky find for me, this document presents very dramatic evidence about the astonishing rapidity of electrification and the equally astonishing impact of the development, production ond distribution of the fractional horse-power inductive motor. Just for fun, I counted the number of electric motors in my personal workshop. In stationary tools, know its over 15 -- one unit, a combo power tool, contains 3 electric motors, while each of the numerous portable tools, including cordless -- drills, sanders, biscuit joiner, several saws, grinder -- all, taken together, help argue that, for the woodworker, the fractional horse-power motor has had a major impact.
The decade, 1921-1930, is pivotal to amateur woodworking, because -- following closely the introduction of a marketable small-scale electric motor -- it is in that decade that the early models of scaled-down woodworking power tools first were brought into the marketplace.
The links below lead to webpages on "Master" authors of Woodworker's Manuals. To go the page with links to all the manuals, click here .
Woodworker Manual Author #1: Mario Dal Fabbro -- Promoter of "Modernist" Furniture Designs
Woodworker Manual Author(s) #2: Percy A Wells and John Hooper -- Patrician Manual Writers
Woodworker Manual Author #3: John Gerald Shea -- Intrepid Writer of Woodworker's Manuals for Furniture of America's Ethnic Cultures
Woodworker Manual Author #4: Lester Margon -- Master Illustrator of Museum Furniture
Woodworker Manual Author #5: Franklin H Gottshall -- A Little Recognized "Classic" in Woodworking Annals
Woodworker Manual Author # 6: Walt Durbahn: From Master Carpenter to School Principal to Lexicographer to TV Star
Woodworker Manual Author (Corporate -- Stanley Tools) #7: How to Work With Tools and Wood 1927 & 1952
Woodworker's Manuals # 8: Under Construction
Woodworker's Manuals #9: Arthur Wakeling and the Formation of the National Homeworkshop Guild in the 1930s
Woodworker Manual Author #10: R J DeCristoforo -- "Dean" of Manual Writers
Woodworker Manual Author #11: Aldren Auld Watson, Self-Taught Artist, Self-Taught Woodworker
Woodworker Manual Author #12:
Woodworker Manual Author #13: "Ira Samuel Griffith"
Woodworker Manual Author #14: Herman Hjorth: The Woodworker as Renaissance Man: Teacher, Historian,Technologist
Woodworker Manual Author #15: Woodworker Manual Author (Corporate -- Stanley Tools)
Woodworker Manual Author #16: Jacques Andre Roubo L'Art du Menuisier 1769
Woodworker Manual Author #17: Charles Holtzapffel 1806-1847, mechanical engineer and technical writer
Woodworker Manual Author #18: Charles Harold Hayward "Self-Employed Carpenter" -- Prolific Author of Woodworker's Manuals -- Editor of Woodworker Magazines
Woodworker Manual Author #19: Ira Samuel Griffith:-- Dynamic Teacher, Talented Carpenter, Prolific Author, Visionary Theoretician
Woodworker Manual Author #20: Gustav Stickley: -- Iconic Visionary, Self-Made Entrepreneur, Furniture Designer
Stickley's "United Crafts" Period: As Captured by an 1901 Unsigned Irene Sargent Booklet, "A Revival of Old Arts and Crafts Apllied to Wood and Leather Click here for a pdf of the booklet written by Sargent and images of the furniture designed by Warner.
The Craftsman Workshops Syracuse NY Catalogue "D" 1904
The Craftsman Workshops Syracuse NY Supplement to Catalogue "D" 1905
In February 1905, Gustav Stickley published an extensive catalog -- an 128-page "Cabinet Work from the Craftsman Workshops, or "Catalogue D", with either newly designed pieces, or modified pieces of earlier designs. In both its format and its contents, Catalogue D was a definite departure, indicative of a major revison of company policy.
As his chief biographer, David Cathers, notes, Stickley's earlier catalogs and promotional booklets had a more pedestrain flavor: -- bound in stout brown paper covers, Gothic typefonts, and Morrisian decorative borders that echoed William Morris design. His assistant, Irene Sargent, wrote pieces designed to inspire, which link Stickley furniture to medieval antecedents and/or themes addressed by Morris
In 1904, Stickley shed the medievalist facade -- created by Irene Sargent -- that he had earlier cast over his Arts and Crafts enterprise, making the "D" catalogs more straightforwardly indicative of more direct business orientation.
The covers are gray and rather industrial looking, while pages inside are filled with business-like black-and-white photos.
Lacking in these black-and-white images, of course, are the rich brown hues and textures of the actual wood. Moreover, "the proselytizing agenda of Sargent's essays are gone, supplanted by a brief promotional "Introduction", annonuncing such innovations as sleek spindles, some with inlay. In broad terms, with Catalogue D and its "Supplement" Stickley distilled the heft of his 1901 and 1902 furniture with the refinements Harvey Ellis designs of 1903 and 1904.
Overall, these designs possess an integral wholeness, plain, modest, yes, but also coherent and sturdy . These new designs were tangible proof of a matured confidence, a confidence that resulted in simple, functional furniture that Stickley had aspired toward from his beginning in the industry.
The mitered mullions once found on the doors of Craftsman bookcases and china cabinets were replaced by simpler, lap-jointed mullions. The backs of case pieces were now in most instances constructed of lightweight panels. Seams, where wooden members butted together on cabinet doors or the sides of cases, were now hidden beneath sheets of quartersawn oak veneers. Exposed tenons were still much in evidence, but few pieces with tenon-and-key joints remained in production. The most recent designs lacked the characteristic massiveness of the early furniture, and the timber used in their construction was generally thinner than the stock used before. Stickley's wood finishes retained their beautiful, subtle luster and durability but, like his furniture, they were increasingly standardized.
In March 1905, the month after the release of "Catalogue D," The Craftsman magazine began the "Home Training in Cabinet Work" series. Although initially presented as entirely Stickley's work, it was in fact anonymously drawn by Louise Shrimpton. Some of the "Home Training" designs were created solely for the series, some were simplified renditions of Stickley production furniture, and others were inspired by furniture published in international art journals. According to the first article, the series' purpose was therapeutic, offering satisfying recreation to the tired office worker at the end of a stressful day, and also educational, providing manual training that would "fit a boy, by practice, to become a skilled workman, builder, or designer." It had the additional effect of getting low-cost Craftsman or Craftsman-like furniture into the homes of those readers willing to make their own. The firm may have derived some income from "Home Training" by selling Craftsman wood finishes and Craftsman hardware to amateur cabinetmakers. There was perhaps another benefit: Craftsman readers who had made a few pieces of "starter" Stickley might in time be induced to buy the actual product.
Source: adapted from David Cathers Gustav Stickley New York: Phaidon, 2003, pages 124-141
Albert Fair The Steel Square as a Calculating Machine 1906
Long Subtitle: being simple directions for using the common steel square for the solution of complicated calculations that occur in the everyday work of carpenters, builders, lumber dealers, plumbers, gas fitters, engineers, electricians, tinsmiths, blacksmiths, masons, stone cutters, etc., etc., with numerous illustrations.Also includes an extensive, scathing critique of Frederick Hodgson, since 1883, the authority on the use of the steel square. Along with a citation of Hodgson's book, sections of Fair's The Steel Square as a Calculating Machine are keyed to my glossary entry on the Steel Square.Percy A. Wells, Furniture for Small Houses: Book of Designs for Inexpensive Furniture With New Methods of Construction and Decoration, London: Batsford, [1920]
Designed to address a specific need -- recovery in the aftermath in Britain from the devastation of World War I -- Wells directed Furniture for Small Houses toward engaging furniture producers in creating furniture for the "working man".
Wells gives us "a group of designs for furniture intended for the homes of working people, some of which were shown publicly as room settings in London and regional centres, and published in book form.
In design, Wells's recommends furniture with an Arts and Crafts theme, but, as Stuart Evans, the material culture historian, notes, "pared down and without the expressiveness and individuality produced by that movement". Each of its seven sections cover one type of furniture — for example 'Dressers and sideboards' — with several alternative designs for each type of furniture.
Read more about Percy Wells here
Frederick J Bryant, Working Drawings of Colonial Furniture, 1922
Black and Decker Portable Electric Tools and Shop Equipment (Catalog No 6) -- 1923
Dewalt Wonder-Worker "Instruction Book" 1925
Dewalt Products Company, Lancaster, PA, proudly introduced its radial arm saw in 1926. This 8-page leaflet -- an operator's manual which came with the Wonder-Worker-- presents details about Warranty, operating methods, care and maintenance, and a table of replacement parts. Numerous photos -- some with parts named, as assistance for making repairs -- are scattered, page-by-page, throughout the leaflet. To follow the historical context of this document, click here and read about the history of the emergence of the radial arm saw. And also see William Klenke's article on "the saw that cuts from the top".
Paul V Woolley, A Guide to the Study of Woodworking1925
Paul V Woolley, A Guide to Woodworking Projects: A Companion Volume to A Guide to the Study of Woodworking1926
The 1920s was a time of both frustration and transition in Industrial Arts, particularily woodworking. Frustration, because the profession was losing recruits to other interests. (With their operations set up in lines of mass production, furniture manufacturers could hire unskilled employees off the street. Instructors also needed to contend with a lack of interest among students.) In response, IA came up with several stratagems designed to solve the problem, including the idea of promoting home workshops.
One response -- very innovative -- for creating greater interest among boys for projects to undertake in courses are these two indexes to projects, concepts, histories and the like, published in woodworker's manuals and related sources. It freed up the instructor from details that boys could work out for themselves. (Taken together, these two "Bibliographical Indexes" are innovative examples of what -- in the academic world -- is called "From Theory Into Practice". Click on the links to see the contents of the books themselves, or see more details on Woolley's two books in Woodworking Manuals, 1921-1930 and/or click here for more detailed account of IA education in the 1920s.)Herbert E Tautz and Clyde J Fruits, The Modern Motor-Driven Woodworking Shop: How to Plan, Operate and Get the Most Out of It Milwaukee: Woodworkers Educational Department (Division of Delta Manufacturing Co.), 1930
The first of a 3-volume set, this 8-chapter volume covers "The Value of a Workshop", "How to Plan a Workshop", "The Circular Saw", and "The Jointer". Four chapters cover the circular saw, circular saw accessories, operation, and "using the moulding head". The two chapters on the jointer are basics of jointer design and its operation. This set -- soon replaced with the individual volumes:-- How to Get the Most of ..., links below-- and The Deltagram, a monthly magazine -- evidently became a victim of the fierce competition in the emerging bench-top woodworking machines market. Numerous publications -- manuals and magazines -- were flooding the market, including the well-received 2-volume set, edited by Arthur Wakeling, The Home Workshop Manual and Things to Make in Your Home Workshop. Perhaps most interesting is that among the 15-model shops displayed are examples of minaturized "line-and-shaft" set-ups, a feature of home workshops before the concept of a motor for each machine became common
James Tate, Getting the Most Out of Your Drill Press, 1931.
James Tate -- the first named editor of The Deltagram (detailed in Chapter 5:2) -- authored this spledid manual for the first Delta bench-top drill press. Getting the Most Out of Your Drill Press is 30 pages of "helpful hinsts from Delta", including photos and diagrams, with sections on "laying out the work", "twist drills and how to sharpen them", :how to drill", "the drill press in the woodworking shop", and "pointers on selecting a drill press". You'll notice that, unlike today's models -- with the motor belted at the same level of the drill head -- Delta's first bench-top drill placed the motor just above the bench, with the belt on pulleys first perpendicular to the post, then extending horizonitally to the drill press's head. For more on Delta's drill press, see this entry.
Herman Hjorth:-- How to Make Veneered Panels for the School and Home Workshop 1932
While this manual on veneering reflects the technology of the early 1930s, its contents has much to tell us today about the history and craft of veneering. As the title suggests, it is designed for beginners. The material presented is arranged in fifteen chapters, and covers the history of veneering, the advantages of veneering, the types of veneers, including marquetry and inlaid pictures, and copious detail on the preparation and finish of veneered surfaces. In a chapter on the history of glue, Hjorth touches on several glues used up to the '30s, including "casein glue" -- the publisher of the manual manufactures casein glue -- but also briefly notes that the recent introduction on the market of two kinds of "resin" glue -- phenol formaldehyde and urea formaldehyde -- show great promise for use in the "small shop and [by the] home craftsman".)
Walker-Turner:-- A Comphrehensive Handbook on Uses and Applications of the Band Saw and Jig Saw 1934
Containing over 100 photos and line-drawings, this 70-page booklet gives "comprehensive" some meaning. Not only does the booklet detail features to Walker-Turner's two new bench-top woodworking machines, but gives readers instructions on how to use both of them as well as how-to instructions on creating marquetry, on high speed routing, on flexible shafts, in other words -- for the wannabe amateur woodworker of the Depression era -- a propectus for some exciting departures from the limitations of hand tools.
Walker-Turner:-- A Comphrehensive Handbook on Uses and Applications of the Bench Saw, Jointer and Shaper 1934
Containing over 100 photos and line-drawings, in design, this 70-page booklet is much like the booklet above. The booklet features three of Walker-Turner's new bench-top woodworking machines, instructs readers on how to use them, and gives insights on additonal uses; e.g., using the shaper's spindle as a drum sander. (I have a Delta shaper of this same vintage and just might try out the drum sander idea. With this set-up, and an up-down motion on the "travel" lever, you can get a poor man's "oscillating" sander.)
Harry J Hobbs Working With Tools
Published by the Leisure League of America, this 90-plus page booklet is another introduction for Depression-locked America to the burgeoning hobby of woodworking. Written by a veteran editor of woodworking magazines and woodworker's manuals, Harry J Hobbs, the booklet has seven chapters, with the first provocatively titled, "Fun in the Workshop" -- read chapter one here-- , but others include "making room for the workshop", "tools you need" -- hand and power -- "use and care of tools" and what to make". The numerous illustrations are all line drawings. This booklet must have had considerable impact, because it is recommended in the 1938 Standard Catalog for Public Libriaries, the bible for book selection by public libraries: -- read more on woodworker's manuals in libraries here
A lucky find -- I'm indebted to Mildred Champlin for this acquisition -- the "CASCO PROJECT BOOK" describes 28 prize winning articles made from wood and veneer by home craftsmen using CASCO Glue. Copyrighted in 1935, my copy states that it was part of a "Second Printing", which I take as a sign that this 32-page booklet was popular. Both the range of interests and the quality of achievement represented by the "winning" projects included in this booklet testify to an active, vibrant population of amateur woodworkers in this Great Depression decade. Please note the item by Herman Hjorth (directly above), also published by THE CASEIN MANUFACTURING COMPANY OF AMERICA, INC., 350 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY, a coincidence that suggests some collaboration between the Casein glue people, Constantine's veneers, and Hjorth -- if only because Albert Constantine himself, in 1954, collaborated with an aged Hjorth in the update of Hjorth's 1932 manual on veneering, above.
Ads about this competition sponsored by Casein are sprinkled throughout Popular Science Monthly and Popular Mechanics, and I found several half-page ads in my 1932-1934 and 1937 issues of The Home Craftsman
There is, I know, "more to this story", but I need the opportunity of looking at other booklets Casein published, year-by-year, during the 1930s. I will appreciate any assistance readers can supply connected with obtaining copies of these booklets.
"Stanley-Carter Router Shaper Catalog no 61" -- 1935
Sam Brown Getting the Most Out of Your Lathe Delta -- 1935
Brown arranges his manual - thirteen chapters and appendix -- into three main parts: (1) woodturning, (2) metal turning, and (3) metal spinning. Seven chapters address such woodturning issues as "the lathe and its equipment" including tools, indexing mechanisms, measuring tools, spindle turning, centering, faceplate and chuck turning, special turning operations (post blocking; oval turnings, split turnings, turned boxes, duplicate turning, spiral turnings, fluting and reeding), "jigs and fixtures", lathe attachments (the sanding drum, sanding disk, other accessories), wood finishing on the lathe (wax finish, frictional polish, oil finish, varnish & shellac finishes, french polishing). Finally, six chapters cover metal turning and metal spinning. Profusely illustrated with black-and-white photos, tables of data, diagrams, and drawings of sequential operations.
Portable Skil Belt Sander
Contents of this pdf gives "operating instructions:Operating instructions for belt type skil sanders"Operating Instructions Belt-Type Skil Sanders" no date, but 1930s vintage. I am indebted to David Hoelzeman for this pdf. Neither David nor I are sure of the date on his portable belt sander. For me, it looks 1930ish; for David, his memories are 1950ish.
Sam Brown, No 1180 Bench-Top Shaper Operator's Manual -- 1935
In 8-and-1/2" X 11" format -- for loose-leaf binders -- this 6-page leaflet is the operator's manual. Featuring both photos and diagrams, it includes a parts list and cut-away diagrams of the shaper's anatomy. Sam Brown "Getting the Most out of Your Shaper" Delta -- 1936This manual closely follows the format for their machine tool manuals that Delta adopted later in the '30s. (Tate's 1931 manual on the drill press above is in a 8-and-1/2" X 11" format.) In fifty pages, eleven brief chapters cover a wide range of topics, including "the shaper and its adujustments", "cutters and collars", "methods of operation", then shaping with "guides", with "collars", with "patterns", "using forms", "jigs", and "grinding shaper cutters". The last chapter dedicates over 10 pages to the "application of shaper cutters", most of it illustrations. Most usefully, many photos and diagrams are featured on every page of this booklet.
Archie Frederick Collins,Amateur Power Working ToolsPhiladelphia: Lippincott, 1937
A remarkable book, it presents Collins' review of numerous power woodworking machines released for the home workshop in the 1930s decade. As time allows, I intend to focus on some of these machines in greater detail (in chapter 5:5 -- technological_development ); in the meantime, enjoy the comments by Collins about the woodworking machines that created excitement among amateur woodworkers during our Great Depression.
Sam Brown, Getting the Most Out of Your Circular Saw and Jointer 1937
The bulk of this almost 50-page booklet is dedicated to the combo 8-inch circular saw and 5-inch jointer on a metal stand, but the 3rd page features a photo where the newly-released Unisaw is front-and-center. (Powered at 220-volts, the Unisaw comes with 3-HP, 10-inch blades, and tilting-arbor, and is out-of-reach the vast home-workshop population, especially in the 1930s.) The booklet's chapters on the circular saw include all standard operations and the "moulding" and "dado" heads, features that multiplied the usefulness of circular saws for home woodworkers in that era. (The lack of tilting arbor on the circular-saw is overlooked.) Included with the jointer's operations are rabbeting, beveling, taper jointing, tapering-in-the-round, and chamfering.
James Tate, Getting the Most Out of Your Drill Press -- 1937.
Tate's update of his original Delta manual on the drill press is placed in the format adopted by Delta for all "Getting the Most Out of ..." manuals. Just short of 50-pages, the manual is arranged in 11 chapters and an appendix. Unlike the manual above, this one covers routing, shaping, mortising and such other miscellaneous functions as polishing, cutting disks, mixing paint, etc. Combines excellent photos with numerous diagrams and charts.
Stanley Tools, The Stanley Tool Guide
Thirty pages of black-and-white diagrams and illustrations -- with brief text -- this is a WW II guide to hand tools for Americans -- engaged in the war effort on the home front -- who want an interesting and rewarding hobby while the combat in Europe and the Pacific takes its course.
Sargent Combination Planes nos 1080 & 1085 Description and Directions for Using -- June 1943
Stanley Tool The Joy of Accomplishment
-- 1947Not exactly a "tool" catalog, this 8-page pamphlet reflects the post-WW II euphoria, of being free of the constraints of a wartime economy of rationing and other types of sacrifice. After an upbeat paean about the rewards of a sense of "accomplishment" that you can receive from taking up woodworking, Stanley then launches into suggestions about "selecting tools for a home workshop". These suggestions are grouped into two areas: "Primary tools" and "Tools to be added as needed". Reference is made to "the Stanley Tool Guide" -- something that I have not seen -- and the revised edition of the original How to Work With Tools and Wood
Leaflet for Mortising Attachment for Delta's Bench Top 14" Drill Press
-- pdf for Mortising Attachment leaflet, "Delta PM-1704 1949 "14-B 14" Drill Press Instruction Manual"Porter-Cable Electric Tools for Home and Workshop 1948 (Have misplaced this one; will upload when I relocate it)
Stanley-Carter Equipment for the Woodworking Industry no 81 1950
Delta Homecraft Power Tools leaflet for "The Deltashop" -- Early 1950s
Generously given to me by a woodworker friend, this tri-color leaflet extols the virtures of "The Deltashop" as "The Only Right Combination of Basic Power Tools.
Assembly, Operating Instructions and Parts List for Sears Craftsman Bench Saw 10-Inch Tilting Arbor, Model No 113.29960
Includes is Main part, 22-pages, and additional 4-page Instructins of Assembly of Craftsamn Adjustable Table Extension No. 9-2178. Approx date for saw, 1950s. Clues are, 1, purchase by original owner, 2, there is no zip code, which appereared in early 1960s. However, if any reader can help withmore precise date of manuafacture, please send me a message: ray@woodworkinghistory.com
Walt Durbahn -- Walt's Workshop 1951
This is the woodworker's manual of Walt Durbahn, beloved teacher on television in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Over 140 pages of text, photos, diagrams, etc., walk wannabe amateur woodworkers through the steps of creating 42 projects: furniture for the workshop, for the home and garden and even some home repair instructions. No index, but the table of contents is very detailed. Just the recipe for a bustling Do-It-Yourself American population, still recovering from World War II.
Delta Things To Make on Your Circular Saw and Jointer 1954
Published the year that I graduated from high school, this 30-odd page booklet is filled with images and plans for both modernistic -- rectinlear -- styling on cabinetry for many rooms in the home and for outdoor furniture popular for the 1950s, also in the modernistic genre. Dated, yes, but some of the designs -- with a little revisions -- could still fly today.
Porter-Cable Quality Electric Tools Catalog no 104 1956
Shedd-Brown Home Handbook (Minneapolis) 1958
That old French adage, "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose", i.e., ": the more that changes, the more it's the same thing", often shortened to "plus ca change", applies in the contents of this 1958 home handyman's guide. Yes, the "home handbook" contains material, text and illustrations, that -- in the "fifties" -- applied to a nation rapidly shifting from a largely "Great Depression" economy and collective mindset to one driven by the still "hot" economy that resuted from America's massive deployment in World War II. When I say something about "not changing", I have in mind here such things as "how to accurately saw a board with a hand saw", "how to drill accurately with a brace-and-bit", and othe similar activities of amateur woodworkers, now in the past. However, whether hand tools or power tools are used, the "how-to-do" principles that underly obtaining the desirable results are the same: "Cut along this line!" Thus the wisdom that this hand book contains is ageless.
Stanley Tools Operation of the Modern Router
1971
For the owners of Stanley Routers, this is a standard operator's manual, but it is more, too. The cover:-- an image the classic Stanley-carter dome-topped router, a model discontinued in ? The contents also asks, rhetorically, what is a "router?", anticipating that in 1971, many amateur woodworkers still did not possess one. Looking back myself, I know that in 1971, few amateur woodworkers with whom I was acquainted still didn't have a router. I did not -- it was a tool still considered within the scope of the professional craftsman. That attitude changed in the later 1970s, and especially in the 1980s, when -- after 1976 -- the new woodworking magazines began treating routers as a tool for all woodworkers, not just professionals.
Sears Craftsman Quick Facts [on Router], Router Bits and Accessories 1973-1982
With editions published between 1973 and 1982, this Sears Craftsman booklet illustrates and describes what opportunites and options woodworkers -- especially amateur woodworkers -- had three decades ago. Shafts of the bits seem to be limited to 1/4-in. For many woodworkers -- from the 1950s on -- memories of using router bits constructed of "high speed steel", or HSS are better forgotten, because of the sometimes less-than-satisfactory results that HSS bits often produced. the vintages of this guide is revealed by the fact that HSS bits are the first featured. (Carbide tipped bits and bearings are also featured, but their novelty is evident by placing these after the HSS bits.) Accesssories include ball bearing arbors and bearing rings; butt-hinge templates for mounting hinges quickly on doors; router crafters; drawer and door panel decorators; edge crafters; router tables; dovetail jigs; trammel point; "rout-a-form pantograph"; and edge guides
Woodworking as Critical Thinking:-- The Practical Intelligence of Woodworkers
In recent decades, more and more is being studied and written by psychologists and other academics about the "practical intelligence" of people who are in work settings which involve working with their hands. Because this wwebsite focuse on woodworking, my attention will be directed toward a few of these studies, especially any that help delineate woodworking's history. Considering how important furniture is to the fitting out of households, across the world, nation by nation, we can easily understand why much of woodworking is concerned with furniture making. Moreover, across the world, cultural museums are filled with numerous examples of furniture as treasured icons of artistic achivement. Let's remember that ALL of these treasures have been executed by woodworkers. Any attention, then, to studying the so-called "practical intelligence" of woodworkers seems drastically overdue!
From Mike Rose, Chapter 4, "A Vocabulary of the Carpenter", in The Mind at Work New York: Viking Press, 2004, page 67-98
... Paul's job is to draw the lines on the case that will mark the placement of the supports. Paul steps onto the stool, framing square in hand, pencil behind ear. He begins. I watch him for a long time.
Because the framing square is two feet long, Paul has to draw the lines in increments, steadying the framing square against several reference points, checking and double-checking each segment of each line. He has to be sure that each line is so many inches from the top or bottom and that each segment of each line is aligned with the other, and that the twin lines (across the top and across the bottom) are aligned.
Paul is cautious. Every time he slides the framing square from one increment of the line to another, he checks it at several points, his face turned slightly, eye close to the wood. Then he runs his pencil slowly along the rule, pulls his head back, and checks it again.
This is a pretty basic task: Paul is using some fundamental measurement arithmetic and gaining practice with the framing square, aligning it on a surface, reading it. But he is also learning something, I think, about attending, summoning one's powers of concentration in the service of precision. We saw the role of attention in the waitress's work. Here we see it in a different context, and in a way that calls forth William James's classic discussion of attention:
"Focalization, concentration of consciousness are of its essence."Source: William James, The Principles of Psychology , New York, H. Holt and company, 1890, page 404.
The exact placement of the supports matters, and it is one of the last tasks in the long life of this valued project. Paul focuses his efforts to get it right. I am drawn by his deliberateness, its development manifest in this task.
When we think about problem solving, creativity, acts of the mind, we tend to think of the grand moment, the clarifying insight, the breakthrough, the tough nut cracked. Fair enough. Such moments are worthy of acknowledgment. But I think it is also worth dwelling on the commonplace, ordinary expressions of mind that every day, a thousand times over. enable the work of the world to get done, and that, more than we think, are critical in solving the less common. more dramatic problems that face us.
In his study of creativity, The Mind's Best Work, psychologist D. N. Perkins argues that creative ability, long studied as exceptional, can also be understood as "exceptional versions of familiar mental operations," such as perception and memory.
The notion is valuable here, for it encourages an appreciation of the significance of cognitive processes that, because of their frequency and familiarity, are taken for granted. Such an appreciation might provide one way to develop a vocabulary befitting the mind at work.The more time I spend in Jerry Devries's workshop, the more I notice the various ways this mix of attention and perception knowledge of the field, and values plays out in the day-to-day routines of working with wood. Consider, for example, the sharpening of the senses that develops in the woodworking environment.
"Use the eyes to test straightness, squareness. and symmetry," writes the author of an early-twentieth-century pedagogical tract, "before applying any other testing instruments."Jerry, like other expert carpenters, ... is able to estimate length at a glance. He can eyeball a structure for misalignment, an angle that's off, gaps, bows. sags in an assembly. He troubleshoots the cause of problems through the look of things. He has an eye, and a touch, for texture.
He scans for flaws, spotting a place high up on the interior wall of the display case where a screw has barely broken through the wood. This ability has been characterized by several cognitive researchers as disciplined perception ... It is disciplined because it emerges from one's training and depends on -- and helps constitute -- a body of knowledge. And what is perceived is connected to systematic action; here perception has meaning and consequence for assembly and repair. The woodworker's visual skill is so much a part of the work that it's easy to miss its special quality. Thus it was through a sense less identified with carpentry that the importance of disciplined perception first struck me.
With "Focalization", James anticipates the powerful concept, "Tacit Knowledge". I say "anticipates" because James did nothing to make focalization "operational"; that is, James did nothing with the concept except to note its potential. Only later in the 20th century, did psycholoogists give attention to tacit knowledge.
First,tacit Knowledge cannot be taught. Instead, it is that part of knowing, skills, and experience that one must learn by his/her self.
Tacit Knowledge is studied by cognitive psychologists, but it is the construct of the Hungarian physicist, Michael Polanyi, in 1958.
Polanyi maintains that much of a researcher's success depends upon tacit knowledge, that is, upon craft skills that have been acquired through practice and that cannot be articulated explicitly.
Polayni has a vivid way of giving credibilty to this concept:
At Scotland's University of Aberdeen, in the 1950s, Michael Polanyi delivered his justly famous Gifford Lectures, affirming the existence of "personal knowledge" as an essential component of any knowledge, whether scientific or practical. Later, in 1958, the University of Chicago published these lectures as Personal Knowledge . His most famous concept, "tacit knowledge", is about skills that cannot be learned from textbooks. Polanyi maintains that much of a craftsman's success depends upon tacit knowledge, that is, upon craft skills that have been acquired through practice and that cannot be articulated explicitly.
Polanyi's discussion of the personal element in all forms of disciplined craftwork gives much insight into tacit knowledge. He distinguishes between explicit knowing, such as occurs in the theoretical formulations of projects, and even in everyday practice; and tacit knowing, which is unstated (and in some cases cannot even be articulated) but, is nonetheless the basis for making sense out of experience. Without acknowledging such capacity, he claims, there can be no logical explanation of certain processes that occur when extrapolating from one point, where much is known, to another point, where nothing is known for certain. In other words, "the structure of tacit knowing . . . is a process of comprehending: a grasping of disjointed parts into a comprehensive whole."17 [personal knowledge p 28] Polanyi's Concept of Tacit Knowledge
Polanyi's most significant distinction for the concept of tacit knowledge" is that between focal and subsidiary awareness. Focal awareness is the ordinary kind of fully conscious awareness of a specifiable object. In contrast, subsidiary awareness is the peripheral noticing of features of an object that are not attended to in themselves but are seen as pointers or clues to the object of focal attention. According to Polanyi, it is "well-known that the aim of a skillful performance is achieved by the observance of a set of rules which are not known as such to the person following them,"12
In any given context, there are some factors of which we are aware because we are directing attention to them. In other words, we are focally aware of them. In the same context, there are also factors we are aware of, even though we are not focusing on them. That is, we are subsidiarily aware of them. For example, when a person is pounding a nail with a hammer, attention is focused on the nail. The person is only subsidiarily aware of the hammer. If, however, attention is switched to the hammer, the person becomes focally aware of the hammer and subsidiarily aware of the nail.
In such examples, "the cognitive context is brought into being by the knowing subject 'attending from' that which he is subsidiarily aware and 'attending to' that of which he is focally aware.' In pounding a nail, the person attends from the hammer, of which he is subsidiarily aware, and attends to the nail, of which he is focally aware.[personal knowledge, p 49]
Since tacit knowledge is such a powerful concept, it has been applied widely, especially into what is labeled "everyday life".
Polanyi's discussion of the personal element in all forms of scholarly inquiry gives much insight into tacit knowledge. He distinguishes between explicit knowing, such as occurs in the theoretical formulations of inquiry, and even in everyday descriptive discourse; and tacit knowing, which is unstated (and in some cases cannot even be articulated) but, is nonetheless the basis for making sense out of experience. Without acknowledging such capacity, there can be no logical explanation of certain processes that occur when extrapolating from one point, where much is known, to another point, where nothing is known for certain. In other words, "the structure of tacit knowing . . . is a process of comprehending: a grasping of disjointed parts into a comprehensive whole."
Ascribing such creative characteristics to the requirements of disciplined inquiry is necessary because without the investigator's "experience, talent and technical skill," "neither the perception of the object nor the elaboration of hypotheses, nor even their verification, can be done in an entirely formal and mechanical fashion." Craftsman's work (often called Craft Skills) is done with particular objects, which may be material or intellectual constructs, or a mixture of the two: and the operator must know them in all their particularity. Their properties and behavior cannot be fully specified in a formal list; in fact, no explicit description can do more than give the first simple elements of their properties. Hence the operator's knowledge of them must be "intuitive" or of the sort described by Polyani as "tacit."
It cannot be learned from books, but from a teacher by precept and imitation, and supplemented by the personal experience of the operator himself. Such a craftsman's knowledge of his objects is necessary for any sort of scientific work; even in pure mathematics, where the objects of the work are purely intellectual creations, the properties of the objects which are known from established results are not sufficiently particular and subtle to guide the work of constructing an argument for a new proof. Jerome Bruner, a pioneer in the Critical Thinking movement, is justly famous for the observation, Going Beyond the Information Given, a direct reference to the concept of Craft Skills.
* Polanyi's most significant distinction for the concept of tacit knowledge is that between focal and subsidiary awareness. Focal awareness is the ordinary kind of fully conscious awareness of a specifiable object, or what cognitive psychologists call Explicit Knowledge. In contrast, subsidiary awareness is the peripheral noticing of features of an object that are not attended to in themselves but are seen as pointers or clues to the object of focal attention. According to Polanyi, it is "well-known that the aim of a skillful performance is achieved by the observance of a set of rules which are not known as such to the person following them."
* In any given context, there are some factors of which we are aware because we are directing attention to them. In other words, we are focally aware of them. In the same context, there are also factors we are aware of, even though we are not focusing on them. That is, we are subsidiarily aware of them. For example, when a person is pounding a nail with a hammer, attention is focused on the nail. The person is only subsidiarily aware of the hammer. If, however, attention is switched to the hammer, the person becomes focally aware of the hammer and subsidiarily aware of the nail.
* In such examples, "the cognitive context is brought into being by the knowing subject 'attending from' that which he is subsidiarily aware and 'attending to' that of which he is focally aware." In pounding a nail, the person attends from the hammer, of which he is subsidiarily aware, and attends to the nail, of which he is focally aware. Things look different and sensations feel different when seen or felt as clues to something else, than when they are attended to directly. The kinds of differences that occur depend, of course, on the type of subsidiary element being considered, but in all cases we can say that the knowledge gained by subsidiary awareness is tacit. To speak in the indicative mode about such elements would require focusing attention on them and then they would no longer be the relied-on subsidiary elements in question.
* [needs editing-- this comes from p. 307 of Bazerman] Lev Vygotsky’s concept of internal language (as elaborated in Thought and Language) is a conceptual precursor to Polyanyi’s tacit knowledge.
From Robert J Sternberg, et al, Practical Intelligence in Everyday Life New York: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2002, page 104-105
Understanding Practical Intelligence: The Role of Tacit Knowledge
What distinguishes people who are more successful from those who are less successful in their everyday lives? Sternberg and his colleagues find that much of the knowledge that workers need to succeed in real-world tasks is tacit.
Acquired during performance of everyday activities, typically, for the most part, it is absorbed without a conscious awareness of what is being learned. Moreover, while people's actions may reflect this knowledge, they may find it difficult to articulate what they know.
The notion that people acquire knowledge without awareness of what is being learned is reflected in the common language of the workplace as people speak of "learning by doing" and "learning by osmosis." Terms such as professional intuition and professional instinct further imply that the knowledge associated with successful performance has a tacit quality.
The term tacit knowledge, introduced by Polanyi (1966), has been used to characterize the knowledge gained from everyday experience that has an implicit, unarticulated quality. Sternberg and others in his research circle view tacit knowledge asan aspect of practical intelligence, tacit knowledge reflects the practical ability to learn from experience and to apply that knowledge in pursuit of personally valued goals. Tacit knowledge is needed to successfully adapt to, select, or shape real-world environments. Because tacit knowledge is an aspect of practical intelligence, it provides insight into an important factor underlying the successful performance of real-world tasks. Research by Sternberg and his colleagues (Sternberg et al., 1993; Sternberg et al., 1995), which we review in later chapters, has shown that tacit knowledge can be applied to understanding performance in a variety of job domains.
Support for the importance of the tacit knowledge concept is found also in research on expertise and implicit learning. Research with experts in a variety of knowledge-intensive domains has shown that reasoning and problem solving in such domains depend on proceduralized skills and schematically organized knowledge, both of which may operate outside of focal awareness (Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988). Furthermore, expert knowledge appears to reflect the structure of the operating environment or situation more closely than it does the structure of formal, disciplinary knowledge (Gruen Sr Patel, 1988).
Research on implicit learning focuses on the phenomenon of learning without intention or awareness. Tacit knowledge may be, but need not be, acquired implicitly.
People are capable of acquiring knowledge of a very complex nature without conscious intention or awareness of learning.
The research on implicit learning suggests that knowledge can be acquired in the absence of awareness or intention to learn and thus can have a hidden or tacit quality.
(7) The Cultural Value of Woodworking
(The discussion below succinctly captures some of my personal opinions about an alleged cultural value woodworking. Much of the gist below is influenced by her discussion in Chapter 3 Mary Ann Stankiwicz's The Roots of Art Education Practice; however, I discuss these matters more fully in the chapters 1 through 5 on education.)
In the 1880s, educators who supported manual training had the conviction that it was neither "trade training" nor preparation for particular forms of work. Instead, they argued, students would develop hand and eye coordination by learning to use tools for working with wood and metal. Theses skills gained through manual training, moreover, would be beneficial for all students, regardless of their vocational interests. Read more here and here.
As America progressed into the 20th century, especially into the 1920s and early 1930s, many of these same educators -- under the influence of educational theorists such as John Dewey ("learning by doing") -- came to see manual training, and for that matter, all public schooling, as preparation for work.
And of course, while the views about the purpose of education were changing, this change was driven by how the evolving nature of work in America's industries. With the emergence of the new technology, especially the assembly line methods of production, workers no longer needed the of knowledge and skills that might be developed through either an apprenticeship system or any manual training programs.
Instead of hand and eye coordination and qualities such as self-direction -- claims made by advocates of manual training from Calvin Woodward and John Runkle in the 1880s through Charles Richards and Charles Alpheus Bennett in the 1900s to R W Selvidge and Emanuel Ericson the 1920s -- the kinds of "skills" industrial workers needed were an ability to follow orders and to perform simple, repetitive tasks. Thus educators, as well as businessmen, criticized manual training, not because it was vocational preparation, but because it was an anachronistic, outmoded form of vocational training in an industrial age
With such sentiments in the air, we can understand more easily the intentions expressed below about the true meaning of woodworking by two industrial arts educators, Joseph A. Shelley and Richard M Van Gaasbeek.
Woodworking in all its branches is essentially creative. It teaches art through design, and permits the individual to display his information and abilities in a concrete manner.
Source: Joseph A. Shelley, "Some Observations on the Cultural Value of Woodworking", Industrial Arts Magazine 13 October 1924, page 374
Woodworking is an art. The woodworker who has learned his trade well, is familiar with the underlying fundamental principles and has the skill to apply them to a practical and useful purpose, is an artist.
Source: Richard M Van Gaasbeek, "The Cultural Value of Woodworking", Industrial Arts Magazine 15 1926, page 3.
Harvey Green's Wood: Craft, Culture, History is the first book in my experience that looks at the "culture of wood", or maybe it's "the woodworking culture". Whatever, upon spying it, I realized a heretofore unrecognized truth about amateur woodworking: amateur woodworking is a "culture", similar to a "participatory" sport, like golf or tennis or racquetball, but -- at least in my experience -- has not gotten such recognition. Why? This neglect of observation is obvious, in my view, though, for the following reason: Woodworking is an activity engaged in by "insiders", who are not taken to introspection about their activities, while "outsiders" who may be looking in -- and possess the analytical skills needed to expose woodworking as a culture -- fail to understand the chemistry involved.
Sources: Harvey Green,Wood: Craft, Culture, History. New York: Penguin, 2006. Green is a professor of history at Northeastern University. An academic book that includes sections on woodworking, and written by someone who betrays himself as an outsider is Hobbies: Leisure and the Culture of Work in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
The matter resloved itself with, in my view, at least, an ironic twist. Old woodworking slowly shifted from a professional calling to an assembly line type of production. But out of the ashes, emerged a new type of woodworking, basically amateur, but also -- as a participant activity, rewards that are spiritual, creative, and cultural. This is a cultural shift that can be illustrated by what I call "the hour-glass analogy.
The Hour-Glass Analogy
That said, I want now to show you a powerful schema that I use to keep me on a research track for this project: I call it the hourglass analogy. I am indebted to Tom Caspar, an editor at American Woodworker, for the suggestion about the hourglass configuration of woodworking, and of the claim about shift "from production to consumption of woodworking", a theme that I develop more fully directly below.
(8) What is my approach to this History?
As the successive chapters of my history of amateur woodworking are completed and uploaded on the Web, readers will discover that I have "scoured the literature", "done my homework", as they say, in my efforts to uncover what, without exaggeration, is a "virtually secret history of woodworking", at least as this history relates amateur woodworking, in this century.
However, in my attempt to expose this human activity, much to my satisfaction, much information can be uncovered. The chemistry, i.e., the "chemistry" involved in human affairs, is complex, and I continue to search for the broader explanations.
Much less evident in the literature are the results of research into the implications of specific, small and unobtrusive technologies, especially those that enter the home (often by the back door). Oliver's point is that the appearance fractional horse power electric motor set in motion a series of changes in living that had a major impact upon behavior, values, and the like, but these shifts occurred without the responsibility being recognized, Further, Oliver adds,
There is little to help us to understand better what the[se technologies] are, what they do, how they work and their intended, unintended, as well as their unanticipated and unplanned for consequences - those now increasingly evident as the twentieth century draws to a close.
All these matters and more are things needed to be in place before amateur woodworking, as a movement, could take off.
Each of these issue will be dealt with, first, in very brief discussion, in these introductory paragraphs, but later -- appropriately, chapter by chapter -- in greater detail.
(Chapter contents are listed on the table of contents page.)
What conditions, i.e., social, political, economic, technological, aesthetic, were needed before amateur woodworking took off?
But woodworking, including amateur woodworking -- including amateur woodworking -- has a very, very long history. Nonetheless, although amateur woodworking always existed, the practice of woodworking as a leisure activity before or at the beginning of the 20th century was, of necessity, conducted under much different conditions then compared with today, or even in the mid-century. Read for example, the article that I've posted on my history of woodworking website as: Document no. 2: Chicago-based journalist, Phil Creden's "America Rediscovers Its Hands" (1953), and contrast it with the Document no. 1, by the New Yorker, A L Hall, "My Workshop at Home" (1908).
The point is that several factors, outside the purview of amateur woodworking, needed to be in place in America, before amateur woodworking became an matter of interest for men to considr it as a leisure time activity. Among these factors are :
- sufficient disposable income for potential woodworkers to purchase hand and power tools;
- the luxury of sufficient leisure time to actually engage in woodworking as a hobby;
- home electrification;
- the development of an economic fractional horsepower motor,
- the availabilty on the market of hand and power tools of a scale appropriate for use in home workshops.
All these matters and more are things needed to be in placee before amateur woodworking, as a movement, could take off.
Each of these issue will be dealt with, first, in very brief discussion, in these introductory paragraphs, but later -- appropriately, chapter by chapter -- in greater detail. (Chapter contents are listed on the table of contents page.)
Selecting Herbert Cescinsky as one of my models for this history of woodworking goes along with my conviction that those capable of writing good historical accounts of topic in woodworking need not come from the halls of academe. Historians of furniture, for example, have employed the techniques of both the ethnographer and the archeaologist. During his lifetime, Cescinsky had a reputation as an authority -- maybe "the" authority -- on furniture history.
Extended articles in Cescinsky's Early English Furniture and Woodwork London: Routledge, 1922, a 2-volume folio-sized set covers furniture topics for the age of oak in Britain -- the 15 and 16 hundreds, the beginning of records of carpentry and woodworking in the English-speaking world -- including such matters as the origin of the practice of "quartersawing" oak.
(Contrary to popular opinion, the practice of quartersawing oak comes from a desire to minimize a wood's shrinkage; the aesthetic features, -- quartersawn oak's "flecks" and "rays" -- are an unanticipated payoff. The best account of this history is Cescincsky, something that you can check for yourself by clicking on the link and going to the Glossary entry on quarter-sawn oak. He also shows the roots of the gateleg table, and traces the evolution of the chest -- through the combination of chest and drawers to the "chest" of drawers.)
A reviewer in 1923 declared that
The first volume deals with the work of the carpenter, joiner and carver as found in the church and in the house. Woodwork for structural purposes commences with timber-framed houses, and the open-timber roof of halls and churches which forms the chief glory of English craftsmanship of the fifteenth and the sixteenth centures. Moveable woodwork, that is to say, furniture proper, occupies the whole of the second volume, and the development and progression of each article of furniture, the chest, the cupboard,the table, and the chair receive successive and individual attention. The conditions under which the craftsman worked are discussed and examples given of the tools he used. Craftsmanship and its development are kept clearly to the front throughout, but technical details are not dealt with exclusively, and the subject matter is approached from many points of view.
Third, I think I can confidently say that I come to woodworking as an "insider":--
My personal woodworking experienceHere's where I think that my experience -- both as an amateur woodworker and as a journeyman researcher/writer -- counts. (See also my -- incomplete -- Memoir.)
Ex: I have many back issues of woodworking journals, collected from the beginning (i.e., 1976, when the current crop of woodworking magazines first began to appear). For background on woodworking in the latter half of the 20th century, I have (slowly) paged through them, issue by issue, noting things possible to included in my text. There are many!
In addition, as you can tell from the entries, I have access to old books and old magazines. (I have paged through the entire volume-set of Amateur Work, Work (London) Home Craftsman, Popular Homecraft, and Deltagram .
As for books, today is nirvana, in several senses, at least: first, Google print is beginning to be a major player on the Internet in digitizing the world's library, a project that includes books on woodworking. For acquiring older, used books, second, there are several services on the Internet that are extremely efficient in locating rare titles.
Some early comments by the original editors of the magazines are fascinating, especially today, in retrospect, when so much has changed since the beginnings in the 1970s. Before 1976, the founding year of Fine Woodworking, no magazine existed that was dedicated solely to woodworking. Today, there are many, not only in America, but Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, as well as other areas.
As for experience at woodworking, for close to a half century, to a greater or lesser degree, I have personally "practiced" woodworking, with varying degrees of satisfaction and success. Over the years, except for a bed, I have built (at least) one piece(s) of furniture for my whole house: chairs, tables, book shelves, armoires (on my homepage), cradles, chests of drawers, and numerous other pieces, of which I have long forgotten.
I have also built or made improvements on a few of my own tools. (The link leads to the bandsaw table and fence -- in addition, though, I have other homemade tools and other fixtures in my shop -- enough to have my wife tease me by saying that -- in his workshop -- "Ray makes jigs!"; not pictured are several tables for radial arm/compound miter saws, routers, and drill-presses, and a tilting-top table that also serves as a 4' X 8' vacuum press glue-up" station.
And I have built many, many jigs. The following are a few examples:
(Jigs -- see definition of "jigs" in the glossary1.shop made bandsaw table and fence 2. Jig for creating pictures with compound miters 3. Jigs for creating and gluing up arts-and-crafts table legs.)
For the woodworking cognoscente, Jigs are homemade tools, or adjuncts to manufacturers' tools, especially power tools, that help make these tools operate more efficiently, and/or more safely.
Taken together, all items mentioned above, but especially the "jigs", strongly suggest that, perhaps more than any other profession, rather than from top down, woodworking has developed from the bottom up.
What schema of understanding am I bringing to the History project?
Yes, I have a schema, but to explain what the schema is, I need to introduce three principles that have guided me in the past, all of them are related to teaching students how to conduct research, but also, ironically, related as well to how woodworkers do their woodworking.
(Before I retired, working in the academic world, when I spent four decades as both an academic reference librarian and as a classroom professor -- I found out quickly that, when conducting their research, i.e., searching for materials in a library, my students typically had a misconception about the nature of inquiry, or as inquiry is more broadly called, research.)
First, in my experience, in the Library, naive students look for and expect to find "the answer to the question" (i.e., the assignment given by their classroom teacher), instead of "the evidence to be examined", needed to formulate the answer to the question.
In the Library, in place of looking for the answer to the question, I attempted instead to direct students think about what "evidence" they needed to gather for successfully completing their research assignment, and help them locate the sources where the needed evidence could be found. From my experience in woodworking, parallels to critical thinking in the academic classsroom abound in the workshop.
Second, frequently, when when students set themselves up to carry out this operation, it meant "going beyond the information given". From my personal experience as a woodworker, much of the process of building a project from scratch means going beyond the information given. As any experienced woodworker can tell you, the most frequent flaw in a set of instructions for constructing a particluar project is the part(s) that is/are missing and/or incorrectly dimensioned. At this juncture, where there is an error, going forward with the project is both time-consuming and irritating, but forward progress is just slowed, not stopped, as the woodworker calculates precisely how to "go beyond the information given", i.e., compensate for the error, and finish the project anyway.
Whether errors exist in this Arts and Crafts table is not the point. Instead, think of the multiple opportunites that exist for errors in dimension to creep in, whether in rendering the drawing or in cutting all the parts. Multiple talks with my friend Stan Klonowski about this matter have convinced me that "slips" do creep into projects frequently, but that while they indeed exist, errors do not deter progress, simply slow it down, Nonetheless, this example helps prove the truth, that woodworking is "critical thinking".
(In the research that I've conducted on the history of amateur woodworking, since ca. 2004, often I have recalled that I am myself am doing just what I told my students to do, "going beyond the information given". Definitely, the research path is not clearly marked; there is no existing body of knowledge.)
Source: adapted from Jerome Bruner, Beyond the information given: Studies in the Psychology of Knowing New York : W W Norton, 1973
(Most dramatically I found this out building a baby's rocker in the shape of a lap-strake boat. Full of compound curves and other ways of joing that I had never encountered before. I frequently cursed the skimpy instructions and parts list, but plowed on, until, at last, the rocker took shape.) In the academic world, much stress today is given the importance of teaching critical thinking in the classroom. In conducting research on the roots of the Arts and Crafts movement in Philadephia in the 1870s, I found pretty clear evidence of a pedagogy designed to impart "critical thinking", thirty years before John Dewey coined the phrase, Reflective Thinking", the frist label for critical thinking. Click here for the account.
Third, I also introduced my students to the principle that makes so much sense for all of us engaged in telling a story, i.e., roughly what I believe writing a history is, indeed, "telling a story", and -- as an additional payoff, "telling a story" is teaching, and that, "To Teach is to Learn Twice". This concept is attributed to the Frenchman, Joseph Joubert (1754-1824).
(Lately, when working on this history project, quite often, I have remembered that I am myself doing what, years ago, I told my students to do, "To Teach is to Learn Twice.")
The schema, then, is the compelling evidence that woodworking -- whether in a historical time-frame, or today -- needs to be explained for within a context of problem solving, tacit knowledge, and other components of critical thinking.
These questions concern the idea I may have mentioned earlier about the "What?", and the "How?", That Is, "How" you put something in a History paper is as important as "What" you say in a paper. I try to answer such questions as "Who?'" is involved, "When?'", "Where?'" and "How?'" the event took place, "What?'" happened, and most importantly, "Why?'". Scholars always try to give the reasons "Why?'" We call this "contextualization". I Familiarize myself with concepts related to the topic: What? I identify major personalities: Who? As best I can, I summarize historical background: When? What? Where? How? Why? In short, I try to develop a historical perspective.
