Lost Art Press

Author: fitz

Woodworker, writer, editor, teacher, ailurophile, Shakespearean. Will write for air-dried walnut.

How Grindstones are Made

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grindstone_farmer

Berea, Ohio is a town of 3500 inhabitants, situated on the Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad, and the Cleveland and Toledo Railroad, twelve miles southwest of Cleveland, and six miles from the shore of Lake Erie. It has long been favorably known as the location of the Baldwin University, the German Wallace College, and the extensive and valuable stone quarries.

Either of these interests is sufficient to give the town a position of some importance in Northern Ohio, but its grindstones make it known in business circles as the great emporium of sharpening material. The quarries are situated along the bed and banks of Rocky River, a small stream, and a smaller creek falling into the river about the centre of town. They are now open for three miles on the river, and one mile on the creek.

The quality of the stone was discovered in 1830, by John Baldwin, a name of many eccentricities but some most excellent qualities. In 1830 and 1831, he employed two Irishmen to cut two tons of grindstones in his cellar. These were mostly sent to Canada for a market. In 1832, Mr. Baldwin invented the present method of turning stone, and commenced operations, the whole season’s work amounting to about twenty tons—a sufficient quantity to stock the market. These first efforts produced very indifferent stone, but success finally crowned the effort. The business has increased until it now employs, in all its departments, about a thousand men, and over $1,000,000 capital.
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Lost its Original Meaning

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village_carpenterAs to the ancient furniture of good English oak, of which wood Cobbett (though I should hardly quote him as a sterling authority on such a matter) says the furniture of an Englishman’s house always ought to be, how pleasingly solid and substantial it looks, the heaviest man might plump himself down on the settle or the chairs in security.

Without the needful cushions, I grant the settle would look bare and uncomfortable in use; but with the soft, loose cushions about, that you can adjust to your own liking, it is in reality the perfection of ease. And how much better and more healthy this arrangement of loose cushions is than the usual stuffed sofa, that collects the dust which can never be wholly removed in the once-a-year spring overhaul.

With the old fashioned settle the loose cushions can readily and quickly be taken out of doors every morning and beaten free of the previous day’s dust, and so be kept ever sweet and clean. And how the good old furniture lasts, and how at home it looks in an old house: the “wood carpenter,” as he called himself, who made these chairs and tables so shapely and so strong, had no idea of a fashion in furniture changing continually, he thought in generations, not in years.

“By hammer and hand shall all things stand,” and the ancient craftsman wrought “by hammer and hand”; and so proud was he of his productions that he frequently carved the year of their making upon them, as the builder did upon his houses.

The big factory where goods are turned out wholesale by machinery was not thought of then. Now a machine has no brains, no feelings, so the articles it turns out have a smooth, uninteresting finish, they are not imbued with the personality of the hand maker, and they lack the subtle charm of it.

I almost fancy that the word manufacture has lost its original meaning, for when I hear of manufactured goods, I always think of machinery and steam; yet the word manufacture, I learn from my dictionary, means hand made, being derived from manus, the hand, and factum, a making.

James John Hissey

The Charm of the Road: England and Wales – 1910

– Jeff Burks

Design of the Moving Plane Arrangement

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hardware_window_advertising_01

Too Much in a Window is Worse than Too Little

If the display is carefully studied it will be noticed that just enough goods are shown to suggest the line carried. A small assortment of up-to-date samples often proves more effective than a window crowded with samples of well known goods, which everyone knows can be found in a stock carrying such new and thoroughly up-to-date goods.

The firm in whose window the display was made (Fig. 10), carries one of the most complete lines of tools in the metropolis. Hence it would have been easy to fill the window from top to bottom with goods. But this concern, as well as all successful window display advertisers, recognized the value of exhibiting only a limited number. Such a window has greater selling power than one in which samples of all lines are placed, entailing considerable expenditure of thought, time and money.
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Passing of the All-Round Mechanic

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mechanic_bench

When thinking of the modern wood-working establishment, with its finely-drawn divisions and subdivisions of all the different operations in the hands of experts and specialists, it is with a feeling of regret that we see the old-fashioned all-round mechanic being gradually crowded into the background, with the prospect that sooner or later his type will become extinct.

Not so many years ago the skilled workman was an indispensable factor in every wood-working shop. He was a combination of cabinetmaker, carpenter and machineman who could make a complete door or window or a piece of furniture from the raw material, with no other assistance but his own skill. He could lay out his work, match, joint and lay his own veneer, knew all about the properties of glue, the nature of the various kinds of wood and their adaptability for different purposes, besides a thousand other shop kinks, acquired by years of practical experience.

It used to be a source of real pleasure to watch such workman handle his tools when building up, piece by piece, some intricate design of artistic woodwork, and the evident satisfaction he derived from viewing the work of his own hands, showed the earmarks of the artist. On account of his ability and wide range of usefulness, he was looked up to by his shopmates, and his work called forth the admiration of everybody.
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Apprenticeship and Handicraft

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The man who designs and makes a good chair, or other useful article of any kind—all the more if it be beautiful as well as useful—is second only in the respectability of his occupation to him who brings grain and grass out of otherwise barren ground.

It is a very mistaken notion of the relations of things that sets trading—that is, buying and selling—a very different matter from commerce, which is the bringing of the products of one country into another—above handicraft. But handicraft seems to be falling into neglect.

The number of artisans who thoroughly understand their craft, and take a pride in doing good work, seems to be diminishing at a rate which is perceptible from one five years’ end to another. Indeed, it is notorious among all those who have occasion from time to time to employ skilled labour, that if they need the services of, let us say, a carpenter, a cabinet-maker, a watchmaker, or a painter, they cannot be sure, without some troublesome inquiry, that the work will be done in a workmanlike manner.

This uncertainty has no reference to that skill and taste which are the personal attributes of the individual workman, and give one man a reputation which another can never attain, but to that knowledge and skill, at once elementary and complete, which is possessed by every artisan who has “learned his trade.”
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