Lost Art Press

Author: fitz

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

Orderly Shops and Good Tools

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Mechanics_1888
There are few mechanics who realize the importance of keeping their tools in perfect order; nevertheless, the experience of every one having to work with a set of tools ought to prove that he should love his tools and regard them with pride. We scarcely recollect a single instance of a really good workman who did not possess this affection for, and pride in, the implements which enabled him to turn out his work well.

If hammers are rusty and with faces covered with careless nicks, and fitted with ill-shaped and broken handles; if sharp-edged tools are badly ground and covered with rust; if cold chisels are made very much like old shanks taken at random from the scrap pile, and litter, dirt, tools and fragments are clustered together in a close conglomeration, it will convey about the same idea to the observer that a beggar in tattered habiliments would in the parlor of a prince. Every one would feel a great desire to either eject the intruder from the apartment or at once leave the place himself.

There are instances where this affection for, and pride in, implements have gone extremely far and become almost a monomania; so much so that the journeyman could scarcely bear to see you examining his chisels, files, etc., and seemed to have a fear, whilst you were looking at them, of some outward effect like that which the Indians attribute to an evil eye, but which merely arose from a species of selfish affection for these children of his handicraft.
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Boy Mechanics

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boy_mechanic
Boys precede men and apprentices precede journeymen. The boy is the father of the man. It is an old saying and a true one. Almost all boys are naturally mechanics. The constructive and imitative faculties are developed, in part, at a very early age. All boys are not capable of being developed into good, practical, working mechanics, but most of them show their bent that way. There are a few cases in which the boy has no competent idea of the production of a fabricated result from inorganic material, but such cases are rare. Given the proper encouragement and the means, and many boys whose mechanical aptness is allowed to run to waste, or is diverted from its natural course, would become good workmen, useful, producing members of the industrial community.
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Bostwick’s Giant Riding Saw Machine

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bostwicks_saw

A simple method of quickly cross-cutting a log has long been required by those who have to do with unsawn timber. The time and trouble involved by the employment of two sawyers is a serious item in lumbering expenses, and even where a circular saw is available the log has perhaps to be removed from some distance to be placed upon the bench. The ingenious invention illustrated herewith essays to get over these timber-dealing difficulties, and after practically testing its merits we are able to say that it effectively does all that is claimed for it.

The merit of this contrivance mainly consists in the fact that every particle of power in the body of the operator is brought to bear on the work. The feet, hands, back, and even the weight of the man is brought to bear on the saw, whilst the operator sits in the saddle, with his feet upon the treadles and hands upon the lever, in a perfectly easy and natural position. The saw is driven by motions of the body so easy and natural that they are hardly felt, certainly not more than riding a horse. The principles of leverage employed in its operation afford a perfect application of power and the force is applied just “where it will be the most use.” Every “foot-pound” of power produces a foot-pound of good honest work.
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How to Select a Saw

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How_to_Select_a_Saw

I often derive great pleasure and profit from reading the choice bits of information in “ours,” and was much interested in reading, in No. 623, suggestions respecting the purchasing of saws. They are from an American source, and will no doubt be very useful to any one purchasing an American-made saw, but are incomplete, and do not contain all the information necessary for any one to possess who desires to know what he is buying of any make. I take the liberty of sending you the following suggestions, and, if you think that they will be of interest to your readers, shall be glad if you will insert them in “ours.”

It would be invidious to recommend any name to be sought after in choosing a hand-saw, but I would say this, give a fair price, and go to a shop of good reputation, and trust to the seller, who should certainly, for his own sake, sell you none but the best maker’s. After trying if the handle suits your hand, and is fixed at such an angle on the plate as to present the teeth at the right angle to the wood when held in the position for working, so that the grain of the wood is not crossways of the handle, as every user of a saw knows to his cost that handles break soon enough with the fibre of the wood lengthways of the weakest parts, without the handle being weakened by the grain being crossways. I have never met with this defect in English-made saws, but have many times in American-made ones.
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The Art and Mystery is Invaded

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BSA6CABINET-MAKERS who labour under the disadvantage of belonging to the sterner sex must look to their laurels. The art and mystery is invaded by the ladies, and according to a contemporary the movement in this direction is extending. Not only are the light painted articles of furniture receiving the attention of the fair workers, but carved work is also being executed by their nimble fingers, thanks chiefly to the School of Wood-Carving at South Kensington, which affords practical tuition to a large number of female pupils.

There may be nothing very serious in all this, but it is a fact not to be despised. Feminine competition is gradually affecting the labour market in all sorts of branches, and although, no doubt, a very desirable thing that our “sisters, cousins, and aunts,” should be able to earn their own living, the prospect of men standing idly by while the women do the work, is not particularly pleasing. There is no doubt that they come to many employments with great advantages, being usually more patient, more painstaking, and defter in manual occupations requiring great nicety of touch. Consequently their male coworkers must endeavour to foster these characteristics if they hope to cope successfully with them.

There is one drawback to a workshop full of members of the gentler persuasion. Those conversational powers so frequently granted to them would, we fear, tend somewhat to retard the progress of work, and a suite or sideboard might be disastrously delayed owing to a heated discussion on the merits of a new bonnet or a fresh colour in ribbons, unless, indeed, our fair carvers are superior to such frivolities.

The Furniture Gazette – (London) May 1, 1889

– Jeff Burks