Matt asked if I would post the following question here on our blog so he could get some other opinions. Here’s Matt’s question:
What is the single defining quality that separates each title: “artist,” “artisan” and “craftsperson,” from the other two? Are the terms mutually exclusive or can more than one apply at the same time? And what are the implications of these titles; i.e. does your title affect how you work or the quality of the work?
Also, Matt welcomes any feedback on his essay. You can send your comments to Matt here or post them in a comment below.
“The craftsmen of Paris have a lengthy and expensive apprenticeship, provide about 500 francs of tooling, and are bound in unhealthy and foul-smelling premises, have longer working days than their foreign comrades, to earn wages lower than those of laborers.”
— French political pamphlet published in 1912 by Chambre syndicale des ouvriers ébénistes du département de la Seine. The drawing is by Paul Poncet. Image found by Jeff Burks. Note: One French inflation calculator indicated that 500 Francs from 1912 are the equivalent of more than 1,650 Euros in 2012.
I don’t use this blog to flog you with commerce, but this is a link worth checking out today.
ShopWoodworking.com has put a bunch of good titles (and one birdhouse book) on sale for 50 percent off. Except for the birdhouse book, this is all good stuff – including a bunch of my DVDs.
This sale ends today, April 10.
This is a good time to pick up some titles for your permanent library:
When I teach woodworking classes, I am sometimes asked the following question: Do you consider yourself first a writer or a woodworker?
I don’t have an answer to that question. I have to do both things just about every day to feel human. And so I usually answer the question by saying: I don’t know. But right now I’m… (pick one) thirsty, tired, bloated, crampy, malodorous or oblong.
But today I was tired. Only tired (and a little oblong).
This evening we wrapped up five days of building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” at the Melbourne Guild of Fine Woodworking in Australia. This is, hands down, the furthest that all the 12 students have come to completing the project. Almost all of the students had their lids glued up and were adding the dust seals when we called it quits. A couple students still had to glue up their lids, but that was more by choice than because it was 5 p.m.
There are two reasons we made it so far. First, I changed a couple simple things about the course with the dovetail layout and the cutting that saved us almost an entire day. Read my blog entry here for more details on that.
Second, the students were relentless. It was honestly unlike anything I had seen before in any class. They worked like dogs during the day (barely stopping for lunch) and we had to shoo them out in the evening. Also notable: They saw, hammer and plane much faster than Americans, Canadians or Europeans. Faster is not always better, but their swifter pace was noticeable.
For those of you who won’t be able to attend Handworks in May, you can still find yourself a pair of Studley-like calipers for your shop with the help of the always-digging Jeff Burks.
Jeff did a little research on the so-called “register” calipers, which is the name that some manufacturers (but not all) used for this tool. Below are a good number of links that will help you search for the different brands.
The best link? The last one. It’s to a Japanese company that still makes this tool. Stainless steel. Several sizes. Hardened tips.
And metric.
The good news on the manufacturing front is that we are hopeful that a modern toolmaker will produce these for sale. The company borrowed our prototype and all our photos and measurements from the Studley version. So keep your fingers crossed.
I’ve been using our prototype in the shop for many months and find it to be a useful apron tool for handwork.
For the most part, I use it as an “adjustable mullet” – there’s a thumbscrew on the back of the tool that locks in a particular thickness. So when I’m raising a panel by hand, I lock the caliper at the groove’s width and use the caliper to determine when I’m finished.
I use the same basic procedure when cutting rabbets and surfacing stock by hand.
You can, of course, use a locking dial caliper to do the same job. Or a block of wood. This is just another way to do it.
Using that list I found an auction for a register caliper on Worthpoint. The style matches the Studley caliper, though it appears to be one of the larger versions. This one was stamped with the name Wm. Johnson Newark NJ. This company was founded in 1834 and operated from a building complex called the Hedenberg Works.
1899 Seeger and Guernsey’s added a category for register calipers with one company: Kraeuter Co. Newark, NJ – founded 1860 and also operated from the Hedenberg
Works.
Niigata Seiki of Japan currently manufactures a stainless steel version of the register caliper under the SK brand name. They are available in multiple sizes with metric graduations and hardened tips.