“The Art of Joinery” contains Moxon’s chapters on joinery, plus modern commentary. “Mechanick Exercises” contains all of Moxon’s chapters on handcrafts (including the joinery chapters). But no modern commentary.
To reduce confusion and make our lives simpler, here is what we are going to do. We are taking “The Art of Joinery” out of print and giving away its content for free via pdf (much like “The Anarchist’s Workbench”) to everyone. You can download “The Art of Joinery” pdf free via this link. You don’t have to register or give up your email or anything. Just click and the pdf will download to your computer.
We have also reduced the price of the hardcover “The Art of Joinery” book to $20 (it was $31). When we sell out of the current stock, we will not reprint it. So if you ever wanted a physical copy of this book, this is the last chance to get it from us.
We hope this reduces any confusion about which book to buy. It makes us happier because we don’t want to sell you the same content twice. Plus it is one fewer SKU for us to manage in our warehouse.
Early visitors to the new western cities of America were willing to travel by coach, wagon,horseback, boats and on foot to see and report on the westward growth of their new and independent country. They kept detailed diaries and turned their experiences into published travelogues. A minister would include the social aspects of the settlements, whereas an engineer would take note of the topography, soil conditions and geology. Publishers of almanacs and directories recorded annual growth of population, commerce and manufacturing.
Pittsburgh was, as an early traveler from Boston noted, the “key to the Western Territory.” This was especially true for travelers from New England, New York and the Mid-Atlantic states, for Pittsburgh was the stopping point to resupply and get repairs before continuing their overland westward journeys. Once steamboat travel was available, Pittsburgh was the embarkation point to begin a trip on the Ohio River and onward to the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.
David Thomas (1776-1859) was a Quaker from Cayuga County in western New York. Traveling by horseback, he departed his home in the summer of 1816 on a trip that would ultimately take him to western parts of the Indiana Territory. He kept a diary and made note of the geology, agriculture, wildlfe, commerce and industry he observed during his travels. His notes and observations were published in 1819. He arrived in Pittsburgh around June 7, 1816, and described it as such:
Wraught Nails to Cut Nails
The new towns and cities of the “Western Country” needed a huge supply of well-made nails and they needed them fast. By 1807 there were four nail factories, all worked by hand. In 1811 Charles Cowen opened a slitting and rolling mill that included the manufacturing of nails. By 1814, the Pittsburgh Iron & Nail Factory was owned by William Stackpole and Ruggles Whiting, both originally from the Boston area. Their factory was steam powered and they installed Jacob Perkins’ patented cut nail machines. Thomas visited the Stackpole & Whiting rolling mill and nail manufactory and observed the manufacture of cut nails.
Jacob Perkins invented the nail machine in 1790 and patented it in 1795. His invention was reportedly able to cut 500 nails per minute.
An advertisement in a Lexington, Kentucky, newspaper, circa 1815, for goods from the Pittsburgh Iron & Nail Factory.
The Stackpole & Whiting mill was located at the corner of Penn Street and Cecil Avenue. In 1818 they bought steamboats at foreclosure and began to build their own boats. They went into bankruptcy in 1819 and relocated their boatbuilding business to Louisville, Kentucky. The rolling mill was later taken over by Richard Bowen.
The Mechanic’s Retreat
In 1815 an outlet tract (land cleared for farming) across the river in Allegheny Town was subdivided and developed as a residential area for workers employed by some of the early industries located a short distance away along the banks of the Ohio River. The area was bounded by Pasture Lane (now Brighton Road) and the North Commons (now North Avenue). The houses were modest in an otherwise undeveloped rural setting. Mechanics Retreat Park, at the corner of Buena Vista and Jacksonia streets, is a small remnant of the original development.
Also in 1815, Mr. James Jelly opened a three-story steam-powered factory for the carding, spinning and weaving of cotton. The next year an advertisement for a different kind of Mechanic’s Retreat ran in a local newspaper.
The Quality of Local Goods
Thaddeus M. Harris, a Unitarian minister from Boston, along with several companions, left his home in the spring of 1803 to visit the territory northwest of the Allegheny Mountains. His party arrived in Pittsburgh on April 15. After experiencing an eight-day journey over the mountains he remarked about the expense of moving goods overland from Philadelphia and Baltimore. The expense of transporting heavy goods, such as furniture, might cost more than that of the furniture.
As the business class gained wealth they sought to furnish their homes with high-style furniture as was made in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Skilled craftsmen from both cities, as well as those from other cities and towns on the Atlantic Seaboard, moved to the new western cities seeking the same opportunities as other new settlers. In 1803 Harris noted the quality and woods used to make furniture.
Fourteen years later, Cramer’s Magazine Almanac of 1817 provides more detail about the types of furniture being made. One indication of the growing wealth of some customers, and cabinet makers, was the use of mahogany for furniture. Mahogany was transported by steamboat from New Orleans, a river distance of almost 2,000 miles.
The Mechanics
Before city directories were published there were other publications touting the growth of the western cities. Matthew Carey’s American Museum, or Universal Magazine provides this accounting of the mechanics working in Pittsburgh in 1792:
Zadoc Cramer, publisher of an annual almanac, reported $33,900 worth of goods were made by the carpenters and furniture makers of Pittsburgh in 1803.
By 1810 Pittsburgh was established as a manufacturing center and the population was approximately 4740. The population grew to 8,000 in 1816 and to 9,000 in 1819 (the population in outlying areas was not always included). Pittsburgh was incorporated as a borough in 1816 and the following year a survey of the manufacturies operating in the city was commissioned. The account was published in the city directory fro 1819 (only woodworking and related trades are shown below:
Three cabinet makers had advertisements in the 1819 city directory. Joseph Barclays’s ad included a pointing finger (manicule) causing some irregular, although eye-catching, spacing. In the directory William Crawford’s ad was turned 90° sideways, a technique to allow more text and also to attract interest. Liggett’s ad includes an illustration and was likely the most expensive. The illustration has a roomful of furniture at the top, including a disassembled bedstead with headboard, posts and rails. Liggett was also offering mahogany furniture.
It can be difficult to determine how a 19th-century craftsman and his business fared. City directories were not published each year (especially in the earliest years of settlement) and some directories only listed householders. We do know not every person in a town was counted or listed.
A craftsman might move to an outlying area and have a thriving business and not be documented in the Pittsburgh directory. It also wasn’t uncommon for a craftsmen to move elsewhere for a better opportunities, to change to a different type of employment and there’s also the ever-present disease and death that ended a career. Efforts weren’t usually made to collect directories and other ephemera until decades later when copies might already be scarce.
Here’s what a quick search revealed about the cabinet makers in the three advertisements:
John Barclay appeared in the 1815 and 1819 directories only. William Crawford was in the 1819 and 1826 directories only.
The Liggett family had the longest presence in the city. John Liggett was probably the father and James was his brother or son, both were cabinet makers. A third Ligget was Thomas, likely John’s son (initially listed a cabinet maker and subsequently listed as a carpenter) had the longest series of listings. All three started at the same address, south side of Second Street between Wood and Market streets.
James, the advertiser, was in the 1815, 1819 and 1826 directories. The 1819 listing shows him just a short distance from the Second Street address. John Liggett was in the 1812, 1815, 1819 and 1826 directories. Thomas, initially listed a cabinet maker and subsequently listed as a carpenter, was in the 1812-1826 directories with his last listing in the 1837 directory. He was not in the next directory from 1841, but may have worked beyond 1837, giving him at least a 25-year run.
William Scott had a long career as a plane maker, possibly starting before 1807 and at least until 1839. Charles W. Pine, Jr. wrote an article about early Pittsburgh plane makers and you can find that article here.
The Swetman & Hughes ad ran in the Pittsburgh Gazette. I used Pine’s article to get a lead on the short-lived partnership of Swetman & Hughes. The partnership of James Swetman and William P. Hughes employed three other plane makers: Thomas Clark, Samuel Richmond and Benjamin King. None of the five plane makers show up in the 1815 city directory and only Thomas Clark was found in the 1826 directory for Pittsburgh. Nothing more showed up for Samuel Richmond, but there are some details available for Swetman, Hughes and King.
James Swetman was born in England, arrived in America in 1809 and worked in Baltimore with William Vance until 1816. The Pittsburgh parnership of Swetman and William P. Hughes lasted about two years, until 1820. Swetman then made his way to Montreal and is believed to be the first plane maker in Canada. The Tools and Trades Society has an article about four Bath minor plane makers and includes a short history of James Swetman (you can read the article here).
William P. Hughes was originally from Maryland and likely met Swetman while they were both in Baltimore. After the partnership was dissolved, Hughes moved to Cincinnati. He appears in the 1829 and 1831 city directories, each time at a different address. In subsequent listings, if it is the same person, he had moved on to other occupations.
Benjamin King, also originally from Maryland,was much more successful in Cincinnati. He is listed as a plane maker in the city directories from 1825 to 1844. Beginning in the 1831 directory and onward, he was listed at the same address, on Abigail Street, between Broadway and Sycamore, indicating he found a level of stability in Cincinnati.
Economic Distress and the Formation of a Cooperative
In 1815, after two years of war with America, the warehouses of British manufacturers were bursting. There was a rush to sell these goods, even at a loss, and ship them to America. American markets, with little or no protective tariffs, were flooded with British-made products. One group of manufacturers hit hard were the cotton mills. James Jelly’s cotton mill (across from the advertised Mechanics Treat tavern) began operation in 1815. Soon, his mill, along with more established mills, were struggling to compete with imported textiles. Overall, despite the influx of imported goods, Pittsburgh continued to grow, although moderately, until the Panic of 1819.
In this front-page notice from the February 1819 edition of the Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette a group of craftsmen endorsed sandpaper made by Thomas Bryan. They emphasized it was equal to any imported sandpaper. This was an important means of offering support to a fellow craftsmen, and it telegraphed to the public that good-quality materials were being used in local workshops.
The numbers employed by the city’s manufacturers dropped from 1,960 in 1815 to 672 at the end of 1819. The population fell from about 9,000 in 1819 to 7,248 in 1820.
A farmer wrote to Cramer’s Magazine Almanac in a letter dated July 19, 1819. It was published in the 1820 edition of the almanac:
The farmer had read about an Agricultural Society that might serve as a remedy: “The plan designs to make the society a means of promoting domestic manufacturers as well as to patronise a better system of agriculture.”
The idea of forming a cooperative for the goods made by individual craftsmen and manufactories was also percolating. In April of 1819 the Pittsburgh Manufactory Association was formed. Samual Jones reported on the Association in the 1823 city directory:
The association opened a large brick warehouse on Wood Street between Front and Second streets. In an article about the beginnings of cooperatives in the Pittsburgh area, John Curl detailed the products sold and the the early success of the association:
Samuel Jones (in the 1823 directory) had a few more things to say about buying local:
First Impressions Are Important
David Thomas, the visitor from 1816, made note of two characteristics of the people of Pittsburgh.
First, the vile language:
And, several paragraphs later:
I lived and worked in Pittsburgh for a few years and can attest to the kindness and generous nature of the citizens of the Burgh. As for vile language, I heard none unless a few Ranger fans had the temerity to come to town for a match up with the Pens.
— Suzanne Ellison
A detailed map of Pittsburgh from 1830, courtesy of the University of Pittsburgh Library System can be found here.
Craig Jackson started Machine Time in 2016. It now occupies 25,000 square feet of manufacturing space. The company has 15 employees and plans to hire five more this year. It recently brought on investors to grow even more.
“We mostly do aerospace parts, stupid tolerances,” Craig says. “Some of our tolerances are about the thickness of a Sharpie mark. It’s a whole world that I never truly knew existed. I mean, we’ve got to have temperature control within plus or minus 2°.”
Machine Time’s clients include NASA, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Blue Origin and more. U.S. manufacturing is such that Craig doesn’t need to look for clients – they find him.
Even though Craig never knows exactly where the parts he makes end up on rockets, he says he can’t watch a launch. “My feet are sweating, and I can’t be in the same room,” he says. “I just peek at the news the next day.”
Starting Machine Time, and the first five years, weren’t easy.
“From Easy Wood Tools, I had a big house, I had a Mercedes, I had Porsches, I had retirement,” Craig says. “I had to sell it all to fund this place. I didn’t take a paycheck for the first 5 years. My wife made $45,000 a year. We had to move into a house that was the size of a good-size living room, from a five-bedroom, five-bath mansion.”
Craig didn’t draw a paycheck until February 2022.
“Along the way it was so humbling, how many people were rooting for us, you know?” he says. “Chris [Schwarz] was like, ‘Hey, can you make these dividers?’ And I was like, ‘Probably not, but I’ll give it a try.’ I mean, it took us a month to figure out how to make anything at all productively. But now we’ve got an unbelievable team. I mean, a lot of these young guys are just sponges. And the relationship with Chris and Crucible has been pretty awesome.”
Like many shops, Machine Time’s first CNC was a Haas VF2.
The present location of Machine Time Inc., Nicholasville, Kentucky.
Craig says a super-clean and well-lit facility attracts great employees and customers.
Craig says the mix of making, say, rocket parts and hammers, has been great for the young folks in his apprenticeship program, too. Craig says it’s an honor to teach them a solid method to feed their family for the rest of their life.
“Solid,” he says. “They can go to any city in the country and make a living.”
Craig likes to show his apprentices the 38 ways he’s screwed something up and then tell them not to do it that way. Pick any other way but one of those ways, he’ll say. “Let me know how it works.” He loves being a machinist.
“It’s all I’ve ever been, a machinist,” he says. “I just think, I was made to do this. I’ve tried to not do it. It keeps coming back. It’s what I enjoy.”
Craig likes taking a big 600-pound hunk of aluminum and turning it into a part that might weigh 12 pounds, something thin, like a skeleton.
“It’s just an attractive process,” he says.
Craig says there are strong similarities and differences to woodworking. When woodworking with machines, often the cutting tool stays still and you pass the work across. In metalworking, it’s the opposite, he says.
“Really the precision of woodworking is pretty well directly proportional to the hand skills of the craftsman,” Craig says. “In metalworking, at least the parts we do, it’s more about the precision of the CNC machine.”
DMG Mori 5-axis CNC mills – $500,000 – are Craig’s machine of choice now.
All aerospace parts go through a rigorous CMM inspection – down to .0001” (about half the thickness of a Sharpie mark).
Everything Machine Time makes is programmed virtually via software. Craig and his crew see the entire operation take place on a computer screen first. Once perfected, the program is transferred to a machine.
“Now that sounds pretty straightforward but the devil is in the details,” he says. “There’s a lot of opportunity for mistakes. To program and make a part, it’s probably more than 10,000 decisions. Data points, rpms, speed rates, depth of cut, workholding – it’s the ultimate puzzle, just figuring out how to make this thing. In woodworking, there’s not really that much variety of joints. Everybody has a table saw, a band saw, a router. But in metalworking, I probably have more cutting tools than a whole community of woodworking. And I’m not saying one is harder than the other. I’m just saying there may be more overall variables to deal with…but maybe not.”
“To make one of those is a challenge,” he says. “But to make a thousand of them and to hand them off to an apprentice and foresee all the potential issues, that’s a good 180 hours of engineering and prototype work. It’s way up there. Especially on a thin part that can vibrate when you’re milling it. There’s a lot to it.”
Crucible Sliding Bevel.
And then there’s the Crucible’s Sliding Bevel. A collaboration between mechanical designer Josh Cook and Craig, Craig invented a way to allow users to independently control the rotation of the blade and the sliding of the blade.
“Engineering that, and I had to make a custom workholding, I probably had 400 hours in that,” Craig says. “I like what Chris once said: ‘Well, if you don’t like the price of it, we welcome you to go into small-scale manufacturing.’”
Of course, Craig acknowledges most of us are guilty of this line of thinking from time to time, including himself.
“When I go to the store and buy something made in China or a Mercedes or whatever, I look at it and think, ‘Well they got a machine and they just push a button and it spits it out,’” he says. “We just don’t have enough bandwidth to truly consider the depths of everything in our environment. We just don’t have enough brain to do that. And all we do is cuss when it doesn’t work. How does a car even hold together? There are 10,000 parts.”
Having been a machinist since the early 1980s, Craig has witnessed incredible advancements in the industry. Today, technology is key.
“We have to utilize every bit of CNC technology known to be or we can’t be accurate or we can’t be economical,” he says. An average CNC machine at Machine Time weighs 40,000 pounds, and has a 20,000 rpm spindle with 40 horsepower – and it costs half a million dollars.
“Weekly we’re bringing in new types of technology to the company, whether it’s how to hold a part with custom fixtures or another coolant system,” Craig says.
Always forward-thinking, Craig gets excited about technological advancements. He isn’t sentimental.
“Our vision as a company is to make manufacturing sexy again,” he says.
Craig says when he was a kid, it was considered cool if your dad worked in the plant. But now, it’s the opposite. Technology, he says, has the opportunity to change that.
“I grew up cranking handles on a Bridgeport mill or an engine lathe but machinists now are computer programmers at a basic level, with a high understanding of physics – we know materials, cutting tools and measuring,” he says. “As I get freed up from the day-to-day I’m going to try to hit the road and talk to colleges and high schools and just show them what we do, show them rocket parts and how we go about all this.”
Craig asks, “Have you ever seen a movie, heard a song, read a book that has a machinist in it?” He can think of one: “The Machinist.” It was a 2004 psychological thriller starring Christian Bale. It’s neither romantic nor uplifting. “I just want to see if I can move that needle a bit,” Craig says.
Craig’s vision for the future of Machine Time is to grow: increase benefits, capacity, all of it.
“The complete vision, as bold as it may be, is to create a standard machine shop model and apply it across the country,” he says. “Machine Time Nashville. Machine Time Las Vegas. And so on. That’s the goal. I don’t know that I’m the guy that can complete that but everything we do is in that direction. And whether we do another location or not, those are just good fundamental business practices.”
Craig says if he had $100 million, he wouldn’t retire. He’d have a bigger machine shop.
“We’ve got customers begging us to do more,” he says. “You know, I worked my butt off my whole life but with Easy Wood Tools, I always felt like it came too easy. It was not easy. But I was never sure that I earned it. I can tell you right now, at this point, I feel like I earned it.”
A Life Chronicled in Book Titles
Craig met his wife Donna on a blind date in 1984. She was 14, he was 16. They’ve been together 38 years. Today Noah is 24 years old, Sam is 22. They both work at Machine Time.
Donna and Craig, 1984.
“They both went their own ways for a little bit like most all young men do,” Craig says. “You know, your dad’s the biggest hero and the biggest asshole you’ve ever known as you grow up. And then when you go out in the real world, you realize it’s good to have somebody who truly has your back. So they’ve come back to my open arms!”
Craig and Donna after 38 years together.
Sam, Donna and Noah.
Craig and Donna live on 5 acres. Craig has a 30’ x 30’ detached garage at home that serves as a workshop – woodworking, as he doesn’t do any metalworking at home. He still loves woodworking and he makes cutting boards, bowls and dining room tables on weekends, giving most of it away to his employees and friends. He stores his wood in a 40’ x 60’ old tobacco barn.
Madrone burl bowl.
Maple burl bowl.
Pine desk for Donna.
A walnut table for an employee who celebrated five years with Machine Time. Buzz, the dachshund, is underneath.
Craig’s tobacco barn, where he stores his lumber.
“I love my lumber,” he says. “And bowl blanks. I’ve got two locations for Machine Time and I’ve got wood strewn across these two locations and my basement and my workshop and my barn so I can never find the bowl blank that I’ve got hidden who knows where and I’m still buying more.”
Craig likes to stay busy.
“I can’t even sit down on a Sunday afternoon unless my body gives out so there’s a curse to it,” he says. “Your strength is always a weakness. My weakness is that I can’t sit down and relax. Vacations, I’m not so great at that. I’m not saying one thing is better than the other.”
Craig used to travel a lot with Easy Wood Tools – he’d put up to 50,000 miles a year on his truck and fly. There were pluses and minuses. His boys were pretty young, but Craig says Donna likes to remind him that the family saw the country. They took the kids skiing, to Cancun, to Disney. They did all kinds of stuff. So although he was away from his family for periods of time, he also had the freedom to spend extended periods of time with them, too. These days?
“I don’t want to leave Donna, not even for an evening,” he says. “She’s my best buddy.”
Craig went through a really difficult period when he didn’t get all his money from Pony Tools and had to sell everything to start Machine Time.
“I about lost my mind,” he says.
To cope, he started acrylic painting.
“It’s probably the most emotional thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “You know the fear of failure? It’s not like making a machine part or making a table or making a bowl. Because I never know what the results are going to be. I don’t look at anything. I just smear it out. And it’s an amazing release. And maybe that’s because of the point in my life when I started doing it. I’m not an artist on paper at least, but it truly helped me keep my sanity. So I paint when I have to.”
“I often have no idea what I am painting till I’m 90-percent done – same with most things I do,” Craig says.
Craig spent the morning of our interview cleaning up 100 gallons of coolant that had spilled out on the floor from a CNC mill. He was mopping it up, throwing wood chips on it. The way he talks about setbacks, big and small, is admirable. They’re all lessons.
“Those lessons, from the bad times, oh my gosh, they’re so much better than the good ones,” he says. “Anybody can do good times and I don’t know if there are any lessons in them, really.”
Around the time Craig sold Easy Wood Tools he also started taking notes, called Book Titles. Today he has hundreds of them, a compilation of big statements condensed. Sometimes he quotes famous philosophers and makes notes. For example:
“The measure of a man is how much truth he can stand (truth always demands change). Nietzsche. AKA – Don’t fear the facts.”
Sometimes he writes his own. For example:
“The universe owes no debts. AKA – Believe that your effort is worth it.”
He calls them learning statements.
“They’re hard-earned and they came at a price,” he says. “And each of them came from a particular moment in time.”
His biggest one?
“Be willing to accept the consequences of doing the right thing.”
The Consequences of Doing the Right Thing
When Craig worked at the tobacco company, the HR manager told him that one day, when she interviewed there, the general manager asked her, “What makes you a good person?” And she told Craig that she didn’t have an answer for that. Craig thought about this for a few days.
“For me,” he says, “it’s, I’m willing to accept the consequences of doing the right thing. And so is Chris. And so is Megan [Fitzpatrick]. I think the word consequences is so often associated with ‘violation’ or ‘you broke the law.’ But the true consequences in life are for doing the right thing. And that’s the best long-term solution. Just look at the long-term. Just think about that, five years from now.”
And five years from now, Craig just wants to keep making ever-more difficult parts.
“It’s all about making jewelry, make it perfect, make it to print, make it amazing to the customer and then we’ll see if we can make money at it,” he says. “I don’t know if I even care about the money. I don’t know. I don’t know that I do.”
“Smile and you will end up happy.” – Craig
Craig likes to tell people this story.
“I feel like when I meet my maker, he’s only got one question: ‘Did you do everything you could with every day I gave you?’ I’ve already got my answer. So when things get too easy, I feel guilty. I’ve got to do more. I’m still walking. Chris is the same way. I’m not the only person. I’m not saying any of this is unique to me, that’s not my point. Everybody’s got me in them. But I’ve got everybody in me too. And we’re all just trying to get through the day and go to bed.”
One morning in 2020, as Craig was driving to Machine Time, tired, his funds drying up more and more by the day, he saw a familiar barn, for the first time really, along the way.
“These words came to me instantly and I pulled over and jotted them down just as I heard them,” he says.
Today, he has them printed and framed, below the above illustration of the barn.
We got a new and larger planer (so we can run single-board chair seats!), so we’re selling the 15″ Powermatic that’s been an excellent workhorse in our shop for a couple years. It has a Byrd Shelix head, and we were still on the first carbide knife edges (so there are three turns left on them – plenty of life). It’s 220 single phase, and on locking casters. $2,000 (retail is $4,449). NB: You must be able to get it into a truck without my help (I’m happy to let you use our engine hoist to lift it onto a lift gate). (No, we cannot ship it.)
Two common choices for Anarchist Tool Chest hinges: hand-forged hinges that lip over the back wall (left) and butt hinges. (Both of the above are from Horton Brasses.)
I promised students in my last Anarchist Tool Chest class that I’d do a video on cutting hinge mortises – so this is for them.
