Lost Art Press

Division of Labor

Posted on by fitz

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This industry as used in this report includes establishments engaged in the manufacture of sash, doors, blinds, window frames, door frames, moldings, stair material, newels, mantels, store fixtures, and all kinds of builders’ trim or finish.

A large number of the establishments are comparatively small and confine their operations wholly to custom work. Many of them are operated in connection with a retail lumber business. Some are run by contractors who carry on large building operations, and manufacture trim, mostly for their own use. Some custom mills in the larger cities are quite extensive and employ a large number of workmen.

A few establishments manufacture for the general market. Such establishments, as a rule, employ a larger number of workmen than the custom mills or factories, have their work more systematized, and pay somewhat lower wages. The latter fact may be accounted for by the greater division of labor whereby an employee, while being expert in the operation of a particular machine or in performing certain work, is not a skilled workman generally, and so can not command as high wages as an all-round skilled mechanic.
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Fit This In

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Despite an overheated travel and teaching schedule this summer, I have written three complete chapters to the “Campaign Furniture” book and am now fitting the final brasses on a teak campaign chest.

This book will be written by Dec. 31 with a release date in early 2014.

In addition to the progress on the campaign front, here’s what else is brewing at Lost Art Press.

1. I have finished revising “Art of Joinery,” and the page-design process will begin in short order. This second and expanded edition of “Art of Joinery” will be released this fall (I hope in time for Woodworking in America). This edition will introduce some new manufacturing changes to our 6×9 books, including patterned end sheets and deckle edges.

2. The deluxe version of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” is now in the hands of the printer. We are waiting for a press date. Designer Wesley Tanner is now turning his attention to designing the trade edition of the book. We have worked out some manufacturing details and can now say that the trade version will be $60. And it will be worth that.

3. John Hoffman is plowing through a critical part of our five-year project, cleaning up some files to get them ready for the designer. This massive, massive book is as important as anything we have done. And yes, it has something to do with Charles Hayward.

The primary reason I have been making so much progress these last two months has been that I’m not blogging much. So thanks to Jeff Burks to picking up my slack. His primary-source entries are the kind of thing you cannot get anywhere else. I know it takes a little more patience to read the longer-form entries written in Victorian-era language. But there is solid gold in every entry (not to mention the cool photos he digs up).

OK, back to the shop. I have to fit the last eight brasses on this chest.

— Christopher Schwarz

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The Specialist

Posted on by fitz

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Today it is the specialist who is sought after. This is particularly true of the professions, and in those trades that ought to be called professions, where a high degree of skill and technical knowledge are required. It is well known that no man “knows it all,” though it is quite possible that a man may know all that is known about one branch of trade or profession, if he follows it closely.

Every day, as it closes, leaves the world richer in knowledge, and the aggregation of many days produces a store of learning which vastly increases the quantity which the beginner must master ere he approaches proficiency. A couple of centuries ago all the world knew of the healing art was within easy grasp of any average intelligent person. Now there is no living physician, however eminent, who pretends to have mastered, or even to be moderately versed in all the details of medicine and surgery. So it is with science, with law, with mechanics, and, of course, and particularly so in the building trades.
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For Those with a Good Library

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Jennie Alexander has asked for help getting a full cite on a quotation that gets thrown out a lot in the world of hand-tool woodworking.

Here’s the quote: “Because people are dead, it does not follow that they were stupid.”

This is often attributed to David Pye and is said to be from his book “The Nature and Art of Workmanship” (Cambridge University Press, 1968). I don’t have this book (shame on me, I know).

If you own this book, could you check the above quote to make sure it’s accurate and report back the page number?

Your help is much appreciated.

— Christopher Schwarz

Selling Atkins Saws

Posted on by fitz

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Importance of Getting Your Article Right First and then Advertising it Emphasized by the Experience of the Manufacturers—How E.C. Atkins Started a Business that Now Employs 1200 Men in the Home Plant—Sought Publicity Through the Trade Papers First—Now Uses General Magazines and Weeklies.

“Get something worth selling— then use printers’ ink.”

This is the Golden Rule of business which E. C. Atkins & Co. followed for many years before they got the “something.” Then they applied the stimulant which produces business wealth — printers’ ink. The sum total is, the company is now one of the greatest producers of saws in the world and some say the greatest. Year after year the Atkins output increases in volume and the expenditures for advertising space grow apace.

The story of Atkins advertising is necessarily the story of Atkins saws, of the man who made both possible. As a maker of saws, the Atkins plant in Indianapolis is a pioneer in the development of the industry as it is known to-day. It was among the first to turn raw steel into a finished saw that the railroads, the trail-makers of civilization, might cut their paths through the woods of the Middle West.

With the Atkins saws, too, was produced some of the first lumber for homes, wagons, bridges, barges and boats of the pioneer settlers in the Mississippi Valley, for there was still much of a trackless forest about him when E. C. Atkins began to make saws. The Atkins works was doubtless the first in its line of industrial activity to see the wealth that is to be wrought out of printers’ ink.
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