I’m teaching two classes at the Florida School of Woodwork in Tampa in February 2020. Registration began yesterday, and let me repeat the two most important words from my first sentence: Florida and February.
The Tampa school is relatively new and has been the location of Fine Woodworking’s Hands On events, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about the school and its facility. Here are some details on my classes.
We’ll be making the American Welsh Stick Chair that is featured in “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” It is a great introduction to chairmaking – no previous experience required. And the emphasis is on using mostly common woodworking tools and processes. No steam bending or green woodworking is required for this class.
In this class we’ll make a reproduction of a Japanese sliding-lid box I measured while I was overseas. It’s a fun project to make. Though the joinery is simple – finger joints and steel dome-head nails – the real challenge is keeping all the details crisp and producing beautiful surfaces.
I hope you will consider joining me. I don’t teach many classes these days, and I’ve never taught this far south.
Part 1 includes the drinking of alcoholic beverages in the workshop and at the work site, the practice of footings and fees collected in the workshop and drinking after the workday ended.
Before water was clean and safe to drink the consumption of cider, ale and wine was a normal activity. Cider, cyder or sider was made from a variety of fruits each summer and autumn and ale was brewed in the home every few days. The day started with a ‘morning’ or ‘eye-opener’ and ended with a nightcap. Hard cider and ale were a significant source of daily calories and alcoholic mixtures were considered healthy. Alcohol consumption was also a normal part of working in the trades, both in the workshop and at work sites. The men of the trades became known for their drinking habits.
The Custom of the Shop
The Mudejar carpenters of Teruel Cathedral (Aragon, Spain) painted on a crossbeam, est. 15th c.
The artists responsible for painting the ceilings and crossbeams of Tereul Cathedral included the central figure offering liquid refreshment to the carpenters, with ready acceptance by the one on the right.
Peter Parler, the builder of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, was “awarded ad hoc sums for purchases, payments or bonus related to the building site. These amounts were related to…measuring cords, nails and metal sheets for templates…when 60 groschen were probably spent on a barrel of young beer distributed among the cathedral workers.”
In 1901, Stone – An Illustrated Magazine published an article “Rites and Ceremonies Connected with Building.” The last part of the article used contemporary diaries and accounts to describe the numerous alcoholic needs of the builders of the first stone building in Albany, New York, in 1656. A staircase was included in the plans: “A winding staircase was a feature of the fort, and when this was finished, five guilders’ worth of liquor gave the workmen the necessary winding gait to test it.”
You can read the account of the Albany stone building in the following link:
The Stent Panel, 17th century, England or Northern Europe.
The workday usually started close to dawn and breaks for breakfast and lunch were taken in the shop. Here’s an account from an article by Ivan Sparkes article about the chairmakers of High Wycombe, England:
Following the (some might say hard-drinking) traditions of immigrants from Europe, workmen in America also had plenty to drink. And as was traditional in Europe, the master was expected to provide the grog. When a ship-builder in Medford, Massachusetts decided not to provide the daily rum the men were not happy.
When Henry Hayes was bound into an apprenticeship in High Wycombe in 1824 among the many prohibitions was this term “He shall not…haunt taverns or playhouses.” Soon he would learn a tavern wasn’t needed in order to drink. Ten years later James Hopkinson was apprenticed at age 15 in Nottingham, and he very quickly learned the payments required to work in the shop: “…having cut out the wood for a table, I was told that I must pay a shilling for them to drink my health, and also that they expected my father to pay a sovereign towards a binding supper…and every fresh job that I had not made one like before, I had to pay a shilling or I should not have been allowed to make it.”
The footings, fees and fines that were required in a craftsmen’s workshop were extensive. In 1839 the 6th edition of John Dunlop’s “The Philosophy of Artificial and Compulsory Drinking Usage in Great Britain and Ireland” was published. Dunlop was the president of The General Temperance Union of Scotland and his book gathered information on drinking practices across society, for men, women and children, and in skilled and unskilled jobs. The summary for cabinetmakers and joiners in Scotland is as follows:
The summaries for the woodworking shops in England and Ireland are similar. Money for drinks was expected when a man was about to get married, when a child was born and in some cases when a workman wore a new shirt. It is important to remember Dunlop’s book has summaries of workshop practices and not every workshop surveyed had the same level of fees and fines for the purposes of drinking. There may also be a certain level of exaggeration on the part of workmen in an effort to shock a temperance worker. On the other hand, it is not surprising apprentices ran away and some men abandoned working in these shops altogether.
The Ivan Sparkes article also includes a passage on how disputes between two men or a disruptive man were handled.
Although drinking ale, beer, wine and “ardent” spirits was perfectly acceptable, being bowz’d, buskey or buzzey was frowned upon.
One of the founding fathers of America enjoyed his beer and wine, however, writing under the pseudonym Silence Dogood, he cautioned against overindulging and the loud and public drunk. Silence, otherwise known as Benjamin Franklin, gathered together all the terms used to describe the overindulged and in January 1737 published his “Drinker’s Dictionary” in the Pennsylvania Gazette. You can read the full dictionary here.
Being a known drunk could have consequences for a craftsman. In his article “Chairmaking in Low Cringles in Yorkshire” Christopher Gibert included this note from the account book of the Laycock family:
After Work and Possibly On the Way Home
Walking to a public house with only horses, carts and carriages in the way of traffic, was often the next step in the daily alcoholic intake of a craftsmen. (I have personally observed this except for the walking, horses, carts and carriages.) When it became unseemly for a woman to be seen in a public house, drinking establishments became an enclave for men.
Craftsmen met to relax after work and before making their way home. Singing bawdy songs and songs about their favorite beverages was a popular pastime. Broadsides printed with the verses of ballads were pasted on the walls of public houses. Although we don’t know the melodies of all the old ballads we do have the verses. It is not too difficult to imagine that after a few beers a lively group of today’s woodworkers could come up with a tune to match the lyrics.
Because even drinkers want value for their hard-earned wages, one popular ballad from the around the middle of the 17th century was “Good Ale For My Money” and here’s a sample verse with the chorus:
In one of the verses from “The Ballad-Makers Complaint” a woodcarver has a bit of a problem and comes up with a clever solution.
One song, that may trace its roots to pagan times is still familiar to us in the 21st-century. Steve Winwood and Traffic gave it new life in their version titled “John Barleycorn Must Die.” In the 17th century the song had various titles (and verses) and one of the more popular titles was:
John Barleycorn personifies the grain that can be made into beer or whisky. In a macabre manner the song describes the planting, harvesting and brewing of the barley. You can listen to a version of the song here.
Spending too much time in a public house could send a man and his family into poverty. Dipping back into John Dunlop’s book on “Drink Usage” he noted an additional practice detrimental to the wage earner. “Some masters and foremen keep a public-house, where they excite the men to take drink upon credit, and take it off the week’s wages: this is said to be “bringing sucken to their own mill.”
There is a similar passage in Ivan Sparkes’ article on High Wycombe, “Indeed one wife complained of the late payment of wages on Saturday evening, when the men would have to stand around and drink their future wages while waiting to be paid. She wrote to the local newspaper of the bad example set by her husband and his mates to their 12-year-old son, when they would come home tottering, have drunk a good part of their pay packet.”
The drinking song “The Jovial Cutlers” from the late 18th century includes a passage in the voice of a grieved wife who ultimately resorts to the Lysistrata stategy:
The public house was also where the early Mechanics’ Societies were formed and they paid their ‘rent’ in drinks bought from the owner. In 1790 a law was passed in England that prohibited payment of wages in liquor. It would be well into the 19th century before there was a law prohibiting the practice of requiring workers to collect their pay in public houses.
If you would like to read more about hazing, bullying, coercion, underage drinking, beatings, shunning (sent to Coventry) and extortion in workshops you can find John Dunlop’s book on “Drinks Usage” here.
The University of California at Santa Barbara has a database on English Broadsheet Ballads. You can read the text, or sing! along to “Have You any Work for a Cooper? OR a Comparison Betwixt a Coopers, and a Joyners Trade” from 1681 here.
Part 2 of The ‘Spirited’ Workshop will cover Saint Monday, a glimpse at how much alcohol was being consumed in the 19th century and a short discussion of temperance.
I bought an old Westclox school clock for the shop right before our building’s 2018 Christmas party. Why did I buy a clock for a party? Read this.
When I received the old clock I plugged it in. Nothing happened. So I did the natural thing with old mechanisms. I made sure it wasn’t heating up, and I walked away.
About 30 minutes later, the clock was running. After some testing, I determined it was losing 10 minutes a day (this model has no way to adjust its run speed). So I did the natural thing with mechanical devices. I corrected the error every morning and let it run.
Nine months later, the clock is running perfectly. I haven’t touched it in a month.
Unlike many digital products, mechanical devices tend to work better the more you use them. The more I use my laptop, the more disk errors accumulate, the processor slows and eventually something crashes and I have to restart. With my old machines, the more they run, the better they run. Yes, there is maintenance (lubrication, of course). But a squirt of grease while the machine is running is all it takes to keep things moving.
I operate the about the same. Mornings are hard. When I teach at schools where they want you working at 7 a.m., I warn my students that my mental capacity hovers at 40 percent until 9 a.m.
I’ve always been this way, even when I was 16. Coffee helps. But being awake and moving is the only real solution. By 11 a.m. I will talk your ear off (about woodworking). And I’ll go until midnight – until I pull the plug on my brain.
I was reminded of all this today because I had to buy a turntable. My old 1970s-era BSR finally crapped out for good. I tried some of the new turntables that have flashy electronics but few mechanical amenities (you want me to change the belt to go from 45 to 33 rpm like on a drill press?). I have not been impressed.
So I went to the local used stereo store where I’ve been shopping for 23 years. I’m not an audiophile. Vinyl is just the way I prefer to consume music. So I told them I wanted to spend $200 or $300 on a turntable. And they said: That’s not possible.
All the vinyl enthusiasts have scooped up the old and excellent turntables.
“So what have you got?” I asked.
“An old BSR,” he replied. “It might last you another 30 years.”
It looked like my old BSR with its fake wood-grain stickers, but this one is a tad fancier as it has pitch control. An upgrade.
I paid the guy (it cost almost nothing) and took it home. I plugged it in and turned it on.
Nothing happened.
You know the drill. I walked away.
Now I am on my fourth album, fine tuning the tone arm so it will neither skip nor wear out my old records, some of which I’ve owned since 1986 (R.E.M.’s “Chronic Town” on blue vinyl for one).
I know that Britt Daniels of “Spoon” sings “Don’t buy the Realistic.” But honestly, in this day and age, you should probably buy the Realistic.
Robert Wearing’s “The Solution at Hand: Jigs & Fixtures to Make Benchwork Easier” has been printed and is en route to our warehouse in Indiana. As soon as it arrives, we will discontinue the special pre-publication offer where you receive a free PDF of the book when you purchase the hardback.
After Monday, purchasing the hardback and PDF together will be $30. If you order before midnight Eastern time on Monday, you will get both for $24.
“The Solution at Hand” is a great companion book to Wearing’s “The Essential Woodworker.” While “The Essential Woodworker” gives you essential basic information on using hand tools, “The Solution at Hand” is filled with hundreds of jigs, fixtures and appliances that make handwork a little easier, especially for repetitive operations.
You can read all the details and download a free excerpt here.
When I finish teaching a class at a woodworking school, there is always a debriefing. The owner asks me how the class went. Were there rough spots? Things that could be improved the next time? It’s standard “let’s be responsible adults” chatting.
That is never the case with Marc Adams, who runs the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in central Indiana. I started teaching there 15 years ago, and every debriefing conversation has been shockingly intimate, personal and cathartic.
Marc and I are about as different as two people can be in the way we see the world and approach woodworking. Yet we get along really well. We are both hard-driving, Type-A family men who juggle our love for our work with our love for our wives, kids, compatriots and craft.
So on Friday, Marc called me into his office after I finished teaching 17 (!) students to make an American Welsh Stick Chair and we went through the regular motions. Marc dropped my paycheck on the floor to ensure it didn’t bounce. He asked how my assistants (Doug, Eric and Will) did. Then he started into deeper stuff.
“So you’re a writer, furnituremaker, publisher, teacher,” Marc said. “So what…”
I braced myself to offer the answer I always give to the question, “So what are you, really? A writer? Furnituremaker? Publisher?”
I even opened my mouth to start forming the words. But the question I was expecting didn’t come.
“So what,” Marc asked, “makes you happy?”
It was like someone had punched me in the gut. I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that question. I sucked in a big breath and thought about it for a half-second.
“I like to build furniture based on my research and write about it,” I replied.
“Is that what you do?” Marc asked.
“Sometimes,” I said. I then started explaining where my income came from, but that wasn’t the answer that Marc was seeking. So I ended my vomiting of my 1040 with, “Sometimes, I get to do that.”
Marc nodded. And then he moved onto other stuff.
On the drive home, I put on the saddest album I own, Magnolia Electric Co.’s “What Comes After the Blues.” Sad music and the open road always opens my mind.
One of the founding fathers of America enjoyed his beer and wine, however, writing under the pseudonym Silence Dogood, he cautioned against overindulging and the loud and public drunk. Silence, otherwise known as Benjamin Franklin, gathered together all the terms used to describe the overindulged and in January 1737 published his “Drinker’s Dictionary” in the Pennsylvania Gazette. You can read the full dictionary 
Robert Wearing’s “