Editor’s note: The third edition of “Cut & Dried” should arrive in February. You can sign up to be notified when it arrives here. In this post, author Richard Jones explains his update to Chapter 6.
Rombald’s Moor: The opening image to Chapter 6.
In 2021, I decided I ought to update “Cut & Dried,” and the third reprint of it at the end of 2024 was a good opportunity to do so. For a long time I had been aware of two ways to determine wood moisture content, i.e., the “dry basis” (db) and the “wet basis” (wb). In Section 6.6 Measuring Wood Moisture Content in the already printed book, I emphasised we woodworkers use only wood’s dry weight as the base weight to assess wood moisture content. This dry basis methodology wasn’t actually named in the book and nor was the alternative wet basis methodology named or described except the wet basis was hinted at in an exchange I had with a furniture student at the end of page 76 and into page 77.
However, since the last printing of “Cut & Dried” in 2019, things have evolved and environmental issues are ever more pressing. The drive is on to reduce carbon emissions, reduce particulates and pollutants etc. I am not here to proselytise on these issues but burning biomass fuel in the form of logs, wood chips, pellets etc. is one potential source of particulates and pollution. Many people and organisations around the world burn biomass fuel for heating homes, cooking, industrial boilers etc., and burning wet fuel is both inefficient and pollutant. The U.K. government, for example, created legislation to regulate the supply of biomass fuel, including setting the maximum moisture content levels for biomass fuel suppliers, and putting in place organisations to verify that such suppliers meet required government standards.
Crucially the authorised method of determining wood moisture content in the biomass fuel sector is the wet basis. It’s the case that the biomass fuel sector might be considered peripheral to us woodworkers with our focus on making things out of wood, and where we want to know its moisture content, but the biomass fuel sector, like use, require felled trees, so there is an environmental impact which deserves some discussion in “Cut & Dried.”
To illustrate the difference between dry basis and wet basis calculations for wood moisture content I’m including some text from the latest iteration of section 6.6 of “Cut & Dried,” but modified slightly for this blog post’s purposes.
A learner approached me with the following figures for a piece of wood both before and after oven-drying:
Wet Weight = 20 grammes
Oven-Dry Weight = 15 grammes
This learner questioned the calculated moisture content result. Using the formula already provided she calculated: ((20 – 15) / 15) X 100 = 33.3%MCdb. This learner, in trying to grasp the basis of the calculation, changed the formula to calculate thus: ((WW – ODW) / WW) X 100 giving the sum ((20 – 15) / 20) X 100 = 25%wb. We discussed the different results, i.e., 33.3 percent and 25 percent, and it is easy to mentally visualise a 5 gramme weight loss is a quarter of the 20 gramme wet weight of the sample, i.e., 25 percent. Similarly, it’s quickly apparent that a 5 gramme weight gain is one third (33.3 percent) of 15 grammes, the sample’s oven-dry weight. As soon as the learner understood the base line for the dry basis calculation is the dry weight of the wood, not the pre-dried wet weight, all was clear to her. She was then able to comprehend how, using the dry basis methodology of assessing wood moisture content wood MC figures such as 100 percent or greater were possible, e.g., wet weight, 200 grammes and oven-dry weight of 100 grammes.
This learner’s confusion had led her to unknowingly stumble upon the methodology for assessing wood moisture content referred to earlier, i.e., the “wet basis” (Forestry Commission, 2011). To calculate the wood moisture content percentage on the wet basis (wb) the formula given by The Forestry Commission (2011, p5) is:
“The MCwb = (the weight of water in a sample/ total initial weight of the sample) X 100.” MCwb as indicated earlier, means Moisture Content Wet Basis. Results are expressed as a percentage.
Further reading, if so desired, can be found at the following links:
Late this year, we sold out of “Cut & Dried”. Author Richard Jones had some changes he wanted to make in the third edition. This week, we sent the book, with these changes, to press.
Some of the changes were small corrections, such as moving an illustration up a bit to better match the text and a degree mark slightly lower and larger than the rest.
Other changes were more significant.
This includes an extensive rewrite of section 6.6: Measuring Wood Moisture Content. Here, Richard adds new information on how biomass fuel moisture content is assessed, which differs from the methodology used for assessing the moisture content of wood used by woodworkers.
Richard wanted to add this because it’s particularly relevant to environmental considerations, such as reducing pollution from wood smoke.
This addition added a few pages to the book, which may not seem like a big deal until you consider the table of contents, text in chapters directing readers to a particular page number, and the index. We were lucky enough to once again work with Rachel, who created the original index and was familiar with the book, to make the necessary index updates.
Another significant change is the cover. Since the book’s second printing in 2019, paper and printing costs have skyrocketed. When we received the quote for the third printing, we had two choices: Increase the retail price (by a lot) or ditch the dust jacket and switch to paper over boards for the cover. We chose to keep the retail price the same. This means the design on the dust jacket will be printed directly on the hardback cover. The 9” x 12” book will still be printed on heavy #80 matte-coated paper.
When reviewing ‘Cut & Dried’ back in 2019, J. Norman Reid of Highland Woodworking wrote: “‘Cut & Dried’ is one of the most complete and detailed works on wood and wood technology available to non-specialist cabinetmakers. For this reason, it merits a place on the reference shelves of all serious woodworkers. I highly recommend this important book.”
“Cut & Dried” should be back in stock in early 2025.
Chair by Terry Ratliff, featured on the cover of Andy Glenn’s “Backwoods Chairmakers.”
At 2 p.m. (Eastern time) on Friday we will open up ticket sales for our Backwoods Chairmakers event that will take place on June 2 at Berea College.
Tickets will be $33 for the event. This fee covers only the honorariums for the 13 chairmakers who have agreed to attend. Berea College Student Craft and Lost Art Press have both volunteered time, people and space to make this event affordable for everyone.
However, if you would like to add a little extra to help cover lunches for the attending speakers, credit card fees and gasoline, you can – only if you want, of course.
The event will begin at 9 a.m. on Sunday, June 2, and will end at 5:30 p.m. There will be demonstrations, lectures, a gallery of chairs by the chairmakers and opportunity to meet the makers and Andy Glenn, the author of “Backwood Chairmakers.”
We have space for only 200 attendees. And each ticket buyer will be limited to four tickets (to prevent scalping).
The tickets will be sold through our Ticket Tailor website (the same site that handles our class registration).
First published in 1987, “The Workbench Book” remains the most complete book on the most important tool in the woodworker’s shop.
“The Workbench Book” is a richly illustrated guided tour of the world’s best workbenches — from a traditional Shaker bench to the mass-produced Workmate. Author and workbench builder Scott Landis visited dozens of craftsmen, observing them at work and listening to what they had to say about their benches. The result is an intriguing and illuminating account of each bench’s strengths and weaknesses, within the context of a vibrant woodworking tradition.
This fully illustrated guide features more than 275 photos of beautifully crafted workbenches as well as complete plans for four benches. “The Workbench Book” explores benches from around the world, from every historical era and for all of the common (and esoteric) woodworking specialties.
This 248-page hardbound edition from Lost Art Press ensures “The Workbench Book” will be available to future generations of woodworkers. Produced and printed in the United States, this classic text is printed on FSC-certified recycled paper and features a durable sewn binding designed to last generations. The 1987 text remains the same in this edition and includes a foreword by Christopher Schwarz.
I met Frank Klausz before I met his workbench. He was seated next to me in the front row during a lecture given by Ian Kirby (Chapter 6). Klausz himself was scheduled to speak about wood finishing the next day. Kirby’s talk centered on his workbench, an example of which he’d brought along. Although the bench had evolved out of Kirby’s own English tradition, from Klausz’s Hungarian perspective it was hardly a cabinetmaker’s bench at all. It had no tail vise and the front vise was of the metal, quick-action persuasion. Klausz fidgeted through most of Kirby’s talk, and at the first break he sprang from his chair and led me to the bench, where he passionately ennumerated his objections.
To understand the depth of Klausz’s convictions, you need to know about his background. Thirty years ago in Hungary, at the age of 14, Frank began his woodworking career in an apprenticeship system that had remained essentially unchanged since the Middle Ages. What was unusual about it, even by European standards, was that Klausz entered into a formal, contractual apprenticeship with his own father. “I paid the highest price for my trade,” Klausz explains. “Once I apprenticed, I didn’t have a father, I had a master.” And a stern master at that. Of the half-dozen workers in his father’s cabinet shop, it was Frank who was taken to task if something wasn’t quite right. Perhaps wary of his own son’s competition, the elder Klausz withheld certain construction tips until the very end of Frank’s apprenticeship. Watching his father work, Frank asked, “How can you do that so fast?” His father replied, “After ten or fifteen years you’re gonna be a pretty good beginner yourself.”
At the end of four years, Frank became a certified journeyman cabinetmaker, on his way to becoming a master (which required one year of work in each of three different shops). Ten years later, Frank and his wife, Edith, packed their lives in three suitcases and left Hungary. Like the journeymen of old, Frank was on the road-except that his only tools were his hands and head, not chisels and saws in a toolbox strapped to his back. By 1969, the couple was living on Long Island, where Frank ran through a succession of jobs – carpentry, casework and so on – trying to find his way back to the work he’d trained to do. It was five more years before he could set up his own shop in a two-car garage in New Jersey. Finally, in 1985, Frank and Edith built the shop they’d been dreaming of.
I went to visit Frank in his Pluckemin, New Jersey, workshop and to meet his workbench in the flesh. My first and most startling impression was of the workshop itself. I had primed myself for an old-world sweatshop, with young apprentices chained to their benches. In Hungary, Frank’s father had two small workrooms-one for the benches and another (unheated, even in winter) for the machinery. When lumber had to be cut from a 20-ft. log, the workers fed it through an open window at one end of the machine shop, across the bandsaw and out again through the opposite window over rollers placed at the sill.
Klausz’s own shop couldn’t be more of the ‘new world.’ The single-story, cinder-block building sprawls a full 100 ft. in length. Painted off-white inside, it is bright and airy, with windows on all sides and large skylights. If Frank had mill a mast for the Constitution, I doubt that he’d even have to open a window.
Frank takes me on a quick tour of the shop to show me their work. While one of his four employees might be building a set of computer cabinets of walnut-faced plywood, another could be restoring an 18th-century English grandfather clock or stripping an office desk. At the far end of the building, we pause for a moment while Frank sprays the handrails for a casket he has built for an elderly client, whose house he has almost entirely restored. In the old country, Klausz explains, there was a cradle-to-grave relationship between the craftsman and his client. As his last commission for the deceased, the cabinetmaker would appear at the funeral, in his Sunday best, to drive the nails into the lid of the box. Clearly, a workbench in this shop needs to be versatile.
According to another old-world tradition, Frank explains, workbenches were passed on from one generation to another. The woodworker was the custodian, not the owner, of his bench – just as he was the custodian of the knowledge of his trade. The workbench took on a life of its own; it became somehow larger than the sum of the men who had planed upon it.
For Frank that chain had been broken. He had brought no workbench with him from Europe, and had to use commercially made benches for years, never having the time to make his own. But, when he found that there weren’t enough benches to go around in the new shop, he decided to build one. “The reason I made one is that you can’t buy one good enough,” he told me. It seemed to Frank that commercially made workbenches were growing smaller and lighter, even as they got more expensive. I also suspect it was Frank’s way of saying he’d come home.
Klausz, with a glued-up tail vise joined with hand-cut dovetails.
There wasn’t any guesswork or design involved when Frank built his bench. He didn’t reinvent the wheel. “It’s a copy,” he says. He had measured two benches at his father’s shop, a third in Vienna and another in Belgium. They were all within an inch of each other. “Apart from little touches like the stops and oil dish, the only difference I found was that some craftsmen treat their benches with loving care and some don’t …. Except for the metal vise screws, my bench is the same as my grandfather’s…. [The design] is so well worked out – if it hadn’t been good, Grandpa would have done something about it.”
When a customer enters Frank’s shop, he encounters the workbench, which also functions as a desk and business counter. Even if the visitor doesn’t comment on the bench, it’s a fair bet he’s noticed it. If Klausz could fit his workbench in his wallet, he would hand it out like a business card – it is his best foot and he puts it forward.
Klausz begins to explain his workbench by underlining a point too often overlooked-location. As the most important tool in the shop, the bench’s placement with respect to work flow (of materials, to and from machines, for finishing and so on) is crucial. Lighting is also important, and ideally should cast no shadows on the benchtop. Hand tools should be readily accessible. Frank’s are kept in a wall-mounted cabinet, only 5 ft. from the shoulder vise of the bench.
Of equal importance is the auxiliary set-up table near the bench, shown below. This low table is the right size (40 in. by 60 in. by 27 in. high) for all kinds of gluing, assembly or finishing. Anything that’s too messy or large for the workbench can be done on the table, leaving the benchtop free for trimming joints and other last-minute tasks. Rather than cluttering the main bench with drawers, Klausz built open shelves and storage bins in the base of the set-up table to hold hardware, small power tools and accessories.
This 27-in.-high set-up table is a versatile companion to Klausz’s bench. It helps organize hardware and portable power tools, and provides a nearby, convenient surface for gluing and finishing. Hardware is stored in 12 plastic bins, and three drawers pull out from beneath the 40-in. by 60-in. particleboard and plywood top.
In my travels I’d seen several variations on Klausz’s workbench, variously referred to as Scandinavian, Danish, Swedish and European. These workbenches all have as a common denominator the ‘dog-leg’ shoulder vise. I thought I had heard most of the arguments for and against this vise; as far as I had been able to discover, the only craftsmen who liked it were those who had trained on it, usually in strict apprenticeships.
I posed the same objections I’d heard to Klausz: The vise isn’t strong enough to withstand heavy clamping pressure. It’s awkward to work around the large corner. The pivoting clamping board often has to be held with one hand to keep it from binding as it’s wound in and out. You can’t clamp a board anywhere on the bench for crosscutting.
Frank’s initial response was a reflex: “If you’re a cabinetmaker, if you do casegoods, frames, if you plane, saw or sand wood, if you do dovetails … I can’t see anything quicker or better.” Later, he explained that the floating clamping board grips well on tapered stock, and one end of a long board (or a door) can be clamped firmly behind the screw while the other end is supported by the portable bench slave, shown at right. But it was only when I watched him dovetail a drawer that I truly began to appreciate the shoulder vise.
Through dovetails are one of the traditional cabinetmaker’s preferred joints, and when Frank cuts a dovetailed drawer he puts the bench through its paces. “Good craftsmen,” Frank says, “not only do things well, but do them with speed…. If you want to make a good joint, you can do it just about as fast by hand as with a machine, especially if you’re doing just one.” With the drawer parts milled to length and thickness, Frank uses a mortising gauge to scribe the thickness of the stock across the ends of the boards. Then he slaps the first piece-the drawer front or back – upright in the shoulder vise.
The quick-action feature of a Record vise is nice, Frank admits, but he rarely has to move the screw on his vise more than a single turn. Because there are no guide rods or screws running below the vise, a long board such as a drawer front can be clamped through the opening, not just gripped in the top few inches of the jaw or along one edge. The work won’t twist and there’s no need to block the other edge of the vise to keep the jaws parallel. (The clamping board pivots on the end of the screw to accept tapered work, and it should move freely without needing to be guided by hand.)
Klausz uses a bench slave (top) to support on end of a long board clamped in the shoulder vise. When he cuts dovetails (bottom) he clamps the board vertically in the shoulder vise, directly behind the screw. There are no guide rods to interfere with the work. He aligns his arm and body with the direction of the cut and, standing above it, he can keep an eye on both sides of the line.
At 33 in. high, Frank’s bench is lower than I’m used to, but the shoulder vise helps to compensate by allowing you to clamp work securely at many different heights. If it’s too high, it vibrates; if it’s too low, it’s uncomfortable. Frank holds the top edge of the drawer front about 4 in. or 5 in. off the bench – a comfortable sawing height – and clamps the board tight. He wheels around to grab a backsaw from the tool cabinet and begins cutting pins – without stopping to lay them out. In about as much time as it took him to rip a bageI on the bandsaw during a coffee break, he defines all the pins at one end of the board with six sawcuts. Once the pins are cut on both ends of the drawer, front and back, the action moves to the other end of the bench. Frank C-clamps the part to be chopped in front of the tail vise – never on it. The force of the mallet blows is transferred directly through the leg to the floor. Whether he’s working on one drawer or six, all the parts are stacked and staggered, one on top of another, so that he has ready access to all the joints. At one point, Frank demonstrates how, during a full day of this work, he would drop to his knees to rest his back (there’s a rubber mat in front of the bench to provide a cushion). This places the work at his chest, instead of at his hip, and gives him a closer view as well.
To chop the pins, Klausz stacks the drawer sides and clamps them to the bench in front of the the vise.
Next, with the parts laid out on the benchtop, he marks the tails from the pins. Then he’s back at the shoulder vise to cut them out. During these operations, the tool tray holds the marking gauge, hacksaw, pencil, square, chisel and mallet-out of harm’s way but easily retrieved. The tray isn’t a repository for yesterday’s project, and Frank keeps it swept clean. Cutting dovetails by eye requires having your wits about you, or it won’t be long before you’re cutting pins on one end of a board and tails on the other. A clean, orderly benchtop is essential.
With the vise snugged tight, Klausz sets the benchdogs with a few smart laps on the end of the board and the head of the dog. A piece of scrap protects the board from the face of the metal dog.
Before the drawer is assembled, Frank planes the machine marks off the inside of each piece. He moves back to the other end of the bench and gently closes the tail vise on a drawer side, using a piece of scrap between the metal dogs and the ends of the board. It doesn’t take much pressure. The benchdogs do two jobs: they grab the wood and, because they’re angled, pull it down. Their down-clamping action is important, especially on thin stock, which will chatter if suspended in midair. To make the most of this feature, Frank taps down on each end of the board in front of the dog, seating it on the bench. He prefers metal dogs to wood because of their strength; they’re more effective at pulling the work down, and he can knock the dogs up an inch or more above the benchtop without having to worry about flexing or breaking them. The dogs can also be reversed and used to pull apart a piece of furniture. For this reason, the dogholes are cut at an 88° angle – any steeper and the dogs might slide out of their slots.
Klausz reverses the dogs in their holes and opens the tail vise gradually to take a chair apart for repair.
“When I plane, I use my body weight and just push down,” Frank explains. “This gives me hours of easy planing, without pushing and shoving.” The bench has to be the right height for this. To demonstrate his formula for bench height, Frank stands next to the bench with his arms at his side and his palms turned down – the benchtop grazes his palms. He is 6 ft. tall and his bench is less than 3 ft. high. Frank planes in two motions – a long, cutting, power stroke and a feathered return as he tilts the plane slightly to lift the blade off the wood and to resume position for the next cut. The bench doesn’t move under the pressure of his strokes.
Sometimes if a piece is small, Frank glues up right on the bench, spreading a cloth to protect the top. But more often, he turns to the set-up table behind the bench. A quick swipe with a wet rag removes any errant drops.
When the glue is dry, he planes the drawer sides by gripping the frame in the front jaw of the tail vise. The other end of the drawer, which sticks out from the vise, can be supported at any height by the bench slave.
To finish the job, Frank planes the top and bottom edges of the drawer flush. He reclamps the drawer flat on the bench between dogs-using the front doghole in the tail vise when he can and keeping the vise opening small. “You want to have the workpiece on the bench as n1uch as possible, not on the vise,” he says. “It puts less stress on the vise itself. The strongest support is up front, over the legs.”
Klausz’s drawer demonstration answered many of my doubts about the shoulder vise: It doesn’t need to be immensely strong, because the screw is always centered behind the workpiece. Whatever inherent awkwardness exists in its design is at least partially offset by this convenient feature, which cannot be found on any other conventional front vise. The clamping board rarely binds in everyday use, because generally it is adjusted in small increments, and it’s the only vise I know of that clamps non-square stock as easily as square stock.
This flip-up padauk stop is all that is needed to hold most boards for crosscutting.
I had one final reservation, though. There’s no easy way to clamp a board for crosscutting anywhere on the bench. “You don’t have to,” Klausz says. All that’s necessary is a small stop, and he flips up the pivoting bench stop at the right end of the bench and pushes a board against it to demonstrate. Its location on the right end of the bench is also more convenient for a right-handed worker than crosscutting off of the left end.
If my own reservations about the bench were mainly resolved, it was clear that Frank had none at all. “If you’re a cabinetmaker, you should have a bench like this,” he said.
With the addition of Kale Vogt to our staff at Lost Art Press, I have been pondering the meaning and implications of the word “apprenticeship.”
For me it is a real thing. Apprenticeship requires papers that lay out an agreement. Something like: I will do this. You will do that. And in the end, this is where we will be.
I bristle at people who use the term “apprenticeship” in a casual way. As if it were something that could be completed in a few weeks or months of training. That’s not the way I see it. After traveling and teaching in Germany for the last 15 years, I have developed a respect for their system.
There are rules. And following them (or not) ends with opportunities (or problems).
And while I believe in the system, I am a bit shy about its terms. I would never use the word “master” to describe a person unless he or she possessed a meisterbrief. Even then, the word “master” is problematic in America because of its association with slavery.
And then we have the word “journeyman.” What about the women who have been engaged in the trade for centuries?
All this is to say: I want to train Kale in a traditional way without traditional labels. What does that mean exactly? Stay tuned.
On the Abuse of Apprentices The other aspect of apprenticeship that is troubling is the abuse. I know that Jane Rees is working on a book on woodworking apprenticeships, and I hope she will find examples where the apprentices were treated with respect and honor.
However, most of the old sources I know of paint apprenticeship as time of abuse and manipulation.
Then there’s the alcohol.
One of the books in our library is a doozy: “The Philosophy of Artificial and Compulsory Drinking Usage in Great Britain and Ireland” (1839). It was published by the teetotalers of the time and was an account of how alcohol was used to control and wreck the working people of the United Kingdom.
What is “drinking usage?” It is a social or business norm where drinking is required. You enter a shop as an apprentice, so you must pay a “footing.” The payment is used in drink for your shopmates. You are taught to dovetail and therefore must pay another fee in alcohol to learn that skill.
What if you refuse to pay? You are sent to “Coventry.” When a worker is sent to Coventry, no one will help them with their work, answer questions or even acknowledge them. And if the poor sod complains to the owner of the shop, then the fees and abuse are doubled.
For the last few days, I have revisited “The Philosophy of Artificial and Compulsory Drinking Usage in Great Britain and Ireland” and pulled out some of the more interesting accounts of what happened to apprentices in Scotland, Ireland and England.
Settle in, because this will probably stop any historical fantasy of traveling back in time to become Duncan Phyfe’s apprentice. We start in Scotland.
Scotland Scarcely has the stripling commenced his apprenticeship, in some towns, to the business of the joiner or cabinet-maker, than he is informed that the custom of the shop is to pay a sum as an entry, or footing, to be disposed of in drink by the workmen.
He receives charge of the fire in the premises; and at every failure of kindling, mending, or extinguishing at night, he is fined in a small sum, to be expended in whisky: failure in putting out candles at the proper time, or in watching the work at meal-hours, and a number of other petty offences, are met by small amercements for the same purpose.
A journeyman carpenter, in a town north of the Forth, having declined to pay the customary drink-money, found one morning his tools removed.
He received no satisfaction, but in about three months they were found in the side of a dunghill, which was being taken away for agriculturalpurposes.
Interestingly, at this time, it was unthinkable to drink alone (except in America).
In Scotland there still exists a loathing terror, even in the regular drunkard, at being considered a solitary drinker; and, but for the amazing number of drinking usages, (so convenient for Scotch topers) this would be an element of transcendent usefulness in temperance reformation.
A cabinet-maker assured me, that such as would not comply with the drinking usages in the shops in which he had wrought, were outlawed (the same as being put into ‘Coventry’); that pieces of wood were thrown at them by their fellows, and that their tools were hid as frequently as possible, to make them comply. Another cabinet-maker informed me that his slippers had been frequently nailed to the floor in front of his bench, during his absence at meals, because he would not regard the oppressive usages of his trade.
There is a bailie in the shop in which he works, and when a court is to be held, the ‘hold-fast’ is used as a bell, to summon the men to attend.
Ireland Not surprisingly, many of the same abuses occurred in Irish shops.
Although the habit of taking a dose of whisky in going to work, technically called a “morning,” be not in general compulsory, yet it is rendered somewhat of this character, when the custom of treating in reference to the morning dram has obtained in any workshop.
And apprentices had it the worst.
If the apprentice be dilatory in coming forward with the footing, the men will show him nothing of the business; if he ask a question, they will “shy the answer;” they will cease to teach, and the master not being always present, the boy will remain untaught: this circumstance is what weighs most with parents, and even widowed mothers will stretch every nerve to provide for the apprentice footing.
And it wasn’t just the apprentices who were abused. The suppliers who sold glue or other materials to the shop were also pressed for alcohol.
Those dealers that supply a workshop with articles necessary in the trade, find it absolutely requisite to treat or “mug” the men, otherwise they will complain of the items supplied; thus in the trade of nails, wood, putty, and other articles, lovers of drink have it in their power in various ways to deprive sober men of their place or job, by false complaints, and oblique hints. We shall often have occasion to notice this circumstance.
The iron of the plane is sometimes glued to the wood for non-compliance with drink usages.
The workshop rules extended to every aspect of life, even to the appearance of the workers in the shop. You had to show up to work looking clean and tidy.
“When a man comes to work with a dirty shirt on Monday morning, he incurs a drink fine.”
But even if you do everything correctly, you are going to be fined. And the price to be paid is in alcohol.
When an apprentice comes to be able for man’s work, he is set to a bench and assumes the apron; on this occasion he is fined 1 shilling for drink: when his apprenticeship expires he pays 10s. 6d., which is called “washing him out.” When the apprentice remains in the same shop, he is “washed in,” by 10s. 6d. of a journeyman’s footing. For the first new job he is set to perform, which he has never done before, he pays 1s. for drink; thus for his first chair, bedstead, or veneer work, and this for each new job. When married, a cabinet-maker pays 10s. for drink. Having a child produces a quart of whisky. At each fall of the year there is a way-goose. Teaching any part of the business that is new to the scholar, requires 1s of a drink premium: this is severe on the boys.
What if you cannot pay? What if your family is poor and your friends are penniless? Well, it’s not good.
When a poor boy is unable to pay these demands, and his friends are backward in advancing him the needful funds, he is put under severe discipline; besides being taunted and jeered at continually, he is subjected to a process of coercion denominated “cabbing,” which is so administered as to make it impossible to discover the perpetrators. A favourable opportunity is watched, the lad is approached behind by a man having the cloth that covers finished furniture in his hand; this is dexterously thrown entirely over the head and shoulders; several spring upon him, and by their help the cloth is wound round the culprit’s head in such a way as to prevent sight: his hands are then tied, and he is laid on his face along a bench, his shoes are taken off, and he is sharply beat on the soles of the feet with a flat board.
And there are fines for all manner of small workplace infractions.
When tools are not kept in the right place, there is 3d. or 6d. charged as a drink fine; 6d. for a long beard, or dirty shirt. “Wetting of new clothes;” this is a cant phrase for a libation of liquor on obtaining anything new. The new occupation of a favourite bench costs a quart of whisky at least; sometimes more, for the highest bidder gets the prize: this may be a station near the window, or otherwise particularly convenient.
Glueing the pockets, and tying things to coats, are also tricks imposed on recusants of the usages.
And then there is the talking of the smack. If you engage in insulting other workers, you could be put to trial.
Speaking ill of a shopmate in a public-house, incurs a fine. That all fines may be duly enforced, proceedings of the nature of process or action at law is established. The oldest hand is styled the father of the shop; he presides in the judgment and infliction of these fines. The case is regularly stated, the accused afterwards makes his defence, he is then sent out, and a decision is come to. I have understood that occasionally there is an extraordinary exhibition of native talent at these opportunities. To ring the holdfast is to strike a tool that will emit a sound, in order to convene a court. It is rung three times on a charge against any man.
The book then details the same sort of charges against English shops (though the author cuts the English shops some slack because the author is clearly English). But after reading more than 300 pages of this account – biased as it was – I’ve decided not going to fine Kale for… well… anything.
Like many people learning a trade, Kale observes the activity in the shop and tries to emulate. Megan and I put our tools away every day. Kale puts their tools away every day. We clean up after ourselves at the end of each day. Kale does the same.
I suspect we’ll never have to send Kale to Coventry.
