Carpentaria

“ House building is the carpenter's craft; cabinet-making the joiner's trade, yet both are so intimately associated, that it is difficult to draw a line. The same tools, the same methods and the same materials are employed.
There is no trade more ennobling than home building. It is a vocation which touches every man and woman, and to make it really an art is, or should be, the true aspiration of every craftsman. ”

“ Were we not to make great allowance for the peculiar circumstances in which this country has developed its moral and material faculties, we would solve the question against the generally accepted theory, and proclaim carpentry still the greatest agent of progress. Carpentry in America has not yielded to masonry; even in the erection of brick or stone houses, the former has a greater share of work, the latter doing scarcely anything beyond building the outside walls. In American brick or stone houses, about twenty-five times more wood than in European is used. ”

“ And last but not least there's a pickie that the journalist people have dubbed, "Distinguished Society Women distinguish themselves as Carpenters," et voilà Beryl, Babs and your Blanche, in delicious cream serge overall things, with hammers, planes, and saws embroidered in crewels on the big square collars and turn-up cuffs, and enormously becoming carpenter's caps, looking at a rest-hut we've just finished. Oh, my dearest and best, you don't know what it is to live till you've learned to carpent! It's positively enthralling! When we're skilful enough we're to go abroad—mais il faut se taire! ”

“ The carpenter was delighted with it, and showed it, with a good deal of exultation, to his five companions; every man of whom came the next day to the shop and wanted one just like it. They did not understand all the blacksmith's notions about tempering and mixing the metals, but they saw at a glance that the head and the handle were so united that there never was likely to be any divorce between them. ”

“ Thus, in the early pioneer days, before there was a village blacksmith, cobbler and carpenter, every farmer had to be his own blacksmith, cobbler and carpenter, and in many homes the furniture and most of the household utensils were manufactured by the men and boys of the family, particularly during the winter months, when there was no work to be done on the farm. On the other hand, women were also engaged to some extent in the production of raw material. Every good housewife had her little kitchen garden, where she raised the vegetables for her family table. ”

“ The carpenter comes into your house to put up a set of shelves,—the cook comes into your kitchen to cook your dinner. You never think that the carpenter owes you any more respect than you owe to him because he is in your house doing your behests; he is your fellow-citizen, you treat him with respect, you expect to be treated with respect by him. You have a claim on him that he shall do your work according to your directions,—no more. Now I apprehend that there is a very common notion as to the position and rights of servants which is quite different from this. ”

“ It is a very serious fact that now-a-days no one in our country is acquiring faithfully the carpenter's trade. Much of this lamentable condition of things is no doubt due to the fact that machine-work has supplanted the hand-work of former times.6 Doors, blinds, sashes, mouldings are now turned out by the cord and mile, and all done in such greedy haste, and with the greenest of lumber, that if it does not tumble to pieces in transportation it is sure to do so very soon after entering into the house-structure. ”

“ A carpenter’s shop has grown into shape in the recesses of those sacred colonnades, and a carpenter’s apprentice planes his lathes and sprinkles his shavings beneath the graceful arches, while around and looking down into the little grassgrown courtyard, tall houses stand in a quadrangle, and white linen hangs to dry against the time-tinted marble: but slender columns with twisted stem and fair carven capital still spring frankly from out a daintily moulden base around the green enclosure, and stand in their simple beauty through shade and sunshine of Italy. ”

“ Witness the old coloured screens of Norfolk, the harmonious greens and reds, the proper proportion of gold, the panels adorned with saints on backgrounds of delicate diaper work, and compare these triumphs of decoration with the rougher blues and reds of the average restored screen, and one ceases to wonder why we now prefer the wood plain.
Of late years carving has gone out of fashion; a change has come about. The work is necessarily slow, thus causing charges to appear high. Other and cheaper methods of decoration have driven carving from its former place. ”

“ Joiner, but as the trades of the Carpenter and the Joiner are almost always united, we will speak of all the tools as belonging to one business. Carpenter’s work, then, consists of the framing roofs, partitions, and floors, in making the various joints used in beams, ties, rafters, and joists for supporting floors, and the proper way of supporting buildings by posts and girders. The Carpenter requires to be strong and active, that he may properly handle the heavy timbers on which he has to work ”

“ In many cases the various gremios bear hard upon each other. Thus, for instance, the carpenter must not employ his industry on mahogany, or any other wood but deal, nor must he invade the province of the turner. The turner must confine his ingenuity and labour to soft wood, and must not presume to touch either ivory or metals, even though he should be reduced to poverty for want of work. ”

“ About twenty carpenters were gathered up along the line of the railroad and brought into the relief work. The plan of procedure was for the farmer to receive the lumber, paper, windows, hardware, etc., for a ‘shack’ and haul it to his farm. Then one carpenter would be sent to the place to direct operations and with the farmer and his neighbors helping, the ‘shack’ would be quickly completed. If two or three ‘shacks’ were to be in a group, one carpenter could supervise all at once. ”

“ Whilst waiting the tide, the note of a bird resembling the cuckoo broke the deep stillness that prevailed. It was evening; all around was calm: the wide extended plain dimly stretching away on every side, the waters as they imperceptibly swelled between the curving banks, the heavens in which the last rays of the sun still lingered, gilding the few clouds that hovered near the horizon. ”

“ Whatever there may be, however, of want of precision in some of the domestic carpentry—always remembering one thing, that we must make due allowance for shrinking, for the summer sun, and the winter cold, and also remembering that the masonry, at any rate, which was free from such exigencies, is perfect, and evidently put up by men to whom we now could teach very little indeed, in the plenitude of our knowledge—nothing in this supposed shortcoming{246} in carpentry can prevent our taking lessons in its general form and style. ”

“ These various misfortunes made everybody see how much better things would go on if the carpenter did all the carpentering that was needed by the little colony. If the carpenter hired the tools of Green, Green would lose nothing, for the carpenter could give him more for the loan of them than anyone else, because no one could make such good use of them as the carpenter. The carpenter would also be a gainer, because he would then be able to turn his skill in his trade to the best account, and would get all his wants supplied by his companions in return for the services he rendered to them. ”

“ Even the carpenter became inspired with a desire to make something ornamental of his own department, and has shaped and carved (literally carved) his timbers into graceful moldings. Then, again, in the roof of Sall Church, Norfolk, shown in Plate IV, you have a noble piece of carpentry which is as much the work of an artist as the carved figures and tracery which adorn it—indeed it is all just as truly carved work as those figures, being chopped out [227] of the solid oak with larger tools, ax and adze, so that one knows not which to admire most, carved angels or carved carpentry. ”

“ Thus it is not surprising that division of labor was applied to carpentry; and bridge-makers, or "pontiffs," as they were called, after the Latin fashion, builders, joiners, ship-builders and military carpenters were recognized as distinct trades, nor could one division intrude upon the duties of the others.
Though the middle ages are generally estimated as an epoch of retrogression in art, carpentry improved. Its military department was naturally perfected by the unrelenting wars. In these an enormous number of workmen found employment. ”

“ He produced a carpenter properly qualified for repairs on an old house, because he had always lived in one and had been repairing it most of the time since childhood. He found us the right men to clean our well, to do our painting, to trim and rehabilitate our frowsy door-yard. He took me in his buggy to see some of these men; the rest he sent for. If you have ever undertaken a job like ours you have a pretty good idea of our debt to William C. Westbury. ”

“ Carpentry and joinery, as well as all other trades connected with building, are subservient to the architect, when an individual of this particular profession [112] has been employed; but it most commonly happens, that the master-carpenter acts in this capacity. ”

“ As a consequence the carpenter had the chance to express himself in the woodwork, the village blacksmith the opportunity to display his skill in such small ironwork as the hinges or the latch for the door and every workman felt called upon to do the best that was in him. ”

“ A country carpenter deals in every sort of work that is made of wood: a country smith in every sort of work that is made of iron. The former is not only a carpenter, but a joiner, a cabinet-maker, and even a carver in wood, as well as a plow-wright, a wheelwright, a cart and wagon maker. ”

“ Although the carpenter lives in the steerage, he gets his food from the galley, from the same mess with the men in the forecastle, having no better or different fare in any respect, and he has no right on the quarter-deck, but must take his place on the forecastle with the common seamen. In many vessels, during fine weather and on long voyages, the carpenter stands no watch, but “sleeps in” at night, is called at daylight, and works all day at his trade. ”

“ The time for carpentry is over. The hour has come for upholstering; and he upholsters obstinately, padding a house which no longer exists. He will perish miserably, cut up by the Ants, as the result of his too-rigid instinct. ”

“ At ten o’clock there was a bustle and confusion at the door, and a long string of lads marched, two and two, cap in hand, into the room. These were all the carpenters’ apprentices in Ludwigslust. Every quarterly night the hospitable carpenters have them in after supper to be regaled with beer and cordials, and initiated into the mysteries of jollity that are connected with the existence of a master carpenter. “Long live all carpenters’ apprentices! ”

“ For instance, the carpenter at the end of the ten years had to give a greater value of the articles he produced, in exchange for a meal of fish, than he had when first he began to live by his carpentering. The danger and difficulty of fishing had increased; there was no danger in the carpenter's work, and its difficulty had been reduced by the adoption of various means of saving labour, and by improvements in the tools. ”

“ In the matter of economy in carpenter work, a certain amount of extra work put into framing the forms to withstand the stress of repeated use is economically justifiable. Also carpenter work put into framing which substitutes clamps and wedges for nails is sound economy; generally speaking a skillful form carpenter is recognized by the scarcity of nails he uses. The possibility of reducing carpenter work by ordering lumber to length and width from plans has already been mentioned. It is possible often to go a step further by having certain standard panels, boxes, etc., made in regular shops. ”

“ We can only imagine one trade older than that of the Carpenter, and that is the Tool Maker, and as the earliest tools, or at all events some portion of them, were probably made of hard wood, the Tool Maker may in some sense be said to have been a Carpenter also. ”

“ The hatchet, the saw, and the plane are the three primal implements of the carpenter. The value is in knowing how to use them.
The institution of Manual Training Schools everywhere is but a tardy recognition of the value of systematic training in the use of tools. There is no branch of industry which needs such diversification, in order to become efficient.
The skill of the blacksmith is centered in his ability to forge, to weld, and to temper; that of the machinist depends upon the callipered dimensions of his product; the painter in his taste for harmony ”

“ The labour of building a lumber rack was much heavier than anything the boys had done before, but it brought the larger muscles into play, seemed like real carpenter work, and was an excellent preparation for the finer tool work to follow. A boy who has never carried out a piece of large work [154] successfully cannot realize the satisfaction of looking at a really good piece of construction and being able to say, "I made that all myself!" ”

“ I am persuaded, therefore, that God wills not that I return thee thy money. Without delay, he distributed the whole amongst the paupers, and drove the carpenter away in great tribulation. (16)
APPLICATION.
My beloved, the carpenter is any worldly-minded man; the trunk of the tree denotes the human heart, filled with the riches of this life. The host is a wise confessor. The cake of earth is the world; that of the bones of dead men is the flesh; and that of gold is the kingdom of heaven. ”