Carpenter's shop

“ Ancient eyelets admit faint rays of light, and a fine rounded arch points to what was once the principal doorway.
The interior is domed, vaulted and massive, black with age. Small, it seems to carry one back to the days when Christians were few and worshipped in secret. Now fitted as a carpenter's shop, it is full of the sound of hammer and plane. In one corner, men are melting glue and heating irons at a huge fireplace. The floor is uneven and below the level of the road. Light enters with difficulty. ”

“ Each kind of business, or trade, has its own bazaar. There is a shoemaker’s bazaar where scores of cobblers are working. At the entrance to each cavelike shop two shoemakers sit sewing away with untanned calfskin aprons tight about them. Between them on a block of wood, an olive tree stump it may be, rests a slab of white marble. ”

“ Fig. 9.
The Work Bench.—In its proper place we show in detail the most approved form of work bench, fitted with a tool rack to hold all the tools, conveniently arranged. In this chapter we are more particularly concerned with the uses of tools than their construction; and we impress on boys the necessity of having a place for everything, and that every tool should be kept in its proper place. A carpenter's shop filled with chips, shavings and other refuse is not a desirable place for the indiscriminate placing of tools. ”

“ The front of your school building, your home, an old barn, the handsomest house in your neighborhood, a country church, the kitchen of your home, your own room, a hen house with the hens just going to roost, a dovecot, any public monument you may know, the inside of a public library, the post office, a drug store, a carpenter's shop, a blacksmith's, an iron foundry, a milliner's shop, a beehive, a crow's nest, an ant-hill, a spider's web, an aquarium, a farmhouse, a tall office building, an ocean steamer, a sailboat, any curious house you may have seen. ”

“ The man is worth thousands of pounds, but his place of business is not bigger than a dining-room table—and there are scores like him. The next few shops are all silversmiths—four or five in each shop, couches and cushions as before, and cabinets full of trinkets. Further on they are hammering brass and copper—a score of shops at least consecutive. Now we come to an archway, through which behold a large reservoir, with people bathing. There is a Hindu temple here, and they do not like us to enter ”

“ The story of the picture. Here in a building that once may have been a home, we see an old-fashioned country blacksmith shop. The wide door has been made in two parts so that the upper part can be swung open to let in the sunlight. The lower part of the doorway remains closed and is just high enough to keep the horse and donkey shut in. But the dog could easily jump over it should he become frightened by the flying sparks of fire.
The smith is trying a shoe on the hind foot of the beautiful horse, but neither the man nor the horse seems quite satisfied with it. ”

“ Fig. 18.—Nail-box.
Supplies of nails, brads, etc., should be kept in cans and cigar-boxes of different sizes, and it is a good idea to letter these receptacles that you may be able to put your hands upon what you want without having to hunt for it.
Shelves will be handy to keep paint-cans and these boxes on.
Workshop Clothes.—Old clothes should be worn in the shop, as carpenter work is rather hard upon them, especially [Pg 19] the trousers. Better than these is a pair of overalls and perhaps a jumper. They are easy to work in and wear better than anything else. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was once upon a time a piece of wood in the shop of an old carpenter named Master Antonio. ”

“ Cairo is a city of the Egyptians. Not one tenth of its inhabitants are Christians and it is the hundreds of thousands of natives who make up the life blood of this metropolis. They are people of a different world from ours, as we can see if we go down for a stroll through their quarters. They do business in different ways and trade much as they have been trading for generations. Their stores are crowded along narrow streets that wind this way and that until one may lose himself in them. Nearly every store is a factory, and most of the goods offered are made in the shop where they are sold. ”

“ Almost every trade now is subdivided into several. Formerly a carpenter did every thing about a house. Now the doors are made by one concern, the blinds by another, the stairs by a third, the floors are laid by a fourth, the lathing by a fifth: all the mouldings are done by machinery, and so on. ”

“ Whether the "art of furnishing" or the desire to have what people require for use in their houses more becoming and beautiful, be a rising influence or not, it is certain that the "fancy" or ornamental furniture trade is of large and increasing importance, corresponding to the increased size and cost of modern London and country houses, compared with those built during the reigns of William III. and George IV. Every tradesman who has the pretension to repair chimney-pots, to whitewash, or paint house-fronts, ceilings, or offices, writes up the word "decorator," on his shop-front. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The wants of the carpenter and others in the building trades are many and varied as to size and form. It would be difficult to say how many business require a good assortment of nails to complete their equipment. ”

“ Landing, as the pioneers did, on barren shores, with the necessity for home-building ahead, the activities and resources of every one of them was called into play, and in every group there was some one or two, at least, who must assume the rôle of carpenter, if not, in fact, already chosen directly with reference to that trade. ”

“ Carpets, except the cheaper ones, are seldom sold in the bazaars nowadays. They are purchased on the looms. The best ones are only made to order. There are, of course, a few rug shops, and occasionally an old carpet finds its way to a second-hand shop in the bazaar. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Carpenters were in great demand, as were also blacksmiths, wheelwrights, millwrights, masons, bricklayers, plasterers, and in general all representatives of the building trades and of trades ministering to farmers. ”

“ As for the carpenter, what I remembered of him on the evening in the hotel in the city of New York was just a kind of quiet assurance in his figure remembered from boyhood. The old workman had spoken to mother of young workmen in his employ. “They aren’t learning their trade properly,” he said. “Everything is cut in the factories now and the young fellows get no chance. They can stand looking at a tree and they do not know what can be done with it ... ”

“ Pictorial decoration, elaborate and beautiful as it was, did not constitute the principal item of cost in constructing these mansions. It was rather upon rare woods, uniquely grown timbers, exquisite joinery, and fine plastering that great sums were lavished. Single boards eighteen feet square; pine stems forty feet long without any appreciable difference of diameter throughout; carpenter's work as accurate as though all the parts of a building had grown together naturally instead of being joined artificially,—these involved outlays even greater than the sums lavished on the decorative artist. ”

“ A hammer and a coarse saw was about a complete set of tools on many jobs we did up there. Still, large wooden houses filled with all the most modern comforts [Pg 93] are also constructed, and in such none but the best workmanship is tolerated, so there, of course, a tradesman is indispensable. At all housebuilding, too, a man who is constantly at it acquires a quickness which would altogether outdistance the novice, but one may learn as he goes in that trade, and the best men I have met in the carpenter trade out here are men who never served their time to it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even now, ordinary dwelling-houses are not built by either of them; it is the carpenter who has charge of their construction. The carpenter’s is a dignified craft; he is called in Japanese the “great artificer,” and stands at the head of all artisans. In the building of a house, a master carpenter is called in; he prepares the plans, and if they are approved, he sets to work with his apprentices and journeymen. The other artisans, the tiler, the plasterer, and the joiner, work under him. He is not as a rule an educated man and knows his trade from having worked at it from apprenticeship ”

“ We find many men who were at once architects, sculptors, painters, goldsmiths and image-makers. This condition existed till the middle of the seventeenth century.
In the Middle Ages, the carpenter made the household furniture which formed an integral part of the dwelling; and he was quite capable of giving to it the Gothic ornamentation in vogue.
It was not till the fourteenth century that the increase of luxury and the progress of the arts demanded a division of labour; and that the huchiers and joiners formed separate bodies from the carpenters. ”

“ The sashes, frames, doors, shutters, linings and soffits are all framed and put together, i.e. wedged up and cleaned off at the shop; the flooring is planed and prepared with rebated or grooved edges ready for laying, and the moulded work—the picture and dado rails, architraves, skirtings and panelling—is all got out at the shop. On a new building the joiner fits up a temporary workshop with benches, sawing stools and a stove for his glue pot. ”

“ To keep the three carpenters busy who had been building the wings, I set them to making furniture for the place. They made the furniture as good as they could—folks came along and bought it.
The boys picked up field-stones and built a great, splendid fireplace and chimney at one end of the Shop. The work came out so well that I said, "Boys, here is a great scheme—these hardheads are splendid building material." So I advertised we would pay a dollar a load for niggerheads. The farmers began to haul stones ”

“ I discovered that there is nothing more plastic than brickwork, nothing more elastic than a girder. A carpenter spends days of his time and dollars of your money fitting and joining a certain section of framework; that is to say, he engages in such craftsmanship when not sharpening his saw. It has been my observation that the average conscientious carpenter allows forty per cent of his eight-hour day to saw sharpening. ”

“ I do not think it wise to bring out a large stock of carpenter's tools, or even ironmongery, beyond some pots, pans, and kettles; for, although things may be purchased at a lower rate when an assortment is bought in London, yet so many things are in this case always taken which are never of the slightest use, that it comes dearer in the long run. If any large tools, such as axes, adzes, &c. are bought, they ought not to be too highly tempered, as where this is the case they fly like glass when used on hard wood. ”

“ It is the province of the carpenter to put together simple woodwork; that which is an actual part of architecture, such as boxes, chests, benches, seats, shelves, and so forth as require only good material and neatness of hand in execution. The joiner and cabinet maker include this amount of skill as a foundation for their accomplishments, as a sculptor can block out a statue and a painter grind his colours, work, however, which in ordinary practice is handed over to assistants or apprentices. ”

“ In poor churches which possess no fine materials for decoration, one has often wondered at and admired the picturesque effects extracted from yards of muslin, gold tinsel, and box wreaths, artistically combined. Our house carpenter is the only representative we have of the vestiarius, and he is but a feeble descendant from the ancestors of his craft, who were expected to study and evolve the adornments of the building for its completion, the materials of decoration for special occasions, and lastly, the mechanical means for hanging and stretching the draperies. ”

“ Robert Smith, the landsman, was a carpenter by trade, and it fell to his lot to put together again the materials of the old warehouse. Had there not been such a mechanic among the crew, however, a dozen Americans could, at any time, construct a house, the 'rough and ready' habits of the people usually teaching them, in a rude way, a good deal of a great many other arts, besides this of the carpenter. ”

“ The intense light, the vivid colors, the extraordinarily picturesque life, the bustle and movement; the narrow high tumbled houses with projecting storeys, painted shutters, etc., and alleys simply thronged with people; the usual little shops with four or five men and boys squatted in each, and multifarious products and traffic—gold and silver work of excellent quality, elegant boxes and cabinets, all being produced in full view of the public—embroidery and cap shops, fruit shops, sweetmeat shops, cloth merchants, money-changers ”