The Village Carpenter

Walter Rose

Reviewed by:

Paul Womack

I have just been reading "The Village Carpenter" by Walter Rose. It's a lovely evocative description of English village life (as well as craft) from the 1850's and I thoroughly recommend it a a wonderful read.

My intention in this post is to extract some of the more "OLDTOOL" relevant facts, and present them for discussion...

* Lines for sawing logs were made with a chalk line. However the chalk line was sometimes coloured with lampblack, not chalk.

* there is GREAT emphasis on saw sharpening. Either the steel was soft, or sharp saws were *REALLY* important (no power saws, remember)

* pit saws were sharpened before every log (the top-man sharpened while the bottom man got the log ready)

* There is a reference to "graduated sharpening" "I learnt from them that teeth should not all be shaped at the same pitch: their method was to file those at the point, or end, at an angle of about 60 degrees, and those at the heel at about 30 degrees. All the other teeth between graduated to these two standards"

* The list of tools carried to a site in a bag includes a saw sharpening file.

* His grandfather went to saw a beam about which the "fulltime" sawyers had complained. "He sharpened his handsaw overnight, rose early, walked there, and sawed it down himself by hand"

* work-rates are REALLY high

* a girl's "travelling clothes box". "... it involved planing all the wood, and dovetailing each angle. The finished box was fitted with lock and key and iron handles at each end". This was "reckoned a day's work"

* "The making of a gate was considered a day's work for a qualified carpenter, and was expected to be done in the ten hours which at that time constituted a day of labour. No one ever suggested that it was possible to make one in less time. The oak was hard with long seasoning, and all the work - planing, mortising, tenoning and fitting in of the rails - was done by hand"

* P*w*r Tools - "This is by no means an unrelieved calamity; no carpenter would wish to revert to the toil of past days, the work at the saw-pit and the preparation of such simple things as floor boards by hand"

* He considers the tools he is using (circa 1880) to be far better than tools of older times. But he admires the skills of earlier carpenter; he reckons their work better, yet their tools worse (he is talking about fine furniture, so perhaps this is just a case of carpenter Vs cabinet maker)

* "To examine the woodwork of past days is to be impressed with the fact that in spite of inferior tools a high degree of excellence was attained"

* "... long and forgotten maker. The limitations of his tools are revealed by long slight undulations on the surface of the boards, the finish of his imperfect plane"

* Sharpening stone were poor. The introduction of imported Washita in 1889 stones was a revelation. "It is easier to sharpen a true edge on a wide tool with a narrow stone than with a wide one". He argues this because it's difficult to keep a wide stone flat across it's width.

I hope that these clippings are of interest to the list. These bare facts are of interest to us galoots, but the book as a whole is far more than that. I loved it.