My Woodworking Essay Rubric
My Essay:
Carpenters, The Builders Of America: Woodworking In the Colonial Era
Without barrels, Colonial America’s profit would have sunk and its economy would have fallen. Barrels were a great way to trade and store belongings. With the genius design of the barrel, an average man could push one thousand pounds or more. America’s trade profit rested on the shoulders of the most important type of carpenter, the Cooper. Cooper actually means container maker. They made barrels, butter and milk churns, mugs, and buckets. They were at the top of the middling class, which is another way of saying middle class. Coopers tended to make supplies for ships, like barrels and buckets, but they were the only ones working on the ships. But cooper’s didn’t do it by themselves. They were other carpenters to help. The whole process, from the tree, to timber, to lumber, was the responsibility of the carpenter, the most important tradesperson in Colonial America.
There was a huge variety of wood related trades in Colonial America. Woodworking played a big role in building America. Carpenters were the primary woodworkers, who often split up their jobs. In the book, The Woodworkers by Bobbie Kalman, she says: “As towns grew, skilled woodsmen started specializing, or becoming experts at certain jobs.” (pg.6) Some carpenters had more useful jobs in society, while others had less helpful jobs. Trades like the Cooper paid much better than the Joiner, but they were all in the middling class. It was a very common job and was great for a family who wanted their child to be an apprentice. Carpentry is so important because it was a big source of income, jobs, trading, and expanding the colony into the America we know today. Carpenters had a huge variety of trades, such as the Cooper.
Coopers were container makers. Their products were great for trade and voyage overseas. They made things such as barrels, buckets, butter and milk churns, mugs, and so much more. The used curved planks called spades, and metal bands they made themselves, instead of the blacksmiths. They also used the joining process to attach the planks before applying the metal bands. They were by far the most important carpenter in Colonial America. They were very dedicated and worked 12 to 15 hours a day. The design of the barrel was also very important. Barrels were rounded so that men could transport hundreds of more pounds. Also, only a third of the barrel had contact with the ground, so the barrel could be turned in different directions, instead of picking up the barrel and turning it in different directions. Sea travel was the main use for barrels, but shipwrights were the biggest part of sea travel.
Shipwrights built ships. Ships were a very important part of trade, war, and transportation. The English ships were a common design, but different countries did tend to add their own little things that differentiated them from other ships. The slave ships were just small ships, with barely enough space to fit the slaves. Warships were much bigger than transport ships. Their outside layer is insanely strong, due to the process of seasoning wood, which is a method to make the wood firm and durable. While shipwrights build the ships, there are other things in the ships besides barrels and weaponry on the ships. Things like furniture were the work of Joiners and Cabinetmakers.
Joiners and Cabinetmakers are basically the same things, and there isn’t much of a difference between the two. Cabinetmakers are affiliated with furniture, while Joiners have no boundaries. Joiners joined everything and worked with lots of different people. They worked with shipwrights, housewrights, coopers, and wheelwrights. Cabinetmakers also joined wood, except they didn’t help other carpenters join wood. Cabinetmakers made furniture of all types and of all different qualities. Cabinetmakers also made coffins, which also were different qualities. The longer seasoned the wood was, the nicer the quality. The type of wood was important too. Birch was terrible, and oak was very common. There were trees that could only be found in specific areas. Joiners had tons of jobs, but the pay wasn’t the greatest, while cabinetmakers salary was different depending on the project. Furniture was most commonly found in a house, a house made by housewrights.
Housewrights built houses of all sizes. They were a very mobile job. They had no specific workspace and traveled a lot to get to the different locations that houses needed to be built. Building houses was a very well paying job. They built churches with the help of Joiners. The also did a process called raising the roof, which wasn’t a party. The laid planks called rafters on the top of the structure and nailed or joined the into the rest of the building. They then cut out the shingles or were given stone shingles. Those were then attached to the rafters, and the roof was done. All the wood had to be seasoned, where the wood is left to dry in a log house. The wood must be seasoned for seven years minimum so that the wood doesn’t shrink and leave holes in the walls, ceiling, floors, and stairs. Sometimes the holes caused the house to collapse.
The seasoning was and still is a very important process. Now there are ways to speed up the seasoning process, but we still have to season wood. The seasoning was overlooked by woodsmen. The log houses wood was seasoned in were in a sunny area and had to be protected from rain, snow, and other natural occurrences. You would either find about five gigantic log houses or tons of small ones. But before the timber didn’t just appear in the log house, someone had to cut it down. That is the job of a woodsman.
Woodsmen were the lumberjacks of the Colonial Era. They cut down wood for the carpenters. Before they cut the tree, they had to check the wind, because one small breeze and the tree falls on the poor woodsman. Once the tree is chopped, and before it’s sent to be seasoned, the bark is taken off with a special type of saw. The saw is flexible, so its shape can be adjusted to the timber. Then it’s cleaned of bugs and sent to a log house to be seasoned. Then possibly years later, it will be used for a carpentry project. If it will be used for a carriage, it won’t be seen for seven years. But that wood will be used for European woodworking, but Native and African woodworking is a different matter.
Natives built boats. They made canoes out of logs, shells, fire, and animal fat. They burned a hole in a log and covered the parts of the log they didn’t want to burn in animal fat. Once the fire went out, they dug out the remains with shells. They used thin timber as paddles. They main materials, were stone, wood, and shells. The houses had frames made of twigs and branches, and they also carved wood. What they carved with is still unknown to man today. But the Natives weren’t the only woodworkers in town. The Africans did some woodworking too.
Most of the woodworking Africans did be while they were enslaved. They did the hard and dangerous work that carpenters didn’t want to do. They cut down the risky trees, went to the broken parts of ships, risking their lives, and sometimes even built the slave ships that would bring their fellow Africans to America, “The Land of the Free”. Africans were mostly worked on ships because ships needed the most help. Africans wouldn’t leave their town or city for work unless very necessary, and most carpenters didn’t either.
Carpenters were either urban or suburban carpenters. The different places had their pros and cons. Suburban carpenters could get wood much faster than urban carpenters. The downside was that business wasn’t so good. Traveling wasn’t easy. Only 1% of the population had carriages, let alone horses. Getting to suburban carpenters was much harder for people. Their tools were most likely a worse quality than urban carpenters, due to the fact that they couldn’t go to a nearby store and get new tools. Urban carpenters had a much better business, but got supplies much slower than suburban carpenters, but had very new tools. But suburban, or urban, all carpenters has apprentices.
Apprentices were a very important and helpful part of a carpenter’s job. Parents petitioned their children as an apprentice. Sometimes carpenters took apprentices for free, but other times it cost parents. When the first settlers arrived at Jamestown.having a master was like having a third parent. Masters had complete control over apprentices, and apprentices treated their masters with respect, just as they treated their parents. Masters could discipline their apprentices, just as the child’s parents would. An apprentice could only be an apprentice for a specific amount of time. That time served as an apprentice was decided by the master. The longest amount of time an individual could serve as an apprentice was seven years. It was rare to be an apprentice for seven years. The usual amount of time was four or five years, but if the apprentice disagreed with their length of apprenticeship, they could shorten that term by running away like the great Ben Franklin had. But not all apprentices parents petitioned them. Orphans often were found by carpenters and taken in as apprentices. Few Americans served seven years; five or four were more usual, and sometimes the boy shortened that term by running away as Ben Franklin did. Because of this, there were constant advertisements in the newspapers for a missing apprentice. But masters had much more to take care of than their apprentice.
The carpenters without apprentices had problems. He had lots of rival carpenters who most likely had an apprentice. He had a short of help, which wasn’t good for business. If he had a workforce, they all lived with the master as one big, but not always happy, family. It was the master’s responsibility to take care of his men’s problems and to make sure that they showed up to the church on Sunday.
Woodworking was a very important part of Colonial America and still is. From raising the roof to joining a barrel, carpenters were a necessity to trade, travel, and building the America we live in today. The tools and processes from then are still used today, which was how advanced carpenters were and why they are so important today. While some tools have been modified like power tools, other tools only have minor changes due to modern day technology. Carpenters are now more of an artisan than a tradesman. They now make crafted goods instead of necessary objects. What would America be like without carpenters? Would there be an America? Would we exist? That’s a question with no answer. Who would have thought that a man with metal tools and wood would affect the outcome of the America we know today?