Kale vs. Young Thomas

This week, I revisited the life of Thomas, the fictional hero of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker,” one of our first books at Lost Art Press and a fun read.

The book was part of a series of texts published in the early 1800s that introduced young people (and their parents) to a trade. The books outline what you’ll do all day in a certain trade. And outline how you could succeed in it.

Most of the texts in the series are as dull as a home center jack plane. But “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” is an exception. It clearly was written by someone who had been an apprentice in a pre-industrial workshop. (We don’t even know the author’s name; the book was written anonymously.)

So let’s see how Kale’s experience stacks up so far.

“Now, it is only the careful apprentice that can be entrusted to do what is the next part of the apprentice’s duty – to light and take care of the fire. In a joiner’s shop, where so much wood and shavings are always lying about, great care must be taken to guard against accidents by fire.”

I’m gonna be honest here, I’ve never asked Kale to tend the workshop’s fire. That’s because we don’t have one. I had hoped to have a woodburning stove in the workshop to deal with our scrap wood and provide heat, but the city said there was too much risk of fire.

“The apprentice will be expected to take care of the glue-pots and keep them always ready for use. Every body knows the look of glue as it hangs at the ironmonger’s door, and that it is used for joining wood together.”

Kale has definitely become a glue expert here. Megan has trained Kale to make our Piggly No Wiggly glue from gelatin, water and salt. It’s the glue we use here and the glue we sell. (Want to learn to make it yourself? We give the recipe away).

During classes, Kale keeps watch on the glue pots, especially our rogue Waage pot, which will either try to keep the glue at 70° F or 200° F, depending on its mood.

We have a lot of gluing tools, brushes, palette knives silicone trays and toothbrushes that need regular cleaning (in the dishwasher).

“In a joiner’s shop where a good deal of work is done, there are many nails used for one purpose or another, which are thrown on one side as crooked and not fit for use. Now, it is not worth the journeymen’s while to leave their work to straighten them, so they are left for the apprentice to set right at his leisure time, for it would be wasteful not to use them again.”

OK, Kale, guess what we’re going to learn next week.

“Turning the grindstone is one part of the apprentice’s business, which he will find, at first, to require a good deal of strength, and to be, perhaps, not very pleasant. However, he must be ready at all times to do it; for it will often happen that one or other of the journeymen will notch his plane-iron against a nail which he did not see, or even against a hard knot in the wood which he is working; and then he cannot go on with his work till he has ground the iron again…”

Lucky for Kale, we have electricity.

“By use the rubstone grows hollow in the middle, and it is every man’s business to face it afresh when he has finished with it, so as to leave it always ready for use. This is done by rubbing it with another piece of stone which lies beside it, and there is also a straight edge of wood to try it by. Facing the stone is an office which few men like; when they have sharpened their tools, they wish to go and use them at once: but neither do they like, when they come down to sharpen their tools, to find the rubstone hollow, and have to face it themselves instead of the one who used it last: so, by general consent, a fine has to be paid by any man who leaves the stone without facing it. And it often happens that an apprentice may very much oblige a journeyman by doing this for him.”

Kale doesn’t flatten my waterstones. Instead, I have put Kale in charge of keeping the student tools sharp. This gives them regular practice on a wide variety of edges. Kale, by the way, is an excellent sharpener.

“The apprentice must expect to be employed sometimes as an errandboy.”

I hate to say it, but yes. Kale does help us with these tasks that keep the business running. Some are mindless (fetch lunch for the students). Some are not (sweet-talk our plotter into spitting out 50 sheets of full-size plans).

“One main part of the apprentice’s employment remains to be noticed – the helping the journeymen when their work, from its size or other circumstances, requires more than one pair of hands; and in this, perhaps, more may be learned than in any other part of his work by a boy who is really disposed to learn all that he can.”

This is how Kale learns the trade here. Last week we did in-depth lessons in changing the blade on the band saw and one of the trickiest jobs in the shop: birthing a full bag of debris from the shop vacuum. When Kale helps us at the lumberyard, they are learning about wood. When helping a slow student along, Kale is learning everything about hand and machine work.

And finally: