The Wheelwright's Shop , livre ebook

THE WHEELWRIGHT’S SHOP
By
GEORGE STURT (‘George Bourne’)


Passages Selected and Edited by
A. F. COLLINS
Inspector of Handicraft and Science Birmingham Education Authority
1930



Published by Old Hand Books, an imprint of Read & Co.
The Wheelwright Shop first published in 1923 This edition published by Read & Co. in 2013
Copyright © 2013 Read & Co. Books
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without the permission of the publisher in writing.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN:9781447493020
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk


Contents
George Sturt
Edit or’s Preface
Introduction
Chapter I The Wheelw right’s Shop
Chapter II Ti mber: Buying
Chapter III Timber: Carting an d Converting
Chapter IV The Sawyers
Chapter V Timbe r: Seasoning
Chapter VI “ Wheel-Stuff”
Chapter V II Hand-Work
Chapter VIII “Bot tom-Timbers”
Chapte r IX Waggons
Chapter X Curves, Tapering and Shaving
Chapter XI Learni ng The Trade
Chapter XII Wh eels: “Dish”
Chapter XIII Wheels: Spokes and Felloes
Chapter XIV “Stocks,” and “Ringin g The Wheel”
Chapter XV The Smith: “Ge tting Ready”
Chapter XVI The Smith: “Putting-On” and “Boxing-On”
Chapter XVII Iron-Work and Jobbing
Glossary




Side-View of Surrey Farm Waggon, 1919


George Sturt
George Sturt was an English writer on rural crafts and countryside affairs, better known under his pseudonym of George Bourne. He was born in 1863 at Farnham, Surrey, England and spent his early manhood as a teacher at the local grammar school. Sturt remained in this position until 1894, when his father died, after which he ran the family wheelwright shop on East Street, Farnham. Sturt stayed here for the rest of his life, and wrote numerous books and articles under the name of George Bourne, whilst simultaneously running the shop. His first and only novel to be published was A Year’s Exile (1898), soon followed by The Bettesworth Book (1901) and Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer (1907). The Bettesworth Book especially captured the humour and idioms of his locality, containing Sturt’s loving recollections of his gardener’s anecdotes; ‘I never see such a slaughter as that was, done by moles, in all my creepin’s.’ He also included the gloomier actualities of life for the rural poor, concerns regarding changing harvests and the ever-looming worry of a span in the workhouse. This book, alongside Sturt’s later texts, contained exemplary depictions of bucolic craftsmanship, although in reality Sturt found the routines of business life irksome. He disliked using the ‘unsoiled morning’ for industry. When feeling ‘clear headed and awake’ he believed his time would be much better spent writing. Sturt continued writing into the later years of his life, penning in his last decade A Farmer’s Life, with a Memoir of the Farmer’s Sister (1922) and A Small Boy in the Sixties (1927)—a semi-autobiographical account of his early childhood. Sturt died in 1927, in his home town of Farnham, and is buried in the cemetery of St Andrew’s Church. Inside the church is an engraved tablet with the words ‘To the memory of George Sturt, who wrote with the understanding and distinction of the wheelwright’s craft and English peasant life.’ He is remembered today in the Surrey History Centre, an establishment dedicated to telling the story of the county, and its people.


Editor’s Preface
An examination of the literature suitable to the needs of adolescent readers and available for their use, especially in schools, brings to light the fact that it includes few books which reveal the personality of the craftsman as well as the interest of his work. Yet no reflective person can fail to realise how great a part the development of constructive activities in the sphere of material things has played in the progress of mankind.
That young people are interested in craftsmen and their work is clear from the popularity, particularly among boys, of books dealing with the more spectacular achievements of the engineer and inventor. But such books are for the most part written more with the aim of presenting technicalities in a popular and readable form than of showing us the craftsman himself—the man behind the work. Moreover, their literary standard is such that they are not usually regarded as subjects for other than purely recreat ive reading.
Records of their work written by practising craftsmen, or by those who, while directing the work of others, show an intimate knowledge of a craft gained only through an arduous apprenticeship, are not common. Such records, however, do exist, and contain literature of real worth, full of human as well as of technic al interest.
The object of “The Craftsman Series” is to make this literature available in a form convenient for school use.
The need for books of this type is especially obvious at the present time, when so much attention is being given to the practice of crafts as a part of genera l education.
The Series consists entirely of books in which the craftsman speaks for himself. In every volume the text is solely that of the Author, abridged it may be, but strictly in the literal sense of the term. Apart from the work of selection and arrangement the Editor’s contribution is limited to an introductory chapter, and, where necessary, occasional notes and linking-up passages, the authorship of which is clearl y indicated.
George Sturt, the author of this volume, was a lover of the English countryside. Before the publication of The Wheelwright’s Shop in 1923 he had written several other books on rural topics, including The Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer, The Bettesworth Book , and A Farmer’s Life . His last book, A Small Boy in the Sixties , was issued in 1927, the year in wh ich he died.
The original edition of The Wheelwright’s Shop is much larger than this volume. The whole of it is fascinating reading, but not every part is equally easy for young readers to understand.
That a writer of George Sturt’s capacity should find in the trade which circumstances compelled him to enter such scope for his literary powers is itself no mean testimony to the living interest of his subject. The knowledge displayed in the book belies his modest estimate of his own ability as a cra ftsman also.
In The Wheelwright’s Shop he has left us something that stands by itself—a record of his craft by one who, both in study and workshop, was a maste r craftsman.
A. F. C. 1930


THE WHEELWRIGHT’S SHOP
Introduction
In The Wheelwright’s Shop you will read much about tools and their users in the later years of the ninetee nth century.
No one knows how long it was after the appearance of man on the Earth that he discovered how to make even the crudest tools, but it is certain that many thousands of years have passed since that time. The improvement of tools and of the methods of working with them has been a very, very s low process.
The men of the Old Stone Age used chipped flints as tools. At first these were rough and clumsy; as the centuries went by an improvement was made here, another there, until in the New Stone Age men became expert in sharpening, polishing and using too ls of stone.
Again many years passed before the use of metal was understood. Not until about 3000 years before Christ, countless generations after the first tool-users, were metal tools developed to such an extent that their users, the ancient Egyptians, could construct chairs, tables and beds much like those of the present day.
From that period until the time of which this book speaks—the time of our own grandfathers—the tools of the craftsman, and especially of the craftsman in wood, changed very little. The use ofsteel has brought about improvements in cutting edges, and there have been a few other changes, but in their essentials these tools are much the same as those used by the earl y Egyptians.
In the days of the Old and New Stone Ages each man used his own simple tools for his own purposes, but as time went on, and men began to collect in larger and more settled communities, those who were most expert in tool-using became the “makers” for the others. Thus began that division of men into craftsmen and others, and later of the craftsmen into stone-workers, wood-workers, metal-workers and the like, which persists into o ur own time.
There were no books then, and men learned to use tools, and to use them very cleverly indeed, without ever learning to read or write. Boys worked with men to learn their crafts. Some knowledge they could pick up by watching their masters at work, but their real skill came only through long practice and experience.
Such workmen, the craftsmen of the Middle Ages and of later days almost up to our own time, were proud of their trades and jealous of outsiders. They kept their knowledge to themselves and to their apprentices. They formed themselves into trade societies or groups and had their own rules and secrets, some of which they preserved in the for m of verses.
In the later Middle Ages in Europe these societies of craftsmen became the craft gilds. The gilds had great power, and were often granted special privileges by those who governed the countries in which their members worked. They were rightly jealous of the reputation of their crafts, and did much to preserve ideals of fine workmanship.
In the days of the gilds practically all craftsmen carried on their trades in small workshops, but, by the middle of the eighteenth century, factories containing crude machines driven by water power had largely displaced the small workshops in trades such as s