At the master’s bench:teaching 18th-century technique and artistry

Mack Headley discusses why sometimes the old-fashioned way is the best way to create subtle and sophisticated furniture pieces. August 28, 2006

Transcript

Lloyd Dobyns: Hi! Welcome to Colonial Williamsburg:Past & Present on history.org. This is “Behind the Scenes” where you meet the people who work here. That’s my job. I’m Lloyd Dobyns, and mostly I ask questions. Last week, we spoke with Mack Headley, the master cabinetmaker at Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area, and this week, we continue the conversation with Mack.

Lloyd:When you are building something, how do you make sure it’s authentic?

Mack:Well, by using the original objects as our standard for apprentices. In educating apprentices, that’s one of the most difficult things to do. How do you impart to someone what your expectations are? And for us it’s easy – you just point to the original objects and say, “Your things are supposed to end up looking like this when they’re successful.”

Lloyd:Do you use pictures, or real things if you can?

Mack:Well the best is to have the physical object in the shop, and [Colonial Williamsburg’s] collections is very generous with bringing in antiques. We will have them sitting on the floor beside us, and be able to answer questions immediately.

Lloyd:  After you get – you brought up apprentices, let me keep going with that – how long does it take, and how much do they have to learn, and how difficult is it?

Mack:Well, the 18th-century training period is stipulated as seven years back in England. We got a real shortage of workmen in the colonies in the 18th century, so they let guardians and apprentices and masters negotiate whatever they think is fair between them. And that could be five years, that’s not an unusual period. It’s running – our training system today – is running about the same in time.

Our goal is to be able to run someone through a five-year training period, staring out with the most fundamental processes:how to make a board flat, how to square up an end, how to read a rule, and how to work and what to expect from the raw materials and the nature and shrinkage properties of wood. All those basics and basic tools – assembling first a box, learning to cut a dovetail, working up to tables, learning post and rail type and mortise and tenon construction. And then that eventually to chairs, more and more complex and sophisticated tolerances and decorative demands.

Lloyd :So before you move on to the next step, you have to pretty well master what was required for the first step.

Mack:Yes.

Lloyd: So it really is, hands-on, you do it until you get it right, and then you move on to something else.

Mack:That’s our system, yeah.

Lloyd:You were talking about wood and the shrinkage properties, and the things you have to learn about it. Twenty-first century wood is not 18th-century wood. Is there any difference? Do you have to learn different things, or is it similar enough that it doesn’t matter?

Mack:Well I think with furniture, the problems many people have from old-growth trees versus second-growth trees are not going to come into a problem for 18th-century furniture. Where you are often selecting pieces of wood for beauty and variety of grain, and those with interesting figure also have interesting distortions in their shrinkage patterns.

Wood is interesting; it’s constantly shrinking and swelling across width of grain and moves no [in]significant amount along length of grain, and when the grain begins to swirl in all directions, that gets confused. And it’s interesting and it’s beautiful, but you need to learn to work with these inconsistencies. So from that perspective, we could get wood just as inconsistent today as they had in the 18th century.

Lloyd: (Chuckles) Speaking of wood, do you have a favorite? I know that many cabinet makers like to work with one thing, and don’t like to work with another but will if you have to. What’s your favorite wood?

Mack:I think the woods that 18th-century customers gravitated to – they were looking for things with beauty, they liked very fine-grained woods – these things also tend to work very crisply with a good steel cutting edge. And also some woods are more stable than others, tend to shrink less than others, and I think probably what was used most often in this area in the 18th century is still my favorite, American Black Walnut. Now I think in many ways, the imported mahogany is a little easier to work, and probably one of the most stable of all the furniture woods, but it has a very irritating dust which is just kind of caustic.

Lloyd: You talk about a good steel cutting edge. I am assuming that everything you use in the 18th-century cabinetmaking shop is an 18th-century tool. Is that correct?

Mack:We have good reproductions of 18th-century tools.

Lloyd:Oh, I’m sorry, a reproduction, yes. If it lasted from then until now, there’s a tool for you.

Mack: Yes, something worth taking care of.

Lloyd:Do people like the tools? Do people like to look at them and ask about them and see if they would work the same . . .

Mack:Well I think there’s a lot of interest in the tools on the visitor’s part. And the tools are something that most folks can relate to. The basic ergonomics of a hand tool is very very old. A Roman cabinetmaker would recognize what our 18th-century counterparts are taking and inheriting, and in turn, our modern folks can as well.

I guess the nicest thing about our 18th-century tools that has changed is that the older tools just were more comfortable when men really had to make their living with them. Even 19th-century hand tools are not as comfortable as 18th-century ones. The machines begin to come into play, things are mechanizing all aspects, and the tool is just something you would just pick up and do a little trimming with and set aside. But an 18th-century plane for instance, a man is working with hour after hour. And saws are just suited to . . .

Lloyd:That had not occurred to me, but modern workmen are using power tools so the comfort of the hand tool is not nearly so important as it would have been to an 18th-century cabinetmaker. He couldn’t have an uncomfortable tool.

Mack: Well not when you’re working with hours and hours of labor with the physical tool. The blisters or the calluses or whatever are going to add up.

Lloyd: You mentioned earlier a woodworking symposium that you get things ready for. You were talking about you were getting some chairs and things ready for a woodworking symposium. I didn’t get to ask you about it. What is the woodworking symposium?

Mack:Well we had a good many requests over many years for us to do workshops. And we’ve tried some small operations where we could handle six or eight people at a time, with real hands-on activities. That has kind of grown into a very large presentation where we invite enthusiasts, hobbyists, and serious woodworkers to explore a particular topic or aspect of cabinetmaking.

We’ve been doing this for the last eight years. Last year we focused specifically on making chairs. Rather than the attendants being able to work at the bench with us, we have experts in different areas – last year it was Windsor chair making and we did fancy, stylish chairmaking – and we actually try to demonstrate the physical production of chairs. And then there’s a very close-up video camera looking over our shoulders and we afford a couple hundred people at a time a view . . .

Lloyd:(interrupts) . . . Yeah I was thinking we’re not doing this for six to eight.

Mack:Yeah, yeah. Now it’s gotten pretty large and it’s like they’re looking over your shoulder at the bench. And it’s a pretty open affair too. There are questions from the crowd and you just are with a bunch of like-minded woodworking enthusiasts and it’s talking about 18th-century cabinetmaking.

Lloyd:I can see how you would get a few people with an interest in 18th-century cabinetmaking. I’m having a little more difficulty focusing on a couple of hundred.

Mack: Well we do this twice, so there are two crowds of hundreds.

Lloyd:That’s twice a year. There’s that much enthusiasm for it?

Mack: There has been a great deal. There are a lot of very serious hobbyists and I think the hand working that Williamsburg is doing in all the trades is trying to preserve or rediscover is not economically practical, but I think the satisfaction and the possibilities with hand tools are just too enticing. You can do things that are just impossible with machines. Machines are fast at simple things, but when you want to get into sophisticated structure or design work, you really need to go back to the subtlety of hand control.

Lloyd: Ok, we’ve got two groups of 200 or so each of enthusiasts and hobbyists. Let’s go to the other end:what do the kids think about it?

Mack: Well the young school groups that we have come through are – I’m trying to think of what they are most drawn to as they look through the shop and the wareroom. I guess the most common question is, “How much does it cost?” Which is kind of the most common wareroom question.

Lloyd: Why did I expect that?

Mack: And in the workroom, I think it is most easy to get them involved in the activity and the physical rhythm of the work. They seem to be drawn to that when left to their own devices.

Lloyd: Do you ever get a kid who says, “That’s not the way my Daddy does it?”

Mack: Well, on occasion, the kids will come in and, many of them do have fathers that do handwork and many of the basics in a small shop operation, I think kids whose fathers do some woodworking, there’s a lot familiar there. But I guess the missing whine of a plug-in router is kind of a nice thing not be intruding into the place.

Lloyd: I suppose that it is, but you’ve got to admit:every once in a while, the whine of a router is a very comforting sound in the 21st century.

Mack: Not quite as nice as the sound of a molding plane cutting over, making the same shape.

Lloyd: And doing it more efficiently, I should think.

Mack: Well, doing it with a greater versatility.

Lloyd:That’s Colonial Williamsburg:Past & Present this time. Check history.org often. We’ll post more for you to download and hear.


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