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Posts from the “History” Category

Overkill

Posted on 5 August 2015

The quirky little projects we get are some of my favorites.  They fall outside the typical reach of woodworking, and most folks wouldn’t want to be bothered.  And while they are rarely lucrative, there are other kinds of compensation.   Two years ago (I couldn’t believe it when I checked the email thread!), a regular client asked if we could fabricate the missing wooden handle for an heirloom pistol he had. I of course said yes, before even seeing the project.  I know nothing of guns or gunsmithing, but weird old stuff excites me, and the transgressive allure of a firearm made the project irresistible.  Up close, the pistol was even more interesting than I had imagined, unlike anything I had ever seen.  …

Categories: History, trade secrets

Tagged: boot pistol, machinist, pistol, Rikert Engineering, Steve Reichert, underhammer percussion pistol, walnut

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Rescue!

Posted on 13 February 2014

Unless something goes terribly wrong,* carpentry is not usually not about adrenaline rush.  Firefighters burst into burning buildings to save puppies, while we shave another few thousands off a piece of crown miolding to make a perfectly coped joint.  Slow and steady tends to suit my constitution, but a bit of urgency now and then can be nice, too.  So I was excited to get the call from Lex, a repeat client of ours:  “There’s an oak library in a house in JP, and they’re about to gut the building.  We can have it if we can pull it out tomorrow; otherwise, it’s landfill-bound.”  We jumped into action, though our shop is not equipped with any slidey fire-poles.     The house was substantial…

Categories: History, Seen, victorian, vintage

Tagged: Jamaica Plain, library, oak, salvage, victorian

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Lost the bet

Posted on 8 June 2013

Starting a new project is fun and challenging on many fronts, but one of my favorite parts is developing intimacy with an older building, starting to discover its quirks and secrets.  We’ve just begun work on a magnificent Victorian in Boston; the front façade is voluptuously ornate, with no less than six different styles of window trim.  Notably odd, though, is the fact that two of the windows are missing — filled in with clapboards.   When our clients bought the house a few years ago, they thought this was pretty puzzling.  They assumed that someone with a limited respect for the house’s history had taken a shortcut during an earlier renovation, and they were hoping to restore the windows some day.   As…

Categories: History

Tagged: horsehair plaster, mystery, victorian, windows

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19 years of iteration…

Posted on 14 September 2012

19 years worth of my phones

19 years worth of my phones

and conversations are still garbled.  I got my first mobile phone, a Nokia 101, in 1993 and tried not to use it at all, as the minutes were very dear.  I gave up on it after a while, and didn’t get on the carousel again until the oughts.  Twelve phones in the last twelve years, and I still wish I didn’t need one, though I spend an inordinate amount of time with the current one.

I documented the group as #s 2-12 were headed off to the recycler.

 

 

Categories: History

Tagged: cell phone, communication, Nokia

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Interview with a kindred soul

Posted on 10 September 2012

I’ve wondered for a long time about the economics of doing skilled hand-work.  Adam Davidson of Planet Money does a nice job addressing this question in one contemporary context in his recent story on NPR.  I suspect that the story generalizes; it certainly resonates with our experience.  Has it always been this way?  I’m curious about the social and economic standing of cabinetmakers and joiners working 200 years ago in Massachusetts, for example.  Were they roughly in the same social class as their customers?  And could they afford their own work?

Categories: History

Tagged: bespoke tailor, economics, NPR, Planet Money

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Found in the attic

Posted on 6 September 2012

One of the perquisites of my work is getting to poke around in the attics and basements of old buildings.  Along with mummified squirrels and decades of dust, weird and elegant things occasionally pop up. Last weekend I was helping my friends Anne and Paul evaluate the wisdom of buying a particular 2-family house in Arlington, MA.  The house was unremarkable, but the attic had a couple of treasures:   These two wooden toilet tanks served the first and second floor bathrooms.  They were reportedly located in the attic to ensure that there was enough pressure to clear the un-optimized bowls of 1913. The house also had the most elegant retraction mechanism for an attic stair I’ve ever seen.     There were a…

Categories: History

Tagged: Arlington, attic, attic stair, toilet tank, wooden plumbing

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The gang

Posted on 17 February 2011

For the first time in living memory, we all managed to gather in one place, and what a place!  a wonderful Jamaica Plain restaurant called Vee Vee, owned by our friends Dan and Kristen Valachovic.  Unfortunately, the event that finally motivated us to gather en masse was John’s going-away dinner.  Today was his last day (tiling to the end!), and Saturday he starts the drive back to San Diego, via Vermont, to honor his love of non-Euclidean geometry. Best wishes and happy travels to John, and we hope to lure him back to the fairer coast soon.

Categories: History, Uncategorized

Tagged: Vee Vee

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