The main structure of Hay’s cabinet shop was built in the 1740s at the bottom of a ravine on a Williamsburg back street. A later extension, appended to the west wall of the original structure, spanned a small stream that snaked its way through the ravine. Never made to power early machinery, the stream, combined with the gully and locale, likely made for cheap real estate. The potential savings were offset over time by the stream’s slowly destructive interaction with the building’s foundations. Anthony Hay and successors – Benjamin Bucktrout and Edmund Dickinson – were kept busy by the stream’s constant encroachments. While the business thrived until Dickinson’s 1776 enlistment in the First Virginia Regiment, the building slowly fell into...
We at Mortise & Tenon are passionate about inspiring and teaching people to work with their hands. If you know someone who wants to learn woodworking who is more interested in using handsaws than standing at a table saw and planing boards instead of sanding them, you’ve come to the right spot. We are a small, independent company in Midcoast Maine that publishes a twice-per-year hefty “magazine” (more like a “journal”), instructional books, online courses, apparel, and woodworking merchandise. “[M&T is] a wonderful publication that succeeds so beautifully in documenting traditional furniture building and making it feel simultaneously timeless and meaningful in our modern day.” – George Sawyer, chairmaker Not sure what to gift your loved one this year? Our growing catalog can feel overwhelming to navigate,...
Hayward’s writing is suffused with a poignant awareness that the 20th century was a time of inexorable decline in the use and manufacture of hand tools. All sorts of skills and techniques that were taken for granted in previous centuries disappeared, and the use of the double iron wasn’t immune from this trend. By the end of the 20th century it was common, as I noted earlier, to hear the claim that cap irons didn’t really stop tear-out. Some writers speculated that the real purpose of the cap iron was to stabilize or add heft to the cutting iron. One prominent author wrote that cap irons “do more harm than good in a handplane” – a statement that would have...
