A Family History of Carpentry

My family has had carpenters in it for at least four generations and I can not g
o back any farther than that. My father's father came from Anglesey, an island o
ff north Wales called Ynys Mon in Welsh. I visited his place of birth once. We w
ere directed by a local old-timer to a field, but we could not see a dwelling or
any ruins. I clambered up unto a mound of earth to get a better view and then w
e realized that I was standing on his old home. He had lived in a hole in the gr
ound covered over with earth! A door was still on it, overgrown after 70 years o
r so of disuse and there was a kind of stone chimney in the long grass on the to
p. I was 10 years old and my Dad was 33 and it was the only time either of us we
nt the length of Wales to look up our family history. It is more than probable t
hat my great-grandfather was a shepherd.
My grandfather ran away from home at 14 years of age to Liverpool and became an
apprentice ship's carpenter. That would have been in 1914. What a time to pick t
o go out into the big world - the start of the First World War in Europe. He cou
ld not speak English at the time, but must have taught himself as he learned his
apprenticeship. He passed out as the best in his year and was given a set of th
e finest woodworking tools of the age. Each tool had a small brass plate in the
handle with his name etched into it. My father still treasured them when I was g
rowing up.
I never met my granndfather; he died a month before I was born, but I was named
after him and, knowing that I was due and that he was going, he left me a teethi
ng ring, which I still have. More to the point of this article though, there was
not a single power tool in his tool bag when he died in 1954.
My father was the youngest son and when he was old enough, he had to leave schoo
l to be apprentice to his father who had stopped his roaming by then. Growing up
with my father in the 1950's and 1960's, I do not remember him using power tool
s either. He used a brace-and-bit for drilling, several assorted hand-sharpened
saws for cutting and his only consent to modern technology, a Yankee, which was
a pump-action screwdriver. Everything he needed to hang a door or cut a roof was
in one bag or later on a box, which he made himself.
I went away to study and travel and when I returned to stay 12 years later, my b
rother had finished his carpenter's apprenticeship and was working with my Dad.
That would have been in about 1980 and my brother still swears to ths day that D
ad only bought power tools then because he, my brother, had learned how use them
in technical college. Something which my father always denied, although it did
seem a bit of a coincidence to me. My brother, now in his Fifties, still uses ha
nd tools where he can, but also has the full range of power tools in a near-by v
an.
His son, now nearly 30 is also a carpenter and he has a power tool for every job
and throw-away saws. How times have changed.
Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several subjects, but is curren
tly involved with the <a href="http://woodworkingpowertools.org/Black-And-Decker
-Power-Tools.html">Black and Decker Power Tools</a>. If you would like to know m
ore or check out great offers, please go to our website at <a href="http://wood
workingpowertools.org">Woodworking Power Tools</a>