The Cabinetmaker
Cabinetmaker Activity
Click button below to download the Cabinetmaker Activity Sheet.
Woodworkers
A cabinetmaker is one of many tradespeople who work with wood. Their focus is furniture (cabinets, tables, chairs, etc.). Cabinetmakers probably do not cut down their own trees, but they have to get their wood from someone who does. Cutting down a tree might have been done with an axe like this.
Tools of the Trade
A cabinetmaker’s shop might have looked like this.
The cabinetmaker uses things like a hammer and nail, or screw and screwdriver that are familiar to many of us, as well as some other less familiar tools such as:
Brace & Bit: Used like a drill to make holes in the wood. You hold the round knob against your body, and turn the center part which pushes the bit into the wood. The bit (on the left) is put into the bottom of the brace. Like on a modern drill, there would be different size bits depending on the needs of the project. Another style of drill is this hand drill. You turn the handle on the side, which turns the gear, which in turn pushes the bit into the wood.
Plane for smoothing and shaping the wood. These come in many different styles and shapes, but all have a sharp blade that just barely sticks out of the bottom. The shavings on the floor in the image of a cabinetmaker’s shop come from a plane being scraped across wood.
Clamp for holding things in place while working on them. Clamps are still common today, but might look different. The part that looks like a screw is turned to widen or shrink the size of the opening.
Cabinetmakers might carry their tools in a chest like this one. Notice how fancy the inside is compared to the outside! In addition to holding tools, this chest served to show potential customers the quality of the work the cabinetmaker could do.
This tool chest is on display at METC’s Cabinetmaker exhibit. See the sign hanging up? Just like modern store signs, this advertised to potential customers. That sign hung outside the shop of Madison Cabinetmaker Caleb Burrows, whose portrait also hangs in the exhibit.
