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Literature, Art & Science

onnectionsCTools of the Trades Vocabulary Scramble

Can You Match These Tools or Products to the Trades?(Hint: all are mentioned and defi ned in this article.)

Shipcarver:Cooper:Shipsmith:Printer:Anvil, Chase, Stave, Chisel, Hardie, Press, Mallet, Forge, Bilge, Hoop, Figurehead, Hogshead, Quoin, Bellows, Head, Tongs, Bick, Composing Stick, Cask, Gouge, Hammer, Brayer, Draw Knife, Platen.

Tools of the Trades: Hands-On Learning Opportunities in a Seaport Town

“Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee. He that has a trade has an estate.”

-Benjamin Franklin

Find out how your students can experience Mystic Seaport here: http://www.mysticseaport.org/learn/k-12-programs/fi eld-trip/

Famous Tradesmen

Paul Revere, Silversmith: Paul Revere was born in Boston in the year 1734, and at the age of 13, he left school to apprentice with his father, a silversmith. Paul eventually took over his father’s shop and produced beautiful and today highly collectible silver. After the Revolutionary War, he diversifi ed into other kinds of metals. Paul cast iron, cast bells, and cannons of bronze, forged bolts and spikes from copper, and developed a process to make rolls of copper sheathing for use on ships and buildings, A favorite book and fun link: Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes

A favorite book: Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes

John Alden, Cooper: In the year 1620, at the age of about 21, John Alden was hired in Southampton, England, to serve as the cooper aboard the Mayfl ower and was charged with taking care of the cargo, stored in casks. Although not a Separatist himself, he decided to remain in America and signed the Mayfl ower Compact. In 1623, he married fellow passenger Priscilla Mullins and they had 10 children.

A fun link:http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/mayfl ower-john-alden-ships-cooper

Colby and Campbell, Ship Carvers: While not household names, these two men were well-known carvers in Mystic in the 1850s through 1870s. During this time, Mystic shipyards were busy building fast wooden, clipper ships, as well as schooners and steamships, all of which needed decorative carvings. Colby and Campbell were also baseball fans, and in 1866, they helped to form a local baseball team called the Mystic Oceanics. On July 31, 1869, the following article appeared in the local paper, the Mystic Pioneer, describing the launching of a full-rigged ship named Frolic: “We notice that she (Frolic) has a splendid fi gurehead carved by our artistic townsmen, Campbell & Colby. It is a lady with a bat in one hand in an act of striking a ball which she holds in the other, enjoying a frolic. It is very appropriate.”

Benjamin Franklin, Printer: Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston in 1706, one of 17 children. Although he excelled at reading and writing, he left grammar school at the age of 10 to assist his father in the family tallow-chandler and “sope-boiler” business. For two years, he cut wicks and fi lled dipping molds, but was most unhappy. At 12, afraid that he would run off to sea, his father allowed Benjamin to become indentured to his elder brother, James. He agreed to take Benjamin on as an apprentice, to teach him the art of printing and provide him with food, lodging, and other “necessaries” until he turned 21. Benjamin never earned journeyman’s wages from James, because he left before his tenure was up. The brothers quarreled, and Benjamin quit, reporting that James sometimes beat him. Benjamin ran away to Philadelphia, and eventually opened his own printing shop where he printed many things, including currency, his own newspaper called the Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard’s Almanack.“Though he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, though he had rendered to his country service of incalculable importance as the

ambassador of the colonies at the court of France, though he had attained eminence in many branches of science – when he came to write his last will and testament, he began it this way:

I, Benjamin Franklin,Printer”

(Taken from: The Story of Printing and Bookmaking, by Douglas C. McMurtrie)

by Nancy Hughes, Mystic Seaport Educator

In order to ensure a next generation of museum-goers, Living History Museums such as Mystic Seaport need to present history in a lively and engaging manner. Exhibits, whether boats, buildings or select artifacts, must attract and challenge students, and the experience

needs to be a memorable one. How can we do that? Mystic Seaport is well positioned to provide hands-on learning. Every day brings scheduled opportunities for visitors to raise or lower a sail, touch a codfi sh eyeball during a fi sh split, make some rope, or take a horse and carriage ride. Some exhibits have buttons to push and levers to pull; at others, interpreters may let students hold a harpoon or roll a cask. All these interactions make history “come alive” for our visitors.

Mystic Seaport has another important mission – to preserve the trades that defi ned 19th-century Mystic as a town world famous for building wooden vessels. Today, Museum shipwrights work in an active restoration shipyard to build and restore wooden vessels of all types and sizes. In our recreated seafaring village, trades supporting the shipbuilding industry are represented by a ship carve shop, a cooperage, a shipsmith, and a print shop. Skilled craftsmen not only produce items used by the Museum but also teach their craft, so that skills of the 19th century are actively used in the 21st. All visitors are welcome to visit the shops and see our craftsmen at work, but only students on a pre-arranged basis have the chance to go “behind the barrier” on a Hands-On-History Guided Tour and try out a trade. During the tour, students will participate in three hands-on activities, including at least one of which will be a trade. (Other activities chosen may include a chantey performance, a roleplayer encounter or a take-home sailor’s craft.) Next we will discuss the different trades and the hands-on activities that students can do together.

The Ship Carve ShopIn groups of up to eight, students will be shown how to use a gouge and

a mallet and will carve a leaf on a block of wood to take home. Enter the village at Mystic Seaport, and students will soon spy the brightly painted sign for the Ship Carve Shop. Inside the shop, they will fi nd an array of products made by the carver for use on a vessel. Each of these items was unique, commissioned by the owner or shipbuilder to adorn a specifi c vessel. Name boards and trail boards, while often beautifully gilded, served the practical purpose of identifying a vessel by name and homeport. A fi gurehead rides beneath the bowsprit at the front, or bow, of a vessel. Its purpose is strictly ornamental, and is meant to impress, tell a story or honor a particular person or country. Instead of a fi gurehead, a modest scroll (or billethead) would be used on a hardworking ship such as a whaleship.

Photo credit: Mystic SeaportThe ship carver is part artist and part tradesman. He uses wood that is easy

to carve, but also durable at sea. Before beginning their carving project, students will learn a little about the different kinds of wood samples displayed in the shop. What is the difference between soft wood and hard wood? What do the rings of a tree signify? What does density mean, and why is it important to a carver? What does grain mean and how does it affect a carver’s work? How can we identify a hard wood tree from a soft wood when we walk through the woods? (Hint: Leaves vs. Needles). Students will also learn about tools. The three key tools of the ship carver are the chisel, the gouge, and the mallet. The chisel is a cutting tool with a fl at blade used to make a vertical cut in the wood called a “stop-cut”. The carver uses the mallet, or double-headed wooden hammer, to tap the chisel to make the “stop-cut”. The gouge is a cutting tool with a curved blade for cutting rounded grooves in the wood. Blade curvature varies from nearly fl at to very round, and a good set of tools provides the carver with great fl exibility and precision while carving. Finally, and most importantly, students will learn and practice good safety practices while executing their carving project. The carve shop even has a private, back room equipped with student-height tables.

The CooperageIn groups of up to eight, students will have a chance to shape two staves

to take back to the classroom, raise a bucket, drive hoops on and off a hogshead, and roll a cask. In good weather, the Cooperage’s double doors are wide open to catch the breeze off the Mystic River. There, the cooper can keep an eye on the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaling vessel in the world. There’s a close connection between coopering and whaling, as almost everything that was taken aboard a whaleship to sustain the crew for the two to fi ve years of the voyage was stored in watertight, easy-to-roll barrel-shaped containers called “casks”. And, when the crew aboard whalers got lucky and caught, killed and processed a whale, they needed to store the precious oil in something for the long voyage home. They used casks for this task. Depending on its size, a cask may be called by different names, including barrel, keg, hogshead, and pipe. They vary considerably in size and shape, but all have the same basic elements. All casks are comprised of carefully shaped wooden pieces called “staves” that are uniform in length, wider in the center, and tapered at each end. When heated, staves can be bent and then drawn together and held in place with bands of metal or wood called “hoops”. Each end of the cask is fi tted with has a circular “head” set into a groove near the ends of the staves. The heads can be removed by loosening the nearest hoop. Because of the bend and wide center width of each stave, the cask is fatter in the middle. This is the cask’s bulge or “bilge”. This combination of bulging middle and tapered ends give the cask the perfect shape for maximum maneuverability. A cask can be rolled, pivoted, and rocked, making it the perfect container for loading cargo on a ship. Coopers make other kinds of containers, too. Think about what you might need around your house if you lived in 19th-century Mystic. You might need a churn for making butter, a tub for doing the wash, a bucket for the well, a bucket for the horse, a pail to carry when picking berries or apples. Still watertight, these containers are made with straight, not curved, wooden staves and may be open at one end, but still are held together with removable hoops.

Photo credit: Mystic SeaportStudents will be instructed in safe work practices, and invited into the

cooper’s work area. Seated at the “shaving horse”, each student will have a chance to pull on a “draw knife” or “hollowing knife” to shape a stave, and perhaps, under close supervision, plane the edges of the stave on the “joiner plane”. Without a proper angle or bevel on the edges, staves cannot form the tight circle needed for a “tight” or watertight container. Students will also see how the cooper uses a small anvil or “bick” to fashion a metal hoop and will have a chance to use a “driver” to drive on and take off a hoop. Students will also “raise” or assemble a pre-made bucket and have a chance to maneuver a truly elegant moving machine – the humble cask.

The ShipsmithIn groups of up to eight, students will collectively make at least two hooks

to take back to the classroom. Each student, in turn, will have a chance to strike the iron on the anvil with a hammer and pull on the bellows while another student is working. Even on a cold day, the Shipsmith is the place to be. Moved to Mystic Seaport in 1944 from its original location, the historic James D. Driggs Shipsmith shop comes from New Bedford, Massachusetts, once the busiest whaling port in the world. At the time the shop closed in 1924, it was the last surviving whalecraft manufactory still making harpoons, cutting spades, and killing lances.

Students will immediately be attracted to the fi re burning brightly in the forge, a large brick structure of which the shop has two. They will notice the bellows above, a large wood and leather apparatus which, through pumping by pulling a handle, forces air through a pipe into the base of the fi re. This stimulates the fi re to burn more effi ciently and produce more heat. Hard to see, but can you tell what the shipsmith is using for fuel? He burns coal, more precisely, soft or bituminous coal to create a fi re with a temperature of about 3,000 degrees. This is the temperature needed to heat iron, the so-called “black” metal, to about 2,000 degrees. Have you ever heard the expressions “strike when the iron is hot?” The shipsmith knows when the iron is hot enough to strike when it turns an orange-yellow color. “Red-hot” is not quite hot enough! The shipsmith quickly uses tongs to remove the hot iron from the forge and transfer it to an anvil, the sturdy metal base upon which he pounds and shapes the hot iron. The anvil consists of a fl at surface for forging, a horn at one end for turning,

and a hole or two for inserting a hardie (tool for cutting) or swage (tool for shaping round items).

Photo credit: Mystic SeaportTo make a hook, two students at a time will join the shipsmith at the forge

and anvil. One student will tend the fi re and pull the bellows as needed. The other will work at the anvil under close supervision of the shipsmith. Using a hammer, the student will begin or continue the process of “drawing down” a hot iron rod by executing a series of well-placed strikes to make the iron longer and thinner. Once tapered, the rod will be given an “eye”, turned around the horn of the anvil to create a hook, cut to the proper length using a hardie, given a fl attened decorative top, and punched or drilled so that it can be hung. The rod will need to “take the heat” (be returned to the forge) several times during this process. All students will pull the bellows and strike the iron.

The Print ShopIn groups of up to eight, each student, in turn, will use the historic

Washington Press to print a pre-typeset handbill and will have a chance to use wooden type to set their initials in a chase and print them out on paper. To walk into the Print Shop at Mystic Seaport is to enter the hustle and bustle of 19th-century small town America. We are confronted with the latest technology in the shape of great, looming black machines to cut paper and impress upon paper whatever job the printer has taken on and composed. He might be setting the type for the weekly paper, the Mystic Pioneer or the Mystic Press, depending upon the year of our visit. He might be printing a handbill or poster sized advertisement for a ship newly built in one of Mystic’s several shipyards, or for a cough remedy carried in the Drug Store around the corner. To say that he is printing, is to really say that he making an impression, for he is most likely using a large, workhorse press called a Washington Press. Here, a large waffl e-like weight called the “platen” is lowered onto the “chase”, or metal frame that holds the job to be done. The chase sits upon the “bed” of the press, which is rolled under the platen by means of a handle. Then the platen is lowered by moving a lever called the “tail”.

Photo credit: Mystic SeaportBut, wait. What’s in the chase, exactly? Students will learn that in the

19th century, a printer had to compose his job by hand-setting type. All around the shop, we see segmented trays called “cases”, which neatly sort individual letters of a certain style (font) and size (measured in “points”). The terminology “upper case” and “lower case” comes from the sorting of capital and small letters. The printer chooses the letters he needs and places them sequentially in a “composing stick” to form words and spaces that create a line of type. The letters appear backwards, or the mirror image of how they will print. Once transferred to the chase, surrounded by wooden spacers called “furniture” and locked in with metal locks called “quoins”, we are ready to move the chase to the bed of the press. Now, what else do we need? Ink, of course, which is applied to the tops of the reversed letters by means of a roller called a “brayer”. Each student, in turn, will have the chance to ink the chase and work the Washington Press. His or her take-home souvenir will be a fi ne “fi rst impression”.

Each student will also have an opportunity to set type in a chase, using large wooden letters, under the supervision of a Museum teacher accompanying the group. Once set, each student will again use the Washington Press to create a piece of personalized stationery. How fun is that? ________________________________________________

For more information or to book a Hands-On-History Tour use this link:http://www.mysticseaport.org/learn/k-12-programs/fi eld-trip/guided-tours/

Interested in a more extensive experience for your students? Ask about our Apprenticeship or Overnight Programs!