What a surprise that after 90 minutes of being overwhelmed in Powells Books in Portland, OR, I found Professor Mack Jones' 1945 guide Shopwork on the Farm, just as I was leaving the store. It was like finding The Rosetta Stone. Suddenly, all of these mysterious objects in our shop or barn began to make sense. Professor Jones, at the University of Missouri, would have encountered many landowners and tenant farmers doing things much the way their grandparents had done.
There was a time when most small farms operated nearly as a closed system; the farm was also an amateur mechanic, blacksmith, plumber, and carpenter. At the end of WWII, many rural areas still lacked electricity, so hand tools were the rule and remained that way for a long time. Power tools were expensive, and farmers on small holdings tend to be a thrifty lot. Sadly, with the passing of generations, the coming of cheap big-box-store tools, and the movement off the small farms to large industrial operations, many old-timey skills have faded. That's why this book is such a treasure to me. I own so many of the tools described, yet for some I had no idea how they might be used.
To any Millennials who want to try rural life, I'd recommend doing a lot of research first. This book would prove an excellent starting place. Nearly everything I have done with a circular saw, a table saw, a power drill, or an electric planer can be done by hand. And simple tools we rely upon, such as an electric bench grinder, can be put safely to many uses I'd not considered before. Jones' advice is well presented and easy to follow. I realized that all these years I've been using a whetstone incorrectly!
He has advice on everything from using an anvil properly to heating and bending metal in a hand-pumped forge; these are skills I will be putting to the test in the next year when I next shape metal.
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