On Thursday, June 21, 2018 at 8:37:37 AM UTC-5, dpb wrote:

We generally have a view of the early colonial furniture makers as being
"one-off" craftsmen turning out every piece lovingly ... reality was
"not so much"

That falls in with the myth that the "old craftsmen" loved to use inaccurate, manual tools that took longer to perform a task, were harder to master, and made the work days much longer.

At this point in my young life with about 45 years in the trades, I have never, ever, once heard any professional say that they prefer to use manual tools versus pneumatics or electric. Having the manual skills to perform a certain task are a tremendous advantage, but no one but the home educated craftsman thinks it is better to cut dadoes with a dado plane, put brads in with a hammer and nail, drill holes with a brace and bit, and cut boards to length with a hand saw.

From custom cabinet makers, casement makers, on to house framers and form setters, everyone is looking for a way to make a basic task repeatable. And faster, easier, with as small a learning curve as possible.

I read once that the required skills needed to complete furniture in the days of Phyfe, Hepplewhite, Chippendale, etc., at the level of craftsmanship needed made it impossible for ONE person to build a piece. There were drawer makers, top makers, joint makers, finishers, etc., all involved in just one piece. No one person made the famous stuff.

And rest assured, anytime an advancement was made in metallurgy creating higher quality tools that made a task go faster, I have no doubt that anyone "in the business" took quick advantage of it.

Robert