Thread: Ever heard of a ticking stick?

Originally Posted by Chief Tiff

This is how I was taught to differentiate between the trades:

Joiner: a skilled craftsman who can design and assemble complex wooden fabrications, such as a double hung sash window and frame.

Carpenter: a skilled tradesman who can nail a double hung sash window frame into a house, upright and square. Ish.

Hi Chief

That's pretty much how I learned the difference. The joiner designed and made precisely engineered woodworking joints so that windows, doors, chairs, cabinets, stairs, etc all lasted a hundred years. The carpenter did the onsite woodworking in housebuilding, including installing the joiner's work.

My mothers family were stone masons and builders for 150+ years, but they did everything - quarried, faced and installed stone work, dried green timber, designed and made joinery products, built houses and commercial buildings, etc. As my late Great Uncle George explained:

• when I work in the shed making stairs or chairs or windows, I am a joiner, a craftsman.
• when I work on the wooden parts of a house I am a carpenter, a tradesman.
• they were very conscious of this skill heirarchy.

Although four brothers worked together in the family building business for over 60 years and all did all jobs there was some skill segregation.

• George was the master joiner, and his brothers assisted him,
• Bill was the master mason, and his brothers assisted him,
• Jack was the foreman carpenter and site supervisor, and his brothers assisted him,
• Cecil maintained the machinery, made metal stuff and did most sharpening, and his brothers assisted him,
• their sister Glad did the bookwork and belted her brothers with the jam spoon when they argued.

Definite heirarchy depending on the task.

Incidentally, all four were members of the Masonic Lodge, perhaps the last Masons who were actually practicing masons.


Fair Winds

Graeme

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

their sister Glad did the bookwork and belted her brothers with the jam spoon when they argued.

.... and her her brothers assisted her!

Originally Posted by woodPixel

.... and her her brothers assisted her!

Yep. They had to! She was under 5 feet tall and still wielded that spoon when all were in their eighties.