Welcome!
We have just redesigned our website. I hope you enjoy it!
It's amazing how many crafts and trades have been lost to history. One day soon I expect someone to research how people used to put up web pages on websites like this one to share information and know that it too is a lost craft. Some of the crafts and trades have become just hobbies to some and industry has revolutionized others or completely eliminated them.
My great grandfather had a full blown blacksmith shop. When I was a child the shop had not been a working blacksmith shop in years but I played there with my young imagination. It took me back to the days when the fire burned bright and his hammer smashed against the hot red steel and showers of sparks rained at his feet. Later in life it made me appreciate all the crafts and trades that have come and gone to get us to today along with the craftsmen who experimented and sacrificed for the benefit of everyone who lived after them.
In the past people typically worked one trade or craft all of their lives and pasted the secrets of their trade or craft to their children or apprentice. So much information has been lost about the crafts and trades of yesterday while some have been captured in books written by tradesmen and craftsmen before they passed. The mission of this website is to try to capture a few of these books from each trade or craft that has been lost to history.
Please feel free to submit comments and suggestion using the "Contact Us" button above. Thanks again for visiting!
Latest Book
Our latest book addition is "Making Tin Can Toys" by Edward Thatcher originator of Tin Can Toys and Instructor of Metal Working, Teachers College, Columbia University New York, 1904-1919. Drawings made and the author's models painted by Isabel Thatcher. Published by Philadelphia and London J.B. Lippincott Company 1919.