by deMolay » Sat 08 Mar 2008, 21:40:32
These crafts will continue even after peak oil. They were all essential pre-industrial trades. Only the Millwright Craft still thrives today.......1. Mill-Wright - In the beginning, a builder of everything. One whose occupation was the design, planing and building of mills or mill machinery. A person who fashioned wood and/or metal into machinery. Required the services of a Blacksmith to fashion metal parts and gudgons. Later, one who installed water wheels, turbines, and flour milling machinery. The trade of the millwright was established in Europe before preindustrialization and continued to evolved through the industrial revolution. However the term "millwrighting" came into popular usage later. (36) The craft involved the indentured apprentice. The learning emphasis was on the use of basic tools, materials, equipment, computation skills, and organization and structure of power and industry.
2. Millstone Dresser - Originally an itinerant worker, who dressed and balanced millstones. Millstones needed to be dressed every three or four weeks. Required the services of a Blacksmith to draw out and temper mill picks or bills. Later, this became the job of the miller. In larger merchant mills they employed full-time millstone dressers.
3. Miller - A tradesman who operated a grist mill and or merchant mill. Grinds grains into flour and meal. (37) A miller makes use of the skills of a cooper to make dry coopers (barrels) to hold his flour. The weaver made him cloth sacks to hold grain and meal, and bolting cloth.
4. Wheelwright - A tradesman whose speciality it was to make and repair carriage and wagon wheels. Required the services of a Blacksmith to fashion metal bands and tires.
5. Blacksmith - A tradesman or smith who works with and shapes black iron and steel.
6a. Smith - A tradesman who makes thing out of metal. He works in different types of metal and is known by the type of metal he works in, example: blacksmith, tin smith, silversmith, goldsmith, a white or black metal smith.
6b. Wright - A craftsman, a builder, a maker, a person who performs skill, such as a millwright, wheelwright, shipwright, housewright.
7. Apprentice - A young person learning a craft from a skilled worker, and formerly, bound to an employer or Master by a legal agreement. Traditionally the Master housed, clothed and fed the apprentice. The craft of the apprentice evolved in the late 15th century to the mid 17th century. (38)
8. Journeyman - A workman who has completed his apprenticeship and works for an employer or Master. A reliable worker.
9. Master - A person who has mastered a trade, a person with a very great skill or knowledge. A person of property, who owns a shop, conducts business, employs workman or journeyman, and trains apprentices. (39)
10. Laborer - An unskilled worker employed by a tradesman, businessman or property owner.