Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1883-03-22
truth that one amateur carpenter is

1
equal to two movings, and even then
the destructiveness of home carpentry
! would be moderated. The husband OF
whom the infatuated wife is fond of re-
marking, 'tHe is so handy with his
| tools that he can do almost anything
| destroys an average amount of seventy
| five dollars worth of furniture annually,
as estimated by our most intelligent
furniture dealers; and so we'll is this
understood among the latter class that
some enterprising furniture dealers sell
| amateur tool chests at half their cost to
their regular customers, feeling sure
that their business will thereby be i'm
mensely benefited.
The amateur carpenter always has
perfect confidence in himself, and in-
stead of learning humility from his
many failures, he grows bolder and
more reckless. He may be too busy Or
too tired to accede to the ordinary re-
quests of his wife, but when she asks
him if he won't just mend the rocking
chair or put up shelf in the kitchen,
he will even lay aside his after-dinner
cigar in his zeal to WELD the hammer
| and saw. He rarely finishes what he
undertakes to do. Ii there is what
ladies call ga squeak" somewhere in the
rocking-chair, he begins the work of
banishing the squeak by pulling the
chair apart, and when, after an hour or
two of hard work, involving great de-
struction of veneering and hopeless
laceration of the joints of the chair, he
succeeds in dsconnecting the rockers,
he announces that he is too tired to do
anything more, and must put off the
work of reconstruction until the next
day. In some cases he does resume
work, and succeeds in putting the chair
together. again after fashion, but it is
then so SCARED and MANNED that he
acknowledges that it will have to 90 to
the cabinet makers to be 'sdone over"
and in his pride at having removed the
squeak he never seems to perceive that
the last state of that chair is decidedly
worse than the first.
The partial or permanent ruin OF the
object which the amateur carpenter
undertakes to mend is by no means the
full extent of the damage which he
infiicts upon the furniture. Ii he uses
the saw, he invariably places the article
to be sawed on a chair, and contrives to
infiict deep cut on the chair by tho
jealous and incautious use of his weap-
on. If he wishes to nail one piece of
wood 10 another, he places them both
ON the floor, and drives his nails
through the carpet and deep into the
planks beneath. When he uses the
glue-pot, he either lays the wet brush
down upon the damask table cover, or
he upsets the glue upon the carpet. One
of his most characteristic feats is that OF
shortening one LEG of table. Being
told that the leg is too long, he saws it
off so as to make 1t of the same length
as the other legs. Invariably he finds
that he has made it too short, and he
then tries to shorten the other legs.
There is yet to be found single in.
stance of successful shortening of table
legs by man with an amateur tool
chest, although several eNasperated and
persevering men have sawed AN entire
set of four legs into small pieces in the
vain hope of bringing them into uni.
formity. III -.
1t is probable that more far-reachine
injury is done by the amateur carpenter
who makes articles of furniture than by
the man who simply repairs them The
book-cases and single bedsteads made
by the head of the family who is handy
with his saw can not be thrown out-of.
doors, but must remain to vex the souls
of the intelligent members of the family
and fill the minds of visitors with
amazement. What is imperatively
needed is strict prohbitory law for
bidding the sale of carpenters tools to
any man who can not prove that he is a
professional carpenter. Until this is
done there will always be men who VIII
buy tools aud enter upon 4 career of de-
struc,ion of household furniture which
must cause any, angel, with n taste for
housekeeping to weep bitter though use.
less tears.-Harper'S Ba-Gr.