Brooms From Work

[Dolphinjon]

I work at a restored Shaker village as a costumed interpreter and historic crafts demonstrator. I started April 1st as an interpreter, but they quickly started letting me learn to make brooms as well as woodworking. I primarily make traditional Shaker style flat brooms, but they allow me to play around with different broom styles as well.

The first picture is a hearth broom I finished a couple of days ago for my sister-in-laws friend. It's a hawks tail style hand broom. Typically this style is only made for whisk brooms, but I'll make large ones on handles upon request (or when I'm motivated to send some special brooms to the gift shop).

The second picture is just a couple of different Christmas ornaments made from scrap broom corn. I've made about 50 in the past week.

The last picture is my first hand tied broom made with craft broom corn as well as my first broom with a plaited neck. It should go home with me, but the handle is too long to fit in my car and its too cold to drive with it hanging out the window

 

[bobjackson]

My Friend's wife was a test pilot for those. Seriously, great job.

 

[firewhatfire]

I like the neat little ornaments

 

[ironman123]

Cool. How do you change the refill? :biggrin:

Ray

 

[Dolphinjon]

Thanks for all the kind words. I've learned that when you invite people to "test drive" a broom, it gets interpreted several different ways. :-D

As for changing the refill, you just have to be very careful...

 

[randyrls]

I went to a craft fair in the town where I grew up. There was a man making corn brooms there. I got one, but I was more interested in the cast iron jig that held and rotated the broom and allowed the ends to be trimmed evenly. Cast into the side of it was "Pat. Pending 1899"

 

[Dolphinjon]

The broom machine we use is from 1880. I've learned how to fix parts, grease it, and use the power of leather and copper shims. The flat broom press we have has an 1879 patent date on it. It amazes me that I'm allowed to use those machines

 

[SDB777]

Me thinks my ex-wife use to ride that one photo'd in the last shot


Nice! Seems there are so many different things that people do here, it never fails to amaze me!!!




Scott (she rode a broom...nevermind) B

 

[robutacion]

Wow,

I'm so glad that someone (sounds young) is continuing such a tradition, I never though that existed anymore, as so many of other crafts and items form the years going by...!

What surprises me even more, is when I looked at your location and saw USA, I would expect someone like you to be posting from a remote village somewhere in the Asia Pacific or even from some of the old European countries but certainly not from the USA...!

Another 2 things I noticed is the antique tools and work-shop type, on those pics of yours, the second thing is the rough swan wood floor, what wood is that, it looks like something from the hairy-Oak, or similar, how could I miss that, really...??

Show us some more of your work and work-place, those machines should look amazing...!

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers
George

 

[Charlie_W]

Very Very Nice Brooms and craftsmanship.
Do you have a lathe? you could turn the entire handles or knob tops for your short brooms or whisk brooms.

 

[navycop]

When I first read the title I thought you took the old handles and turned them into pens... Good job...

 

[Dolphinjon]

Thanks for all of the kind words.

George, the floors in that room are supposed to be ash, though some of them look more like oak. I work at Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, which is a restored Shaker village. This building is called Centre Family Dwelling, and was the largest of the buildings on the property (its still the 2nd largest stone building in the state). It was built 1824-1834 and is 24,960 square feet. We moved our workshops into this building while they do restoration work on our main shops.

They've taught me to make brooms and to do a lot of woodworking by hand. I've grown up using power tools so its been a learning experience. Here's a few pictures of our current setup. The lathe was built in about 1970, but is a copy of a lathe found at Colonial Williamsburg. We don't know what the Shakers' treadle lathes looked like, but it at least uses the same principle. I've made one small broom handle on it, and it was exhausting. We do lots of small projects on it, and let anyone who's interested in trying turning give it a whirl.



The work bench was made by a few of us back in May. It's from old tobacco tier rails and is made of red oak.



Behind the shaving horse is a lot of our project lumber. We mainly use cedar, sassafras, poplar, and cherry. The cedar is mainly used for staved vessels. I've been learning the basics of coopering, and it is much harder than I expected. I didn't think it would be easy, but it is just so time consuming to get all of your angles correct.

 

[robutacion]

Thanks for sharing that magnificent working area, you are so lucky to be part of...!

I now understand better what the building is about, something rare to find, what I mean is, museums with artefacts, tools and materials used in the old days are not unique, unique are the ones that are used as schools, and ands on experience using either original or reconstructed/replicated tools and equipment from the old days.

I wonder if that "hands on museum" is open to all ages and sex's, or is part of a extension to some scholar curriculum...! gives a bit of info in that please.

What age group are the participants/students...??

I once was an antique furniture restorer, interestingly I had various requests to repair/salvage or totally re-create old pieces, and what is interesting about this is that, one one think that, one would only consider spending such amounts of money to re-built/repair antique valued pieces of furniture but not so, I had many jobs to work on all sorts of stuff, from restoring old wooden tools, such as planners, chisels, hand saws, and all sorts of equipment found in wood-working, and not only, shops from the old days.

Not all were requested to bring back to its original or working condition, some were requested to be transformed into complete new pieces using the existent materials. One that always come to mind was the old work benches, some well over 200 years old (this was back in Portugal, a country nearly 900 years old), some more recent, and the request was to transform them into centre tables for the dinning room.

Was not always the wood these pieces were made from that was the determining factor, many wanted simply to have a usable and more suitable piece, from an ancestor/relative most used piece and these old solid work benches would in many cases be, a great raw material to work with. Most would have the under top as the final top surface, as the original top surface would be far too damaged to provided the best final results but, the transformation was always an amazing process to witness..!

I had some request also to be part of a restoration jobs on old wooden boats, as a master carpenter (as they called it), was no shortage of work requests and this, may explain my interest in these issues even today...!

If you can, gives a few more pics of the building and other aspects of that place, thank you...!

Cheers
George

 

[Fishinbo]

Cool brooms and tools in the shop. I thought that I can only see them in the movies as props. Great work!

 

[Dolphinjon]

George, we are a non-profit organization that was formed in the 1960's to preserve the buildings that remained from the community of Shakers that once lived there. At peak population, there were 491 people living there, and roughly 266 structures stood over the years on roughly 5000 acres. Today, we have 34 restored buildings on 2,491 acres. We also have over 25 miles of stone fences making it the largest collection of stone fences owned by any one owner outside of the United Kingdom.

Most of our buildings serve as hotel rooms, a dining room, gift shops, and conference centers. The museum is primarily located in just a handful of buildings. We get a fairly diverse group of visitors from across the United States and abroad. During the spring and fall, we get a large number of school groups that visit for different programs. Our most popular is called "Sheep to Shawl" and takes place over three weeks. When school groups come for that program, they get to see a sheep shearing, the wool being spun, dyed, and woven into a shawl, and a solo performance of Shaker Music. When time allows, we take them through the "Brothers' Shops" to see coopering, broom making, wood working, and blacksmithing.

My job, primarily, is to be a history interpreter and demonstrator of historic and traditional crafts. When time allows, I am expected to produce items from the workshops to be sold in the gift shops. These items are primarily brooms and small woodworking projects such as window props. One of the men I work with taught industrial arts (shop) for 18 years in public schools. Because most children today never get a chance to take a shop class or use a tool outside of maybe a Dremel or a power drill, we tend to spend a lot of our time with the guests helping kids (and adults if they're interested) try some of the tools. I'll let anyone who's interested take a turn on our treadle lathe as long as there isn't a project on it that one of us needs to get done. We also let them try using a low-angle spoke shave on the shaving horse, and usually one of our egg-beater style hand drills. It's not much, but it's more than most of them have ever done before. I routinely send kids home with a little scrap piece of wood that they shaped with a spoke shave, drilled a hole in, and sanded. When time allows on slow days, I'll happily help kids make some form of hand tied broom as it's something that isn't terrible hard to do and gives them a major sense of accomplishment.

Years ago, we used to teach a variety of workshops in weaving, basket making, broom making, and oval box making (although the oval box classes were often taught by John Wilson). We are starting to work on putting together workshops again. We still do them by special request, but we are starting to talk about expanding them again. I have the theory that a lot of people would pay to make their own Shaker style flat broom. I know I would have, even if it cost 2-3 times as much as just buying one. We shall see what happens.
The village has a decent website. You can check it out at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill | Kentucky Hotels Lodging & Inn At Shaker Village | Pleasant Hill KY.