The Labor of being a Gunsmith

[spgordon]

I am interested in a comment made on this forum (over a decade ago!) about Andreas Albrecht, who, after serving as a gunsmith in Moravian communities for many years, became the proprietor of the inn in Bethlehem's Moravian community in 1766. The post stated: "Do you really think that Andreas Albrecht chose to run a tavern in the middle of his career as a gunsmith?  No the church decided that they wanted him there at that time doing that job." (It is certainly true that the church decided where Albrecht would work: but I am wondering about this assertion about what he would have wanted.)

This comment made me think about something I wrote a few years ago, in an essay on William Henry of Lancaster. There, I showed that by 1760 Henry had given up his gunsmithing work and had become a merchant--and said that "the desire to sweat less at the forge was motivation enough" for him to be eager to abandon the occupation of gunsmith and work, instead, as a merchant.

So I wonder what you all think about this. From what you know about eighteenth-century gunsmiths and gunsmithing, doesn't it make sense that--if they could--gunsmiths would leave behind an occupation that demanded such manual labor for one that required less manual labor? Do we, as builders or collectors or researchers, romanticize an occupation that was just a laborious trade not unlike shoemaker or tinsmith or miller (none of whom, I think, we romanticize).

With thanks in advance for your thoughts,

Scott

[Lucky R A]

Scott,
  I would think that there are very few  builders today that are qualified to speak with authority to your question.   Those who have built an entirely hand built gun would be the only ones that truly appreciate the labors that go into the task.  Here comes the BUT, how many of even the early builders of Albrecht's era built guns entirely by hand w/o the use of imported parts completed by a secondary source?   Sweat and labor may have been a motivating factor to abandon gun making, but good ole capitalism was probably a greater motivator.   Many of us who build fulltime today have already completed a career not associated with gun building.  We now build for a love of the craft and some monetary compensation.  Today as of old your heart has to be in it, as there are much easier ways to make a dollar.     Ron

[Robby]

Amen.
Robby

[spgordon]

Thanks, Ron, for the reply. I agree that a substantial difference is that people who build today do it (for the most part) as a hobby because they love the activity. But I wonder if this distorts our view of eighteenth-century gunsmiths. Did eighteenth-century gunsmiths love their work? Or did they work at their trade just as a shoemaker or tinsmith or cook or baker did: it was the trade in which they had been trained and it offered them a chance to make a living.

[tallbear]

Scott

Great disscussion!!

I am someone who has always earned a living from my back/hands.I left school at 17 and went into construction,transitioned from that to custom cabinets/furniture and finally now build long rifles full time.While some of these transitions were from other factors a good bit of it was the recognition that my body can only take so much.I left construction recognizing that sheet rocking and roofing would eventually take a heavy toll on my body.So too the shop work of standing on a concrete shop floor making cabinets left my knees with some arthritis and bursitis in my shoulder.So on to gunmaking.I'm not saying this is the only factor but it certainly was a contributing one.Spending a day filing out gun mounts certainly gets my joints aching particularly if it's cold and damp out.

I deal with these aches and pains daily and while I certainly have no complaints I can see why a craftsman would search out other means of making a living if an opportunity presented itself.

Another factor that I had a long talk with Wallace Gusler about is the frustration of your eyes going.We have the benefit of modern lighting and eye care.Even with these advances Wallace often lamented that he could no longer see well enough to do the quality of work he could do in his younger years.I can certainly see where the loss of keen sight and frustration of no longer being able to do what one once could quality wise would also push someone to leave their craft for another.

Mitch Yates

[Bob Mac]

I may be way off base, if I am, I'm sure someone with much more knowledge will let me know. Wouldn't an established gunsmith also have an apprentice who would be expected to do more of the manual labor involved in gunmaking? Wouldn't this be a part of the learning curve?

[Bill Paton]

Mitch’s comments about eyesight brought to mind two original signed Nicolas Hawk rifles I examined side by side recently. Both have Hawk’s exquisite engraving style, but on one the characteristic Hawk extremely fine “eyelash” lines are less finely engraved and have about half the number of lines per inch compared to the first (and other Hawk rifles I’ve seen). The supposition is that the cruder one may be a late Hawk product done when his eyes were failing. Maybe some of you have seen similar evidence from 18th and 19th C makers.

[Buck]

I appreciate Mitch's explanation.
I started laying brick / laboring at the age of 14 (actually 2 weeks prior to my 14th birthday). I worked every summer, winter, spring vacation and weekends until I was 17. At that point I left High School and began full time employment as a Labor / Mason. Finally in 1990 I began my Apprenticeship with the Department of Labor / Local Union, by the time I was a 2nd year Apprentice I was teaching the 1st year Apprentice Class and was already beginning my upper managerial career. Through the years I went from Laborer to Mason to Foreman to Superintendent to Director of Operations then to Estimator and then to all 4 at one time. In 2005 I was awarded (at 34 years old) the Golden Trowel for Job of the year in the tri-county area and the following year (for the same project) the Bronze Medal for Best Religious project of 2006 in the National Competition. Afterwards I began running the "Mega Schools" that were being constructed in the Chicagoland area, at this stage I had anywhere from 35 to 65 employees on my specific site along with another 30 - 50 at various different projects running at the same time. The responsibility can be overwhelming and the eventual outcome is exhaustion. I my opinion, I think once you have taken it as far as you can reach you begin to lose the love for it. From my own experience it was a role that was 24 hours a day, and for the better part of 16 years I neglected the things that mattered for the glory of the build. Once you come to that point your satisfaction is achieved with more simplistic things, time with your children / grandchildren, spending quality time with your significant other and so on and so forth. In 2012 I finally gave it up and retired to the office where I now estimate only, like Mitch I feel the aches and pains, but when I leave the office it stays there. I thought it would be difficult to let it go but I have no problems with it it's a younger mans game and you can't take the glory to the bank.

Mr Albrecht may have accomplished all he wanted to achieve, Its better to go out at the top of your game than to fall apart / crash and burn because they never remember the greatness of what you've accomplished, only the burning wreck you left behind.
    
Buck    

[tallbear]

I think we also are jaded here because we all love the "Longrifle" so much.Most that frequent here have a desire to learn more and improve their skills/knowledge.I am fortunate to have always had a job that I enjoyed and have always been one to be "playing" in the shop after hours and on weekends.Enjoying both the improvement in my skill and knowledge. I have run across many in the trades ,in fact have had many employees who looked at their particular craft as just a job.They never strove to learn more than the job required and viewed it as just a way to make a buck.I can certainly see a gunmaker of the period who apprenticed at an early age while they may have been good at it they never developed a love for it and moved on once other opportunity presented them selves.

Mitch Yates

[Bob Roller]

Scott

Great disscussion!!

I am someone who has always earned a living from my back/hands.I left school at 17 and went into construction,transitioned from that to custom cabinets/furniture and finally now build long rifles full time.While some of these transitions were from other factors a good bit of it was the recognition that my body can only take so much.I left construction recognizing that sheet rocking and roofing would eventually take a heavy toll on my body.So too the shop work of standing on a concrete shop floor making cabinets left my knees with some arthritis and bursitis in my shoulder.So on to gunmaking.I'm not saying this is the only factor but it certainly was a contributing one.Spending a day filing out gun mounts certainly gets my joints aching particularly if it's cold and damp out.

I deal with these aches and pains daily and while I certainly have no complaints I can see why a craftsman would search out other means of making a living if an opportunity presented itself.

Another factor that I had a long talk with Wallace Gusler about is the frustration of your eyes going.We have the benefit of modern lighting and eye care.Even with these advances Wallace often lamented that he could no longer see well enough to do the quality of work he could do in his younger years.I can certainly see where the loss of keen sight and frustration of no longer being able to do what one once could quality wise would also push someone to leave their craft for another.

Mitch Yates

I've never claimed to be a gunsmith but have been a machine operator,machinist,tool maker if need be and a mechanic on uncomputerized cars and simple aircraft. I guess my lock and trigger making fit in there some place and for the past two years I have noticed a tendonitis and wrist pains on my right hand and arm.
I have started taking two "Aleve"capsules every morning and they seem to help.Tomorrow morning I have an eye exam and may need new glasses.The ones I am wearing now are not right and they are fairly recent but I think the eye doctor was in too big of a rush and I am changing doctors. Tomorrow tells the tale.

Bob Roller

[Majorjoel]

I can only add my opinion about what may have motivated a master gunsmith to take up a new profession. First, I believe that human nature hasn't changed very much in the last 2-3 hundred years. If an opportunity comes along that perhaps gives a person more stature in the community or somewhat a higher wage earning potential? Most folks will strive for such an advancement.  I cannot relate exactly to an 18th century gunsmith, but know directly of one such craftsman from the late 1830's. Abia Butler Smith, apprenticed to Joel T. Feree from 1836 and finished has training in late 1838. He worked in Clinton PA. (western PA.) and built many rifles up until the Civil War. During these war years, he patented a few gun related inventions making improvements on breech loading designs. He also got involved in farm machinery and made his living in that line of work for the rest of his life. I can only speculate that the changes were all about financial gain.

[spgordon]

If an opportunity comes along that perhaps gives a person more stature in the community or somewhat a higher wage earning potential? Most folks will strive for such an advancement.

Yes, I agree ... and I suppose my initial question implied without stating clearly that gunsmithing in the eighteenth century was not high on the pecking order of occupations (no matter how much we may admire these gunsmiths' work today): anything that did not involve regular manual labor, for instance, would have been higher on that eighteenth-century pecking order.

In Albrecht's case, the church did probably decide to reassign him to the Sun Inn. But I would guess he moved there with little reluctance. He would have been in his late 40s. It is worth remembering, though, that he returned to his trade as gunsmith and continued to train apprentices in the 1770s when he moved to Lititz.

Having joined the Moravian communal economy at Bethlehem in 1750, Albrecht could not, initially at least, have been concerned with profit or wealth, since no wages were paid in that economy. In 1758, as church authorities began to consider eliminating the economy, they asked workers what they thought. Here is Albrecht's response: "Concerning the common Oeconomie, the first thing I must honestly say for my part is that I did not come to the [Moravian Church] to achieve external advantages.  I was sought out by the Savior and chosen and called for blessedness.  When I heard of the [Moravian Church] and got to know it, I knew right away that that was where I belonged, that I would be safe there and in that way could flee all the misery and danger to my soul.  This outweighed everything for me. For I had decided that outside the [Moravian Church] I would be an unhappy person; this is the reason I said at the beginning that I had not come to the [Moravian Church] for the sake of external advantages and also for this reason have not thought much more about external matters for my person than always to desire that I would not be a burden to the [Moravian Church]. And for this reason the Oeconomie has never repelled me, nor been against me, and I have never considered how to get out of it because of any of the difficulties that might be connected with it."

Albrecht's trade was his contribution to the "Economy" and in exchange for it he received food, clothing, housing, medical care ... education for his children (if he had had any at this point). Presumably, he would have accepted any task that the larger community needed him for--and at one point that required him to be an innkeeper instead of a gunsmith. I would guess that would have felt like a "step up" for him, as Joel suggests, but that's sort of what I'm asking about.

[Buck]

Mitch,
Maybe my thought came across the wrong way. Like yourself I also love / loved my trade, but when one excels they are usually thrust into a managerial situation (at least in my trade). I suppose in Albrecht's time it was different because honesty / honor was prevalent (in Albrechts time Chicago politics did not exist). I had the opportunity this past summer to visit a job I had sold for my employer in Chicago. While walking with the Site Foreman I watched several of our Masons installing block, the Foreman, a couple of years my junior, proceeded to tease me about the "glory days" and the rest of the crew joined in and we all enjoyed a good laugh at my expense. Afterwards I picked up a trowel and proceeded to install some units with the Bricklayers, I quickly remembered how much I enjoyed the work and the companionship of the men. About 5 minutes into it the whole crew was behind me watching, it was like being in the Apprentice school once more with my students. It was a pleasurable experience and the men realized I was one of them and not an inexperienced number man who sits in the office drinking coffee and eating donuts all day long. However there comes a time when it is necessary to move on and try new things it doesn't mean you love the craft any less. Sometimes a break and then a return to the action is what it takes and sometimes it is just time to move on. I am caught somewhere in the middle of that debate, but I still love the trade.

Buck   

[Brookville]

I wish I could remember where I read this but it was stated that a lot of mechanics, like gunsmiths, pursued their trade long enough (if lucky) to buy a farm.  I would imagine that it would be considered a step up at that time.

[Buck]

Brookville,
I would consider it a step up today.
Buck

[bama]

The skills required to build the early longrifles that we admire today are not easily learned. I believe that those that excelled at creating not only a useable tool but a work of art spent many hours learning and perfecting this trade. As many of you know it takes a considerable amount of time to build a rifle from a blank. To spend that much time to just produce a tool is one thing but to spend that much time and produce a tool that is a work of art is another. A man does not produce such a thing without putting much of his own self into it. How many builders here have put everything have into a build to create not just a tool but a thing of beauty. Then, it is finished. You stand back and admire it, judge it, roll it in your hands feeling every curve, tracing every line. Thinking all the time with satifaction of a job well done but at the same time thinking of how you will do better on the next build. Always striving for perfection. Then comes the moment that you have to turn this item over to the customer that ordered the tool. It is not easy to release an item with which you have been so intimate with easily but you do. Only those that have spent this time with wood and chisels making a masterpiece can understand this feeling. The hours spent learning the skills required and the time spent to produce is a big investment of a builders life and is not given up easily.

Dedication to ones religious beliefs is the one thing that i can think of that would over ride a persons learned trade. If you are religious then you understand this statement. If he did change his responsibilities inside the church it was because of his dedication to the church. You do not stop being something you love, something you have so much investment in, something that expresses who you are that bares your soul to be an inn keeper.

I worked in the engineering construction trade for 45 years. I enjoyed my work and it provided well for my family, but i have always been a gunsmith at heart. I will be a gunmith until the day I die. I do not think the old masters were any different. I agree with Mitch and Wallace that as we get older our skills deminish but i do not believe that the desire goes away. I love to build as much or more today than i did when i built my first rifle 43 years ago.

Art takes many forms and artists are born. You don't stop being an artist beause you do something else. The artist is still there, waiting!

[spgordon]

Jim puts beautifully the case opposed to the one I was leaning towards.

I suppose my clumsy question assumed there is a single answer, but in reality different gunsmiths must have felt differently about their work. My impressions are skewed because my main area of study is William Henry of Lancaster, who did "abandon" gunsmithing in 1760, becoming first a merchant or iron-monger and later, even more wealthy by the Revolution, a public official who experimented with chemistry and mechanics in his free time. He "rose" from a laborer to a gentleman.

Some gunsmiths must have treated their work as work, not as art, and these men would likely have switched occupations, as Joel suggested above, if they could become something that promised more money or more prestige. In the eighteenth century, such upward mobility was not easy or common, so many men must have stayed gunsmiths not out of choice but out of necessity.

And then others, the men that Jim speaks about, must have loved their work, considered themselves artists or craftsmen, and wouldn't have done anything else even if they could.

[Brookville]

Buck: I did not mean to imply anything derogatory about farming today.  At that time, I believe, being able to own a piece of land where one could establish a home and farm was a step up from having a small shop or working for someone else.

George Weicker was an example of gunsmith turned farmer.  George (1769-1853) was one of the important Bucks County gunsmiths who made guns until 1799 when his father died.  He and his brother, Jacob sold their property and moved to Union County (Weicker Run) and bought a farm.  There's no evidence of his making guns after this time.

[Buck]

Brookville,
I didn't take it that way, my family has some of it's roots in farming. I always found the farm to be peaceful and hard work. Aside from that, the bonus is you never hear a cow complain or an ear of corn lie to you.

Jim,
You put that eloquently, I suppose its different (you can't put a 144000 sqft structure in your hand and roll it!) to some extent. I was always extremely satisfied with the completion of the structure until it was time to receive retention (the companies money) then it went south. Installing material is different than managing, I always enjoyed and still enjoy laying brick-stone-terra cotta. Today the typical mason is not the mechanic he used to be, and the attributes required of a Foreman is the ability to yell and scream and lie at a consistent pace. For a true mechanic to return to installation is difficult when he is more superior than the individual screaming at him to do it the wrong way. Anyway, great post.
Buck

[bama]

Thanks Buck
I know by listening to the conversations we have had that you are proud of your skills, as well you should be. It is not easy to lay a straight and level course of block much less make a structure that is a marvel to look at. I have great respect for those with that skill.

Mr. Gordon I also respect your efforts in trying to bring to life the lives of the old masters. I feel that your view is probably sound and based on much research. My view is based only on my love of building and the passion I put into every rifle I build. I have invested much of my life to learning the skills required to build a rifle. It would be very difficult for me to walk away from my passion. When I look at the early rifles i try to picture the effort that went into making it something to be admired not only by us but the audience of the masters time! Why go through the effort to add the carving, the wire, the inlays, why use a beautiful piece of wood. None of these things help the tool to function better. I like to think that these artfull decorations were an extension of the man and the times in which they were used. The early rifle are robust and strong able to withstand hard use and long treks. I believe the men who built these guns were cut from the same cloth. Yet at the same time these hardy men took the time to add the decorations that make these tools a work of art. Why? It was not needed to make a useable tool. I am not a expert but i believe the church would have frowned on it if was done in a boasting manor to show off ones skill. I like to think that they admired the beauty of the design and its perfection just as they did music. Passion for perfection.

I know that economics always was a part of their lives and that many gunsmiths were farmers and had other interests to make wealth. Those that set the bar high did not do so without an investment of time and I feel passion. Passion is a drink that is hard to put down.

Again thank you sir for your time that you have invested in this subject. It shows your passion also.

[JV Puleo]

Has it occurred to anyone that perhaps his eyesight was beginning to fail? While glasses were known, they were also expensive and perhaps not readily available. I certainly know that I simply cannot even read my micrometers any longer without them.

jp

[Eric Kettenburg]

We're all just speculating because none of us can truly step into the shoes first-hand of an 18th century man no matter how much we believe it to be possible.  I truly believe that at the root level the entire psychology of the 20th/21st centry brain vs. the 18th century brain is a major factor, although this does speak somewhat to the nature vs. nurture debate and I personally feel both points to be valid; in this case, and to illustrate a simple point if perhaps over-exaggerated (or perhaps not), not one of us need worry about a simple slip of the chisel leading to gangrene and loss of a limb or death.

Furthermore, we have hopelessly over-romanticized the 18th century rifle and 18th century riflesmith, in my opinion.  Most if not all arriving immigrants were poor, homeless and destitute of far more than many of us are able to comprehend.  The primary goal of many such was acquisition of land and acquisition of property, two things that many if not most had been denied in Europe.  Having a valued trade equaled a means toward this end, yet a number of the individuals whom I have closely studied, Johannes Moll and Peter Neihart two who come quickly to mind, built large operations which mandated apprentices to do the grunt work and very possibly - I suspect, but can not prove as yet - that age and the acquisition of wealth lead to more managerial work and less such grunt work.  This, to my mind, speaks to a love of upward mobility and much less to a love of a particular trade or "art" form as we too often now view it.  I do not personally believe very many of these men viewed themselves as artists in the sense that a painter or sculptor of the same period would view his self or be viewed by others.

Albrecht, the subject of the original question, is also something of a 'special case' - at least early on - because he was living in a communal and socialistic closed society.  He did not need to worry about starving to death if he was not able to sell firearms or undertake his trade in a financially profitable manner; his needs would continue to be met and perhaps the worst he might face would be a re-orientation of labor toward a more gainful employment.

[smart dog]

Hi,
I also think it is useful to remember that most of those makers were dead by age 55-60, Albrecht being an exception.  They probably got physically used up pretty quickly by both the demands of their trade and the daily chores of survival.  Senescence in their trade from age probably was not as big a factor as it is today.  Also, of course they did not think of themselves as artists.  In their day that was a very exclusionary term used to describe the great master painters and sculpters not decorators.  Decorative arts were done by "tradesmen" and paid as such. 

dave

[spgordon]

First: thanks to everybody for taking my query seriously and responding so thoughtfully.

Second: you can tell from my posts above that my thinking largely corresponds to Eric's. It was very difficult to achieve upward mobility in early America, but upward mobility would have been the ambition of most laborers. It one could move from somebody who worked with his hands to somebody who did not, you had made it. To me, the thing that makes it misleading to imagine that what 21st century gun-builders think about their activities sheds light on what 18th century gunsmiths thought about their activities is a simple fact: most 21st century gun-builders do this as a leisure activity. It is their pleasure and their passion. Not so with 18th century gun builders, for whom it was their daily grind.

Third: in Albrecht's case in particular, he returned to gunsmithing after he served for a half-decade or so as the proprietor of the Sun Inn. So I don't think eyesight or physical debility caused his shift in profession.

Scott

[blienemann]

Have been away from the computer and alr.com for a few days, but would like to contribute.

From my research, it appears that in 18th century Europe, a trade or handicraft (Handwerke or literally Hand Work) was highly respected.  A boy had to be of conjugal birth, Christian faith, honest ancestry and the son of a craftsman or professional in order to learn a trade.  Albrecht apprenticed to a gunstocker at 13.  Daniel Kliest, master locksmith at Bethlehem unless sent to Shamokin, shared the Locksmith & Gun Stockmaker shop with Albrecht.  Kliest’s father was a locksmith, and though he had the opportunity to study another field, young Kliest “preferred a good handicraft and wanted to become a Lockmith.”  Valentin Beck was a contemporary of both men, worked at Bethlehem and Christian’s Spring for a time and was sent to North Carolina.  Beck’s father had been a gunsmith, and though he died shortly before his son was born, young Beck chose the trade of his father.  I think these boys had the support of their families and communities – suggesting respect for the trades.

When these young men came to Pennsylvania, an opportunity to marry and to improve themselves in the new world was either offered or implied.  The communal Oeconomy was not intended to be permanent, but to allow the communities to be built and the mission work to spread without having to borrow money and thus be influenced by “Strangers”.  Other Moravian communities around the world did not operate in this fashion, and as Scott mentioned, they considered ending the communal approach earlier.  These men only served a portion of their lives in this arrangement – the remainder private like anyone else.

Albrecht and the others worked their trades in Bethlehem or remotely, but also traveled as musicians, taught school, served as lay pastors or similar.  Albrecht was proposed for marriage at least once earlier, but the parties chose not to follow through.  Looking at the gunshop records for C’s Spring, it almost seems that he finished training young Oerter in 1766, and when a marriage was offered, he and his wife agreed.  With his tremendous musical talent and having traveled Europe, Albrecht was a perfect candidate to host dignitaries and other guests at the Sun Inn for 4 ½ years.

Young Oerter had left Albrecht for a time, and his father may have encouraged a different profession – being an accountant and surveyor himself.  But Oerter went back to Albrecht, and we are so fortunate to have his signed and dated work – with marvelous art included.  Oerter “worked faithfully and industriously, sometimes even beyond his potentials”.  The letter Scott found where 26 year old Oerter describes a rifle he has made and refers to the rifle as “She” suggests at least a respect for his craft.  Maybe more – romantic or playing with history back then?

When the Inn was further privatized in 1771, Albrecht went to Lititz and resumed his gunstocking trade, working for another 30 years.  Wm Henry immediately sent his son to learn the trade with Albrecht – this implies respect for the trade and the man.  By this time he had a small family and worked to support them.  Albrecht’s boys all learned the trade - several went on to other jobs, while Henry Albright was a talented gunstocker for his entire life.  Grandson T J Albright continued, supplying arms through St. Louis and other areas as the young country expanded.

Wm Henry had been orphaned, his father may have been a gunstocker, he was sent away to learn the gunsmith’s trade, connected with influential men, served as armorer and went on to many other interests.  But he placed his son in the gunstocking trade.  The Henry and Albright families continued to apprentice and journey their sons to each other for several generations, and the Henry family played a major role in gunmaking for generations.  Wm, Sr seems the exception – perhaps due to situation, personality, opportunity, drive?  Interestingly many of these men became judges – a trade does not seem to have held them back.

Jim’s comments about what it takes to go from tool to art must surely have applied with some of these men.  It seems that Albrecht’s back to back C-scroll carving (attributed) and other details spread over place and time.  The fanciful creatures on Bethlehem and C’s Spring rifles are repeated in a way by Henry Albright and others much later.

A number of gunstockers or gunsmiths bought a farm or operated a tavern in later years.  Jacob Loesch in North Carolina traded gunstocking for designing waterworks for various towns.  Some also worked at clock making or jewelry, applying their mechanical and design skills.  It’s possible that we put more value on “upward mobility” than they did?  We probably need to look at each man or boy individually, and from what little we can find from their time, guess their thinking.  It seems that most began a trade to improve themselves, and some at least stayed with it, passing on for generations.  Bob