Memories of "Old Woodworking Machines"

http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/schedule/26season_video.html

2612 Old Woodworking Machines
Beautiful belt-driven nineteenth century machines still make window sashes in this New York shop.

I'm 60, not 160, but tonight I feel like it; transported back to my childhood. I wrote earlier about growing up in a small Ontario town next to a blacksmith shop, and riding a horse drawn milk wagon home from after school. Well, at about the age of 8, I remember Dad taking me to a lumber yard that had an old sash factory, with mortice machines and long overhead shafts, long belts looping and twisting to each of many machines. This was about 1957, when the plant was already long obsolete, but it was intact. Not so long after, I'm sure, the machinery would have been dismantled and scrapped.

The above video illustrates just such equipment, much of it dating back to the 1860's when such mechanization would, as I understand it, have just begun to replace hand work, and others more automated from the 1920's. During these times, sash and furniture factories would have been scattered across towns and cities and would have employed many and used local lumber. I hope you don't mind my reminicing, and regretting not having paid more attention, in the 1950's and more recently, when "The Woodwright Shop" was broadcast in our area and I wasn't astute enough recognize the significance. As an afterthought, the shop would never be allowed to operate today; it was far too dangerous!