West Wood Shop

If you go inside the shop, you’ll see a large piece of machinery along one side. This is a hand-cranked lathe. Woodworkers still use these today, but the electric versions. It spins a block of wood so that it can be evenly carved. A carpenter would learn his trade as an apprentice, which means they would study under and work for someone that was already professionally performing the trade. They would serve their apprenticeship for about 4-7 years before becoming skilled enough to set up shop for themselves. It was also common to travel and perform this trade for whoever needed it in whatever town you happened to be in before moving on.

The type of wood that grows here, and that a woodworker would have used here in The Chattahoochee Valley is called Longleaf Pine. Not only was it used for wood, but the needles of the tree can be made into baskets. Other products were made from the tree such as turpentine, rosin, pitch, tar, paint, and soap. During the 19th century, America, and the South, in particular, was the world leader in the business of what are called naval stores, which made items such as turpentine from tapping the trees. This industry was extremely popular in Chattahoochee Valley, If you were not a landowner, yeoman farmer, or town-dweller, odds are that you worked in the naval store business if you were a man.