Exploding The Mystical Craftsman Myth

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Exploding The Mystical Craftsman Myth

As a Hackaday writer, I see a lot of web pages, social media posts, videos, and other tips as part of my feed. The best ones I try to bring you here, assuming of course that one of my ever-vigilant colleagues hasn’t beaten me to it. Along the way I see the tropes of changing content creator fashion; those ridiculous pea-sized hand held microphones, or how all of a sudden everything has to be found in the woods. Some of them make me laugh, but there’s one I see a lot which has made me increasingly annoyed over the years. I’m talking of course about the craftsman myth.

No. The Last True Nuts And Bolts Are Not Being Made In Japan

If you don’t recognise the craftsman myth immediately, I’m sure you’ll be familiar with it even if you don’t realise it yet. It goes something like this: somewhere in Japan (or somewhere else perceived as old-timey in online audience terms like Appalachia, but it’s usually Japan), there’s a bloke in a tin shed who makes nuts and bolts.

But he’s not just any bloke in a tin shed who makes nuts and bolts, he’s a special master craftsman who makes nuts and bolts like no other. He’s about 120 years old and the last of a long line of nut and bolt makers entrusted with the secrets of nut and bolt making, father to son, since the 8th century. His tools are also mystical, passed down through the generations since they were forged by other mystical craftsmen centuries ago, and his forge is like no other, its hand-cranked bellows bring to life a fire using only the finest cedar driftwood charcoal. The charcoal is also made by a 120 year old master charcoal maker Japanese bloke whose line stretches back to the n’th century, yadda yadda. And when Takahashi-san finally shuffles off this mortal coil, that’s it for nuts and bolts, because the other nuts and bolts simply can’t compare to these special ones.
Something that’s genuinely in decline where this is being written, this craftsman is making a cricket bat in India. Amit.kapil, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Purple prose aside, this type of media annoys me, because while Takahashi-san and his brother craftsmen in Appalachia and anywhere else in the world possess amazing skills and should without question be celebrated, the videos are not about that. Instead they’re using them as a cipher for pushing the line that The World Ain’t What It Used To Be, and along the way they spread the myth that either there are no blokes in tin sheds left wherever you live, or if there are, their skills are of no significance. Perhaps the saddest part of the whole thing is that there are truly disappearing crafts which should be highlighted, but they probably don’t generate half the YouTube clicks so we don’t see much of them.

Celebrate your Local Craftsmen

My dad was a craftsman in a tin shed, just like the ones in the videos but in central southern England. Partly as a result of this I have known and dealt with a lot of blokes in tin sheds throughout my lifetime, and I am certain I would feel right at home standing in that Japanese one.

Part of coming to terms with the disturbed legacy of my own dysfunctional family has come in evaluating what from them I recognise as part of me and what I don’t, and it’s in my dad’s workshop that I realise what made me. Like all of us, he instinctively made things, usually with great success but let’s face it, like all of us too, sometimes where just buying the damn thing would have made more sense. He had truly elite skills in his craft that I will never equal, just as in my line I have mastered construction techniques which weren’t even conceived when he took his apprenticeship.

But here’s the point, my dad was not unique, and all the other blokes in tin sheds were not necessarily the same age as he was. Indeed one of the loose community of blacksmiths around where I grew up was someone who was in another year at the same school as me when I was a teenager. Even the crafts weren’t all of the mystical tools variety, I am immediately thinking of the tin shed full of CNC machine tools, or the bloke running an injection moulding operation. Believe me, both of those last two are invaluable craftsmen to know when you need their services, but they don’t fit the myth, do they? They’re not exotic.

So by all means watch those YouTube videos showing faraway folks in tin sheds and their craft, you’ll see some amazing work. But please don’t buy the mystique, or the premise that they automatically represent a disappearing world. Your part of the world will have blokes in tin sheds doing things just as impressive and useful, whether they be hand-forging steel on the anvil or working it using cutting-edge technology, and we should be seeking them out rather than lamenting a probably made-up tale from the other side of the world.

Early 20th century Japanese craftsman: Elstner Hilton, CC BY 2.0 .

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