The Shaker broom vise is a specialized production vise that made the normally round broom flat to make it more efficient for cleaning purposes. The Shakers' invention revolutionized the production and form of brooms; in the process greatly expanding an industry in New England.
Shaker brooms built upon the 1797 contribution of Levi Dickenson of Hadley, Massachusetts, who used tassels of sorghum (Sorghum vulgare), known as broom corn, to make a better grade of broom. Brooms were essential to kitchen and hearth cleanliness. [1] The manufacture and selling of brooms was the most widespread of all the Shaker industries. The first sorghum brooms were made by the Shakers at Watervliet. [2] This colony is credited with being the first to grow broom corn, which was around 1800 when they first grew it on an island in the Mohawk River that was near their community. [3]
Theodore Bates (1762–1846) of the Watervliet Shaker community is credited with the innovation of the "flat broom" in 1798, as all brooms and brushes prior were round. [2] [4] He invented a unique wooden vise that pressed the round bristles flat. [3] This allowed heavy twine to be sewn through the flattened broom to permanently hold that shape. [3]
Bates' vise idea to make flat brooms and brushes was a leap in technology since it produced products that worked much more efficiently. An industry developed to sell these to the outside world. Soon the New Lebanon community ramped up to make these flat brooms. This flattening technology worked well with their woodworking technology of lathe-turned wood handles. The vise was used as part of the Shaker broom making process. [3]
Most of the Shaker villages were involved in making these flat brooms and flat brushes. [2] The flat brooms were produced by the tens of thousands. [3] Only a few of the original Shaker flat brooms made in the nineteenth century have survived into the twenty-first century. These were made under the auspices of a Mount Lebanon Shaker Trustee named Robert Valentine (1822–1910). [3]
The Shakers were the pioneering inventors of the broom vise, which made today's flat broom possible. According to Lowder (2012) this was "the only major update to the broom since the introduction of the broom machine" and permitted flattening and sewing, instead of mere lashing to a round handle. This design innovation is evidenced in modern brooms (assuming they are not synthetic). [5] [6]
The brooms were respected and given care – such as hanging on the wall when not in use and sometimes covered with cotton hoods to keep them clean. [4] The covered flat brooms were used to dry-polish hard wood floors and clean the last traces of dust off hard surfaces. [2]
The flat broom led to a boom of broom making in the United States. In 1850, more than a million brooms were built in Massachusetts alone, resulting in a large export trade extending to South America. [5] [upper-alpha 1]
The vise consists of two upright planks, one rigidly fixed to the base and the other hinged via a pair of short distance pieces. This can be clearly seen in the small vise on the left of the illustration "Making Shaker brooms". The handle of the broom can pass between the distance pieces, the length of the handle imposing a minimum size on the fixed upright. Larger vises may have the movable jaw hinged at the base and do away with the distance pieces, see the illustration "Shaker broom vises".
Illustrations on Haydenville (2015) show that there are two sets of jaws affixed to the planks. The lower set are level with the top of the planks and are circular when closed to firmly grip the head of the broom. Metal plates rising from the planks carry the upper set which are flat and force the broom corn flat. The jaws are closed by a toggle mechanism operating on horizontal links from the fixed jaw and vertical hanger links from the floor. The toggle is provided with a long wooden handle which the operator can pull down to secure the broom in the vise. [6]
Curling is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called rocks, across the ice curling sheet toward the house, a circular target marked on the ice. Each team has eight stones, with each player throwing two. The purpose is to accumulate the highest score for a game; points are scored for the stones resting closest to the centre of the house at the conclusion of each end, which is completed when both teams have thrown all of their stones once. A game usually consists of eight or ten ends.
Longships were a type of specialised Scandinavian warships that have a long history in Scandinavia, with their existence being archaeologically proven and documented from at least the fourth century BC. Originally invented and used by the Norsemen for commerce, exploration, and warfare during the Viking Age, many of the longship's characteristics were adopted by other cultures, like Anglo-Saxons, and continued to influence shipbuilding for centuries.
The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, are a millenarian restorationist Christian sect founded c. 1747 in England and then organized in the United States in the 1780s. They were initially known as "Shaking Quakers" because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services. Espousing egalitarian ideals, women took on spiritual leadership roles alongside men, including founding leaders such as Jane Wardley, Ann Lee, and Lucy Wright. The Shakers emigrated from England and settled in Revolutionary colonial America, with an initial settlement at Watervliet, New York, in 1774. They practice a celibate and communal utopian lifestyle, pacifism, uniform charismatic worship, and their model of equality of the sexes, which they institutionalized in their society in the 1780s. They are also known for their simple living, architecture, technological innovation, music, and furniture.
A broom is a cleaning tool consisting of usually stiff fibers attached to, and roughly parallel to, a cylindrical handle, the broomstick. It is thus a variety of brush with a long handle. It is commonly used in combination with a dustpan.
An adze or adz is an ancient and versatile cutting tool similar to an axe but with the cutting edge perpendicular to the handle rather than parallel. Adzes have been used since the Stone Age. They are used for smoothing or carving wood in hand woodworking, and as a hoe for agriculture and horticulture. Two basic forms of an adze are the hand adze —a short-handled tool swung with one hand—and the foot adze (hoe)—a long-handled tool capable of powerful swings using both hands, the cutting edge usually striking at foot or shin level. A similar tool is called a mattock, which differs by having two blades, one perpendicular to the handle and one parallel.
Boat building is the design and construction of boats and their systems. This includes at a minimum a hull, with propulsion, mechanical, navigation, safety and other systems as a craft requires.
Pliers are a hand tool used to hold objects firmly, possibly developed from tongs used to handle hot metal in Bronze Age Europe. They are also useful for bending and physically compressing a wide range of materials. Generally, pliers consist of a pair of metal first-class levers joined at a fulcrum positioned closer to one end of the levers, creating short jaws on one side of the fulcrum, and longer handles on the other side. This arrangement creates a mechanical advantage, allowing the force of the grip strength to be amplified and focused on an object with precision. The jaws can also be used to manipulate objects too small or unwieldy to be manipulated with the fingers.
A crew cut is a type of haircut in which the upright hair on the top of the head is cut relatively short, graduated in length from the longest hair that forms a short pomp (pompadour) at the front hairline to the shortest at the back of the crown so that in side profile, so the outline of the top hair approaches the horizontal. Relative to the front view, and to varying degrees, the outline of the top hair can be arched or flattened at the short pomp front and rounded or flattened over the rest of the top to complement the front hairline, head shape, face shape and facial features. The hair on the sides and back of the head is usually tapered short, semi-short, or medium.
Japanese carpentry was carpentry in Japan developed more than a millennium ago. It is a form of woodworking joints that involves building wooden furniture without the use of nails, screws, glue, or electric tools.
A billhook or bill hook, also called a pruning knife or spar hook, is a versatile cutting tool used widely in agriculture and forestry for cutting woody material such as shrubs, small trees and branches. It is distinct from the sickle. It was commonly used in Europe with an important variety of traditional local patterns. Elsewhere, it was also developed locally such as in the Indian subcontinent, or introduced regionally as in the Americas, South Africa, and Oceania by European settlers.
A chine in boat design is a sharp change in angle in the cross section of a hull. The chine typically arises from the use of sheet materials as the mode of construction.
Sorghum bicolor, commonly called sorghum and also known as great millet, broomcorn, guinea corn, durra, imphee, jowar, or milo, is a grass species cultivated for its grain, which is used for food for humans, animal feed, and ethanol production. Sorghum originated in Africa, and is now cultivated widely in tropical and subtropical regions. Sorghum is the world's fifth-most important cereal crop after rice, wheat, maize, and barley, with 61,000,000 metric tons of annual global production in 2021. S. bicolor is typically an annual, but some cultivars are perennial. It grows in clumps that may reach over 4 metres (13 ft) high. The grain is small, ranging from 2 to 4 millimetres in diameter. Sweet sorghums are sorghum cultivars that are primarily grown for forage, syrup production, and ethanol; they are taller than those grown for grain.
This glossary of woodworking lists a number of specialized terms and concepts used in woodworking, carpentry, and related disciplines.
Commercial sorghum is the cultivation and commercial exploitation of species of grasses within the genus Sorghum. These plants are used for grain, fibre and fodder. The plants are cultivated in warmer climates worldwide. Commercial Sorghum species are native to tropical and subtropical regions of Africa and Asia.
The Whitewater Shaker Settlement is a former Shaker settlement near New Haven in Crosby Township, Hamilton County, Ohio, United States. Established in 1824 and closed in 1916, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 as a historic district.
Watervliet Shaker Historic District, in Colonie, New York, is the site of the first Shaker community. It was established in 1776. The primary Shaker community, the Mount Lebanon Shaker Society, was started a bit later. Watervliet's historic 1848 Shaker meetinghouse has been restored and is used for public events, such as concerts.
The chronology of Shakers is a list of important events pertaining to the history of the Shakers, a denomination of Christianity. Millenarians who believe that their founder, Ann Lee, experienced the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, the Shakers practice celibacy, confession of sin, communalism, ecstatic worship, pacifism, and egalitarianism. This spans the emergence of denomination in the mid-18th century, the emigration of the Shakers to New York on the eve of the American Revolution, subsequent missionary work and the establishment of nineteen major planned communities, and the continued persistence of the faith through decline into the 21st century.
The Shaker Seed Company was an American seed company that was owned and operated by the Shakers in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, many Shaker communities produced several vegetable seed varieties for sale. The company created innovations in the marketing of seeds – including distributing, packaging and cataloging – all of which changed the horticultural business model forever.
A paintbrush is a brush used to apply paint or ink. A paintbrush is usually made by clamping bristles to a handle with a ferrule. They are available in various sizes, shapes, and materials. Thicker ones are used for filling in, and thinner ones are used for details. They may be subdivided into decorators' brushes used for painting and decorating and artists' brushes use for visual art.
