Why Is Carpentry Still Important Today

In the construction industry, carpenters are almost indispensable. They do a lot for the construction of homes and other buildings that sometimes goes unnoticed. They set foundations, lay stairs, install beams, trim and much more. Without skilled carpenters, the construction of many buildings would not be possible. Carpentry is an essential skill in American society and given improvements in technology and techniques it is still very important today. Carpentry is the activity of building or repairing objects and structures using wood. People that do this professionally are called Carpenters. They are responsible for many aspects of the construction process of buildings, both residential and commercial. Most Carpenters learn the trade through an apprenticeship.
Most carpenters learn their trade through a 3- or 4-year apprenticeship. For each year of the program, apprentices must complete at least 144 hours of technical training and 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job
training. In the technical training, apprentices learn carpentry basics, blueprint reading, mathematics, building code requirements, and safety and first-aid practices. They also may receive specialized training in concrete, rigging, welding, scaffold building, fall protection, confined workspaces, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 10- and 30-hour safety courses (Occupational Outlook Handbook: Carpenters).
There are three different types of carpenters. They are Residential, Commercial, and Industrial. Residential carpenters specialize in new-home building and remodeling. They cover a wide array of tasks in the building process. They set the foundations of homes and frame exterior walls. They also finish roofs, and decks on the home. On the interior of the home they can install floors, cabinets, drywall, and doors. The bulk of the work of building a new home, then, is done by a carpenter making them vital in the building process. Commercial carpenters do some of the same things as Residential carpenters, but use some different materials to do so. They can specialize in using steel to frame buildings such as office buildings and schools. They can also perform some of the same tasks that Residential carpenters perform on homes on the interior of buildings. Some other Commercial carpenters work with concrete to fix foundations and walls. Industrial carpenters are much different from both Residential and Commercial carpenters. They can set forms to pour concrete in, build scaffolding, and create underground tunnels for air circulation. Other Industrial carpenters make tunnels, dams, and things of that nature. Without the expertise of these carpenters, the building process would be more complicated and might not be possible at all. (Occupational Outlook Handbook: Carpenters) Most of the carpenters in early America worked under an artisan system (Carpentry in the 1800s). Much like today they would start out with an apprenticeship, usually lasting between four and seven years. Upon completion of their apprenticeship, they would embark on their own becoming a Journeyman. As a Journeyman they would make by hand frames for doors and windows along with stairs, baseboards and cabinets. They would also do a lot of the framing of houses and other buildings. The mass production of wood for building purposes really hurt the artisan system in regards to carpenters. Owners of installation companies could start to afford training new workers to install various components of the home. They would get paid somewhere between one and two dollars a day, another blow to carpenters. At the turn of the century a carpenters’ job was sometimes underestimated. The construction of houses, however, would have been impossible without a skilled and knowledgeable carpenter. The skills needed to frame and finish the house were too complex for the average person to know. In most cities at the time, carpenters needed to be a professional carpenter to legally practice their trade. Due to the low wages earned carpenters began to unionize beginning around the 1850s (Carpentry in the 1800s). Modern carpenters do even more in regards to the building process. They really control most every aspect of the building process, from discussing plans with the people they build for to drawing blueprints and following through on the plans to make the finished product come to life. Modern carpenters need to be able to communicate well with people involved with the building process and be able to read and interpret building plans to make the plans come to fruition. Early American carpenters had to make use of the materials they had. They had to cut their wood themselves and shape it into workable pieces. The tools they had at their disposal did not do much to lighten their workload. Most all of the tools they had were manual usage, meaning they had to do all of the work themselves by hand. They used hand-saws and axes to cut their wood and planes, chisels and mallets to shape their wood into workable pieces. Then they would use hammers, bracing tools, and other tools to frame and build homes and other building. Through time, improvements in these tools made work more ergonomic and in many ways easier for carpenters. Lighter tools made for easier work with manual tools like axes, hammers, and saws. Today, the technology in tools make building far easier than it was back when tools were manual use only. There are nail guns, band-saws, table saws, and electric planes that make framing buildings a breeze for trained carpenters. (A Brief History of Tools) Homes in 18th and 19th century America were built using techniques that were somewhat basic compared to the ones used in homes today.
This was somewhat due to the tools and technology they had at the time. The ways that carpenters have accomplished the tasks required to build have changes with enhancements in technology. When tools that at one point were vital to the building process become obsolete, the techniques used with those tools become obsolete as well. Some of this has to do with various building codes that ensure a safe product. Builders and other people involved in the process take advantage of improved technology to keep codes up to date (History of Building Codes). Every building in America has to be built to these codes, therefore carpenters have to know the current codes and build accordingly. The idea of building codes are actually as old as America itself. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson encouraged building regulations to ensure public safety (History of Building
Codes). Carpenters in America can have different specialties and job types, but all have one thing in common, their importance to the construction industry. Carpenters lay the foundation for any job or build. They frame and finish most all homes, offices and other buildings. They can remodel interiors of buildings and build exterior parts like decks and patios. It is safe to say that without carpenters, the building process would be a longer than necessary process that lacks the skill and expertise to accomplish the key parts involved. Carpenters continually increase their level of skill and as long as there continues to be improvements in the tools and techniques that they use, the demand of trained carpenters will be high.