What are the terms for tradesmen involved in making carriages? One specific vocation comes to mind: wheelwright or, simply, wheeler. But, obviously, that name implies narrow focus of the profession. Did they, historically, concern themselves with wheels only, or did they work on other parts as well, especially as applied to undercarriage?
Would the general blacksmith be producing iron-work (springs, stays, plates, joints, nuts, bolts etc.)? Was the regular carpenter the one to work with timber articles? Who, then, makes axletrees (axle beam made of wood, but trimmed with metal pieces and fittings, and considered as part of carriage iron-work)?
William Felton, author of “A Treatise on Carriages” (1794) calls himself a coach-maker. Would that be a one-man show, or hands-on supervisor of a large operation? Given Mr. Felton’s apparent expertise, would such skilled professional be solely involved in production of most exquisite machinery, or were they your half-pence, run of the mill, everyday coach-makers?
Is coach-maker someone who works primarily with finer, bodied, passenger carriages? Were there different tradesmen who made industrial cargo transport, or simpler ox-drawn village cart? In general, how availability of specialists differed from large cities to rural areas, or from established countries to the far colonies (e.g. British Isles or Continental Europe vs. West and East Indies).
The more terms, archaic and otherwise, the merrier. Historical references to changes overtime are welcome. My current project is focused on mid-XVIII century New England, but I wanted to make the question as possibly broadly applied.
Best Answer
Wægn-wyrhta is found in Old English, so wainwrights have been around in the language a long time.
Wain and wagon tends to be used for those that carry things, carriage more often for those that carry people, and coach generally for those carriages that are covered. There’d be exceptions, but it would make coach and carriage a bit more respectable than wain and wagon, both for the owner, and the tradesman who makes it.
William Felton tells us much in his treatise, more than I care to read through myself, but how a tradesman became a tradesman seems to be left as an assumption. (I freely admit I may have just missed it).
Most skilled trades were taught through apprenticeship from the mediaeval period, until industrialisation changed a lot of such professions, and changes to standardisation changed a lot of the rest. The process does still remain in some cases, and has left a mark on others.
An apprentice would train under a master. He (and in this profession, it almost certainly would have been he) was mostly compensated in room, board and training, with little or no allowance beyond that.
Upon completing his apprenticeship, he became a journeyman who could charge a wage for his day’s work.
A journeyman could submit a masterpiece to be judged by the appropriate guild, which would allow him to join the guild in his own right as a master. A master would generally be an independent tradesman, paying a fee to the guild, and being responsible for the purchase and maintenance of his own tools, premises, and so on.
In London in 1630, a petition was made for an organisation of Coachmakers and Wheelwrights to be incorporated. The Worshipful Company of Wheelwrights and Worshipful Company of Coachmakers and Coach Harness Makers were eventually incorporated separately in 1670 & 1677 respectively, and gained the status of Livery Companies in the 18th Century. They exist to this day, but are now charitable organisations, whose websites are http://www.coachmakers.co.uk/ & http://www.wheelwrights.org/
(How the guilds served as trade union, standards body, mutual support society, pension fund, life assurance provider and fraternal organisation, and came to sometimes be only one of those, and sometimes replaced by them, is a topic onto itself).
A quick look finds a period as a “journeyman carriage maker” described in the life of one Hiram Mish White (1830-1903) in biographies from Franklin County, Pennsylvania.
I’m sure a more diligent look would find examples closer to the period you are interested in.
A similarly quick look finds “journeyman coach-makers” mentioned, such as in The London Tradesman: Being a Compendious View of All the Trades, Professions, Arts, Both Liberal and Mechanic, Now Practised in the Cities of London and Westminster. Calculated for the Information of Parents, and Instruction of Youth in Their Choice of Business by R. Campbell Esq. (1747) which tells us much (all emphasis his):
(A crown was 5/- so that would be £0.25 in modern British currency).
This goes some way to answering a lot of your questions, though I note that coach-maker seems to be more often the British, and carriage-maker more often the American. Ngrams seems to bear this out, but I wouldn’t have full confidence in that. It could perhaps reflect a greater percentage of covered coaches among the carriages used in London, a difference in the American and British English of the time, or a combination of both. Or it could just be chance leading me to find more American examples of one, more British of the other.
Campbell’s book goes on to mention wheel-wrights (a "Coach-Wheelers" and separately talking about "Cart-Wheelers" whose work need not be as well-finished), "Coach-Carvers" and "Coach-Founders" who specialise in carving and metal-founding for coaches, and so on, while the book you yourself cites has prices for some of the items that must be purchased. Between these (and with some modernising of Campbell's 18th Century Tendency to write all Nouns in Capitals which was the Fashion among some at the Time, but already dying out), you should be able to build up a reasonable picture of the trade.