The Nation's Blue-Collar Artists

Just as Goth stonecutters who chiseled ornate facades for Europe's grand Gothic cathedrals were master craftsmen of the Middle Ages, tool-and diemakers are premier artisans of the industrial era. Instead of granite or limestone, their medium hard metal. They create the tools that can cut metal into precise patterns and the dies to mold it into complex shapes.

The tradition of tool-and diemaking is as old as the industrial age. Many of the earliest practitioners were blacksmiths who turned their forging talents to toolmaking. In the 18th century, craftsmen gathered in the manufacturing hubs of England, France, Germany and Sweden to fashion tools that would enable machines to produce items like clocks and locks. The trade flourished most dramatically in America. In the early 1800s, Eli Whitney helped to pioneer mass production, using standardized, interchangeable parts at his Connecticut musket factory. By the early 1900s, the toolmaker's skills enabled machines to engrave the Lord's Prayer on a sliver of metal less than one-hundredth of an inch wide.

Today's artisans can trim metal to within one ten-thousandth of an inch, using mechanical cuts more precise than the strokes of the finest brain surgeon. During a grueling four-year apprenticeship in vocational classrooms and on the shop floor, the toolmaker absorbs the principles of solid geometry and learns to think in three dimensions. He is expected to read labyrinthine blueprints as well as be aware of the exact levels of heat and pressure that will cause various metals to buckle and break.

Despite their skills, the status of the nation's 176,000 toolmakers has steadily declined in the past 30 years, as young people have sought out better-paying, less demanding jobs. Next year U.S. companies will have openings for 8,600 tool-and-die workers. If the recent past is any guide, training programs will graduate fewer than half of the craftsmen needed.

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