If you were setting up a business in New Zealand, in the early years of European settlement, what type of business would be best? Baking, banking, and brewing would all have been good choices, and your descendants, living on their family trusts, would, I’m sure, have been suitably grateful. But what about tinsmithing?
Tinsmiths convert flat sheet steel into items such as buckets, watering cans, and tin trunks by cutting, bending, riveting, soldering, and crimping. Tinsmiths would have enjoyed an advantage over business concerns that imported this type of goods from overseas, because the freight on the sheet steel would have been far less than the cost of importing the bulky finished objects. The sheet steel would have taken up far less space in the holds of ships coming to…
