Registration is now open for:
• Build a Cricket Table with Derek Jones (July 30-31)
• Build the “Anarchist’s Tool Chest” with Megan Fitzpatrick (Aug. 2-6)
• Make a Carved Oak Box with Peter Follansbee (Nov. 8-12)
• Build a Dutch Tool Chest with Megan Fitzpatrick (Dec. 3-5)
If you have any questions about classes, send an email to covingtonmechanicals@gmail.com.
— Fitz
The following is excerpted from “The Joiner & Cabinetmaker,” by Anonymous, Christopher Schwarz and Joel Moskowitz (this section is by Schwarz). J&C is a short book written in 1839 by an anonymous tradesman; it tells the fictional tale of Thomas, a lad of 13 or 14 who is apprenticed to a rural shop that builds everything from built-ins to more elaborate veneered casework. It was written to guide young people who might be considering a life in the joinery or cabinetmaking trades, focusing on how apprentices could obtain the basic skills needed to work in a hand-tool shop. However, this is not a book for children. It is a book for anyone exploring hand-tool woodworking. In it, Thomas builds three projects during the course of his journey in the book, and there is enough detail in the text and illustrations to re-create these three projects just as they were built in 1839.
In addition to the complete original text, you’ll find an historical snapshot of early 19th-century England by Moskowitz, chapters on the hand-tool construction of the three projects (a Packing Box, a dovetailed Schoolbox and a Chest of Drawers) by Schwarz and complete construction drawings.
Plus, there’s an audiobook available of the original 1839 text, read by none other than Roy Underhill!
Flattening Panels With Planes
With the glue dry, it’s time to flatten one face of all of your panels. Thomas begins with the jack plane then moves to the trying plane, yet the details of the operation are sketchy in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.”
Early workshop practice was to use the jack plane (sometimes called the fore plane) across the grain of a panel. This operation, which Joesph Moxon called “traversing” in his “Mechanick Exercises” of 1678, allows you to remove a good deal of deal without tearing the grain too deeply. Working the grain diagonally in both directions allows you to get the board fairly flat – Thomas checks the board with a straightedge as he works, which is always a good idea.
Note: When you work at 45° to the grain of a panel, you will typically see more tearing in one direction than in the other. This is normal. Just make sure you finish your diagonal strokes in the direction that produces less tearing.
Determining when a board is flat can be a challenge. After some practice, you learn to tell by the way your planes respond when dressing the panel. The shavings become consistent in thickness, width and length all along the board. A straightedge can help. So can winding sticks, which aren’t mentioned in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.”
Winding sticks are two identical sticks that are longer than the board is wide. They are placed at several points across the width of the board and compared by eye. When the panel is twisted, the sticks aren’t parallel. And because they are longer than the board is wide, they exaggerate any wind.
The author of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” has a novel solution: Compare your panel to a known flat panel. If your panel rocks on the flat one, it’s in wind. Of course, the trick is getting that first panel flat. It’s possible to create two panels that are in wind but don’t rock on one another – the high spots of one panel nest into the low spots of the other and result in a false reading.
However, once you get one panel flat, the method explained in the book works well.
Dressing Panels to Identical Thickness
With all six panels flat on one face, it’s time to dress the mates to the same thickness. The exact dimension isn’t important (3/4″, 13/16″ etc.). What you seek is to get all the parts you are going to dovetail together (the sides and ends) to the same thickness. Then you want to get the bottom in the neighborhood of 1/2″ thick. And with the top you want to get it flat and clean. Then stop.
Any other work past this point isn’t necessary and will wear you out. Remember: Few people experience furniture through their dial calipers. If it looks good, it is good.
Gather up your sides and ends and look for the thinnest area on these four boards. Set your marking gauge to that thickness and scribe that thickness on all four edges of all four boards. Then use your jack plane (first plane across the grain then work diagonally) to work that second face almost to that scribed line. Then use your trying plane to finish the job.
To thickness the top and bottom pieces, simply find the thinnest area on each and scribe that thickness all around. This should be quick work because you don’t have to get four boards to agree.
Squaring Panels by Hand
There are a number of ways to get your sides and ends to the correct length. They all involve sawing them close to the finished length then shooting them to their final length with a plane.
When Thomas built the Packing Box, he used a handsaw to cut the boards to length and a smoothing plane to dress the ends square enough for a rough box. However, here Thomas uses a large backsaw to make the crosscut and guides his plane with a shooting board, one of the essential jigs in a hand-tool shop.
Let’s talk about these tools and jigs. Thomas employs a sash saw to cut the sides and ends to length. Despite the name, sash saws weren’t used only by woodworkers who made windows. The sash saw, as described by Charles Holtzapffel, has a sawplate that is 14″ to 16″ long and has 11 points per inch.
Of course, a modern woodworker with some knowledge of saws would ask: So is it a rip saw or a crosscut saw? The answer isn’t simple. Woodworking books of the early 19th century don’t make distinctions between saws with ripping teeth (zero rake and zero fleam) and those with crosscutting teeth (15° rake and 20° fleam is typical).
In one corner are woodworking historians who say that if fleam isn’t mentioned, it didn’t exist. So they sharpen all their saws for ripping and have to jump through a few hoops to make clean crosscuts.
In the other corner are woodworkers who say that fleam likely existed. In my mind, the evidence of this is found in the shop. If you work only with rip saws, you end up preparing the line you intend to cut by adding a trough made with a chisel. This trench prevents tearing. However, preparing the work with a chisel isn’t mentioned routinely in the early texts. So either they had some other unmentioned way of dealing with spelching created by a rip tooth, or they were smart enough to add a little fleam to their saws to make them cut more smoothly. Or perhaps they just planed away the torn-out areas, which is what Thomas does in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.”
Or perhaps the hand-filing created a little fleam that made the saws cut a little cleaner. No matter how hard I try, I can’t file a saw with zero fleam – it always gets a little fleam as a result of hand sharpening.
For this book, I worked with both sorts of saws. I have a sash saw that is filed rip and one that is filed crosscut. Both are hand-filed. So the rip-tooth sash saw actually has a little fleam and the crosscut tooth has a little more fleam.
In truth, if I had to have only one sash saw I would be hard-pressed to choose its configuration. When it came to crosscutting parts to size, the crosscut sash saw really shined. The cuts were clean and required almost no clean-up. The rip sash, however, was much easier to use when cutting tenons (a joint that comes up in the final project). The rip sash tracked better in a rip cut, and it was faster.
If I had to make a recommendation on what sort of saw to buy, I’d buy a rip sash saw with about 10 or 11 points. And I’d buy a 6″ double extra-slim-taper saw file and a Stanley 42X saw set. Then use the saw for both crosscutting and ripping and get to know it. Then try sharpening it with a little more fleam and relax the rake until it does a fair job for the work you do. This saw might not be optimized for ripping or crosscutting, but it will allow you to use only one saw.
By the way, this is a common compromise in the realm of the power saw – the carbide teeth of combination blades are ground to handle both crosscuts and rips and do a passable job. There’s no reason you cannot find this same middle ground with a hand-powered saw.
On the Shooting Board
Shooting boards mystify beginning woodworkers. These workshop appliances are much like a bench hook for sawing. They have a fence that you brace the work against. They have a bed for supporting the work. They usually have a hook on the front edge of the appliance that hooks over the front edge of your workbench. And they usually have a track that your handplane runs in.
The fence of a basic shooting board needs to be at a right angle to the track that the plane rides in. Also, I think it’s best to have the fence about 1″ thick; that way you’ll be able to dress 1″ stock without tearing out the far edge. Finally, the fence should not be slick. At the least, don’t apply any finish to the fence. At best, cover the fence with some sticky-back sandpaper (the specific grit is irrelevant). You will be surprised by how this makes the shooting board easier to use.
The bed of a shooting board should be wide enough to handle the stock you typically deal with (and then some). My bed has about 14″ of working surface. This allows me to deal with 12″-wide stock and have some room to start my handplane on the track without it tipping. I don’t apply finish to my shooting boards (except to the track), but it won’t hurt to apply a coat of boiled linseed oil to the bed if you please.
The shooting board’s hook is fastened below the bed. It doesn’t have any special characteristics. Usually I just use some of the same size stock I used for the fence.
The track, however, needs special attention. It needs to be wide enough for the sidewall of the handplane you plan to use for shooting – my track is about 4″ wide. The track trips up a lot of first-time users because they don’t understand how the plane won’t eat up the edge of the adjacent bed.
A typical bench plane for a shooting board (which is a jack or a try) has some metal by the side of the mouth aperture that’s usually about 1/8″ to 3/16″ wide. It’s this little land of metal that prevents the plane from chewing up your shooting board into oblivion. The first time you use the shooting board, your plane will rabbet away a little bit of the bed, then you’ll never cut the bed again (unless you increase the cut of the plane).
I think it goes without saying that you should never use a rabbeting plane or shoulder plane on a shooting board. Those will indeed eat your bed for breakfast.
I apply a little paste wax to the track to keep the planes running smoothly. It’s the only maintenance required – except for occasionally confirming that the fence is true.
Using a Shooting Board
Before you trim up your panels for the Schoolbox, I recommend a little practice on some scrap pine first. Shooting boards require a little skill to use. Here is how I do it to get good results. First realize that the far end of your cut is going to get a little spelched. That just happens. You have three ways of getting around this: You can chisel a little 45° bevel on the far corner to prevent the spelching. You can plane that far corner first with a few short strokes on the shooting board to relieve that area. Or you can plan for the spelching – leave a little extra width so you can remove the spelching with a couple long-grain passes on that far edge when you are done.
Position your board so that the knife or pencil line is right on the edge of the bed and allow the waste to hang over the track. Press the work against your fence with your off-hand. Then grasp the plane’s sidewall with your dominant hand. This hand has three jobs: Hold the plane against the track, push the plane forward and keep the plane in the cut.
This is where the skill comes in. You need to find the right combination of down, forward and inward forces to create a straight edge. The hardest part is figuring out how much pressure you need to apply to hold the plane in the cut. Too much force and your work will slide away on the fence. Too little and the plane will skitter across the end grain without cutting.
That’s why I like a plane with a sharp iron and lots of mass for shooting. Those two characteristics make it easier to keep the handplane in the cut.
Keep moving the plane forward and back until it stops cutting. Check your work. If you hit your line, you’re done. Otherwise, move the board a bit and shoot some more.
What is interesting about the description of shooting in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” is that Thomas starts shooting with a jack plane to remove the roughness of the saw. Then he follows up by shooting with his trying plane.
I have two theories here: Either Thomas has a rip sash saw that has torn out the grain, or Thomas isn’t all that good a sawyer yet. If the latter is true, Thomas had better start making some more practice joints because the next section has a good deal of sawing in it.
The following is excerpted from “Shaker Inspiration,” by Christian Becksvoort.
There is a misconception among some woodworkers that working with hand tools only is better, or downright holy, while power tools are pedestrian, not real woodworking, and should be avoided. Not so. It depends on what your aim is. Is this a hobby, or are you doing this for a living? (More on this in Chapter 8.) I think that the British craftsman, professor and philosopher David Pye best puts it in more understandable terms. There is a sharp distinction between what he calls the “manufacture of risk” and the “manufacture of certainty.” The manufacture of risk means that a tool, guided by hand, whether powered or not, introduces risk. It is totally dependent on the skill of the user. On the other hand, the manufacture of certainty guarantees an identical outcome each time. When I carve cherry chair seats, I use an electric grinder with carbide cutters. The depth, proportion, shape and symmetry of the seat are determined by my hand-eye coordination. One slip and the seat is toast. Using a scorp is also the manufacture of risk, only slower, with less chance of making a major mistake.
To all you smug woodworkers out there: Not all hand-tool work involves risk. Some actually involves the manufacture of certainty; the results are guaranteed to be identical, each time. When using a straightedge and knife to make a cut, the cut will be straight every time (unless you let go of the straightedge). There are even folks making hand-cut dovetails and using clamp-on, magnetic dovetail guides. Come on, who are you fooling? Each cut is pre-determined and will be identical. Where is the fun and skill in that? Freehand is cheaper – no jigs, templates or gadgets. That’s where skill and practice lead to craftsmanship. Dovetail jigs are merely a crutch.
I think that one of the best examples is carving. There are still lots of carvers who use traditional carving chisels. All hand work – the manufacture of risk. However, more and more carvers, especially in the competitive world of bird carving, are using electric hand carvers, wheels, burrs and diamond bits. It’s still hand guided, and one slip results in disaster – also clearly the manufacture of risk. The source of power, be it muscle or electric, is inconsequential. I couldn’t run my business without my jointer, planer, drill press, lathe (although I used to turn knobs on the drill press before I acquired a lathe), mortiser or table saw. Ripping 40′ (12.2m) of cherry moulding with a handsaw is not my idea of a good time, therapy or craftsmanship. To me, that’s monkey work. If you get off on that, more power to you.
So what makes craftsmanship special? I maintain that it is evidence of the human hand. Yes, there will be mistakes. No one is 100-percent perfect (that’s why I own a SawStop). The Navajos professed that there is no such thing as perfect work, and all their rugs and pottery had an asymmetrical error of one sort or another. I’ve never turned out a perfect piece, yet I strive for perfection each time I come into the shop. What constitutes evidence of the human hand? Small mistakes, certainly. But they have to be nearly invisible. Large mistakes are just another growth and learning opportunity. They need to be fixed, rectified or replaced. Examples of the human hand? Hand-carved letters will never be as perfect as routed ones, but they are by far more elegant. Chair spindles, tapered with block plane or spokeshave, reveal minute facets but appear round. Chair seats, carved with grinder or scorp, will always have slight irregularities. Hopefully, they’re not noticeable, but they are present. Pins or through-tenons that are trimmed with a chisel are not perfect. I’ve even had the surprising pleasure of restoring a Shaker desk only to discover that the tenons were slightly chamfered, hidden inside of a mortise. That, ladies and gentlemen, is craftsmanship.
A few random thoughts on tools in general. Buy the best, and buy only once. Early in my career, I had a set of those blue-handled chisels, six for $39. When I started working full-time, banging dovetails all day, I discovered that I had to re-sharpen at least once or twice a day. At the end of a few weeks, that’s four to five wasted hours (I got to be really good at freehand sharpening, though). Even at a reliably low per hour shop rate, at the end of two weeks I could save enough to afford a set of Lie-Nielsen Toolworks chisels. Now I can do two or three large cherry case pieces before having to pull out the waterstones. What about used and antique tools? Those can be a real find and a real bargain. On the other hand, if it takes two or three days of shop time to fix, restore and tune a bargain plane to get the rust pits out, it might be better time-wise to buy new. If you enjoy fixing tools that’s one thing, but if you’d rather spend time working wood, then choose the other option.
It has also been my observation that a skilled craftsman with minimal and humble tools can do a much better job than someone with no or minimal skills and great tools. It’s all in how your implements are used. I recall that when Brian Boggs started making chairs, he cut his mortises with a sharpened screwdriver. His chairs were, and still are, masterpieces. Incidentally, he’s the only woodworker I’ve bought furniture from. His chairs are the perfect combination of thoughtful design, ergonomics and meticulous craftsmanship.
CNC & 3D Printing
It seems that our world is awash in consumer glut. Gadgets, products and devices that were once considered luxuries are today available to the masses. Decades ago, portable phones were naught but a pipe dream. Now, two-thirds of the population on this planet use and enjoy them. And in two years, they will be obsolete and need replacement. Mass production, on a scale never imaginable, has made it all possible. I agree that every human should be able to live a satisfying life, but where does it end? Walk into a big box store, and most everything you see there will be in the landfill in about five years. Is that sustainable?
Where exactly does craftsmanship end and mass production start? Anything perfectly reproducible, be it one, 10 or a million copies, is mass production. That’s where I see 3D printers. Some schools used to have craft areas, but now the latest is a “maker space.” Many of these don’t actually let you make anything; instead gadgets can be re-built or re-purposed, and the latest widgets are spit out by a 3D printer. Granted, the future of 3D printing is unfathomable, especially in science, medicine and machinery. But in crafts? Yes, coding and programming are skills, but you are not making an object. Press a button and the machine makes the object. Is that craft? The same can be said for CNC production. Every piece perfect. Every piece identical. It’s the ultimate manufacture of certainty. It’s just the ticket if you’re making kitchen cabinets, or have a line of furniture that you want to sell, but not make. Every piece identical, with no sign of the human hand. Just mass-produced. Is that why we are woodworkers? Is that what craft is evolving into? I suppose the same gripe was aired when Linotype machines cast lead letters as you typed. Who remembers Linotype? We’ll see where it all leads us.
One place that it’s led us: The word “custom” is now completely meaningless. You order your new Mercedes, in that beautiful metallic pearl color, with the engine size you specify, the sound system that you desire and a few other trendy options. That’s custom, right? Yup – there are 2,384 cars identical to your baby out on the road. In a world of increasing conformity, however, I think there will always be a perceptive and discriminating few who will in fact value the individually handcrafted piece. In my business at least, I know most of my clients value having something handmade, by me, that no one else has. They appreciate the finer things: art and craft. Let’s face it – only one person (or institution) can have the original “Mona Lisa,” but anyone can have a print. What’s the difference? You decide.
Please note that I’m not bad-mouthing mass-production. All of humanity needs a place to sit, a table to eat at and a bed to sleep in. Individually built furniture will never fill that need. The axe I’m grinding concerns those folks who buy pre-turned chair legs, pre-turned spindles, have their chair seats CNC-carved, then have the whole thing assembled by a minimum-wage employee, and sell the finished product as a “handcrafted” chair. Does that pass your straight face test? Is that your definition of craftsmanship?
In the long run, you decide what type of business you’ll operate, and exactly how you’ll make it work. And consumers will decide what they want to purchase: a big screen TV or a hand-made cabinet.
I don’t make many unequivocal statements, but here’s one: Some non-stringy species of white pine is the correct wood for a tool chest. And if you can get it, choose sugar pine or Eastern white pine. These are lightweight woods that are easy to work with hand tools, and they are typically less expensive in the U.S. than any hardwood, with the possible exception of poplar. And while poplar will work for a tool chest – as will any wood, really – it’s heavy and harder to dovetail than pine. And that will make your tool chest heavier than it needs to be.
Fully loaded, a sugar pine “Anarchist’s Tool Chest” weighs in the neighborhood of 200-225 lbs. (The hardware and choice of wood for tills and other interior bits will affect the weight, as, of course, will the specific tools inside.)
And while I’ve never weighed a pine Dutch tool chest fully loaded, I used to work out of a poplar one while teaching on the road, and I had a heck of a time lifting it in and out of my car. So I’m keeping one of the pine ones I’m building right now to make my peripatetic woodworking life just a little easier.
For the tool chest classes I teach here, I do my best to source beautiful, clear sugar pine, which is typically available in wide widths – the fewer pieces in panel glue-ups, the better. But every once in a while, someone will ask if they can prep their own wood for a class – and it’s usually for the anarchist’s tool chest class – the one for which the wood prep is the most demanding and most critical that it be good. I say sure…but you darn well better do a good job of it. A) I won’t have time during the class to fix any out-of-square edges for you and B) I won’t have on hand matching stock to replace a piece should something go terribly wrong. C) I don’t want to help lift your full-size oak or purpleheart tool chest into your car at the end of class.
But if you insist on bringing your own, below are the steps to follow (some of which are pretty basic…but you never know what people already know).
The flatter the wood, the easier it is to prep – and the more plain the grain, generally the easier it is to dovetail. I don’t want any points of cathedrals or bird’s eyes in my pins and tails (or knots, or course). So the first thing I do is to lay out rough cuts to avoid anything problematic. I start with the largest pieces (above, that’s the front and back of the ATC), and try my best to have all my glue-ups be only two pieces (you can see above that I typically have to use three pieces in at least some of the carcase and lid panels).
So first, I mark out all the pieces, and if they’re longer than 14″ or so, I rough cut them about 1″ overlong at the chop saw and about 1/2″ overwide at the band saw (or I joint one edge then cut them overwide at the table saw). For pieces that are shorter than 14″ (and therefore can’t safely go through the planer), I keep them attached to another piece until after the surfacing is done. You don’t, however, want to leave the pieces much longer than they need to be. The longer a board, the more likely it is to be twisted – the less of that you have to take out, the better. Because the more you have to remove from one surface to correct twist or a cup, the more will go into your dust collector.
In order to run the wood through the planer to get it flat (and all of it to the same thickness), you need one flat face; that face registers on the bed of the planer. If you’re good with a jointer plane, you may not need a jointer. If you’re decent with a jointer plane but have to prep wood for seven people and have three days to do it, you definitely want an electric jointer.
If you have a helical head on your jointer, you don’t have to worry much about grain direction, but run the stock in the correct direction anyway; it’s a good habit to adopt. The grain should be running downhill. And if there’s a crown in the board on one face, there’s probably a cup on the other. When you run the wood across the cutters, you want it supported as much as possible at the outside edges, so the cupped face should face down. If you’ve already arranged it with the grain running correctly but the cupped face up, simply flip the board end for end, before jointing it. (Odds are pretty good that the heart side will be facing up.)
With thick wood, you can get away with jointing it only enough to create flats at the outside edges to register on the planer bed. But the planer rollers will flatten thin wood…which will spring back after it exits the planer. So for 3/4″ (or thinner) stock, I always run the stock as many times as necessary across the jointer to flatten one face completely. And because I think it’s unsafe to have to push too hard, I’d rather make several light cuts than one deep cut; I usually have the cut set to no more than 1/16″
After the final jointer pass, I stack the boards atop the planer, flat face down, with the last end that went over the jointer facing toward the planer mouth – that’s the way they get fed in (last off jointer, first in planer). Though again, if you have a helical cutter, it’s not (usually) that critical.
I follow the same steps every time I use the planer; that way, I never get turned around. As I pull pieces off the far end, I stack them back in the exact same orientation as they were run through the machine. Then if I have to run them again to get to a certain thickness and the first face is flat, I flip them end for end as I feed them into the planer for the second pass. And repeat. That way, I’m removing wood from both faces, and hopefully equalizing the moisture exchange. (And if I have someone catching for me, I make sure they don’t flip the boards as they stack them.) Same steps for the operator every time. And if the first face isn’t flat after one pass, the board is in the right direction without flipping it to simply run it through again.
And here’s the critical part for classes when it comes to thicknessing: I run all the wood that has to be the same thickness at the same time. I would never run, say, the front and back of a through-dovetailed carcase then come back three days later and run the ends. In order to avoid problems, all the pieces must be the exact same thickness – your best shot at achieving that is to do it all at once. I don’t care if the pieces are a hair over or under 7/8″ – I just care that they’re all the same.
Once all the stock is flat and to thickness, I joint one edge in preparation for cutting it to final size (even if I’ve already jointed an edge to cut a piece to rough width, I do it again, in case it got bashed up), and mark the jointed edge; that edge will run against the table saw’s fence.
But it’s the table saw work that scares me the most in folks prepping their own stock; if the pieces aren’t square, the person’s class experience is doomed – and I don’t want that. But if I have to take the time to correct problems, the other students in the class suffer. So at least one person (in addition to me) is going to be unhappy.
So I am ultra careful at the table saw to make sure my cuts are square. First, I rip the pieces to final width, making sure I keep the wood tight to the fence. Then I triple check that the crosscut fence is dead square to the blade, and before we got a reliable slider, I clamped like pieces together to make sure they were the exact same length. (Now I trust the stop on our slider. But I don’t trust the stop on your slider.)
So after setting my stop I raise it, then crosscut one end square (with the jointed-edge mark against the fence), then drop the stop, flip the board and cut it to length. Boom – two square ends, and the right length. Repeat.
Once all the pieces of that length are cut, I reset the stop and cut the mating pieces. And so on with the rest of the stock.
Note that all of the above assumes no glue-ups. Throw wide panels into the mix and you add glue-ups to the prep. I’ll write about those in a few days.
The following is excerpted from “With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture Making,” by André-Jacob Roubo, translated by By Donald C. Williams, Michele Pietryka-Pagán & Philippe Lafargue.
For the fashioning of raw timbers, we understand the manner of splitting [hewing or sawing] and squaring them, which is done in different ways, according to the nature, the quality and the thickness of the wood. They are sawn by the mills, or even by hand, by workers called long sawyers or simply sawyers. I will not speak here of the harvesting of the woods in the forests. I will be content to say only that they are sawn and cut in sizes and lengths relative to our different needs, and that wood thus prepared is called wood samples.
They are found abundantly in all types and all qualities possible in the inventories of the wood Merchants, which they ordinarily cut for themselves and for their clients, and are transported to their storage lots or shops in Paris. [Suppose you go to a lumberyard and in the lumber section you will find 2×4, 2×8, 2×6 etc. This is what is called bois díechantillons. In this case it is oak, pine, walnut etc. of various types but standard dimensions.]
Cut or squared-up woods take different names according to their sizes, and according to the place which they occupy in the body of the tree: We call them dosses [slabs], countre dosses, swinging doors, framework, chevrons and finally planks and battens.
Slabs are the first cuts removed from a log in order to square it up, after having removed the bark, like those on sides g–g, Fig. 5 and 6.
When the diameter of the tree is considerable, and you fear that the first cut slab will become too thick, you make a double-cut, which is called a contre-dosse; that is to say, that it is between the first cut dosse [slab] and cut line and the heartwood [wood between the pith and the sapwood] like those on sides h–h, Fig. 6. When the wood is beautiful, the contre-dosse are very soft, being very close to the edges of the tree [closer to the sapwood layer]. They do not have any sapwood except at their extremities, instead of the first cuts, dosse, that have sapwood all over their convex areas. The thickness of the contre-dosse is not precise. It varies from 2 to 4 thumbs. After a log is thus squared, you saw it into thin panels or lumber planks, according to its hardness or softness. You can then judge whether it is appropriate for one or the other. [That is,] [u]nless one cuts planks from the entire width of the tree, especially with soft wood, which I will speak of later.
The double doors of main entrances are ordinarily 12, 15 or even 18 feet long, by 1 foot or 15 thumbs wide, for the longest, and by 4–5 thumbs thick. They are almost always of a hard-quality wood. They should have neither knots nor splits. This may be found in the woods of Vosge, but they are very expensive and very rare.
Lumber for framing is of a length from 6, 9, 12 and 15 feet. They are 6 thumbs wide by 3 thumbs thick.
Rafters have the same length as framing, and sometimes more, by 3 to 4 thumbs squared, that is to say, they have as much thickness as their width.
Planks have 6, 9, 12, 15 and even 18 feet of length, by 1 thumb 15 lines, 1–thumb-and-a-half, one thumb-9 lines, and 2 thumbs thickness.
There are also planks of 7 feet length, but they are rarer than the others, and are difficult to find in all thicknesses.
With regards to the width of planks of French wood, they vary from 9 thumbs up to 1 foot. However, those of 1–and-one-half thumbs to 2 thumbs are ordinarily a foot wide, and those below this thickness from 9 up to 10 or 11 thumbs at the most.
There is still another type of thin French oak wood, named Entrevoux, which only has but 9–10 lines of thickness, by 6, 7 or 9 feet in length, which is appropriate for making panels, provided that it is soft and beautiful.
For the wood from Vosge, there are all kinds of lengths and thickness of which I spoke above, except that there are none of 6–7 feet, or even less. There are also those of 3 thumbs thickness by 12 feet in length. With regards to its width, that is not fixed, because in all the different lengths and thicknesses of this wood, there are from 6–7 thumbs of width up to 18, 20 and even 26 to 30 thumbs [width]. That is why Merchants do not sell this wood by measurement [of the individual boards], as with the others, but by each row of the lumber stack, which is 4 feet in width.
To facilitate the understanding of widths and thickness of woods for joinery relative to their different lengths, I have attached a table [on the next page] where all the wood types are distinguished according to their length, width and thicknesses.
The wood from Holland is not included in the number of those I have mentioned here because it is only a thin wood, which is sold by the handful or even by the cord. These lengths are of 6, 7, 9 or 12 feet by a thickness of 6 or 9 lines.
The thickest of these woods is called three quarters, because it should have 9 lines thickness, although often it only has 7 or 8 at the most. (The thinner ones are called feuillet [leaf] and are only 4 to 5 lines thick, while it should be 6 lines thick.)
It is to be noted that French wood is always thicker than the wood from Vosge with each sample; that is to say, that the first always has 2–3 lines more than its thickness, such that the wood of 1 thumb sometimes has 14–15 lines [thickness]. On the contrary, the latter [wood] always has 1 line less than it should have, which is a shortcoming. Also it has the advantage of being straighter than the other, and has less waste.
For the battens made of oak, wood Merchants sell them only rarely. Joiners use wood from Holland for thin panels, and they even saw [resaw] them at their shops while on edge, to the thickness and of the quality that they judge to be appropriate.
Pine is not subject to the rules of thickness of which I just spoke, at least that type used in the woodworking of buildings.
That from Auvergne ordinarily is 12 feet in length by 14–15 lines in thickness. Its width varies from 10 to 14–15 thumbs.
That from Lorraine has only 11 feet in length at the most. Its thickness is the same as that from Auvergne, but the most ordinary thickness is from 10–12 lines. Its width varies thus, from that of the latter.
There are also the little leaves of pine from Lorraine, of the same length as the planks, which have from 6 up to 8 lines thickness.
Walnut and elm are not found cut into planks like the other woods. Whenever Joiners have enough money, they buy whole logs which they cut themselves, namely the elm, into slabs of 5 thumbs’ thickness, and the walnut into slabs of 3 thumbs [thickness]. They still saw black walnut to make the panels for tables of 4 lines thickness, which have a width of the whole log, which is sometimes 2–2.5 feet in width.
Beech is found cut into planks of 15–18 lines, and even 2 thumbs thickness by 7, 9 and 12 feet in length. They also sell slabs of this wood for making woodworking benches, tables for the kitchen, and butcher tables, tables that have a length from 7–12, and even 15 feet, by 18–30 thumbs in width, and 5–6 thumbs’ thickness.
Although the wood which one chooses has by itself all the required qualities, it is still necessary to watch out for its preservation. Because wood for joinery should not be used except very dry, it is of the final consequence to Joiners to always be well provisioned with wood of all types, which they keep and dry in their yard before using them.
They should also take care that their yard not be placed too low, nor planted with grass, because the falling and gathering of leaves will prevent the run off of water, which could ruin the wood pile coverings and also the base of a woodpile.
The terrain occupied by the woodpiles should be higher than the rest of the yard, so that water does not collect there. It must be well set up and leveled, after which you put on top some pieces of wood side A, which we call chantier [beam/timber spacers] which has a length the same as the width of the pile – ordinarily 4 feet, although sometimes they make them wider. You make them the greatest thickness possible, so that they make the pile taller with the most possible space between the boards.
You put the spacers distant from each other about 3 feet. Their topsides should be squared and straight, after which you pile the wood on top, after having taken the precaution of putting the worst planks on the lowest level to save the better woods from ground moisture. You make the piles in two ways, according to whether the wood is being dried or is already dry.
In the first case, you pile them up to see through, which is done in the following two ways:
The first is to place the planks side by side with a space [between them] about equal to two-thirds of their width, and to separate each row of planks by laths [stickers] f–f, which separates them, prevents them from touching and maintains them in a solid position on top of each other, such that one can stack up the piles up to 20–25 feet in height. (Fig. 1).
The second way to make see-through piles is to make them squarely; that is to say, to give them as much width as the planks are long. You first put a row of planks spaced equally, as in the first way, always such that the width of the row of planks and the additional space between them is equal to their length.
After this, you put on top some planks in another row, in the same order and at a right angle, which means that you have no need for stickers/spacers, and that the planks have more air between them. However, you should not leave them thus piled for a long time, for fear that the wood will rot where the pieces sit on top of each other. (Fig. 2.)
Rafters of 6–9 feet are piled in this fashion, without however being see-through.
The way to pile seasoned wood does not differ from the first of these two ways, except that the planks touch each other side by side, instead of being see-through. You separate each row with some spacers which you put at an equal distance to that of the chantiers which are three feet apart, so that the planks are always straight and do not warp. However, this last term signifies more of a hollowed-out plank along its width [cupping] than a warping [bowing].
The top of the pile is covered with planks positioned to overlap one on top of the other; one of the ends of which is positioned on another plank (side a, Fig. 4) which is called l’egout de la couverture [not quite like a gutter but more like a rain diverter] and which lies flat upon the pile. One should note, however, that it overhangs the front of the pile by 3 or 4 thumbs, and that it slopes a bit to the outside, in order to facilitate the runoff of any water. You raise it up a bit at the back to create this effect. The other end of the planks of the cover hold a piece of wood b, which is named chevet [or riser], which is positioned on edge on two pieces of wood c, in which a notch is placed, and which is stopped with wedges d, in order that it not turn. The chevet should be a foot and a half tall at least, so that the water accumulates less on the piles.
The middle of the covering should be supported by a piece of wood e, which is placed above the pile, and the two planks along the sides rs, rs should be wider by 3 or 4 thumbs than the two sides of the pile, so that the water does not fall back along its length.
When you wish to make the piles more than 4 feet thickness, you should take care to put the spacers in concert (that is, you place them such that the total length of two spacers is more than 4 feet, which is the length of the laths), overlapping such that it maintains the solidity of the pile. You will need to take care to keep everything straight and vertical in all directions, so as to avoid accidents that its fall might cause.
For thin wood, like the wood from Holland, the battens of oak and of pine, the custom is not to pile them in the open air in the middle of the yard, but to pile them under sheds and above the shop where the workers work, the reason being, they say, that they are preserved better. I believe, in spite of this practice, that they would be better in the yard, where they will receive the air from all sides, and where they will not be exposed to insects [powder-post beetles etc.].
As to their preservation, I believe they run no danger being out in the air. The piles of wood from Holland, which reside for a long time in the wood lots of the Port of Hopital and of Rapee without any damage, are surely guarantees of the truth of what I advance here.
What I am saying here is only general. I know perfectly well that all woodworkers cannot have
great wood yards nor large provisions of wood. But still, for reasons of economy, they should always do their best to be well prepared with samples, and to watch over their preservation as best as they can, so as not to be obliged to have to buy some from the Merchants. The wood that they sell is almost never dry, and the woodworker will pay dearly for what the wood Merchants have.
The more wood is hard, the more time it takes to dry. That is why one should not reasonably use wood that has not been cut at least 8 years in order to be able to do good work. It is not necessary, however, that it be too dry, especially for pieces of joinery, where the wood has no more sap and where the humidity is totally expunged: this cannot be appropriate. [Once the sap no longer is flowing from the lumber and the moisture has departed there is no need to season the lumber any further.]