Lost Art Press

Author: meghanlostartpress

Boarded Bookshelf

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

boarded-bookshelf

This is an excerpt from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” by Christopher Schwarz. 

Trying to improve a simple set of bookshelves might seem ridiculous. But I think there are significant things to say about the warped state of bookshelf construction in the modern age.

What could be wrong about horizontal surfaces fastened to vertical ones? Plenty.

For starters, I’m not a fan of adjustable shelving. I think that if you gave enough monkeys enough mescaline, you might be able to come up with a plastic jig to drill the right number of holes for adjustable shelf pins that weren’t a waste of time or space. But that’s a lot of mescaline. Adjustable shelving is, in my opinion, mostly a cop-out.

Books come in fairly standard sizes. Heck, they once came in sizes that were based simply on how many times you folded a large sheet of paper. But thanks to the miracle and wastefulness of modern book manufacturing, we now have some bizarre sizes to deal with.

These odd books are at the extreme ends of a bell curve of book shapes (called “form factors” or “formats” in the design world). You can find books out there that are 18″ wide and 10″ high (yup, a book on billboards). But if you are someone who reads woodworking books, novels and non-fiction (and not art books on Estonian midget nudist wrestlers), then trying to accommodate whack-doodle form factors isn’t necessary.

So I’ve always viewed adjustable shelving with great suspicion. Do we need to adjust every shelf in a carcase 1″ up or down? I don’t.

boarded-bookshelf2

What Sizes are Important?
Go to any bookstore and you’ll find that most books come in roughly three sizes: small, medium and large.

Small books are 6″ x 9″ or smaller – these are the novels and standard woodworking books of the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s a convenient size for reading in the subway or the park. And they fit easily into a knapsack or shoulder bag.

The medium size is about 8-1/2″ x 11″ (slightly more if it’s a hardback). This became a fairly standard size for how-to books in the latter 20th century and is economical to print. So you will encounter a lot of these books as you build your library. I find them to be a stepchild size. They are too big to travel with easily. Yet when I am reading them at home I always wish they were bigger.

The large size of book is 11″ x 17″ or some close variant. These books are uncommon in the modern age, unless you are into art books or old books. But when I find them they are worth the extra expense.

Many excellent old books on woodworking, including the 18th-century pattern books, were oversized folios. So I think it’s worth making a place for them in a bookshelf. It might be wishful thinking, but so what?

So this bookshelf has shelf openings of three sizes: 18″ high for big books, 12″ for the medium books and 9-3/8″ for the small ones. (However, the top shelf has no top, so you can fit taller books up there if you dare.)

Other Advantages of this Form
So now that you know the typical book sizes, wouldn’t it be sweet to provide just a wee bit of adjustability – up and down – for odd sizes?

No, it wouldn’t.

Fixed shelves are far stiffer than adjustable ones. You can nail a fixed shelf in place though the back of the carcase. This adds immense stiffness so the shelf won’t sag. (And if you think that sagging shelves aren’t a problem then you don’t own enough books.)

The other advantage to fixed shelves is they add to the overall soundness of the carcase. If you have only two fixed shelves – which is typical in a commercial bookcase – the carcase is more likely to rack compared to a carcase that has multiple shelves that are nailed through both the back and the bookcase’s vertical uprights.

One last thing I like about fixed shelves: They don’t ever collapse or slide off their adjustable shelf pins.

boarded-bookshelf-3
Dropped Edge on a Shelf

How to Cheat
So let’s say you think I’m full of crap or you pine desperately for adjustable shelves. Can you make a shelf unit that is stiff enough? Yup. Do these two things: Use a plywood back that is glued and screwed in place. That will stiffen the carcase. To make the shelves stiff, use what is called a “dropped edge” on every adjustable shelf. This is when you attach a strip of solid wood to the front and/or rear of the shelf to stiffen it.

A typical dropped edge is 1-1/4″ wide and is attached to the front of the shelf. Note that the dropped edge can also be used to hide the fact that you used plywood for the shelves. (Naughty, naughty. Plywood isn’t as stiff as solid wood – hence the name “solid” wood.)

If you look at the bookcase in this book, the “kick” (the horizontal strip affixed to the lower shelf ) works exactly like a dropped edge. There’s good reason for it to be attached to the lower shelf because it’s designed to hold the heaviest books.

— MB

Strong Trunk

Posted on by meghanlostartpress
strongtrunk1
Fig. 8.1. A strong trunk in mahogany with ‘riveted’ corners.

This is an excerpt from “Campaign Furniture” by Christopher Schwarz. 

One of the more common pieces of campaign furniture is the simple trunk, sometimes also called a “strong chest,” “traveling chest” or “barracks chest.” The one shown in this chapter, however, has some unusual details you should be aware of. More about those oddities in a few paragraphs.

Trunks typically have square ends – both the height and depth of the trunk can be roughly 15″ to 25″. In general, they are somewhere between 25″ to 40″ wide. The chests are frequently dovetailed at the corners and bound with brass corners and other brass straps. Despite the dovetails, many of the lids and bottoms of trunks were merely nailed to the carcase. It is not unusual to find a trunk with a lid or bottom that has a split.

The trunks almost always had a lock or hasp to protect the contents.

Many of the trunks were raised on some sort of foot. The foot could be as simple as a sledge (sometimes called sled) foot – just a square of wood – all the way to a complex bracket foot.

Inside, many trunks had a small till with a lid, much like a typical household chest. This till stored small items and its lid served as a stop to hold the trunk’s lid open. The chests are typically made from mahogany, oak, teak and camphorwood, which naturally repels moths.

The trunk shown here is typical in many of its attributes except for the joinery at the corners. Instead of dovetails, I have chosen an uncommon (but definitely reliable) type of joinery found on trunks from the West Indies.

strongtrunk2
Fig. 8.2. A ‘rivet.’ This piece of early campaign hardware is held in with screws that then had their heads filed off flush to the pull. This feature shows up on other pieces and even on English infill handplanes.


That’s a Rivet?
I first encountered this joint while haunting antique stores on King Street in Charleston, S.C. One of the trunks there had a series of brass circles that ran in a line up each corner. At first it looked like brass inlay, which is a common feature of some Anglo-Indian campaign pieces.

Instead of decoration, the brass circles turned out to be the joinery.

The dealer, who had imported campaign furniture from the West Indies for decades, explained that some collectors referred to that joint as a “rivet.” He explained that the rivet was nothing more than a brass screw that had been driven in so its head was still proud. Then the screw head was filed flush to the carcase, eliminating the slot.

It’s a surprisingly simple and (I think) attractive way to make a strong joint that looks a lot better than having 12 wooden screw plugs lined up on the corners.

This approach shows up in other applications in the woodworking field. Sometimes, screw heads are filed flush with a piece of hardware. And if you’ve ever seen infill handplanes, you know it was common for the maker to screw in the wooden infills and the lever cap then file off the heads – making for a clean sidewall of the tool.

This trunk is based on several smaller English examples I’ve studied that were dovetailed. But instead of the dovetails, I substituted “rivets” as the joinery to make the trunk look more like one from the West Indies. If you want a more English look, cut through- or full-blind dovetails at the corners. The other decorative details, such as the brass corners and bracket feet, pretty much remain the same.

strongtrunk3
Fig. 8.3. Typically English. This small trunk features blind dovetails at the corners, brass corners, chest lifts and a strong lock.


Almost a Butt Joint

The joinery of the trunk is as simple as a modern kitchen cabinet. The ends are captured by 5/16″-deep x 5/8″-wide rabbets cut on the ends of the front and back pieces. This corner joint is first glued then later screwed. The bottom is captured in a groove plowed in the ends, front and back.

The lid is built a lot like the case below. The ends are glued into rabbets in the front and back pieces. The lid is then nailed on top of that assembly.

When building the carcase, there are two basic paths you can follow. You can build the entire chest and lid as one unit then saw the lid free from the carcase. Or you can build the lid and carcase separately.

I took a path between these extremes. I cut the joints on all the parts. Then I ripped the lid parts free from the carcase parts. I assembled the lid and carcase separately. Why? I don’t like pushing a big assembled carcase over a table saw. But all three approaches work. Choose one you like.

— MB

S. 36. Of the waving engine.

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

plate-5

This is an excerpt from “The Art of Joinery” by Joseph Moxon; commentary by Christopher Schwarz.

The waving engine described in plate 5. fig. 7, hath A B, a long square plank of about seven inches broad, five foot long, and an inch and a half thick. All along the length of this plank on the middle between the two sides runs a rabbet [a raised track], as part of it is seen at C. Upon this rabbet rides a block with a groove in its underside. This block is about three inches square and ten inches long, having near the hinder end of it a wooden handle going through it [that is] about one inch diameter, as D E. At the fore-end of this block is fastened a vise, [that is] somewhat larger than a great hand-vise, as at F. The groove in the block is made to receive the rabbet on the plank.

At the farther end of the plank is erected a square strong piece of wood, about six inches high, and five inches square, as G. This square piece has a square wide mortise in it on the top, as at H. Upon the top of this square piece is a strong square flat iron collar, somewhat loosely fitted on, having two male screws fitted into two female screws, to screw against that part of the wooden piece un-mortised at the top, marked L, that it may draw the iron collar hard against the iron [that cuts the moulding], marked Q , and keep it stiff against the fore-side of the un-mortised piece, marked L, when the piece Q is set to its convenient height. And on the other side the square wooden piece is fitted another iron screw, having to the end of its shank fastened a round iron plate which lies within the hollow of this wooden piece, and therefore cannot in draft be seen in its proper place. But I have described it apart, as at M. {Fig. 9.} Its nut is placed at M on the wooden piece. On the farther side of the wooden piece is fitted a wooden screw called a knob, as at N. Through the farther and hither side of the square wooden piece is fitted a flat piece of iron, about three quarters of an inch broad and one quarter of an inch thick, standing on edge upon the plank; but its upper edge is filed round {the reason you will find by and by}. Its hither end comes through the wooden piece, as at O, and its farther end on the opposite side of the wooden piece.

waving-engine-moxon

Upright in the hollow square of the wooden piece stands an iron, as at Q , whose lower end is cut into the form of the moulding you intend your work shall have.

In the fore side of this wooden piece is [a] square hole, as at R, called the mouth.

To this engine belongs a thin at piece of hard wood, about an inch and a quarter broad and as long as the rabbet. It is disjunct [distinct, unconnected] from the engine, and in fig. 8. is marked S S, called the rack. It hath its under[side] flat cut into those fashioned waves you intend your work shall have. The hollow of these waves are made to comply with the round edge of [the] flat plate of iron marked O {described before}. For when one end of the riglet [workpiece] you wave is, with the vise, screwed to the plain side of the rack, and the other end put through the mouth of the wooden piece, as at T T, so as the hollow of the wave on the underside of the rack may lie upon the round edge of the flat iron plate set on edge, as at O, and the iron Q , is strong fitted down upon the reglet [sic]. Then if you lay hold of the handles of the block D E and strongly draw them, the rack and the riglet will both together slide through the mouth of the wooden piece. And as the rounds of [the] rack ride over the round edge of the at iron, the rack and reglet will mount up to the iron Q , and as the rounds of the waves on the underside of the rack slides off the iron on edge, the rack and reglet will sink, and so in a progression (or more) the riglet will on its upper side receive the form of the several waves on the underside of the rack, and also the form or moulding that is on the edge of the bottom of the iron. And so at once the riglet will be both moulded and waved.

But before you draw the rack through the engine, you must consider the office of the knob N, and the office of the iron screw M. For by them the rack is screwed evenly under the iron Q. And you must be careful that the groove of the block flip not off the rabbet on the plank. For by these screws, and the rabbet and groove, your work will be evenly gauged all the way (as I said before) under the edge of the iron Q , and keep it from sliding either to the right or left hand, as you draw it through the engine.

Analysis
Of course, the No. 1 question you have to have about the “waving engine” entry is what the heck the thing actually does. Is it a planer? A moulding machine? Well, yes. It works like both a planer and a moulding machine to produce what are called rippled or waveform mouldings, which were all the rage during Cromwell’s reign in England.

Wave mouldings show up in many picture frames of the era and reflect light in a most unusual way – thanks to their undulations or ripples.

Moxon’s device seems complex from the description because he is writing about a thing that doesn’t exist in this exact form today. In essence, the waving engine produces rippled mouldings much like a duplicator lathe or a pattern-cutting bit in a router. A flat piece of iron follows a block with the desired pattern cut into it. This moves the stock against a fixed cutter, which gradually (very gradually) cuts away the waste to reveal the final wave shape in the workpiece.

The workpiece, by the way, is pulled through the waving engine by hand. If you are interested in this fascinating machine, I recommend you check out a 2002 article by Jonathan Thornton, who built a close reproduction of Moxon’s waving engine and shows how it developed into a fancier machine that worked with a crank. It’s easily available in pdf format from Stanford University’s web site for the Wooden Artifacts Group (http://aic.stanford.edu/sg/wag/authorindex.html).

— by MB

Waking up Your Eye

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

bhae-blog

This is an excerpt from “By Hand and Eye” by Geo R. Walker and Jim Tolpin.

On the southern shore of Lake Erie lies a narrow strip of cottonwood bramble called Magee Marsh. It’s the last bit of shelter for migrating songbirds before they take flight across the open water. Stiff headwinds can cause a massive pileup with thousands of birds hunkered down, and hundreds of bird watchers converging to witness the spectacle. It’s called a fallout. To a birder, a fallout is an event on par with a solar eclipse.

The first time my wife, Barb, and I stumbled into one, I wasn’t prepared for it. The air bristled with brightly colored warblers as we stepped under the shelter of the tree canopy. I felt a puff of air on my cheek as a blur of yellow feathers darted close to my ear. Veteran birders around me ooh-ed and aah-ed, “There’s a black-throated blue, and just above it, 5′ back at 2 o’clock is a redstart!”

But my eyes weren’t quick enough and I didn’t know how to look, or what I was looking at. Over and over I just missed something wonderful and rare. A 9-year-old boy wearing a T-shirt proclaiming “Birding is not for Sissies” tried in vain to help me, but after a few minutes, politely slipped away. That first morning I wondered to myself if I’d ever get this. I didn’t seem to have the eye for it. In spite of early doubts, gradually my eyes and brain started to mesh. As the day wore on, I began to see clearly those winged jewels I’d only read about in books.

This book is the equivalent of a “fallout” to awaken your designer’s eye. Despite any doubts you might have, you already possess the inherent ability to see with your inner eye. It is, in fact, simply waiting for you to awaken it. You’ll see what once seemed impossible and quickly gain the condence to spread your creative wings. With some practice, the ability to see and unpack a design will become as natural as breathing.

Looking for Clues in all the Right Places
We live in a media-saturated world filled with images bombarding us every waking moment. Yet, as Vitruvius observed, we’re still plagued with a common dilemma: A layman looks while a designer sees. My own craft background, molded by modern industrial practice, left me dependent on measured drawings. The ability to visualize seemed beyond my grasp in spite of a lifetime of building things with my hands. Granted, I had strong opinions about furniture, art, cars and guns, and I knew immediately what I liked or considered ugly. But truth be told, I could only detect the glaringly obvious. Even then, I struggled to pin down what caught my eye. I could admire a masterpiece, but could not explain what tipped the scales in its favor. I’d look at a chair and think, “It’s off; there’s something awkward or clumsy about it,” but rarely could I voice with certainty what looked awry. This is a little embarrassing to admit, but even if I started a project with clear pictures and plans, the image I formed in my head never seemed to match the actual parts as they came together. This reinforced the feeling that I couldn’t trust my eye. Not that I couldn’t “make to print”; I couldn’t “see to print.”

bhae-blog-2
Fig. 1.2.2. Is this just a small writing desk or something more? My untrained eye would have said, “Nice work, nice lines,” with little more meaningful comment to add.
Our modern industrial approach doesn’t awaken the eye. It’s just the opposite; the aim is duplication, and that’s achieved by removing the human element. I started my professional life in the trades as a machinist. Blueprints were my world and point of reference; drawings, measurements and tolerances were my comfort zone. Mistakenly I assumed that’s what artisans had always relied on, just with a more primitive set of tools. I had no idea that the artisan age used drawings in a completely different way than anything I’d been taught.In spite of my misconceptions, my own background in the trades gave me subtle clues that something had been broken. My apprenticeship as a machinist began in the 1970s, right at the sunset of the hand-drafting era. Apprentices got a taste of drafting in the engineering shop, a massive open room with row upon row of tilted drafting tables. Just a few years passed and those big drafting boards disappeared as computer-aided design (CAD) technology emerged. Down in the factory, those dog-eared paper drawings were stored away in a vault and replaced by crisp, freshly printed computer drawings with immaculate graphics. A few years later, machines came equipped with a monitor, eliminating the need for a paper drawing. The next step allowed machines to download the drawing directly into the machine controller and eventually, no image of the actual part was required, just data. Oddly enough we still called them “drawings” even though they contained no pictures, just code. Industrial drawings reached a new pinnacle; they could speak directly to machines in their own native tongue. What a success. It took nearly 200 years from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution for technology to finally and entirely remove the human worker from the equation.

bhae-blog-3
Fig. 1.2.3. You can learn to see what lies beneath the surface. This is what we are talking about!
Now don’t get me wrong; this isn’t a rant against technology. The ability to mass-produce and duplicate things with precision is crucial to our modern society. From safe baby food jars to fail-proof landing gear on an airplane, our world today is unimaginable without it. But at its core, measured drawings and the way we use them in our modern industrial approach focuses on duplication. It removes human error but at the expense of creativity by limiting choices and dictating rigid commands. Worst of all, by emphasizing measurements and ignoring proportions, it masks relationships between parts and how they relate to the whole. We look at a historic drawing and conclude the details shown to build it are sketchy. Conversely, an artisan-age craftsman might conclude that our modern drawings contain everything but the kitchen sink, yet they obscure the essence of the design. The creative spark requires a different set of conditions to ignite. It feeds on choices, options and the ability to see. In short, it needs the human element restored so that a dance can emerge between the play of hands, eye and the wood itself.

— MB

About Panels and Their Grooves

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

This is an excerpt from “The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years: Volume III” published by Lost Art Press. 

Although framed panelling is not employed as much as formerly, it still plays a part in woodworking. Many homeworkers will use the method for a good class cupboard or wardrobe back, while the ever popular oak linen chest is, to most of us, unthinkable unless panelled.

There are a few points regarding panels and their grooves which are well worth thinking about. In the first place, see that the grooves in all the members of a frame are of uniform depth. The panels should be taken to size so that they are 1/16 in. less each way than the measurements taken between the groove bottoms. Thus, assuming that the grooves are 1/4 in. deep, the panels should be cut 7/16 in. more in length and width than the sight size of the opening. This allows 1/16 in. clearance, which ensures that when the frame is cramped up there shall be no pressure on the panels. If the depth of the grooves varies so that here and there the panels are without clearance, they will come in for some pressure when the joints are cramped up, and so may show hollow or round on the face.

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FIG. 1. REBATED MULLET

Mulleting
Then there is the matter of the width of the grooves in relation to the thickness of the panels. A panel should be a push fit in its grooves, no tighter and certainly no looser. Panels too tight often make it difficult to squeeze the joints up well; loose ones, with their movement and rattle, are an abomination.

panels-2
FIG. 2. BEVELLED MULLET

It sometimes happens that panels have to be fitted into grooves too narrow to receive them in their entire thickness. Thus they must be thinned at the edges. This thinning is called mulleting. A common method of mulleting a panel which does not need much thinning is shown at Fig. 1. It will be seen that the panel can hardly be said to fit into the grooves, since at the back it touches only the groove edge. Many workers dislike this method. But it must be admitted that, in the case of plywood panels (which do not shrink), it serves quite well. Solid panels, however, because of shrinkage across the width, would be likely to become slack in the grooves at their edges if mulleted in this way. Even so, if the stuff used for the panels can be relied upon to shrink but little, this may not amount to much.

A sounder job is illustrated at Fig. 2, where the panel is shown rebated. Here the panel does fit the groove and shrinkage cannot cause looseness. It takes a fair amount of time, however, to get an accurate fit of the rebates against the framing at the back. So, in the case of panels not seen at the back, it is a common practice to work the rebates well on, giving, say, 1/8 in. clearance between rebate and frame.

panels-3
FIG. 3. HOLLOWED MULLET AND METHOD OF WORKING

Fig. 3 shows the commonest machine-worked mullet. It is essentially the same as the rebated mullet, but the appearance is better. In fact, it is often employed on the face of panels, usually in conjunction with an ovolo moulding worked on the edges of the framing. To work this by hand, a plane that will make a small hollow (called a “round”) and a rebate plane are needed. Gauge on the edges the thickness to which the mullet has to be worked. Then work the hollow, as shown in Fig. 3, handscrewing or pinning a strip of wood to the panel to form a guide for the plane. It is also advisable to fasten another light strip to the left hand side of the plane to act as a depth gauge. After working the hollow, remove the waste down to the line (dotted in Fig. 3) with the rebate plane. If the mullet is on the face of the panel, take special care not to let the corner of the rebate plane iron dig into the hollowed part.

Never glue panels in their grooves. The idea of framing is to provide for shrinkage of panels. If this movement is prevented by glueing, the panels will probably split or, when jointed, crack along the joints.

— MB