Sir,—I request the insertion of the following statement in your valuable little work. My object is to bring to public notice a most unjust practice among a certain class of men (which, by-the-bye, I am told is law). I withhold names, because it is not persons, but things, which I wish to expose.
I lately bought a piece of squared oak timber of a most respectable merchant, and had it sawed at his yard. The charge for so doing was one pound eight shillings and eleven pence, which appeared to me, at the time I was settling the bill, to be far too much; but being told, in the counting-house, that it was correct, I paid it. (more…)
The labour of the sawyer is applied to the division of large pieces of timber or logs into forms and sizes to suit the purposes of the carpenter and joiner. His working place is called a saw-pit, and his almost only important tool a pit-saw. A cross-cut saw, axes, dogs, files, compasses, lines, lamp-black, black-lead, chalk, and a rule, are all accessories which may be considered necessary to him.
Unlike most other artificers, the sawyer can do absolutely nothing alone: sawyers are therefore always in pairs; one of the two stands on the work, and the other in the pit under it. The log or piece of timber being carefully and firmly fixed on the pit, and lined for the cuts which are to be made in it, the top-man standing on it, and the pit-man below or off from its end, a cut is commenced, the former holding the saw with his two hands by the handle above, and the other in the same manner by the box handle below.
The attention of the top-man is directed to keeping the saw in the direction of and out of winding with the line to be cut upon, and that of the pit-man to cut down in a truly vertical line. The saw being correctly entered, very little more is required than steadiness of hand and eye in keeping it correctly on throughout the whole length. (more…)
It’s quite difficult to determine a species of wood from a 16th-century engraving of it.
So we don’t know for certain what sort of wood would be used to make early squares, rules and levels. One clue comes from W.L. Goodman, who wrote a two-part history of marking and measuring tools for The Woodworker magazine in 1964.
Here’s what he wrote:
“Mediaeval building accounts often refer to the purchase of old wine casks, usually made of Baltic oak or wainscot, for the carpenters to make their straight-edges, rules, and squares from this well-seasoned hardwood.”
Goodman also briefly discusses the Melencolia-type squares in the article and said they were for “setting out.”
So if you want to build some old squares, drink up!
Rather than attempt to explain the specific details of French style trestle sawing, I have attempted to translate two the of the best primary French sources on sawing timber. The translations are not polished, but they will begin to help explain the methods used to mount heavy timbers on the chevalet type sawing trestle. (more…)
To amuse ourselves, Jeff Burks, Suzanne Ellison and I have been trying to find the earliest extant holdfast or the earliest image of one. We’ve gone way back, but the trail goes dead in Roman times. We have people saying the Romans had holdfasts, but we have yet to see one in a museum or image.
W.L. Goodman, the author of “The History of Woodworking Tools,” wrote “sometimes the Romans used an L-shaped iron hold-fast, and for planing, serrated dogs or bench stops” in a September 1964 article for The Woodworker magazine.
Robert Ulrich, the author of “Roman Woodworking,” describes a device that could be a holdfast or a pinch dog, but it’s likely a pinch dog. See these images from the British Museum.
I’m suspect the Romans had holdfasts, which is why I keep looking. (It’s something to do after I’ve had a couple beers and shouldn’t operate machinery.) There’s a 18th-century copy of a Roman fresco (which we think is now destroyed) that shows a holdfast. That image (above) is from “Le Antichità di Ercolano, Volume 1,” by Tommaso Piroli (engraver) 1789.
Here’s Jeff’s translation of the image’s accompanying text:
The other involves a curious painting expressing two genii, engaged in the art of the Joiner. The plank with a toothed iron for stopping the boards, a saw, a hammer, a box for storing other instruments of the art are to be seen in the workshop. On the wall a shelf with a vase from the oglio likely to grease the blade. What the above mentioned two genii Joiners were meant to indicate that inclination arose also called the genius of their respective crafts.
So if you see one when you are touring Roman ruins or European museums (which have hordes of Roman artifacts) this summer, let us know.
