The process of glueing up is one of the most important in woodwork, and requires the attention of all craftsmen who strive to endow their work with the vital qualities of endurance and stability. Often the best methods are the easiest to use; they save labour, and result in a cleaner finish to a job.
PREPARATION OF GLUE Quality in glue depends upon its purity; therefore it is advisable to pay a good price. The best Scotch glue is pale in colour, and is usually in thin cakes. It is is prepared by soaking in water overnight so that it absorbs the correct amount of moisture to make it of the right consistency when hot.
It is, of course, heated in the glue pot with proper water container, and is ready for use when a skin forms on the top of the liquid. If a little powdered alum is stirred in during the heating the glue will be rendered waterproof, or, at any rate, resistant to damp. Never heat glue over a naked flame. It only burns it and causes it to deteriorate.
APPLICATION The butt or rubbed joint is usually one of the first to be prepared and glued up in most jobs. For this joint the glue MUST be thin, that is, will run from the brush in an unbroken stream, but not thin enough to splash, or break up, as it falls. Certainly it must be hot, and be kept hot while being used, preferably in a warm atmosphere.
We all know how this joint is made; it has been described so many times, but many workers, both amateur and professional, find that it sometimes comes apart after a short time, the parting generally commencing and “running in” from the ends of tops, etc.
A butt joint that is completely and permanently successful is obtained by the writer in the following simple manner: The edges of the boards to be joined are first shot straight and true, as usual. Next, they are planed a trifle hollow, usually about 1∕32 of an inch, each edge, or sufficient to make the ends of the boards pinch together tightly when the joint is cramped up. These hollow edges are lightly toothed and are warmed before being glued and rubbed together.
FIG. 1. GLUEING UP RUBBED JOINTS
When being assembled they are placed across two trestles or similar supports.They are quickly cramped together, the number of cramps varying according to the length of the joint.
The advantage of this method is that the greatest pinch or holding power occurs at the ends of the joints, where fracture generally begins.
FIG. 2. APPLYING GLUE TO DOVETAILS
GLUEING DOVETAILS Drawers and other dovetailed joints can be cleanly assembled by brushing the glue on the inside corner of the tails or drawer side, at the same time forcing glue into the small openings where the pins fit (Fig. 2). Glue is transferred to the base of the pins by quickly rubbing the glued end grain of the drawer side across the width, at the back of the drawer front, care being taken to avoid smearing glue below the gauge line. (Fig. 3).
The drawer side is lightly tapped into position with a light hammer, and a joint is obtained with the absolute minimum of surplus glue adhering to the inside corners of the drawer.
FIG. 3. HOW PINS CAN BE GLUED WITHOUT MAKING MUCH MESS
VARIOUS JOINTS With mortise and tenon joints the best procedure is to apply a little glue to all four sides inside the mortise, at the same time allowing a little to adhere to the edge to join up to the shoulders of the tenon, thus effecting a clean joint.
To ensure a permanent dowelled joint, it is best to countersink the holes, and tooth or roughen the dowels before they are cut into short lengths from the whole stick. After cutting to length, a saw cut is made along the length of each to allow surplus glue to escape. After inserting a little glue into the holes on one side of the joint, using for the purpose a foot of dowel rod sharpened at the end, the dowel pegs are driven in.
Mitres and similar small butted faces should be warmed before glueing, and are then rubbed together. If pins are to be used these can be driven in after the glue has set. Glue-blocks should always be rubbed on, and if previously warmed so much the better.
With all joints the aim should be to use sufficient glue to make the joint, with only a very small surplus to be afterwards cleaned off: there is no need to smother it with the glue. Remember that only the glue in the joint is used, the surplus is wasted.
As a final word, always wipe off surplus glue before it sets. Keep a clean swab and can of clean hot water for the purpose. Do not use the water in the glue pot. It is usually dirty and will probably discolour the wood.
The Lost Art Press storefront will be open this Saturday, Oct. 8, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to sell books, holdfasts from Crucible Tool, T-shirts, posters and the like. The storefront is at 837 Willard St., Covington, Ky. 41011.
We have the new “Stanley Catalogue No. 34” in stock at the store, as well as the red edition of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” We also have a decent selection of blemished books for 50 percent off retail (blemished books are cash only). And a few slightly blemished letterpress tool chest posters.
While you are in Covington, be sure to stop by Covington Coffee on West 12th Street. They have fantastic coffee, Lil’s Bagels and make waffles on weekends. (This is not an advertisement.)
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. We’ve gotten a few curt notes stuffed in our mailbox from customers who have stopped by on a Saturday when the storefront isn’t open. Please note that we are open only the second Saturday of each month – not every Saturday.
Fujimigahara in Owari Province, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai, 1830-32. Metropolitan Museum, New York
You never know what you might find when viewing Fujisan in a Japanese woodblock print. The tool the cooper is using looked very familiar and then I remembered the tools from “Woodworking in Estonia” by Ants Viires. The bigger Japanese tool may be a spear plane but in Estonia it was a grooving knife.
Tools from the Boarded Container chapter of “Woodworking in Estonia.”
The Estonian tools in use at the time of Ant Viires research in the first half of the 20th century were likely no different from the tools used a century or more earlier. Besides the the size difference in the spear plane and grooving knife I wondered how the Japanese cooper’s tools might compare to those of the Estonian cooper. A quick search turned up the plate below and oddly enough it was in the National Archives of Estonia.
Japanese cooper’s tools.
The handwritten title in German translates to “Cooper’s Tools.” No date was provided for this plate but the notations beneath each tool give a clue. The notations provide a scale in the old German measurement, the Fuß* (fuss, or foot). The Fuß was in use until the beginning of 1872 when use of the metric system became compulsory. To find out how long was the Fuß (good luck!) see the bottom of the post for some conversions.
Looking beyond the tools the next question was what were the Japanese and Estonian coopers making and were there any similarities. Going back to “Woodworking in Estonia” I pulled a few photos that date from 1890 to 1939.
Products of the Estonian cooper.
As described by Ants Viires coopers made buckets, churns, wash tubs, small baths, beer casks and containers for grain and other food storage. For merchants there were larger barrels for beer, food and many other commodities. For the Japanese cooper it was much the same with the addition of very large barrels for production of fermenting sake and soy sauce.
Selection of Japanese cooper’s work taken from woodblock prints dated 1766-1790 by Chobunsai Eishi (top left and bottom) and Suzuki Harunobu (top right and center).
Many woodblock prints feature domestic scenes with women using buckets and tubs for bathing, washing clothes and for food preparation (I left out the bathing scenes). Much larger tubs and barrels can be seen in making sake.
Dainihon-meisan-zue, sake-making, by Utagawa Hiroshige III (1842-1894).
One of the differences between Japanese and Estonian cooperage is the material used for the hoops. Estonian coopers used small branches, and later, iron for hoops. The Japanese used braided bamboo, then iron and copper. Traditional craftsmen making small pieces and companies using huge barrels for making soy sauce still use braided bamboo for hoops. Overall, there are more similaries than differences in the methods, tools and items made by the Japanese and Estonian coopers.
Not so different: Estonian, 1921; Japan late 19th- to early-20th c.
With so many similarities the next question is about the roots of cooperage in each country. Open wood buckets made using the methods of a cooper have been dated in Egypt to 2690 BC and fully closed Iron Age barrels have been found in Europe from 800-900 BC. By the 1st century BC barrels were in wide use for beer, wine, oil and water. Celtic tribes in Europe can be credited with making and using barrels for beer and wine. Next, here come the Romans because they always seem to be part of adapting, refining, inventing or spreading new technologies.
The Romans, like the Greeks and many early Mediterranean civilizations, used clay containers for storing and transporting wine and oil. Roman rule over the Celtic tribes of Gaul began in the 2nd and 1st c. BC and continued until 486 AD, and it was in Gaul they encountered the barrel. They found wooden barrels a vast improvement over clay amphorae for transporting wine and the added benefit of an improved taste to their wine, especially when the barrels were made of oak.
Loading barrels on a boat in the Danube, Trajan’s Column in Rome, completed 113 AD.
Did the early Estonian peoples learn cooperage from the Romans? Although Roman coins have been found in Estonian we don’t know if there was a direct connection.
Baltic tribes had trade contact with the Romans via the Amber Road. The Amber Road (actually a network of routes) extended from the North Sea and Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean.
One example of the Amber Road, from Wikipedia.
Highly prized, amber from the Baltic has been found in Egypt from 16th c. BC. Like the East-West Silk Road, the Amber Road was a conduit for trading commodities and technology.
For five centuries the Romans controlled Gaul and that extended presence did exert an influence on Germanic tribes not under Roman control. If the Baltic tribes in the area of Estonia did not aquire knowledge of cooperage prior to the end of Roman control the technology may have arrived via trade or war contact with Germanic tribes, or during later invasions by others.
When did Japanese coopers learn their craft? In yesterday’s news (what timing) there was a report that Roman coins had been found in the ruins of a 12th century castle in Okinawa. What next, Vikings? The archeologist overseeing the site said there was no evidence of Western contact with the ancient Okinawan kingdom, but the Chinese did have extensive trade contact with the West from the 14th through the 19th centuries. The coins were probably traded between the Chinese and the Okinawans.
For millenia Japan had extensive trade and cultural contact with its neighbors, in particular China and Korea. During the Nara period (710-794) Japan turned more inward and concentrated on cultivating its native crafts, especially woodworking, ceramics and textiles. As for cooperage, we known that sake has a history extending back 1700 years. In the 8th century sake was favored by, and became regulated by, the Imperial Court. The Imperial regulations covered all portions of the production of sake and included the barrels used.
Left: Late 19th- to early-20th c. cooper. Right: a 21st c. cooper making a sake barrel.
Soy sauce production dates back about 1500 years and one of the key ingredients of the fermenting process is using kioke, barrels made of cedar. After World War II soy sauce companies were urged to use stainless steel vats instead of the cedar kioke.
70 year old kioke fermenting soy sauce at Yamaroku Shoyu.
On the island of Shodoshima the soy sauce makers did not agree and continued to use kioke. In 2012 Yamamoto Yasuo the owner of Yamaroku Shoyu traveled with two carpenters from his company to learn the traditional method of making kioke from preparing the cedar slats, making the bamboo pins and selecting and braiding the bamboo hoops. They worked with Ueshiba Takeshi of Fujii Wood Work in Osaka Prefecture. They now make there own kioke and other producers are following their lead to revive and continue the traditional craft of making the huge barrels. A short (7 minute) video on making a kioke and the braided bamboo hoop is here (it is really cool).
One of the themes Ants Viires highlighted in “Woodworking in Estonia” was the decline of traditional crafts and the use of plastic items to replace wood. This lament is also heard in Japan and more efforts are underway to work with elderly craftsmen to learn and document traditional craft. In Kyoto this movement is particularly strong.
Nakagawa Shuji, an oke maker (oke are the wooden tubs) in Kyoto was interviewed by Kyoto Journal. Nakagawa talks about his apprenticeship and efforts to keep his traditional craft alive. The oke he makes are refined and copper is used for hoops. In the middle photo below he holds the sen, the two handled plane, that dates back to medieval times (1185-1600 in Japan). You can read the interview with him here.
Nakagawa Shuji, oke maker of Kyoto.
Conclusions: although the Romans seemed to have left their coins everywhere they did not originate nor spread cooperage around the world. Good ideas and sucessful technology don’t have to have a single point of origin. With some variations in tools and techniques, when humans need to make something to improve their lives they often travel the same path.
The tools of a 21st c. Japanese cooper.
–Suzanne Ellison
*There was no standardized measurement for the old German Fuß as it changed through time and it also depended on where you were living in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and parts of France. Here are conversions as recorded in 1830 in three places (chosen to show the range of the Fuß measuremnt and because I either lived or visited these cities as a child): Mainz – 314 mm or 12.36 in, Metz – 406 mm or 15.98 in, Würzburg – 294 mm or 11.57 in.
During the last 20 years, most woodworkers have adopted 3/4″ as the standard size for holdfasts, bench dogs and other workbench accessories. So why the heck are we making holdfasts at Crucible Tool that have a 1″ shaft?
Simply put: The larger holdfast has more mass, it doesn’t ream out your bench’s holes as fast and we think it just works better.
During the last couple weeks, I’ve written a series of blog entries on the Crucible Tool website that explain our reasoning. Despite this, we continue to get a lot of questions, and so I’ve consolidated all the answers here.
(Side note: We are working on offering a way for you to subscribe to the Crucible Tool blog so you can get updates via email. In the meantime, if you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to it via this feedburner link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Crucibletool-CrucibleNews.)
A commonly encountered misconception is that wood breathes. As we know, heartwood is composed entirely of dead cells, while sapwood has some living cells, which die after the wood is cut. Nonetheless, wood is an organic substance that by its nature responds to climatic changes. Moisture is absorbed or given off as the seasons dictate.
When the relative humidity rises, the wood fibers absorb moisture that penetrates from the outside and causes the wood to swell. As the humidity decreases, excess moisture is given off by the fibers to be reabsorbed by the surrounding air. Wood is constantly trying to maintain a balance between its moisture content and that of the surrounding environment. This balance is called the equilibrium moisture content (EMC). Simply expressed, it is the amount of moisture present in wood at a given temperature and relative humidity over a period of time (Fig. 4-9).
Fig. 4-9
A closer look at Figure 4-9 shows that humidity is only one factor in determining EMC. Temperature also plays a role. For instance, at a given temperature as humidity rises, the EMC of the wood increases dramatically. This is to be expected. On the other hand, as relative humidity remains constant and temperature rises, the EMC of the wood goes down. Water in the cell walls is in liquid form. As the temperature goes up, the water becomes gaseous and escapes into the warmer air.
Relative Humidity
Relative humidity is expressed as a percentage of the amount of moisture that the air is capable of holding at a given temperature. Warm air can hold more water vapor than cold air. For instance, at 86°F (30°C) and 100 percent relative humidity can hold five times as much water vapor as air at 43°F (6°C) and 100 percent relative humidity. Hence, it is a good idea for a well-equipped wood shop to have a thermometer and hygrometer.
Fig. 4-10. (A) Average relative humidity in July, at noon, local time. (B) Average annual precipitation, in inches. (C) Average recommended moisture content of wood for interior work.
Location, as well as time of year, determines the average humidity. Figure 4-10 shows the average humidity in the United states for July, as well as the average rainfall. The third map takes both of these into account, as well as the corresponding equilibrium moisture content from Figure 4-9, to arrive at a general composite map of average moisture content of wood intended for interior use in various parts of the country. This map should only serve as a rough guide, because local conditions can vary.
Air Drying
Numerous considerations influence the air drying of lumber, among them:Climatic conditions. Generally speaking, very little drying of lumber is possible during the winter, particularly in those areas where the temperature remains below freezing. Moisture close to the surface can evaporate by the process of sublimation, whereby the water goes from a solid state (ice) directly to a gaseous state (vapor) without becoming a liquid. In areas where winter temperatures are relatively mild, some drying will occur, as long as rainfall and humidity are not excessive. Drying rates are variable and often very localized. The location of the drying pile and even its orientation to the sun and prevailing wind all influence the rate of evaporation.
Fig. 4-11
Species. The wood species makes quite a difference when it comes to length of drying time. Specific gravity is a fairly good general indicator of drying rate. The lower the specific gravity, the faster the drying time. The softwoods and lighter species of hardwoods dry faster under favorable conditions. The percentage of sapwood and heartwood also plays a part. For example, sugar maple dries faster than Northern red oak with roughly the same specific gravity, but sugar maple has more sapwood. Figure 4-11 lists the approximate air- drying times of some native woods.
Thickness. The old rule of thumb “one year of drying for each inch of thickness” has no basis in fact. First, it does not take species into account. Second, drying time is a function of the square of the thickness. This means that 8/4, or 2″ (5 cm) stock takes four times as long as 4/4, or 1″ (2.5 cm) stock. In fact, for some species the drying time is even longer than the square of the thickness. This is one reason (along with the differential between radial and tangential shrinkage, described in Chapter 5) why it is next to impossible to dry entire logs without serious cracking or checking.
Grain orientation. Quartersawn wood is slower to dry than plain-sawn wood. The ray cells aid in drying, and although they appear more prominent on quartersawn wood, not nearly as many are exposed on the face of the board.
Pile construction and foundation. The actual method of stacking the wood has a lot to do with the drying rate. Adequate space left around each board aids in drying. Many smaller piles dry faster than one large pile. The pile foundation should be well off the ground to allow for free air movement underneath. Weeds and debris should not obstruct the air flow. Finally, the ground should be well drained, with no standing water.
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