I used paired S-scrolls on this chest for the uprights (the stiles) and crossed versions on the muntins and top rail. Paint adds even more fun.
The following is excerpted from Peter Follansbee’s “Joiner’s Work.”
Forget what you think about 17th-century New England furniture. It’s neither dark nor boring. Instead, it’s a riot of geometric carvings and bright colors – all built upon simple constructions that use rabbets, nails and mortise-and-tenon joints.
Peter Follansbee has spent his adult life researching this beguiling time period to understand the simple tools and straightforward processes used to build the historical pieces featured in this book. “Joiner’s Work” represents the culmination of decades of serious research and shop experimentation. But it’s no dry treatise. Follansbee’s wit – honed by 20 years of demonstrating at Plimoth Plantation – suffuses every page. It’s a fascinating trip to the early days of joinery on the North American continent that’s filled with lessons for woodworkers of all persuasions.
There’s a large body of carved designs I have learned from studying surviving oak furniture from Devon, England, and Ipswich, Mass. These designs are chiefly found on chests and boxes, although they also appear on some chairs and other works. With a few exceptions, the layout for these designs is mostly freehand. It’s a bit daunting at first, but once you learn the vocabulary (my word for the various elements, or parts, of the patterns) of this work you’ll be able to combine the elements in so many different ways that you will be able to fill most any space you are facing. The second overlapping lunette design is part of this group, but by far the most common element is what I have come to call the S-scroll, a term I learned from the scholars and curators who trained me in furniture history. Art historians like to give these things names so they can talk about them, but I am always careful to point out that we have no idea what the makers and users of this oak furniture called these patterns.
The S-scroll amounts to a rounded rectangle with a reverse curve band that creates two diagonal areas. These are then filled with leaves and other designs. Let’s cut a pair of S-scrolls.
Fig. 3.70 Connect the horizontal marginsand the vertical squared lines, and BANG –outline.
Mark out a rectangular space, about 3″ high by 6″ long with no centerline – nothing other than the margins. Now take a gouge similar to a #7 Swiss made, 1″ wide. Strike it at each corner of this rectangle so that the gouge is connecting the horizontal and vertical margins, effectively rounding off the corners of the rectangle.
Fig. 3.71 Strike these nice and deep. You get the best results by cutting it cleanly the first time.
Now with a narrower, more deeply curved gouge, incise a circle just inside one bottom corner and diagonally opposite that at the upper corner on the other end. It usually takes three strikes of the gouge to create a full circle. Make sure to leave enough wood between the rounded corner and the circle; if the circle is too close to the corner, it can become weak and the wood will break out between them, ruining the pattern.
Fig 3.72 I’ve jumped to a different carving for this photo, but this is the moment of truth for this pattern. Don’t worry, I’ve seen period carvings that I would burn. The eye is forgiving, said Jennie Alexander when I was learning chairmaking.
Using the V-tool, cut a pair of curving S-shaped lines that connect one circle to the other. This is new territory – it’s a freehand cut, but don’t let it scare you. I’ve seen period examples that are all over the map – some exquisite, some horrific. One more thing: It’s another venue for two consecutive thoughts. The V-tool lines don’t connect circle-to-circle and margin-to-margin, but margin-to-circle, and circle-to-margin. I think of it as “outside to inside” and “inside to outside.” In the beginning it will help you to mark the line you want to cut. Pencil, chalk, your call. I used to avoid marking it, but have found it helps beginners.
Fig. 3.73 This cut startsin the V-tool outline andcomes out from there.Keep it a bit away from the circle you just chopped. Itcan get fragile if it’s tooclose.
The pattern begins by bending away from the margin/circle at first, then rises up to cross an imaginary centerline, and bends again as it comes toward its goal in the opposite corner. You don’t want the line to head straight for the corners and circles; that can result in a design that’s too skimpy on the inside.
Once you’ve cut the V-tool lines, the rest of the pattern is quite simple. Using a deeply curved gouge, outline the first leaf, the one that flows from the circle.
Figs. 3.74 and 3.75 This format is the one I use the most. I think of it as two-and-a-half leaves:one “fat” one surrounding the circle, the diagonal one; and the half-leaf that then snugs backinto the V-tool line.
Then chop outlines for additional leaves with the #7 gouge. The number of leaves depends on the scale of your S-scroll: one, two, three or more. I angle these so the second leaf axis is a diagonal line from the margin. Then the last incised outline is a half-leaf that connects to the horizontal margins. All of this is long-winded; the pictures help make it clear.
Figs. 3.76, 3.77 and 3.78Chop a crescent behind the firstgouge-cut corners, pop out the circle, and then remove whatbackground you can. Take asmall chop where each leaf laysbeside its neighbor.
After incising the pattern, all that remains is to remove the background with the #5 gouge. Facets are actually just what I want in the background work – a dead-flat background looks too machine-made to my eye.
The details can be varied, from shaping and beveling the bands, texture punching the background, accent punches and/or gouge-chops on the solid surfaces.
Fig. 3.79 One version finished. Here, I used an old 5/32″ nail set as a punch. I’ve seen periodones with a nail used for a similar effect.
Once you can cut an S-scroll, you can use them in designing patterns. They can run in a long single row, alternating curves upward and downward, or in a double row, with alternating pairs on wider stock.
Fig. 3.80 This detail from a joined chest shows pairs of S-scrolls running along the lower railand up the corner post, or stile.
They can “stand up” and alternate, a version that I usually use on a tall box front.
Fig. 3.81 This box front features a row of S-scrolls “standing upright” instead of along a row.
Chest panels and chair backs often have two vertical S-scrolls. There is a staggeringly wide array of design possibilities with this motif.
Yes, I do overcut my pins when cutting half-blind dovetails. (An answer to a question I am sometimes asked.)
Just a gentle reminder – or announcement for those of you who are new here – that six Saturdays a year, we hold “Open Wire” hours from 8 a.m.-5 pm. That’s the place to post any and all woodworking questions to get them answered by us and by your fellow readers. I’m afraid we don’t have time to answer questions that come in via other channels – if we did that, it would leave no time for editing and writing, much less woodworking!
So if you send a question via email (to any of my emails…I got woodworking questions at more than one email today!), Facebook, Instagram etc., you’ll get my standard response to please ask at our next Open Wire – and check out past Open Wires for lots of answers to lots of good questions. (And odds are good that if you have a question, someone else has or has had the same question – so the Q&A helps everyone.)
The next Open Wire is on August 9, starting at 8 a.m. Eastern. (Then October 25 and December 13.)
The following is excerpted from “Shaker Inspiration” by Christian Becksvoort.
Not too many woodworkers can claim five decades of business success, but Becksvoort is among them. In “Shaker Inspiration,” he shares not only his woodworking knowledge and some of his best professional techniques for producing top-quality work, but also the business advice that helped him establish and sustain his long career in a one-man shop. Plus, he shares measured drawings for 13 of his own well-known furniture designs and seven Shaker pieces that he’s reproduced.
Before starting any craft or trade, it’s essential to know the material you plan to work with. Most of us know the rudimentary properties of wood: It’s a renewable resource; it can be soft like pine or poplar, or hard like maple and oak; it splits with the grain, but not across it; no two pieces are alike; it can twist, warp and bow. That, however, is just the beginning. To really know your material, you’ve got to become aware of the nuances. I know I’ve covered this in several Fine Woodworking articles, and in “With the Grain: A Craftsman’s Guide to Understanding Wood” (Lost Art Press, 2015), but it definitely demands a re-hash.
So let’s jump right into Wood Technology 101. Don’t roll your eyes if this seems too elementary. Everybody has to start somewhere, so bear with me. I remember the first project I built in high school. We were taught the use of hand tools (and were tested), power tools (tested), basic joinery (tested), safety (tested) and finishing. My first big project was a 2′-square plant table. I built it to withstand anything. It was glued, screwed and tattooed. A Christmas present for my mom, she put it in the window, right over a hot air vent. Within a week the top cracked down the middle. I asked my shop teacher what I’d done wrong, and he said, “You didn’t let the wood move.” Huh? It wasn’t until I took a wood technology course years later that it all made sense. We’ll get to that shortly.
1-1A. Northern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) cross-section photomicrograph. Coniferous woods (gymnosperms) are older and simpler in structure than angiosperms (hardwoods), and are comprised mostly of tracheids, with no vessels (they are nonporous).1-1B. White pine (Pinus strobus) cross-section photomicrograph showing tracheids and three large resin canals.
Trees are divided into two groupsscientifically: gymnosperms and angiosperms. Gymnosperms are the conifers. They are the older of the two groups, more simple in structure, have uncovered seeds and generally have needles that stay on year-round (except some species, including tamaracks). Commercially, this group is called “softwoods,” although not all conifers have soft wood, yellow pine being a prime example. Conifers have only tracheids and parenchyma cells. However, they have no vessels, so they are called non-porous.
1-2A. Red oak (Quercus rubra) cross-section photomicrograph. Angiosperms (hardwoods) are more complex than gymnosperms, and have vessels. They are referred to as porous woods. The oaks are ring-porous, showing a distinction between early wood and late wood.1-2B. Red maple (Acer rubrum) cross-section photomicrograph. Maple is a diffuse-porous wood, showing little distinction between early and late wood.
Angiosperms made a more recent appearance on the planet, and are structurally more complex, with vessels, tracheids, parenchyma and other specialized cells. They are porous and have enclosed seeds, broad leaves that usually fall in the winter (with exceptions including holly and various tropical woods) and have a greater number of species. Commercially these are the “hardwoods,” although this is misleading, because angiosperms include trees such as poplar, basswood and even balsa. Of the roughly 1,000 native North American woods, only about 30 conifers and roughly 80 deciduous species are used commercially in any quantity. This huge selection of native woods offers a variety of colors, textures, smells, grain patterns and uses. I would strongly urge woodworkers to “go native,” as opposed to importing exotics and hastening the destruction of the rainforest. I mean, how can you beat the purple-brown of freshly cut walnut, the dark red of aged cherry, the smell of sassafras or the lace pattern of quartersawn sycamore? Native woods are often local, more easily obtained, and less expensive.
1-3. Aged black cherry (Prunus serotina). Cherry is extremely photo-reactive, turning from pale pink to rich brown in a matter of weeks.
Let’s take a look at wood anatomy. Figure 1-4 shows the basics. From the outside is the bark, beneath which lies the cambium layer, the layer of lateral growth. It consists of the phloem, which forms the bark toward the outside, and the xylem, which produces a new growth ring of wood each year. The first cells produced each spring are typically larger (best seen in ring-porous woods such as oak and ash), and make up the early wood, while those produced later in the season tend to be smaller and are referred to as late wood. The outer portion of the tree trunk constitutes the sapwood, which is made up mostly of living cells used to transport water and minerals to the leaves and branches, and move sugar from the leaves to the cells and roots. When a sapwood ring dies, it turns into heartwood. This happens every year, but at different stages and on a different time frame for each species. The amount of sapwood also varies greatly in species, from less than five rings in catalpa, black locust and chestnut, to maybe a dozen in cherry and walnut, and to 40-50 in the maples, while it may take close to a century for tupelo and persimmon to form heartwood.
1-4. Typical hardwood end-grain cross section. JOHN HARTMAN ILLUSTRATION.
Heartwood cells are dead, and often a different color than sapwood. This is due to a collection of extractives such as tannins, lignin, gums, fatty acids, waxes and volatile organic compounds deposited in the cells. These give the heartwood its distinctive color, smell and decay-resistance (or lack thereof).
At the center of the tree is the pith, a soft, spongy material formed behind the apical meristem. The apical meristem (not shown) is the “growing point” at the leader at the top of the tree and the ends of branches that give the tree height and the branches length. To put it more simply, the apical meristem grows the tree taller, while the cambium layer grows the tree wider.
Emanating radially from the pith to the cambium are ray cells, used in lateral transport of nutrients. These play a big part in the stability of quartersawn wood.
Wood Movement I don’t want to spend too much time on what’s obvious to many of us: crooks, bows, warp, spalting, figured grain, burls and reaction wood. Check out “With the Grain” if you want to explore any of these terms a bit further. Let’s just jump into what’s really important: wood movement.
Wood movement is a major obstacle for many beginning and even intermediate woodworkers. The reason is that wood is an anisotropic material. That means that wood has different physical properties along different directions. As mentioned previously, it splits easily along its length but not across the grain. It has tremendous loadbearing capacity along its length (with the grain), but dents relatively easily across the grain. Figure 1-5 shows the amount of shrinkage that occurs in a red oak, from green (just less than 30-percent moisture content (MC)) to oven-dry (0-percent MC). Tangential shrinkage (think flat-sawn boards) is 8.6 percent, while radial shrinkage (quartersawn lumber) is about 4 percent, or roughly half. What’s going on to cause such difference? It’s mostly the ray cells (although the difference in early wood and late wood structure also plays a part), emanating from the center of the tree to the outside; the ray cells act like rebar in concrete. They actually hold the wood cells tightly in place and thereby reduce the amount of shrinkage. Now look at the bottom line in Figure 1-5, longitudinal shrinkage. It’s barely visible. Generally speaking, longitudinal shrinkage is about 0.1 percent, and is generally ignored.
1-5. Shrinkage vs. moisture content of red oak. (Hoadley, R. Bruce, “Understanding Wood – A Craftsman’s Guide to Wood Technology.” Newtown, Conn.: The Taunton Press, 1980.)
Let’s put that graph into perspective. Suppose you have a red oak board that’s 12″ wide (30.5cm) and 100″ long (just more than 8′, or 2.5m). If it is perfectly flat-sawn, it will shrink 1.1″ (2.8cm), or just less than 9 percent, in width from the time it is sawn from a green log, until it is dried down to 0-percent MC. That’s quite a sizable amount. If that same red oak board were perfectly quartersawn, it would shrink only a smidgen over 1/2″ (1.3cm), or 4 percent. Either of those boards, flat-sawn or quartersawn, starting at 100″ (2.5m), will shrink only about one-tenth of one inch (.25cm) in length. That’s next to nothing in comparison, and virtually ignorable. So as a wooden rule of thumb, we say that wood moves half as much radially as it does tangentially, and doesn’t change in length.
Think of wood much like an accordion that changes in width, but not in length. That’s because the cell walls act like sponges, absorbing moisture when the humidity is high, and releasing it when the air dries out. It’s obvious that water is at the root of the problem. Eliminate changing moisture and you eliminate wood movement. So you’ve got a few options when working with solid wood. If you live in a museum where the temperature and humidity are constant year-round, movement is not an issue. You can encase the wood in plastic, or a 100-percent impermeable material and prevent moisture exchange. Or you can do what woodworkers have been doing for thousands of years: You can learn to deal with it.
Backtracking just a little, let me say a bit more about moisture content. Green wood can have from 45 percent of its weight as water (white ash, for example), to more than 200 percent of its weight in water (some cedars, sugar pine and redwood). That’s a lot of water. Much of the water is in the cell cavities. This free water doesn’t affect the shrinkage, only the weight. At about 30-percent MC, the free water has evaporated, and what remains is bound water, inside the cell walls. This is the fiber saturation point. Bound water is harder to eliminate, because it is trapped in the cell walls and it takes a fair amount of energy to drive that water out. That energy can come from either sunshine and wind, or gas, oil or electricity when kiln drying. Once bound water begins to leave the cell walls, they start to shrink. Likewise, the entire wood mass begins to shrink. Sort of like a sponge, more water causes the cell walls to expand, while decreasing water causes the walls to shrink.
1 Per 1 percent change in moisture content, based on dimension at 10 percent moisture content and a straight-line relationship between moisture content at which shrinkage starts and total shrinkage. (Shrinkage assumed to start at 30 percent for all species except those indicated by footnote 2.) 2 Shrinkage assumed to start at 22 percent moisture content.
Air drying will usually bring the MC down to the neighborhood of 12 percent, depending on which part of the country or world you are in, while kiln drying aims for about 6-percent MC. Unfortunately, the wood doesn’t stay at those levels, but is at the whim of the weather. Warm summer air holds more moisture so the wood swells, while colder winter air holds much less water so the wood shrinks. Forced hot air heat has even less moisture, and can bring the moisture down to kiln-dried levels. In essence, wood is always play-ing “catch-up” to the current weather conditions, trying to maintain equilibrium with the moisture in the surrounding air.
Don’t panic over the amount of initial shrinkage from green to oven-dry. For a piece of finished furniture inside a home or office, the maximum range of MC is between 6 percent and 14 percent. That cuts the wood movement down considerably, but not enough to ignore. It’s still a major issue when constructing solid-wood furniture, but it’s manageable, and managing wood movement is what separates antiques from landfill fodder.
Let’s take the problem of wood movement head-on. Here is what you’ll need: First, make yourself a copy of Figure 1-6, “Dimensional Change Coefficients,” and keep it in your shop. Laminate it so it will last for years. Alternatively, you can visit the Forest Products lab website (www.fpl.fs.fed.us) and look up the “Wood Handbook: Wood as an Engineering Material.” Lee Valley Tools has a small paper “Wood Movement Reference Guide” that allows you to dial in 75 different woods and check their radial and tangential change coefficients. Highlight the woods you use most often, or memorize their values. Second, you’ll need a moisture meter. This is a must have item for the serious woodworker. I owned one before I had a table saw. You can get a digital pin-style meter at a home supply store for $30 to $40. Top-of-the-line electromagnetic wave meters can run in the neighborhood of $500, but the cheaper ones will work just fine. Finally you’ll need a calculator.
1-7. Dial caliper showing .105 gap over drawer. Use the formula above to determine and measure the ideal expansion gap.
This isn’t rocket science, just a simple calculation. Here is what it consists of: the width of the piece in inches or centimeters, multiplied by the current MC, and the expected change as a whole number (how far from the maximum MC off 14 percent expansion, or the minimum MC of 6 percent for shrinkage), multiplied by the Dimensional Change Coefficient for the species you’re working with, and whether it’s flat-sawn (Ct or tangential) or quartersawn (Cr, radial). Because not all boards are 100-percent flat-sawn or quartersawn, you can pick a number in between these values. A good guess works, although I always try to err on the side of a more conservative value, just to be safe.
For example, I’m making a cherry drawer 6″ (15.24cm) high, in midwinter, with wood that has an MC of 7 percent. It’s mostly flat-sawn. Worst case scenario, it will absorb moisture next year and reach a max of 14 percent. That’s a 7-percent change. Working from Figure 1-6, the coefficient for flat-sawn (tangential) cherry is .0025. On my trusty calculator, I multiply 6 (width) x 7 (change in MC) x .0025, which equals .105″, or just more than 1/10″ (2.7mm). With a dial caliper I don’t even have to convert to a fraction; I just set the dial to .105 (or 2.7mm), and make my drawer front that much smaller than the opening.
1-8. Tool handles of various native hardwoods. Dovetail saw with tiger maple handle, D-8 with apple handle, brace with cherry handle, three awls with lilac, dogwood and plum handles, hornbeam chisel, walnut chisel and live oak and ash mallet.
Fitting that same drawer in midsummer, when the wood has an MC of 10 percent (14 percent max minus 10 percent current equals 4 percent), the equation looks like this: 6 x 4 x .0025 = .06, or <1/16″ (1.5mm). In this case, the drawer can be a mite taller.
Wood movement won’t go away if you ignore it. It’s something I take very seriously. Every time I fit drawers, doors and backs, make tabletops or do any sort of cross-grain construction, I reach for the moisture meter and the calculator. It only takes a few minutes, and will prevent serious future headaches. It keeps you and your customers happy. If you know what you’re doing, knock on wood, and follow these simple calculations, you’ll never have a piece returned for a stuck drawer or split case side.
Editor’s note: Our Mind Upon Mind series is a nod to a 1937 Chips from the Chisel column (also featured in “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years”), in which Hayward wrote, “The influence of mind upon mind is extraordinary.” The idea being there’s often room for improvement.To that end, we’ve asked you what else you have thought of, tried out and improved upon after building projects from our books. To submit your own idea, email kara@lostartpress.com. You can read more about the submission process here.
Today’s pick is from Eric Tuominen. Thanks, Eric!
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
Here’s a quick bevel gauge stand idea for the BS chair made from scrap from the chair. There’s no need to keep taping it and retaping it. Wedges allow for easy removal and placement of my inexpensive bevel gauge, which doesn’t like to stay upright.
To be fully transparent, the wedges came as a happy accident. I made the dado (which the gauge sits in) too loose and decided to use wedges to better fit the bevel gauge. As I worked with it, I found I liked using the wedges.
After I dragged my butt off the plane to Munich with no sleep, Heiko Pulcher did me a huge favor. He plunked me into his Subaru wagon and drove me to the Das Holztechnische Museum Rosenheim (The Rosenheim Wood Technology Museum).
It’s a 1,200-square foot museum devoted to all aspects of woodworking, from chopping down the trees to the machinery involved in the processing and the finished product.
I’ve never in my life seen a museum that is so focused on the trade. There were scale models of sawmills (from Roman times to the present), machinery you could touch, scads of tools presented in context and lots of ideas about how you could make a living working with wood.
Bending runners for sleighs.
I could have spent all day at the museum (we only had a few hours there). There’s an entire display just on riving wood. Another on bending. A whole wall of handplanes and how they worked and what they were used for.
It’s not a tool museum (though they do have lots of tools). Instead, it’s a museum about work (which is way better).
If I had walked into the museum when it opened in 1983 at age 15, I think my life might have taken a turn much sooner. I grew up around furniture making. My grandfather and uncle did it for relaxation. My father did it for necessity. But no one told me you could do it for a living.
A scale model of an industrial sawmill.
The closest thing to the furniture making profession that I knew about was architecture (our house was filled with architecture and carpentry books).
The museum in Rosenheim presents a much clearer picture. And it shows how the technology has changed through the centuries. There’s an entire display about wooden airplane propellers (they are still manufactured in Rosenheim), plus another display on wooden skis and a third display on wooden pipes used for moving salt water (true, that’s not a job you can get today).
And if I’d been there at 15, I might have walked out of the museum, enrolled at TH Rosenheim and gone full German woodworker.
If you are ever in Bavaria, the museum is well worth a visit. Right now there is an excellent temporary exhibition on Western and Japanese joinery, with a fascinating film on Japanese temple building.
