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!
British woodworker Richard Arnold recently discovered an abandoned hand-tool joiner’s shop located only a few miles from his workshop.
Arnold says it looks like the shop was abandoned just before the second world war and looks as if it had never been mechanized. The pit saws were still hanging undisturbed on the walls.
Even more extraordinary are the pine or fir workbenches left in the shop. Each is about 30” tall and looks like it was built right out of Peter Nicholson’s treatise on joinery.
Two of the benches sport planing stops and leg vises with a traditional parallel guide. Yet neither appears to have a garter, as far as I can tell from the photos. Both benches have massive legs plus bearers that pierce the front and rear aprons and support the tops.
Perhaps most remarkable is that Arnold said the benchtops were only about 5/8” thick.
Arnold said there is a third workbench, not pictured, that appears to be an even earlier piece of work and didn’t have any vises attached to it. He promised that he would go back for a closer look and would report back.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Arnold is the generous soul who dug up the original “Doormaking and Window-Making” booklets that we reprinted late last year.