For those of you who have read this blog a while, you will have seen before how Jennie Alexander & I work out some of our ideas & theories. This is another installment in such a back & forth…

The subject is a post I wrote the other day regarding a question a reader had asked about the scribed lines found on my carved work.

http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/scribe-lines/

Leaving these lines showing is in keeping with period practice; and just like nowadays, some craftsmen took more care, some less. To illustrate just how care-free it could be, I illustrated a joined chest from Dedham, Massachusetts, showing the layout of the joinery (not just the carving) scribed on the front faces of the chest. Also scribed on the inside faces. I had questioned the need for this layout to be present on the faces of the stock. Other than carrying the layout from one stile or rail to another, I could think of no use for it…

mortise scribed on front face of joined chest

Alexander wrote in:

  “Peter: Your wondering about joinery’s scribed layout lines puzzles me. The great majority of layout lines are found on the front face of stock. I believe that this is because the front face in joinery is most often not only the fair (finished) face, it is also the only true (tried and trued up) face. The interior face is not only often unfinished, it is also not true in relation to anything. Interior surfaces are often left riven, hewn and misshapen. They cannot accept accurate layout I find it helpful to think of joint furniture as “skin deep” since, in joinery, both fair and true faces are on the outside of the piece. It follows that most scribing will be found there..”

Well, says me, for the mortises, they must be laid out on the inside faces/edges. That’s where they are cut; not on the front faces. And judging by the furniture I have reviewed with this in mind, the majority of the layout for joinery is on the inside faces/edges. All the layout we really are left with is for mortises, that for the shoulders of tenons gets cut away.

In illustrating the Dedham chest I went to an extreme, just to show how much you can get away with…but I think most stuff does not have joinery layout marks showing on the faces. Carving layout is another story.

Here’s a simple example; a joined stool. First the outside face, where the apron meets the stile. No layout.

joined stool, apron to stile

Now the inside view of the same stool. The height of the mortise is struck on both inside faces. Also present is the mortise gauge lines on both the stile & rail:

joined stool, aprons to stile, showing mortise layout

Here is the same sort of layout on the inside faces of a joined chest’s front stile. It’s goulish light, but I had to work it that way to show these lightly scribed lines:

mortise layout, inside front stile, joined chest

The front of this same chest shows no mortise layout:

muntin to upper rail joint

One more for tonight, then I’ll continue this material next time.

This shot shows the inside surace of a joined chest stile; where the mortise is scribed top & bottom. This surface is mostly unplaned, the riven texture is essentially the finished surface. The bottom of the mortise is just above the notch for the till bottom; the top of the mortise is aiming right at the center of the till lid’s pintle hole…

mortise layout, inside unplaned surface

joinery scribed on face of chest

A reader asked about the scribe lines I left showing on some carving recently. In seventeenth-century work, I find them running the gamut, from scribed on the face of a piece, such as the chest front above, to being barely if at all discernable. It is quite rare to not see some scribe lines somewhere on the piece…

In thinking about why the layout for the joinery is on the face of this stock, I have worked on the notion that it helps to transfer the layout from one rail to its mate, or one stile to its mate, etc. Thus hold two mating pieces edge-to-edge, and then transfer the lines right across the faces. Then carry them across the edges with a square and awl.  And yet I can’t then explain why this chest (below, from the same shop as above)  laid them out on the front face, and the inside face too…

While I have this file open, here is some carving from one of these chests, and its scribed layout is still visible on the face of the carving. Some of it is hard to pick out, but the margins, compass-work, and three vertical lines that divide the panel into four segments vertically…as well as the lines struck across the panel to locate the compass’ leg for centerpoints for arcs.

detail of scribed lines for carving

Back to the one that started this line of thought, here is a detail from the pews from Totnes, Devon. The scribed lines are faint, but there are three horizontal lines struck here; a centerline, and an upper & lower line to locate the arches of the motif.

There’s lots more, usually we find mortise gauge lines, alignment marks in the form of triangles and/or arrows, and chisel-and-gouge-cut marks to identify & dedicate mortises and tenons. I’m glad they left them there, it’s like a road map for me. Makes my job easier.

James Conrad, a regular reader of this blog, sent me a comment about an exhibition next week in Exeter, Devon, England. It includes several pieces of joined furniture, mostly chests, made in the area. Devon is significant in New England furniture studies because furniture made there is clearly linked to that made in Ipswich, Massachusetts. c. 1660-1700.

Folks familiar with my carved work will immediately see the influence this material has had on me . I have not seen the pieces in the exhibition, but have been to Devon before and seen a number of works from that area, among them these church pews in Totnes.

carved pews, Totnes, Devon

detail, Totnes pews

Well, I didn’t need church pews here in the house, so I adapted the carvings to fit a box to store junk in:

carved box, oak & pine

detail, box side

Here’s the links to the exhibition details. There’s some great carving there…and I’ll not say more for the time being…

http://www.maineantiquedigest.com/stories/index.html?id=1550

http://www.marhamchurchantiques.com/exhibition

flatsawn oak, in joined chest

This piece of wood looks like a bad day at the workbench; knots & cracks enough to really test one’s abilities. I put it here to show that the recent posts I had about riven radial stock are the “best-case” scenario…but when you have no first-quality “stuff” then you use what you have available. Just to show it can be done, here is the front of the photo above.

central muntin, joined oak chest, Devon

So Nathaniel wondered the other day, what use is the flatsawn board I pictured earlier; I say if you have no better, then use it. It will be more difficult, and require more care, than riven stock. But it’s workable. then when you get some nice riven stock, you’ll have something to compare it to.

Here’s a flatsawn white oak panel I carved.

flatsawn white oak carved panel

splitting radial panel stock with a froe

In my last post, the one about riven oak & how great it is, http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/theres-oak-then-theres-riven-oak/

I forgot one of the most important aspects of riven, radial oak – the stability! It shrinks very little across its face, thereby allowing the joiner to work the wood while it is green, and therefore easier to cut/plane/carve/mortise, etc.

You do need to select the log with care. To be able to rive parts efficiently, you need a dead-straight log. This then will behave best when it loses its moisture, less tension, thus less distortion. Mostly imperceptable.

One reader asked about the lengths that riven stock is best for; and in my work the largest challenge length-wise is making an oak chest lid of three or four radially-split boards edge-glued together. I have one underway now, the boards are about 58″ long, 1″+ thick, and seven or so inches wide. It takes a really good log to get those riven without much wind, or twist in the faces of the boards. So usually these are riven oversize, and hewn to rectify before planing. Otherwise most everything is four feet or less for joined furniture; in many cases quite short. For instance, muntins in a chest are about 14″-17″ long…very easy to get from a log.

I find a riving brake essential for careful riving of anything more than two feet long…here’s one I use a lot. A large wooden tripod, with cross-bars fastened to its front legs. Jam the stock in this crotch, and that allows you to exert pressure on the split to help direct it if it is going astray.

riving brake

I learned this brake from my friend Daniel O’Hagan, who is pictured in Scott Landis’ The Workbench Book using one of these contraptions. The thing I like about it is that the stock is held parallel to the ground, so you can apply pressure easily. Other brakes I’ve seen leave the workpiece tilted up to the sky, and it’s harder to manage them that way. Says me.

In the shots belowe, I was riving the sapwood off some stuff for a pair of stilts I had to make last week. My friend Marie came by & I asked her to get some shots. Thanks, Marie.

riving brake

riving brake

flatsawn red oak

The other day I bought this piece of wood at one of the large “home-improvement” stores. This piece of kiln-dried red oak is 1/2″ x 6″ x 24″ – thus one board foot. Price, about $7. I actually paid less than that, because there was no sticker on it, and the cashier couldn’t find the price. So it was about $4.50. From my standpoint, this piece of wood is about as bad as it gets, the only way it could be worse is if it had a knot in it.

I bought it to compare with the red oak I use every day, the radially-riven stuff, from a freshly-split log. Here’s three boards, one of mine, then a quartersawn red oak and finally this tangential-sawn, or flatsawn board.

riven, quartersawn, and flatsawn red oak

to understand them better, let’s look at the end grain. Hopefully this picture is big enough to see the growth rings in the first two boards from the left, (running horizontally in the photo, across the thickness of these boards) and the medullary rays running perpendicular to the growth rings:

riven, quartersawn, flatsawn red oak

The riven board has its rays running almost right on the faces of the board. The quartersawn board has its rays running close to the faces, at times running out of the faces. The flatsawn board mostly has its growth rings running parallel to the faces of the board. The most stable of these 3 is the riven board, and in additon, it’s the easiest to work with…there is little or no disturbance in its fibers, thus easy to plane, carve, etc.  Below is a detail of the riven and the quartersawn boards. When I work the riven stuff, people often say “Oh, it’s like quartersawn stock…” and my standard reply is that this is what quartersawn wood wishes it was… Notice that the rays in the quartersawn board are running at an angle to the faces of the board. It’s not a bad piece of oak, it’s just not the best.

riven and quartersawn

(l) slow growth, (r) fast growth red oak

Here are the faces of these two boards:

(l) fast grown (r) slow grown red oak

The fast one was too much trouble, I threw it in the firewood pile.

I just checked a local hardwood dealer’s website, and they have quartersawn white oak on sale for $7.50 per board foot. When I buy the log, I pay about $1 to $1.50 per board foot. I am sure once I have all my labor in it to rive and plane it into boards the cost become quite high. No mind, I get all the wonderful work of riving and planing that stuff, and the stock I get can’t be beat.

driving a wooden wedge

sixteenths red oak

 The work I do requires lots of mortises each year. A chest like this has 26 mortises, a joined stool 16. They are almost all 5/16” wide.

carved chest, oak & pine

For many years, I have tried several different mortise chisels, English, French, modern, antique, cheap, expensive. Some came from who-knows-where. Most of them worked out all right, some better than others. But now I am packing up the bunch of them, I just got one that is just what I need – a nice stout old-style English mortise chisel, but brand-new.

 While I was at Woodworking in America earlier this month, I met Joel and Tim from Tools for Working Wood. Over the course of the weekend, we talked a lot about tools. No surprise there. In particular, I had wanted to see their Ray Iles mortise chisels.

5/16" Ray Iles mortise chisel

 This tool is just as advertised. Its form is an old standard shape, tang chisel fitted into an oval handle. No ferrule. [here is the blurb from Tools for Working Wood, I'll let Joel tell the whole story... ]http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/Merchant/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=toolshop&Product_Code=MS-MORT.XX&Category_Code=TBMC

The shape of the beech handle is quite comfortable; and the chisel’s blade is thick and strong. I found that the amount of pounding I was used to is excessive for this tool. If I drive it as hard as I did my previous mortise chisel, it’s too deep…so not a bad thing to have it work a little lighter. I have only chopped about half-a-dozen mortises with it this week, so I plan on making another joined stool next week. Then I will chop all 16 mortises in a row and see how it works. My first impression is that this tool will sail through the task.

using the Iles mortise chisel

Here is the Iles sitting beside the one I mostly used, the Sorby sash mortise chisel. I’ve used the Sorby for years, (with a replaced hickory handle & hoop) – but the thicker shank of the Iles moves more wood up the bevel when you drive it in the stock. A friend of mine would say, ”it has something to do with physics” and I would add “geometry” as well.  

Sorby (top) and Iles (bottom)

So, the Sorby, Goldberg, no-name Garret Wade – all boxed up for posterity. This one hangs behind the bench, ready to go…

If anybody asks me now, what mortise chisel should I get…I’ll send them to Joel & Tim, no hesitation. There are many amazing tool makers out there now, I got to see many of them while at the conference. To my eye, this tool is in a different category from some of the others at the show. It really is a “tool for working wood.” It has no glamor, its “art” is quite subtle. Clearly there is great attention to detail in its manufacture, and it does just what it’s supposed to do. Just a good, old-fashioned tool made nowadays, for getting a job done efficiently. I don’t mean to imply that the “other” toolmakers these days are making tools just for show; I’m in awe of some of the tools I saw…but the simplicity of this one appeals to me for the type of work I do.

http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/

New England Begins

Last week I posted some reference materials for studies of 17th-c New England furniture. The other day Trent sent me a note about a copy of New England Begins that someone has up on Ebay…

I have no stake in this proceeding, but if anyone is out there needing a copy of this, it looks to be in great shape. An amazing reference for material culture studies of early New England…used to sell for $600 and up…if times were different, I’d buy it just to have an extra one…but of course, if times were different, it wouldn’t be $300 or less…

see # 400077735154 on www.ebay.com

Well, I got “Hultman’d” the other day…
for those who don’t know what this means, it refers to Kari Hultman, whose blog “The Village Carpenter” http://villagecarpenter.blogspot.com/ is a regular stop for countless woodworkers. I finally met Kari at the Woodworking in America conference in Valley Forge where she shot & edited a video of one of my presentations there… then she posted it on her website, and I asked if I could stick it here too. she said yes.

thanks for the video work, Kari.

nails secure chest panel for carving

While I was demonstrating carving panels at Woodworking in America, I used a few different bench arrangements. It has been a while since I worked with bench dogs and vices; and for the stlye & method of carving I do, I am now re-convinced that my method of holding the stock to the bench works better than vices & dogs. this carving results in some pounding on the panel, which can bounce loose from dogs, clamps, etc. I managed to work with each bench OK, but back at my shop, when I put the panel down on the bench, it stays put.

nails & holdfasts secure panel for carving

carved panel, Dedham, MA c. 1640-1680

nail holes in cupboard door panel, 1691

I tend to make my panels extra long, and position the nails holes in the waste piece that gets trimmed before fitting the panel…which presumably many joiners did. But now & then I find panels that show nail holes like those above. I leave the nails proud, so I can pull them easily when done. These are fairly stout wrought nails, so tapered square shanks that grab well…

PS: I FORGOT ONE IMPORTANT DETAIL. WHEN I BORE THE HOLES IN THE PANEL FOR THE NAILS, I ANGLE THEM SO THE NAILS PINCH THE PANEL DOWN TO THE PINE BOARD. THIS REDUCES THE CHANCE OF THE PANEL WORKING ITSELF LOOSE DURING CARVING.