I have been cutting some moldings lately for a chest with drawers I’m building. The moldings surround the panels, and the drawer fronts. While I was cutting these, I was thinking about this blog. I started it in 2008, and never thought it would keep going this long. Because I didn’t know what I was doing, I never really organized it well. So there’s lots of photos spread out all over the blog that are useful…but sometimes hard to find. Today, I thought I could just post some photos of period moldings found on New England joined works. So here’s pictures.
a chest from Salem, Massachusetts: Tearout, anyone?
a chest with drawers, Plymouth Colony. This large molding (2″ tall) is integral to the rail, not applied.
molding details, Plymouth Colony chest
Inside one of the Plymouth Colony chests, moldings on the rails and muntins:
interior, Ply Col chest w drawers
Here’s a panel detail from Plymouth Colony. This is a common profile for the period, technically an ogee with a fillet, I think:
This one’s from Chipstone’s website – a Boston chest panel:
This is a muntin from a chest made in Braintree, Massachusetts. I used to make this molding with a scratch stock. I think that cutter is gone now…
This Connecticut (Wethersfield? Windsor? I can never get it straight) chest with drawers was the model we copied last time at Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking. These moldings are oak:
A lousy photo, but if you squint at the ruler’s shadow, you can see the profile of this molding. Dedham Massachusetts chest.
Also Dedham, different chest:
Back to Connecticut, more Wethersfield, Windsor, etc.
a drawer from a Woburn, Massachusetts cupboard:
An ogee on the bottom edge of a table’s apron. Maybe this square table is Boston?
I keep plugging away. Yesterday I got to use some planes!
What a blast – the spoons and bowls are great fun, challenging, etc…but no planes. I need to make a molding to run around my most recent frame & panel – it’s one like this, all I have left is to make the molding & cut & glue it in.
frame & panel
I keep a stash of riven Atlantic White Cedar, just for this purpose. First, I planed the stock to the proper thickness, in this case 1/2″
The gauge I got from the Alexander collection – thanks once again JA.
then rabbets.
and bevels, then hollows and rounds.
Then it was time to pack it away & off to the Cape Cod League Baseball – we went to Wareham to see the Gatemen take on the Falmouth Commodores. We were there early, so Daniel watched batting practice – I carved spoons. Then we watched the game. Gatemen blew the lead in the ninth – took it on the chin.
One of many great things about working at home is that I get to see stuff I only used to hear about. Here’s a marble game from yesterday:
That then turned into a painting by Daniel, who was learning about shadows and light sources this week.
Daniel’s watercolor of marbles in dirt
This one’s just thrown in there – it’s part of an ongoing series of raking light shots.
(Ahhh…the link now only gives me a preview – says I need to subscribe. If the link fails you, do a search for “Luther Sampson Duxbury shop” or something like that. Might be that I reached the monthly limit on freebies at Boston.com…)
I hope you can read it, it’s exciting stuff. Kudos to Michael Burrey for seeing it for what it is…and to the many who have worked thus far on documentation, research, etc.
Long-time readers of this blog know that I follow closely the work that Robin Wood does over in England. Robin’s blog was the one that inspired me to do this one…
Just last week, he (and many others) finished the first-ever spoon fest in Derbyshire. Robin posted a bunch of photos, as well as links to other blog posts about the event. I wished I could have gone, but I deserted my family enough this year with woodworking travels. Be sure to follow the link that takes you to the audio portion of Jogge Sundqvist’s talk that opened the event. Great stuff, thanks for making it happen, Robin et al. Sounds like a good time was had by all.
Now, another piece that you folks that have been here a while might remember is these fabulous drawings from Maurice Pommier.
feuilardier
French sawing
They came with very kind words from Maurice. His work intrigued me, so I looked up his books. He had a children’s book that I added to my list, and I finally ordered it. I couldn’t read a lick of it mostly…but I loved it. I showed it around at a Lie-Nielsen gig one time, & described it as a cross between Mad Magazine & Eric Sloane. I sent images to Chris Schwarz, and he replied that he already had the book in the works. Now it’s ready to go, so trot over to Lost Art Press and see for yourself. I assume that Chris never sleeps. http://blog.lostartpress.com/2012/08/26/new-from-lost-art-press-grandpas-workshop/
I had read the book in a near-finished draft, and was knocked out. Even if you haven’t used molding planes, or especially if you haven’t, this book will make you want to. Hollows & rounds are some of the next batch of JA tools here, later this week. Matt’s book makes the use of them so basic & simple. He really has demystified the use of these tools. If you have ever seen Matt at one of the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Events, then you understand. A nice guy, a great book. Lost Art Press, the hits just keep comin’.
I’ve been working some on the joined chest I started a month ago…here I am fitting one of the panels into the frame. The panel is beveled on its rear face, all around, to fit into the grooves in the frame.
inserting beveled panel
Then knocking the stile in place. This is all a test-fit; I don’t even have the center panel yet.
on goes the stile
I had a little time left the other day, so cut some of the details on the framing parts, starting with this chamfer on the top edge of the bottom rail. I start it with a spokeshave, one of the few times I use these tools any more. In my chairmaking days I used them constantly; but now rarely.
spokeshave
Then finished it with a chisel.
paring the bevel or chamfer
and then cut a molding on the bottom edge of the top rail – this molding runs out at the juncture of the muntin-to-rail joint; so I use a scratch stock for it. We call it a “scratch” stock, but it’s really a scraper I think.
OK – so about scratch stocks in the 17th century. How did they make moldings on joined works? We know they had molding planes, there are a few from the 16th-century shipwreck the Mary Rose. And they appear in many probate inventories too; the following are some examples of molding planes found in New England inventories:
2 revolving plains
4 round plains
3 rabet plains
3 holou plains
9 Cresing plains
inboring plaines
Joseph Moxon & Randle Holme both call them by classical names too; ogees, bolection, and so on.
But look at the molding above the center panel in this detail shot of a joined chest from New Haven, CT. (I clipped this photo out of Victor Chinnery’s book Oak Furniture: the British Tradition. If you don’t have that book & you like this blog, get it)
New Haven chest detail
The molding fades in & out at the juncture between the horizontal rails and the vertical muntins flanking the panel. This amounts to a run of about 9” or so. Not more than 10”.
In that length, the molding reaches its full profile in the middle, but is shallower and not fully defined at each end. I think you can’t do that with a molding plane – the length of the plane’s sole would prevent you from reaching that full-depth in such a short run, while still fading out before the muntins. Says me. One of mine:
PF joined chest
To do this in my shop, I use a scratch stock. But I don’t know the history of this tool. I do know I have never seen it by that name in any 17th-century records. There is one reference I know of that describes using a scraping action to define moldings – in Moxon, but on Turning, not Joinery.
“Of laying Moldings either upon Mettal, or Wood, without fitting the Work in a Lathe.
I Had, soon after the Fire of London, occasion to lay Moldings upon the Verges of several round and weighty flat pieces of BrassL And being at that time, by reason of the said Fire, unaccomodated of a Lathe of my own, I intended to put them out to be Turned: But then Turners were all full of Employment, which made them so unreasonable in their Prizes, that I was forc’d to contrive this following way to lay Moldings on their Verges.
I provided a strong Iron Bar for the Beam of a Sweep: (For the whole Tool marked in Plate 16, is by Mathematical Instrument-Makers called a Sweep) To this Tool is filed a Tooth of Steel with such Roundings and Hollows in the bottom of it, as I intended to have Hollows and Roundings upon my Work: For an Hollow on the Tooth, makes a Round upon the Work; and a Round upon the Tooth, makes an Hollow on the Work, even as they do in the Molding-Plains Joyners use…”
He goes on in great detail, talks about using this sweep to shape moldings in brass, then having success at that, took on wood too. (it’s pp. 217-219 in the section on turning). Here is the tool Moxon’s engraving of the tool he claims to have invented; probably adapted would be a better term.
Moxon's sweep
Here’s one Bob Trent & I had made by Tom Latane back in 2001 when we did an exhibition at Chipstone’s installation in the Milwaukee Art Museum. Latane does some of the nicest blacksmith work I know.
sweep by Tom Latane
I know the sweep is a rather specific tool, but for me the idea is that with it, the workman scrapes moldings, rather than shave them as you would with a plane. that’s the driving point in the search for scratch stocks…
Here is an 18th-century engraving, from Roubo, about a tool like our modern scratch stock. I got it from Greber’s History of the Woodworking Plane. I didn’t look up the translation.
Roubo, from Greber's History of the Woodworking Plane
Here is a funny old tool I bought one day, because it almost is a scratch stock. It’s probably a coach-maker’s molding cutter. It’s sort of like a spokeshave, its blade is not perpendicular like a scratch stock, but more pitched like a true plane. But clearly a home-made job. Screwed together. The sole of this tool is quite short, maybe an inch long. Curved too.
a detail
One more
In this last view, you can see that it’s one piece of wood that’s been sawn in half, then screwed back together. I would look in Salaman’s Dictionary of Woodworking Tools, but it’s in the shop – and I’ll probably forget once I get there.
I’m sure there’s more, but that’s enough for today. I have a book to finish up.
