Woodwork

“ A definite way to produce necessary variety as applied to woodwork, especially if woodwork is the only course offered, is thru the use of such mediums as cane, reed, rush, splints and allied materials in correlation with the wood. These materials add life to the problems and generally arouse interest and enthusiasm in the work at hand. ”

“ But the natural color of woods in many cases may fail to harmonize with the scheme of color to be carried out in the furnishings of the apartment.
WINDOW DECORATION.
In such case, the woodwork should be subjected to delicate, harmonious, painted tints, or polish or gilding, as the case may be.
There is a great variety of woods from which we may choose, but to obtain from them the finer shadings and combinations of color is difficult, not to say impossible.
There is no necessity for making the woodwork that is to be painted unnecessarily substantial or elaborate. ”

“ Diminish the size of a room, add a foot to the width of the house, do anything rather than cramp the stairway.
As far as possible paint should be kept off the inside woodwork. There are but few varieties of wood which may not be made smooth; and by the use of hard oil, which is really oil and varnish mixed together, all woodwork becomes beautiful and can be easily cleaned. It appears almost sacrilegious to cover the fine grain of our native woods with cheap, adulterated paint. ”

“ A bevel on the outside or inside, or both, is about all the young woodworker should attempt in the way of ornamentation. Depend on the natural beauty of the wood, as a fancy frame draws the attention from the picture, which after all is the main thing. We should admire the man, not his clothes, the picture not its frame, although the latter should be neat and well made. ”

“ Woodwork was decorated with painted ornament or with fanciful work on the hinges; and nails and clamps were applied to hold it together, rather than with sculpture, down to the fourteenth century; and in England, France, and Germany, oak was the wood employed for furniture. Both in England and in the countries which had retained old artistic traditions on the continent, such as Italy, France, and Spain (which profited by the skill of the Moors in painted decoration) , colour was used not less on walls and wood than on metal and pottery. ”

“ I had naturally useful hands, and learned the pleasure and utility of being able to do things with them. I took naturally to woodwork, and spent nearly all my Sundays in the carpenter shop, where I cut and bruised my hands, and butchered wood into clumsy, ill-fitting and rickety benches, stools and boxes, which amused our mechanic greatly. But with perseverance, patience and time my skill improved, so that before I left the mill I had become something of an artist in wood, and could really do a very nice and creditable job in joining and fitting. ”

“ In new work, particularly when the use of imperfectly seasoned timber is unavoidable, it would be wise to take the usual precautions as to the proper ventilation of all “built in” woodwork—especially the ends of joists and so forth. ”

“ There are a great many other tools and appliances used by the wood-worker with which the workman should be familiar, but it is not necessary to describe them, as the above-mentioned are the most essential tools common to all forms of woodworking. There is no important principle involved in the construction, care, and [Pg 109] use of woodworking tools which is not discussed in this chapter, and the student who becomes thoroughly familiar with the matter treated will have little trouble in learning to handle other tools.
Fig. 89.—Jointing a Saw. ”

“ When it is remembered that the suitability of wood for a particular purpose depends most of all upon its internal structure, it is plain that the woodworker should know the essential characteristics of that structure. While his main interest in wood is as lumber, dead material to be used in woodworking, he can properly understand its structure only by knowing something of it as a live, growing organism. ”

“ Others admit that it ought to have a place but feel that the results obtained do not justify the time spent upon it. Still others approach the whole field of woodworking from the side of design, tool processes and organized woodworking subject matter being mere incidents to the problem in design. ”

“ It treats of the “every-day” practical problem of the carpenter and house-builder from the “laying of foundations” to the completion of the “interior finish.” $1.00.
WOODWORK FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS. By Griffith. A textbook for high schools, colleges and technical schools. It contains chapters on woods, tools and processes, joinery, turning, carving, inlaying, wood finishing, pattern making, and the use of woodworking machines. It is a well-balanced and authoritative text, presupposing a knowledge of elementary tool processes. Specially adapted to secondary schools. ”

“ BY WILLIAM NOYES. A book full of charm and distinction and the first to give due consideration to the esthetic side of woodworking. It is intended to give to beginners practice in designing simple projects in wood and an opportunity to acquire skill in handling tools. The book illustrates a series of projects and gives suggestions for other similar projects together with information regarding tools and processes for making. ”

“ The classes in woodworking are among the most important at the school. The institute now owns a large tract of valuable timber land, while among the industrial buildings on the grounds is a good sawmill. equipped with the necessary machinery. Whatever lumber is needed in the erection of the buildings is cut on the timber lot, drawn to the mill, and sawed. In this way one class learns to saw and handle lumber. ”

“ The accuracy and skill required can be developed only by actual constructive work. I suggest that we take up a form of decoration which can be done with the knife.
"There are two ways of making an article in wood pleasing to the eye. One is by varying the outline, as we did in our match scratchers, and the other is by some kind of surface ornamentation. There are many ways of decorating surfaces—carving, pyrography, staining, polishing, etc., and very often several of these methods are combined. ”

“ Fig. 17.—Lumber Scale.
13. Qualities of wood.— (A.) Certain kinds of wood are adapted for some purposes better than are others; the wood-worker, therefore, should be familiar with the qualities which conditions demand, and the kinds of woods which have these qualities.
Lumber for framing should be strong and durable; it should be cut from trees which grow to a size that will allow large dimensions to be cut from them.
For outside finish, the material should be wood which [Pg 28] will stand the weather, can be easily worked, and will hold its shape well. ”

“ Carry the plane parallel with the grain when it is possible, and take no more shavings off than is necessary to attain the desired results. The young workman should make a study of the grain and the peculiarities of the different kinds of lumber upon which he works, losing no opportunity to experiment upon and compare the qualities of every available wood.
(E.) In using edge tools of every kind, little is gained, and much is often lost, by working with dull tools; tools should be sharpened often and thoroughly. ”

“ Pitch-pine, an exceedingly hard wood, difficult to dry, and with a disagreeable propensity to crack if not very well seasoned, is also used, and a beautiful material it is. Some small quantity of bedroom furniture in beech, oak, and ash is made in the workshops that I have been describing. As a general rule, however, this manufacture of soft woods is a separate branch of the trade. ”

“ Flooring should wear well, hold its shape, and be of good appearance. In providing lumber for inside finish, care should be used that it has good grain and color, is not too soft, and that it will hold its shape well. Almost any wood may be used as far as strength is concerned, but lumber which shrinks and warps badly is unfit for finishing. ”

“ The strength of lumber cut from trees grown as described is impaired, however, as the wood is more cross-grained than that from trees which grow in the heart of a forest, with practically the same conditions on all sides. ”

“ To see soft wood, such as pine, made up into admirable bedroom furniture, and French polished till the grain of it shows much of the delicacy and agreeableness of satin-wood, we should pay a visit to the works of Messrs. ”

“ The lumber business ranks fourth in the great industries of the United States. The Department of Forestry at Washington estimates that we are using three times as much wood yearly as the annual growth of the forest. ”

“ Much wood is used in decoration and furniture, where appearance, appropriateness, and finish are called for; but these woods, although much in evidence, are infinitely less in quantity than those employed in construction. Some wood is required for implements, turnery, carvings, and small-piece work, where size is secondary and where qualities such as hardness, fine grain, and uniformity, controllable in small pieces, are primary. Some wood is used indirectly, as in the manufacture of paper-pulp, gunpowder, and chemicals. ”

“ But if all my wood-work were to be without groove or moulding, if my mantels were to be of simple wood, if my doors were all to be machine-made, and my lumber of the second quality, I would have my bath-rooms, my conservatory, my sunny bow-windows, and my perfect ventilation,—and my house would then be so pleasant, and every one in it in such a cheerful mood, that it would verily seem to be ceiled with cedar. ”

“ The woodman at work — Tree-cutting in frosty weather — Preparing sticks and stakes — Winter Jasmine — Ferns in the wood-walk — Winter colour of evergreen shrubs — Copse-cutting — Hoop-making — Tools used — Sizes of hoops — Men camping out — Thatching with hoop-chips — The old thatcher's bill.
It is good to watch a clever woodman and see how much he can do with his simple tools, and how easily one man alone can deal with heavy pieces of timber. An oak trunk, two feet or more thick, and weighing perhaps a ton, lies on the ground, the branches being already cut off. ”

“ The principal tools with which they operate are the axe, the adze, the saw, the auger, the gauge, the square, the compasses, the hammer, the mallet, the crow, the rule, the level, the maul, and the plane; and of many of these there are several kinds. [113]
8. The timbers most employed in building in the United States are chiefly pine, oak, beech, black walnut, cypress, larch, white cedar, and hemlock; but of these pine is in the greatest use. Oak and beech are much used in constructing frames, in which great strength is required. ”

“ The employment of wood for articles of domestic use or ornament, gives rise to many departments of mechanical labour, according to the manner in which the grain of the wood is to be made conspicuous or visible. In the antique pieces of furniture still existing in old mansions, the wood employed, such as oak, walnut-wood, mahogany, &c., was always solid ”

“ We also think that some light upon the proper construction of the words 'manufacture of wood,' in paragraph 181, is afforded by the fact that it is used in connection with 'house or cabinet furniture of wood, wholly or partly finished,' and is foll wed by the words, 'or of which wood is the component material of chief value.' This would indicate an article 'made up' of wood, analogous to furniture, or other article in which wood is used alone or in connection with some other material. ”

“ Finally, the author has endeavoured in these pages to treat wood-carving not merely as a fine art, whose chief aim is to produce specimens of fancy work for exhibitions, and facsimiles of flowers, never to be touched, but also to qualify the learner for a calling, and what nine-tenths of all practical wood-carving really consists of, that is, house and other large decoration, and of work which is to be perhaps painted, and exposed to the air. ”

“ Wood-carving has ever been a cherished craft of the place, and the best masters of the art during the fifteenth century lavished themselves on this prodigious task. It is the frost-work on one's window-panes interpreted in polished oak. ”

“ Wood, when abundant and easily obtained, is worked with the greatest facility, and on many accounts, is the cheapest material, for the time, of which a building can be constructed. But it is perishable. It requires every few years a coat of paint, and is always associated with the idea of decay. Yet wood may be moulded into an infinite variety of form to please the eye, in the indulgence of any peculiar taste or fancy. ”

“ Style.—From the remotest ages the decoration of wood has been a foremost art. The tendency of human nature has always been to ornament every article in use. Just as a child of to-day instinctively cuts patterns on the bark of his switch freshly taken from the hedgerow, so the primitive man, to say nothing of his more civilized successor, has from the earliest times cut designs on every wooden article he is accustomed to handle. The North American Indian carves his wooden fish-hook or his pipe stem just as the Polynesian works patterns on his paddle. ”

“ Longer than that we must not stay in this horrible place, we shall have wood enough for our purpose in the building, by pulling down part of the rear of our house, where it won’t be missed, or from the trees in our garden, or part of the fencing. ”

“ The broad-leaved trees give us our hardwoods, used extensively for furniture, the interior finish of buildings, and for the manufacture of tools, farming implements, wagons, carriages, sleighs, etc. To a great extent it was the availability of these strong, tough, hard, and durable woods which has made American tools and implements of 229 such a high grade of excellence that they are in demand in every civilized country. ”