Woodworking for beginners; a manual for amateurs

Front matter

=inpnir lO-^Vx

BE

FOR

Preface

THE aim of this book is to suggest to amateurs of all ages many things which they can profitably make of wood, and to start them in the way to work successfully. It is hoped that, in the case of boys, it may show them pleasant and useful ways to work off some of their surplus energy, and at the same time contribute toward their harmonious all-round development.

It is not an attempt to teach the arts of architecture, carpentry, cabinet-making, or boat-building. Although not intended primarily to impart skill in the use of tools (something which can only be acquired from experience and observation and cannot be taught by any book), still no one can go through the processes indicated without gaining at least some slight degree of manual skill as well as a fund of practical information and experience.

Many books which give directions for mechanical work (particularly those addressed to boys) have several serious faults, and can be grouped in three classes. Some seem to be written by practical workmen, who, however well fitted to do the work themselves, lack the pedagogical training or the psychological insight necessary to lay out such work with due regard to the mental and physical capacity, experience, and development of youth, or to the amateur's lack of experience in the rudiments of the subject. Others are written by teachers or amateurs who lack the trained mechanic's practical and varied knowledge and experience in serious work. Others (and this last class is, perhaps, the worst of the three) seem to be made by compilers who have apparently been satisfied to sweep together, without requisite

VI Preface

knowledge or sufficient moral purpose, whatever thev may have found that would be interesting or attractive, without due regard to its real value. All these writers are constantly falling into errors and making omissions harmful alike to the moral and the manual progress of the readers.'

Effort has beefi made in the preparation of this book to avoid these evils, to keep in line with the advanced educational ideas of the time, and to look at the subject from the standpoints of the teacher, the vieehanie, the bo}\ and the aviateiir zi'orkinaii. The treatment is neither general nor superficial, but elementary, and no claim is made that it will carr}' anyone very far in the various subjects; but it aims to be thorough and specific as far as it goes and to teach nothing which will have to be unlearned.

Great care (based upon an extended experience with boys and amateurs) has been taken to include only what can be profitably done by an intelligent boy of from ten to eighteen or by the average untrained worker of more mature years. It is hoped that from the variety of subjects treated he may find much of the information for which he may seek — if not in the exact form desired, perhaps in some typical form or something sufficiently similar to suggest to him what he needs to know.

It is hoped and confidently believed that a work so comprehensive in scope and giving such a variety of designs, with detailed and practical directions for their execution, will be not merely novel, but may serve as a vade-mecinn and ready-reference book for the amateur of constructive tastes.

Charles G. Wheeler.

Boston. June, 1S99.

^ These criticisms are meant to apply to the class of manuals, compendiums, and so-called " Boys' Books" and "Amateurs' Books," in \.ht popular sense of the word, and not to the many admirable works on sloyd, manual training, and the various special branches of wood-working.

Part I— A Workshop For Amateurs Chapter Page

I — Introductory ....... i

IV — Working Drawings, Laying out the Work,

AND Estimating ...... 49

V — The Workshop ....... 56

PART II— ARTICLES TO BE MADE IN THE WORKSHOP VI — Introductory

VII — A Few Toys ......

VIII — Houses for Animals .....

IX — Implements for Outdoor Sports and Athletics X — Furniture .......

XI — A Few Miscellaneous Operations

103 106 126 141

175 218

Part Iii— House-building For Beginners

XII — Some Elementary Principles XIII — Simple Summer Cottages ....

XIV — A Few Simple Structures ....

238 27 1 291 viii Contents

PARTIl'—BOAr-Bi'lLDIXG FOR BEGIXXERS XV — A Few Simple Boats ...... 298

PART V—TOOLS AiXD OPERATIONS

XVI — The Common Hand-tools, and Some Every-day Operations, Alphabetically Arranged for Ready Reference ...... 344

Appendix — Matters Relating to Wood, Suggestions

about Working DRA^vINGS, etc. . . . 507

Index 539

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

IT has seemed best to address parts of this book particularly to boys, because the majority of beginners are boys, because boys need more suggestions than men, and because a man can easily pick what he needs from a talk to boys (and perhaps be interested also), while it is usually unprofitable to expect a boy to take hold of a technical subject in the right spirit if it is treated in a style much in advance of his degree of maturity. It is hoped, however, that the older reader also will find enough of those fundamental principles of successful work (many of which do not readily occur to the untrained amateur except as the result of much costly experience) to be a material help to him.

IX

" It is not strength, but art obtains the prize, And to be swift is less than to be wise ; 'T is more by art, than force of numerous strokes."

Homer, Iliad.

Chapter I Introductory

WHEN one has made up his mind to make something, he usually wants to begin work at once; so, as I wish you to read this chapter, I will make it quite short. There is a great deal in getting started right, and there are some things to bear in mind if you wish to do good work, as of course you do.

One thing is not to be in too much of a hurry to begin the actual sawing and pounding. The old Latin phrase, *' Festina lente " (make haste slowly), is a capital motto for the beginner. Do not wait until your enthusiasm has oozed away, of course, but do stop long enough to think how you are going to make a thing before you begin to saw.

The workman who thinks first and acts afterwards is the one who usually turns out good work, while the one who begins to work without any reflection (as boys, and even

I men, have been known to do) is apt to spend much of his time in undoing his work, and usually does not get through till after the one who laid it out properly in the first place.'

If Homer, in the quotation at the head of this chapter, had been writing about the way boys' work is sometimes done, he might, perhaps, ha\^e reversed the positions of some of the words and made " swiftness " and " numerous strokes " the subjects of his emphasis. He has expressed well enough, however, the way that your work should be done, and it is one aim of this book to give you useful hints to that end.

Do not spend your time in working out a lot of set exercises, like joints and odd pieces that do not belong to any-

^ An old gentleman whose help, on account of his accurate workmanship, I once frequently obtained when " rushed," was an extreme example of this systematic way of doing work. I would give him perhaps three hours' work, which he would agree to have done at the end of that time. Looking in after an hour or so I would find the work apparently untouched, which was a little provoking, of course, as the average workman would have had it perhaps one third done. But instead, this old gentleman would be apparently only "puttering around," touching up his saws, fixing his planes, whetting his chisels, looking over the wood, and not getting ahead a bit. Going off in disgust (until I got acquainted with his ways, I mean), I would return at the end of the three hours, to find that the work had been ready some time and done to perfection. While he was at first apparently accomplishing nothing he Avas really getting everything in perfect shape to do the work and laying out in his mind every detail of the whole process, so that when he began the actual work it almost did itself, and he forged right ahead of the average workman, who would either have been behind time or slighted the work in order to get it done, and in most cases have made some mistake to be corrected in some part of the process. I never knew that man to make a mistake. Why? Not because his ability was extraordinary, but because he concentrated his mind on the work and thought it out clear through before he began. Now I know the average boy too well to expect him to have the patience to do just as this workman did. It would be unreasonable. But it is the true way to do good work, so try to think it all out as far as you can and to get ready before you begin. The work will go ever so much more quickly and easily.

Introductory 3

thing- in particular, merely for practice. You will be much more apt to put the right spirit into your work when you make complete and useful articles, and you will get the same practice and experience in the end. There is no need, however, to go through a deal of toilsome experience just to learn a number of simple little things that you might just as well be told in the first place. Begin the process of learning by experience after you have learned what you can from the experience of others. Begin, so far as you can, where others have left off.

Before you begin work it may be interesting to look for a moment at the way boys did their work from fifty to one hundred years ago. Have you read the books by Elijah Kellogg ? The reason for speaking of these old-fashioned books is because of the picture they give of the time, not so very long ago, when boys and their elders made all sorts of things which they buy to-day, and also because of the good idea they give of how boys got along generally when they had to shift more for themselves than they do nowadays.

The majority of the boys of that time, not merely on Casco Bay, where Mr. Kellogg places the scenes of his stories, but in hundreds of other places, had to make many things themselves or go without. Of course there was a smaller number in the cities and larger towns who had no good opportunity to make things and were obliged to buy what they could afford (out of wdiat we should call a quite limited variety), or to get the carpenter or other mechanic to make what they needed. But the majority of the boys of that time made things well and had a good time making them. The life they led made them capital " all-round " boys. They could turn their hands, and their heads too, to almost any kind of work, and do it pretty well.

Boys did a good deal of whittling then. This habit, as you doubtless know, still clung to them after they grew up, and opening a jack-knife and beginning to whittle was a common diversion whenever the men rested, whether at the country-store or in the barn or dooryard or at their own firesides. You can see the same habit to-day in some places. The boys whittled splint-brooms of birch in Colonial days in almost every household.' Among some of the minor articles made by boys and young men were axe-helves and handles of all sorts, wooden rakes, wooden troughs for bread and for pigs, trays, trenchers, flails, rounds for ladders, bobbins, reels, cheese-boxes, butter-spats or -paddles, wooden traps, and dozens of other articles, not to speak of their handiwork in other materials than wood.

For that matter much of the same life can be found to-day in the remoter regions, and I have known young men brought up to this kind of life, who (within my recollection) have, as a matter of course, done all the farm work of good-sized cultivated farms with live stock, cut and hauled wood from their wood-lots, done a good deal of sea-fishing and salting down and drying of fish, tended and mended their

' " It has been said that the snow-shoe and canoe as made by the Indians could never be improved. To these might be added the split birch broom, or splinter broom, also the invention of the Indians, but made in every country household in New England in Colonial days. The branch of a large birch tree was cut eight feet long. An inch-wide band of the bark was left about eighteen inches from one end, and the shorter and lower end was cut in fine pliable slivers up to the restraining bark band. A row of slivers was cut from the upper end downward, turned down over the band, and tied firmly down. Then the remainder of the stick was smoothed into a handle. These brooms were pliable, cleanly, and enduring, and as broom-corn was not grown here until the latter part of the past century, they were, in fact, the only brooms of those days. They were made by boys on New England farms for six cents apiece, and bought by the country storekeei)ers in large numbers for the cities' use." — The Chantauquan.

Introductory 5

fish-nets, weirs, and lobster-traps, and sailed or rowed twenty-five miles to market with their produce and back again with their supplies. They also built their sheds, barns, and houses, and part of their furniture, their dories, big scows, and capital sailboats; made their own oars and rigged their boats; made many of their farm tools and implements; built their waggons and '* ironed " them, their ox-sleds and small sleds, and shod them; made some of their tools; did their own blacksmithing, mason-work, bricklaying, and painting; made their own shoes, and did I do not know how many other odd jobs — all with but a limited supply of common hand-tools. This work did not interfere with their going to school through the winter months until they were twenty-one years old, and they still found time for the usual recreations of the period.

Now a young man must have been pretty well developed after going through all that, even if he did not know much about Greek or calculus or was lacking in superficial polish. And it is only the truth to say that quite a number used to tackle the higher branches of study too, with success made all the more assured by their development in other ways, and many, in addition to all this, paid their way through college by teaching or other work. How did they do so much ? Partly, I suppose, because their life was so much simpler and less complex than ours. They did not have so many wants and there were not so many interests to distract their minds. Partly because when they wanted something they knew they must make it or go without. They did not draw so much as we do now, but they did a great deal of observing. They examined things like what they were to make and asked questions, and, knowing that where they had so much to do they could not afford to keep trying things again and again, they learned from their relatives and neighbours what was considered the best way to do their work, and having thought it out carefully they went at it with great energy.

To-day we have only to go to a large factory to see a man standing before some machine and doing some simple piece of work, requiring but little thought — the same thing over and over again, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, until he seems to become almost a part of the machine itself, and is not fitted for doing much else. That is the other extreme. Of course we get things cheaper (even if they do not last so long) because of the factory; but how about the workman ? Which of these two types is the better-developed man ? First you want to be welldeveloped all-round boys, so that you will not become machines or badly one-sided men. After that — each to his special bent, of course.

Now because we no longer cut down trees ourselves, haul them to the mill to be sawed, or rive or saw or hew them ourselves, leave the wood to season, and then laboriously work it up into whatever we have to make — because we no longer do that, but go instead to a lumber-yard and a mill and have a large part of the work done for us — it is a good thing for us to pause a moment before we begin our work to take in the fact that all the advantage is not with us now, and to think what a capital gymnasium that former life was for strengthening a boy's muscle and mind, not to speak of his morals.

You could not go back to those days now if you wished to, of course (except, perhaps, when you go to some of the remoter regions in vacation), and you are doubtless better off for all the advantages you have now and for all our timesaving contrivances, but the advantage depends partly on how you 2ise the time saved from their laborious tasks, does

Introductory 7

it not? You can, however, get inspiration from the example of those older boys and from some of their methods, and can put their self-reliant, manly zeal, grit, and perseverance into your work, and have a capital time making the things and more sport and satisfaction afterwards for having made them.

This book does not try to show you a royal road or a short cut to proficiency in architecture, carpentry, cabinet-making, boat-building, toy-making, or any other art or science. It does not aim to cram you with facts, but merely to start you in the right way. It is for those of you who want to take off your coats, roll up your sleeves, and really make things, rather than sit down in the house and be amused and perhaps deluded by reading enthusiastic accounts of all the wonders you can easily do — or which somebody thinks you would like to be told that you can do. It is for those of you who do not wish to have your ardour dampened by finding that things will not come out as the book said they would, or that the very things you do not know and cannot be expected to know are left out.

It does not aim to stir up your enthusiasm at first and then perhaps leave you in the lurch at the most important points. I take it for granted that if you have any mechanical bent or interest in making things, as most boys have, and are any kind of a real live boy, you have the enthusiasm to start with without stirring up. In fact, I have even known boys, and possibly you may have, who, strange as it may seem, have had so much enthusiasm to make something or other that they have actually had to be held back lest they should spoil all the lumber within reach in the effort to get started !

What you want is to be told how to go to work in the right way — how to make things successfully and like a workman — is it not ? Then, if you mean business, as I feel sure you do, and really want to make things, read the whole book through carefully, even if it is not bristling with interesting yarns and paragraphs of no practical application to your work. You will not find everything in it, but you cannot help learning something, and I hope you will find that it attends strictly to the business in hand and will give you a start in the right direction, — which is half the battle.

" Man is a Tool-using Animal. . . . He can use Tools, can devise Tools ; with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him ; he kneads glowing iron as if it were soft paste ; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools; without Tools he is nothing — with Tools he is all." — Carlyle, Sartor Resartus.

Chapter II Tools

YOU can do a great deal with very few tools. The bearing of this observation lies in " the application on it," as Jack Bunsby would say.

Look at the complicated and ingenious curiosities whittled with a jack-knife by sailors, prisoners, and other people who have time to kill in that way! Have you ever seen the Chinese artisans turning out their wonderful work with only a few of the most primitive tools ? But of course we cannot spend time so lavishly on our work as they do, even if we had their machine-like patience and deftness acquired through so many generations.

We cannot hold work with our feet and draw saws towards us or do turning out on the lawn with a few sticks and a bit of rope for a lathe ; carve a set of wonderful open-work hollow spheres, each within the other, out of one solid ball of ivory; and the rest of the queer things the Orientals do: but it is merely a matter of national individuality — the training of hundreds of generations. We could learn to do such things after a long time doubtless, but with no such wonderful adaptability as the Japanese, for instance, are showing, in learning our ways in one generation.

Examine some of the exquisite work which the Orientals sell so cheaply and think whether you know anyone with skill enough to do it if he had a whole hardware-shop full lO of tools, and then see with what few simple and rude tools (like those shown in the following illustrations, or the simple

drill, Fig. i, still in use) the work has been done. Mr. Holtzapffel describes the primitive apparatus in use among the natives of India as follows ' :

" When any portion of household furniture has to be turned, the wood-turner is sent for; he comes with all his outfit and establishes himself for the occasion at the very door of his employer. He ^^*^' ^' commences by digging two holes in the

ground at a distance suitable to the length of the work, and in these he fixes two short wooden posts, securing them as strongly as he can by ramming the earth and driving in wedges and stones around them. The centres, scarcely more than round nails or spikes, are driven through the posts at about eight inches from the ground, and a wooden rod, for the support of the tools, is either nailed to the posts or tied to them by a piece of coir or cocoanut rope. The bar, if long, is additionally supported, as represented, by being tied to one or two vertical sticks driven into the ground. During most of his mechanical operations the Indian workman is seated on the ground, hence the small elevation of the axes of his lathe. The boy who gives motion to the work sits or kneels on the other side of it, holding the ends of the cord wrapped around it in his hands, pulling them alternately; the cutting being restricted to one half of the motion, that of the work towards the tool. The turning tools of the Indian are almost confined to the chisel and gouge, and their handles are long enough to suit his distant position, while he guides their cutting edges by his toes. He grasps the bar or tool-rest with the smaller toes and places

' Quoted, by kind permission, from Tuniini:; and Mechanical Manipulation.

II the tool between the large toe and its neighbour, generally out of contact with the bar. The Indian and all other turners using the Eastern method attain a high degree of prehensile power with the toes, and when seated at their work not only always use them to guide the tool, but will select indifferently the hand or the foot, whichever may happen . to be the nearer, to pick up or replace any small tool or other object. The limited supply of

FIG. 2.

tools the Indian uses for working in wood is also remarkable; they are of the most simple kind and hardly exceed those represented in Fig. 2; the most essential in constructing and setting up his lathe being the small, single-handed adze, the bassoolah. With this he shapes his posts and digs the holes; it serves on all occasions as a hammer and also as an anvil when the edge is for a time fixed in a block of wood. The outer side of the cutting edge is perfectly flat, and with it the workman will square or face a beam or board with almost as much precision as if it had been planed;

in using the bassOOlah for this latter purpose tlie work is generally placed in the forked stem of a tree, driven into the ground as shown in the illustration."

If ue are inclined to feel proud of the kind of woodwork turned out by the average wood-worker of this country or England with his great variety of tools and appliances and faciHties, we might compare his work with that done by the Orientals without our appliances. Read what Professor Morse tells us of the Japanese carpenter ' :

" His trade, as well as other trades, has been perpetuated through generations of families. The little children have been brought up amidst the odour of fragrant shavings, — have with childish hands performed the duties of an adjustable vise or clamp; and with the same tools which when children they have handed to their fathers, they have in later days earned their daily rice. When I see one of our carpenters' ponderous tool-chests, made of polished woods, inlaid with brass decorations, and filled to repletion with several hundred dollars' worth of highly polished and elaborate machine-made implements, and contemplate the work often done with them, — with everything binding that should go loose, and everything rattling that should be tight, and much work that has to be done twice over, with an indication everywhere of a poverty of ideas, — and then recall the Japanese carpenter with his ridiculously light and flimsy tool-box containing a meagre assortment of rude and primitive tools, — considering the carpentry of the two people, I am forced to the conviction that civilisation and modern appliances count as nothing unless accompanied with a moiety of brains and some little taste and wit. . . After having seen the good and serviceable car-

pentry, the perfect joints and complex mortises, done by good Japanese workmen, one is astonished to find that they do their

' Quoted, by kind permission, from the valuable and entertaining work on yapanese Houus and their SurfoitH(/i/ii,ri (^copyright, 1SS5), by Edward S. Morse.

work without the aid of certain appliances considered indispensable by similar craftsmen in our country. They have no bench, no vise, no spirit-level, and no bit-stock; and as for labour-saving machinery, they have absolutely nothing. With many places which could be utilised for water-power, the old country saw-mill has not occurred to them. Their tools appear to be roughly made and of primitive design, though evidently of the best-tempered steel. The only substitute for the carpenter's bench is a plank on the floor, or on two horses; a square, firm, upright post is the nearest approach to a bench and vise, for to this beam a block of wood to be sawed into pieces is firmly held (Fig. 3). A big wooden wedge is bound firmly to the post with a stout rope, and this driven down with vigorous blows till it pinches the block which is to be cut into the desired proportions.

" In using many of the tools, the Japanese carpenter handles them quite differently from our workman; for instance, he draws the plane towards him instead of pushing it from him. The planes are very rude-looking implements. Their bodies, instead of being thick blocks of wood, are quite wide and thin (Fig. 4, D, E), and the blades are inclined at a greater angle than the blade in our plane. In some planes, however, the blade stands vertical;

V::J

FIG. 3. — A JAPANESE CARPENTER S VISE.

From Morse's Japanese Homes.

Woocl-W^orking for Beginners this is used in lieu of the steel scrapers in giving wood a smooth finish, and might be used with advantage by our carpenters as a substitute for the piece of glass or thin plate of steel with which they usually scrape the surface of the wood. A huge plane is often seen, five or six feet long. This plane, however, is fixed in an inclined position, upside down; that is, with the blade

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FIG. 4. — CARPENTERS TOOLS IN COMMON USE. From Morse's Japanese Homes.

uppermost. The board, or piece to be planed, is moved back and forth upon it. Draw-shaves are in common use. The saws are of various kinds, with teeth much longer than those of our saw^s, and cut in different ways. . . . Some saws have teeth on the back as well as on the front, one edge being used as a cross-cut saw (Fig. 4, B, C). The hand-saw, instead of having the curious loop-shaped handle made to accommodate only one hand, as with us, has a simple straight cylindrical handle as long as the saw itself, and sometimes longer. Our carpenters engage one hand in holding the stick to be sawed while driving the saw with the other hand; the Japanese carpenter, on the contrary, holds the piece with his foot, and stooping over, with his two hands drives the saw by quick and rapid cuts through the wood. This style of working and doing many other things could never be adopted in this country without an importation of Japanese backs. . . . The adze is provided with a rough handle bending considerably at the lower end, not unlike a hockey-stick (Fig. 4, A). . . . For drilling holes a very long-handled awl is used. The carpenter seizing the handle at the end, between the palms of his hands, and moving his hands rapidly back and forth, pushing down at the same time, the awl is made rapidly to rotate back and forth; as his hands gradually slip down on the handle he quickly seizes it at the upper end again, continuing the motion as before. One is astonished to see how rapidly holes are drilled in this simple yet effective way. For large holes, augers similar to ours are used."