Paneled wall with door, located in the parlor
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Paneled wall with door, located in the parlor |
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Mahogany pie safe |
Most everyone has a hobby. Since I can remember, working with wood has been an important pastime for me. Though most of the furniture I have made was for our home, I would sometimes do work for individuals and museums, etc. Once we bought a house, woodworking also became a necessity. We could not hire craftsman to help us restore our home. Even if we could have, we still would have done it ourselves because I am too fussy. Of course, if we had hired craftsmen, it wouldn't have taken us thirty years to do the work! An unexpected advantage has been the example we have demonstrated to our children. As they were growing up, they were always helping in one way or another. From the beginning, our kids have been carting away the shavings, shaping trenails, helping glue up countertops, stenciling the walls, helping lay floor tile, tearing apart and rebuilding walls, building the chicken house, etc. For them 'hands on' has never been just a phrase and having 'nothing to do' was an impossibility. Having his own home now, I am proud to see how our son and his wife have continued the tradition. When the time occurs, we know our daughter will do so also.
In making furniture, the old methods of joinery and solid wood construction (not plywood, pressed wood, etc.) have been my passion. Over the years, I have collected many old tools and use them often. For me, there is something spiritual in handling a 19th century molding plane, the smooth wood of which, was oiled by the hands of a craftsman whose name is still stamped into the surface. Don't misunderstand, I do have and use modern woodworking machines to prepare the wood just as earlier craftsmen had apprentices to prepare their materials.
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Wainscoting |
General
In restoring the Lucinda Manning home, we were careful to, whenever possible, keep as much of the original as we were able to. I have too often seen old trim, moldings and doors thrown out to save the time involved in stripping the layers of old paint off. Even when major changes were required, we copied the style of trim, etc, in the new work.
For materials, we are lucky that there is still a sawmill in the area from which we were able to obtain the dimensions and kind of lumber available in the 1800's. You are not going to find 2 x 4's that are actually 2" x 4" or lumber sawed and planed 14" wide x 3/4" thick at your local lumberyard. I wouldn't be surprised if the lumber for the original house came from the mill (Parlee Lumber) that I have mostly used in the restoration.
Floors
The floors in the original house are all of random width pine. What is unusual is that the boards are not parallel, that is, they are not the same width throughout! The boards follow the shape of the tree, wider at one end and narrower at the other. This saved a lot of wasted material planing them parallel. As long as the wide ends were alternated, the floor still comes out parallel overall. When we first got the house, except for the kitchen, it had wall-to-wall carpeting throughout. When we ripped it up, removing the many tacks, we found that some of the floors had been at least partially painted. All the pine floors were sanded and finished with polyurethane.
Over time, a few of the floor boards had shrunk enough to create wide spaces between and had been filled in with a material which was cracking and gradually popping out. For years, I have watched the "Ask This Old House" programs on Public TV. In one episode, a homeowner had the same problem as I had. They demonstrated using old manila rope which is unwound, glued and forced into the cracks. Because of the color, it blends in well and is able to expand and contract with the seasons.
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Random width oak flooring |
When planning the addition, we decided to have hardwood floors. The man from whom I bought the beams for the timber frame had a lot of clear oak freshly cut in random widths and lengths. My son and I carried all the wood up to the 3rd terrace, piled and spaced it with sticks and dried it for one year. Then we turned over the boards for another year. Later, I surface planed, edge jointed and squared the ends. The rough wood varied between 3" and over 12" wide. In order to have consistent widths and yet waste as little of the oak as possible, I ripped and jointed the wood to six widths. If I had not 'standardized' the widths, I would have been unable to lay lengths of boards from one end of the room to the other without constant re-ripping the next boards in the row. The hardest part was jointing the first side of each board as many of the pieces had warped during the drying process. Having a bigger jointer would have made the this step much easier.
The oak boards were then brought into the house to get accustomed to the interior for a year. Excessive shrinking, once the floor was laid, was to be avoided. The first step was to staple a layer of tar paper to the sub floor. I chose to lay the floor without using tongue and groove but simply leaving them squared. Many early floors were constructed this way and if the wood is dry and and adjusted to the room, it should work and it did.
I predrilled, counter-sank and screwed all the boards through the pine sub-floor to the beams. If a board didn't fit tightly against the previous row, I used two wedges laid parallel to each other and to the board to be forced tighter. The outside wedge was temporally screwed into the sub-floor while I hammered the wedge trapped between and thus forced the new board tightly against the other one and then screwed it down. To cover the holes, I used a plug cutter on the drill press to make the plugs from scrap oak boards. My wife applied glue, lined up the grains and hammered them in. She said she counted over 1200 plugs for each of the two floors!
Cabinetry
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Flush fit doors and drawers |
Doors have through tenons |
The first step in any project is to think about it, do a rough sketch, make measurements and then draw out to scale. Years ago, all drawings were done using drafting tools but now that CAD programs are available, this step is so much easier. A major part of the 'design process' is to confer with your spouse all along the way to make sure that you will both be happy with the result. Two heads are better than one.
Once the drawings are made, all dimensions are transferred to an approximately 1" square 'stick'. All the length dimensions are marked on one side of the stick, width dimensions on another and depth dimensions on a third side. For example, the bottom of the stick would be the starting point or 'floor' for the height measurements. From that point, the total height would be measured, marked on that side of the stick and labeled. Then the measurements for each drawer, stile, shelf, top, etc. would be marked and labeled. All dimensions would be double checked before marking the width and depth dimensions. From this point on, the measurements are taken from the stick, transferring them to the individual boards to be cut and later to the piece as it is assembled. This method is as old as cabinetmaking itself and avoids mistakes and waste.
There are many books on cabinetmaking available as well as opportunities to take evening courses at vocational schools. For those interested in learning the more traditional forms of joinery, there are books with measured drawings of antique furniture. The key, of course, is practice. Traditional joinery is not that hard but patience is required.
When doing cabinetry, I prefer to use full pinned mortises and tenons for doors and frames as they are so much stronger, especially when working with pine.
The rails are cut to length allowing an extra 1/16" on each end so that, when glued, the tenons will stick out of the through mortises a little and be planed down after assembly. If not through tenoned, the tenons should be 1/8" shorter than the mortise depth. The stiles are cut 1/2" longer on each end so the ends don't split during assembly. Using dado blades on the table saw, grooves are cut on one side of each piece for the panels. The stiles for all the doors and (separately) the rails are temporarily clamped together to mark off the common
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Kitchen peninsula with drawers that open two |
ways, both to the kitchen and the dining area |
dimensions, assuring all similar pieces will be the same size. Marking (scratch) gauges, a square, awl, pencil and the stick are all used for laying out the dimensions. On the rails, I cut the tenons using the dado blades. Don't forget the shoulder cuts on the tenons, a good cabinetmaking book will explain about that. The thickness of the tenons is equal to the width of the panel groove. If the mortises are through mortises, I lay out the dimensions on both sides of the styles.
To cut the mortises, I have a mortising attachment for the drill press. Through mortises must be cut from both sides. Usually, the mortises need adjusting with chisels and mallet. Always do a dry run assembly first to check for fit. When gluing, I make sure that the panels are not glued as they need to move with the seasons or they will crack. If the panel width is not cut a little narrower than the space it fits into, when it expands, it can push the stiles apart! I like to drill two 1/4" holes through each stile and tenon and then glue and hammer a square peg through each hole.
As mentioned elsewhere, today's doors and drawers often overlap the rails and styles making assembly easy as fewer adjustments are required. As I flush fit doors and drawers, it is necessary to fine tune the spacing to the thickness of a nickel or dime (depending on the width) to allow for expansion. With this old fashioned style of installation, most modern drawer guides cannot be used. I purchase 3/8" diameter plastic 'buttons' which, in cross section, are shaped like a 'T' the bottom of which is hammered into a predrilled 1/8" diameter hole. Properly placed, the drawer easily glides over these thin 'buttons'. Dust panels, placed between the drawers, are made up of simple sets of solid wood panels placed inside rail and stile frames. The panels must be thinner than the frames or they might interfere with the movement of the drawers.
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Solid wood panels vary in width from 8" to 16" |
Paneling next to the stairway |
depending on configuration of the wainscoting |
follows the slope of the stairs |
Making the paneled wainscoting and wall paneling in the downstairs addition was similar to working on cabinet doors but on a larger scale. Again, I used the stick for measurements. To make them more fancy, I shaped a quarter round molding on the inside of the rails and styles. On cabinet doors, I could easily have used a router in a shaper table and pushed the pieces through to form the quarter rounds as the pierces are relatively short. This time, however, the rails were sometimes over 10' long and the wall stiles 7'. It was easier to have the piece stationary and move the router across it. To do that, I made up a jig attached to the router which allowed me to cut the quarter rounds accurately. Now the problem was that in order for the rails and stiles to fit together, the ends of the quarter rounds had to be cut to the width of the pieces and then mitered. For that, I made two more jigs out of hardwood, one to use as a 45 degree miter box with a back saw. The other provided a 45 degree smooth guide for a wide chisel in order to do a fine adjustment of the mitered quarter rounds when fitting the pieces.
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Paneled fireplace mantle |
Today, when gluing the joints in cabinet doors, the pegs would only be for visual effect. In this work, I did as the earlier craftsmen usually did and only pegged them. Once attached to the walls, they were never going to move again. If I were including extra wide panels, I wanted to make sure they never shifted to one side and allowed a space to develop on the other side when they shrank. The trick was to put a dab of glue in the center of the rail grooves during assembly. Now the panels would expand and contract from the center towards each style equally.
The units were quite large and I needed help assembling and installing them in place. The windowsills, chair rails, fireplace mantle and framing around the doors, windows and plastered areas called for a molding. I found a router bit that I liked and with the router alone and sometimes attached to the table, was able to produce all the molding needed.
All drawers, the sides of some cabinets and the carcasses of some furniture pieces were dovetailed. I do have a Leigh adjustable dovetail jig which I used when making thirty drawers for a reproduction of a country store for an historical society years ago. For work on the house, I laid out and hand cut all the dovetails. A good book will explain that the angle for the tails and pins is different depending on whether working with hardwood or softwood. Tools used are a "T'' bevel, hand square, awl, pencil, back or dovetail saw, chisels, mallet and clamps. Having noticed that earlier cabinetmakers usually allowed the scratched layout marks to continue out along the faces of the drawer sides, I do the same. I make the tails first and then use them to trace the pin shapes on the ends of the front and back pieces.
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Detail of dovetailing |
Through dovetails are for the drawer backs but not usually for the fronts. The front pieces for the kitchen cabinets would have the same bevel as the door panels. That left little extra room in the board thickness (7/8") for the dovetails, only 1/8" between the end of the dovetails and the beginning of the bevels. Much care was required in making the pins so as to not saw and chisel too deeply.
I prefer solid wood over plywood. In making solid wood drawer panels, I have the the grain run parallel to the front and stick out somewhat beyond the drawer back. This allows for future shrinkage. If the panel shrinks too much, there is extra in back which can be adjusted forward. Never, of course, glue this panel, rather, screw it into the drawer back. One piece I made, went into an air conditioned library. The air was so dry that the 24+" deep drawers really shrank, withdrawing from the grooves in the front panels. I had to take them home and add more wood to each panel. Air conditioning did not exist in earlier times and furniture underwent less stress. So why don't I use plywood? I'm just old fashioned, I guess. In the house construction, I don't use plywood because of the fumes from the glues they use in the manufacturing process.
Generally speaking, in the 18th century, hardwood was clear finished or sometimes hand grained. Softwood was almost always painted and sometimes hand grained. Therefore in the Lucinda Manning house, all the pine cabinetry as well as the house trim was painted in period colors. The hardwood countertops, pine shelves in the pantry, the beams and ceiling of the downstairs addition and the interior walls ceilings and trim in the more modern upstairs den, are all clear finished. Satin polyurethane was used for the countertops and shelves and Danish oil on the beams, ceiling and upstairs den. Of course, in the bathroom, around the shower area polyurethane was also applied.
This link was not written to give step-by-step instructions, those are found in good books. My purpose was to offer additional information learned through trial and error.
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Cherry Shaker chair |
Walnut chandelier |
Porringer table |
Birds-eye table |
Built-in cabinet |
Contact: info@manninghouse1860.com