• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

The CHRONICLE of the Early American Industries Association Stanley Garden Tools Specialist Tools for Sash Window Making A Key To Dating Vintage Woodworking Machinery Made in Philada: No. 4 • Two Burls are Better than One Howland’s Hoisting Apparatus, A Nineteenth-Century “Come-Along” An Unusual Plane Configuration Volume 57, Number 1 March 2004 The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc. Vol. 57, No. 1 March 2004 Contents The Early American Specialist Tools for Sash Window Making Industries by Jane Rees ------------------------------------------------------------------1 Association President: A Key To Dating Vintage Woodworking Machinery David L. Parke, Jr. Executive Director: by Dana Martin Batory ----------------------------------------------------- 12 Elton W. Hall Made in Philada: No. 4 THE PURPOSE of the Associa- tion is to encourage the study by Carl Bopp --------------------------------------------------------------- 16 of and better understanding of early American industries in the home, in the shop, on Two Burls are Better than One the farm, and on the sea; also by Karl West ---------------------------------------------------------------- 28 to discover, identify, classify, preserve and exhibit obsolete tools, implements and mechani- Howland’s Hoisting Apparatus, A Nineteenth-Century “Come-Along” cal devices which were used in early America. by Elton W. Hall ----------------------------------------------------------- 30 MEMBERSHIP in the An Unusual Plane Configuration EAIA is open to any person or organization sharing its by J. B. Cox ---------------------------------------------------------------- 31 interests and purposes. For membership information, write to Elton W. Hall, Executive Director, 167 Bakerville Road, South Dartmouth, MA 02748. Departments Stanley Tools: Stanley Garden Tools ------------------------------------------ 23 The Chronicle Whatsits Editor: Patty MacLeish A Tin Tool? ------------------------------------------------------------------ 29 Editorial Board A Trapped Ham? ------------------------------------------------------------- 34 Katherine Boardman Wrap it Up ------------------------------------------------------------------ 37 John Carter Or Cut it Up? ---------------------------------------------------------------- 37 Jay Gaynor Raymond V. Giordano Book Review: Collecting Houses: 17th Century Houses– Rabbit Goody 20th Century Adventure ---------------------------------------------------------------35 Charles F. Hummel Walter Jacob Plane Chatter: The Plane Whose Arms Are Too Long -------------------------- 36 Johanna M. Lewis, Ph.D Michael H. Lewis Dan Reibel Covers: Stanley Garden Tools. During the Depression, the building industry slowed, Bill Robertson and Stanley Tools responded by promoting a line of colorful garden tools. On front Jack Whelan is the special merchandising display that holds an example of each tool. On the back Frank White is a typical set of tools in bright colors with end caps in contrasting colors on the The Chronicle welcomes contri- handles. Walter Jacob discusses the history of Stanley garden tools in his column. butions from anyone interested in our purpose. Submit articles Photograph by Walter Jacob. to: Patty MacLeish, Editor, 31 Walnut Street, Newport, RI 02840. Telephone: (401) 846- 7542; Fax: (401) 846-6675; E- mail: [email protected]. We The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc. ©2004 (ISSN 0012-8147 ) is published quarterly by prefer articles to be submitted the Early American Industries Association, Inc. Elton W. Hall, Treasurer, 167 Bakerville Road, South Dartmouth, on disk or electronically. Please MA 02748. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, submit in any commonly used Inc. c/o Elton W. Hall, Treasurer, 167 Bakerville Road, South Dartmouth, MA 02748. USPO Publication Number word processing program. If 560-620. Periodical postage paid at New Bedford, MA and at additional mailing offices. The Chronicle is available on microfilm from: UMI, 300 Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Design: Patty MacLeish, Ideas into Print, 31 Walnut typed, please double space. Street, Newport, RI 02840. Printed by Cayuga Press, 1650 Hanshaw Road, Ithaca, NY 14850. Specialist Tools for Sash Window Making by Jane Rees rom their first appearance towards the end of these can give a detailed insight into how sash windows the seventeenth century right up to the present were made by hand. day, sash windows have been used in every sort of Although from the late years of the eighteenth F 1 building. A walk round any British village, town or city century, there were attempts to develop a variety of makes clear the quantity of sash windows that have been wood- working machinery,4 until the early years of the manufactured over the last three centuries. For instance, in twentieth century, the majority of sash windows were Bath alone in the period between 1720 and 1820, a rough still made by hand. So it is not surprising that specialist calculation suggests that around sixty thousand sashes tools were developed to assist in the making. were made (three for every working day!). A sash window consists of two main parts, the cased In order for a sash window to work easily and ef- frame or box and the sash itself. A third element, win- fectively, it is important that both the frame and the sash dow shutters, is sometimes added but not necessarily are made accurately. But also, in the days when work- and is not included in the scope of this article. men were paid by piece work, speed was of the essence. When researching the history of the methods of Making the Frame or Box making sash windows, contemporary written sources The construction of the sash frame is relatively simple such as Nicholson’s Practical Builder2 and Skaife’s with little in the way of joints, and the majority of the Key to Civil Architec- tools used would have ture 3 are invaluable, been those found in any but there is another joiner’s kit. Thomas resource that is often Skaife, writing in 1774, overlooked—the tools states that “sash frames that were used. Many are a part of the business tools still survive from easily understood, and the eighteenth cen- require but little merit in tury and many more the execution,”5 though changed little in form he does draw attention to or use over the next the need to position the Figure 1. Top: a “thin” blade sash pocket chisel. Bottom: Edward Preston pulley block within three 150 years; the study of & Sons interchangeable blade sash pocket chisel. Figure 2. Sticking board from Samuel Wing’s workshop. (Illustra- Figure 3. Design for a sticking board from Ellis’s Modern tion courtesy of Old Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts.) Practical Joinery. The Chronicle Volume 57, No. 1 1 Figure 4. The first rebate for the glazing cut using a sash fillister Figure 5. The second rebate for the glazing cut with a sash fil- plane. lister plane. inches of the top or there will not be sufficient height for bars, and there is no evidence of specialist tools prior to the weights. this date. The rebate would have been cut with a moving The most complicated work in making the sash box or standing fillister and the ovolo cut with a moulding is cutting out the sash pocket in the pulley stiles through plane that might well have also been used which the weights are reached. It is necessary to make in other more general purpose joinery. both transverse and longitudinal cuts in a position that However, the difficulties of making cannot be reached with general tools. A special chisel—the the bars became more acute as fash- sash pocket chisel—was developed for this job, though the ion dictated thinner and thinner exact way it was intended to be used is still a matter of bars, which ultimately reached speculation (Figure 1). The basic use was to cut the as little as 3/4 of an inch fibres at the end of the pocket that could not be by the end of the eigh- reached by a saw, but it could also have been used for making the longi- teenth century and 5 tudinal cut at the side of even as slender as /8 the pocket. Sash pocket of an inch by the early chisels come in two types, years of the nineteenth with a thick blade or with century. The shaping a thin. As with many and jointing of pieces tools, by the nineteenth of wood which were in century manufacturers general much thinner were experimenting with than those normally improvements, and the Figure 6. A sash fillis- worked for such items sash pocket chisel was no ter by John Green (York, as doors and panel- 1768–1808). exception. Ed. Preston ling required specialist & Sons (Birmingham, tools that enabled a 6 1825–1934) produced speedy and accurate an interchangeable blade result for the joiner. version, first advertised With the advent in his 1914 catalog as a of the astragal and “new form … supplied hollow mould in the with three different sizes 1760s, sash planes 7 of cutter blades… .” started to appear. It Making the Sash was difficult to cut this Bars mould using the tra- ditional hollows and In the earliest windows, rounds and the need up to the 1740s, the bars for specialist planes had sizeable ovolo profiles became paramount. 1 and were typically 1 /2 Sticking Boards or even 2 inches wide. Figure 7. Using a sash fillister plane. This plane by Greenslade (Bristol, There were three Making bars of this size 1828–1937) dates from the mid- to late-nineteenth century. It differs little from planes of an earlier date, the main differences being that it now has a methods of making presented less of a prob- nicker iron to prevent the wood from tearing, the depth stop is mounted on the bars, but one prob- lem than the later thinner the outside of the plane and the stems are capped with brass. Later versions lem common to all sometimes also had an integral handle. 2 The Chronicle March 2004 from around 1795 to 1810 (Figure 2).8 Designs for sticking boards were occasionally published in woodworking books and magazines; one example can be found in George Ellis’s Modern Practical Joinery (Figure 3).9 Figure 8.

Load more

  40

Copy Link