Doing Time in the Joint: Introducing the Worshipful Company of Joiners

I’ve heard any number of definitions that seek to draw a line between the joiner and the carpenter. Some people say the joiner is defined by his lack of nails. Others by the outcomes: the carpenter builds bridges and buildings while the joiner builds finer things. In an episode of the Woodwright’s Shop, Roy Underhill defines the joiner by his tools, saying he becomes a joiner the moment he picks up a jointer’s plane.

The Oxford English Dictionary takes the "Defined by his results" definition: "A craftsman whose occupation is to construct things by joining pieces of wood ; a worker in wood who does lighter and more ornamental work than that of a carpenter, as the construction of the furniture and fittings of a house, ship, etc." and dutifully notes that it first appears in print from 1386.

Back in May, my favorite woodworking blogger The Village Carpenter wrapped up her blog and signed off, but not before she added me to her blogroll under "Hand Tools Only". When she did this, I was unaware of it and I'm somewhat amused to note that looking back, I haven't done much woodworking since she did so.

One of the reasons you haven't seen many wood chips fly is that I've been remodeling my kitchen (using power tools, I confess). The other is that I've been doing research and acquiring a box of tools that are as near their period form as possible. As always, I get by with a little help from my friends and it never ceases to amaze me how many people have taken on this project as if it was their own.

I've had leads on tools emailed to me and received tools mailed to me from as far away as Georgia (thanks, Noel!) and the UK (thank you, Douglas!). As you probably know, some of them I've revived from the slumber of ages and some of them I inherited.

At this point I've acquired enough tools to begin building the rest of the tools I'll need and for that I shall need joinery.

I guess it's high time I earned that link. 

Well, it's a good start, anyway...

In the Joint, Part One

In the 16th century, there were many joints that did not rely on nails to hold together and it was the joiner whose specialty was the making and execution of those joints. The key joint, in my opinion, wasn't the dovetail so prized by modern cabinetmakers, but the mortise and tenon.

At its simplest definition, mortises are holes and tenons are slightly smaller bits sized to fit inside the holes.  The tenon is then usually held in place by pegs or nails or in the case of knockdown items like trestle tables, a removable key.

If you think about it, that seems a bit weak, but it isn't.  Houses and furniture that was built in the 16th century this manner are still standing today. A bit closer to home, I'm talked before about the 16th century wheelbarrow I made using mostly period joinery, the key joints being four through tenons that form the chassis.

See those two tenons that are sticking through the arms of the barrow above? Those are the tenons that lock the whole thing together. Even the wheel is held in place by those two framing members...

All those pieces in the picture above are held together and square by those four tenons. Until I had to repair the wheel a few years after this photo was taken, there were two nails in the entire thing. The only reason I used screws on the wheel is so I could change it more easily.

Eight years later it looks like this...

That sounds fine and I'll admit that it looks a bit ramshackle, but bear in mind that we're looking at a farm and garden tool that I made out of $25 worth of crap lumber from Home Depot and when I wasn't using it to haul sandbags and lumber, it was parked under a tree for eight years.

No matter how much I loaded the thing down, those tenons held tight.

The pins holding the tenons in place are known as "drawbore" pins, which means the holes are slightly offset and the pin is being yanked in two different directions, preventing it or the joint being held from moving.

This is one of the only two nails in the piece.  I didn't need them. Not sure why I bothered to use them. It's just that I was new at the drawbore tenon and didn't really trust myself yet.

Cutting a mortise

These days, a lucky woodworker with a decent machine cuts these with a mortising machine, which is a hollow square chisel that is dragged through the wood by an augur running through the hollow center. Most of the time these days, I remove the waste from the hole using a drill and then square the hole with a chisel.

We'll be doing this chopping it out with just a chisel.  Handily, this is the exact chisel my grandpa used to teach me how to do this thirty-odd years ago.

I really need to make a new leather washer for that chisel handle.

Draw your square with a knife or a mortising gauge and make a series of small lateral cuts... 

Then, go in at a slight angle and remove the waste between each lateral cut, working with a nice, sharp chisel and working slowly to keep your edges square.

Rinse and repeat, working as deep into the wood as you need to go. Not all tenons need be through-tenons and there are a dozen or so ways to stop them short and lock them in using wedges if you're not up to the drawbore technique.

Not all tenons are shouldered, which is what the parts of the timber on the sides of the tenon in the illustration above would be called. The mortises in the embroidery frame pictured below are the same size as the tenon pieces and are kept in place by the pegs in the frame and the tension of the embroidery. We'll see more of it when we pull thread with the Worshipful Company of Broderers.

I brought up the frame because it handily illustrates how everything made of wood in the 16th century at some point passed under the tools of the guilds of joiners and carpenters. Every embroidery frame, every box, every building. So this is going to be a big one...

Want to learn more about Drawbore Joinery?

Read this article at WK Fine Tools by cabinetmaker and Popular Woodworking contributing editor Christopher Schwarz:

http://www.wkfinetools.com/contrib/cschwarz/z_art/drawboring/drawboring4.asp

Peter Follansbee deals extensively with the mechanics of the drawbore in his book "Make a Joint Stool from a Tree" published by Lost Art Press.

~ Scott

Tools of the Trades: If you can't inherit them, buy them

Without a doubt, the best way to get tools is to inherit them. Not because it means you lost a loved one, but because inherited tools usually (hopefully?) come to you after years of tutelage in how to use and take care of them. Which is also to say that tools inherited tend to be in better shape than antique tools tend to be when you find them for sale somewhere.

A sad old Bailey No 5 awaiting rebirth as a usable tool. Rescued yesterday
for $12.00 from the shelf of an antique store.

I really feel you should mourn and doff your cap when you find a pile of old tools in a state of disrepair at a thrift store or in a flea market. It is the sign of a craftsman who failed to pass on his craft to the next generation. Rusted tools given away are the spoor of a dead craft lineage.

Then put your cap back on and buy them.

Apply some elbow grease to rejuvenating these treasures and apply them to keeping the craft alive in new hands that will appreciate them.

For me, this has been especially true with hammers and hand planes.

As you'll know if you've been following along for awhile (or will find out shortly if you're new here) I am something of a tool addict. From the antique stores, thrift shops, and flea markets, I have added to the hoard of 19th century tools I inherited. Or as I see it, I have given new life to tools that were destined for premature retirement on the walls of some kitschy restaurant or the shelves of some "Flea Market Chic" home.

Nothing annoys me more than to see tools used as bric-a-brac except maybe books abused in the same way and for the same reasons. I think tools are beautiful too, but as functional art, not inert sculpture to molder on your shelves. Use them or by God, give them to someone who will.

If you are a crafter, I hope you feel the same way when you see elements of your craft on the shelves at the local Goodwill. My wife supplements her inherited sewing implements with the same fervor I apply to woodworking and leather tools.

As always, the fall of one noble line gives room for new houses to rise and replace them. A quick tour of woodworking blogs will tell you beyond the shadow of doubt that the pursuit of handcraft is alive and thriving. While an increasingly mechanized world has undoubtedly managed to drive many to set aside the love of good tools meant to last generations in favor of ease and speed, the rise of the internet has also brought together communities of those who are fighting to keep their handcraft alive.

I mentioned Ravelry the other day as a gathering place for knitters both historical and modern. For the carpenter and joiner, there is LumberJocks and Sawmill Creek, for leathercrafters there is Leatherworker.net and for other crafts there are many more besides that I've forgotten or just haven't found yet. One of the great elements of these places is the sharing of resources and advice on rejuvenating these thrift store finds.

The wood body hand plane you see to the left is one of many that I've rescued from oblivion. The seller didn't know what they had. They'd duct taped the throat of the thing for some reason (without actually covering the protruding blade, so I've no idea what it was supposed to accomplish) and jamed the blade in backwards with enough force that it took some doing for me to remove it.

Because I do my research before heading out to go looking, I identified by its maker's marks right away as an English-made mid-nineteenth century Varvill & Sons plane. The plane iron (that's the blade) was original and in decent shape with plenty of good steel under all the rust. The tote (that's the handle) is solid with no cracks, a common flaw with antique planes, and just needs to be tightened a bit. It's a bit rough, but where weren't any cracks or splits that went deeper than a quarter inch, which meant I could fill them during the restoration and have a perfectly sound tool to leave to my heirs and they to theirs.

All of which ends with me buying it for $14.00.

If you look hard enough, these things are out there. Even though I really do live out in the middle of nowhere, I can drive less than thirty minutes and find a trove of antique tools. In fact, the closer to the middle of nowhere you get, it seems, the more likely you are to find these things. I've done this all over the United States, and I can tell you that these tools are to be found everywhere if you're looking for them.

I think it's definitely worth noting that if you don't want to restore antiques you can buy new ones that are being lovingly handmade by modern toolmakers. Specialty retailers like Lee Valley and Woodcraft are filled to the rafters with historically-inspired tools. If you want to talk to people making their own, there's St Thomas Guild, and if you want to buy them, there's even a group in England called Daegrad Tools that has begun reproducing museum-quality tools for the reenactor market, based on archaeological finds. I don't have any of their tools yet, but I'm hearing great things about them.

The toolmakers are really the unsung heroes of the craft guilds and the modern crafts movement.

One of the "projects in the background" for this blog has been to procure and restore almost all of the tools I haven't built myself.  At some point I'll do a full series of posts on 'how to evaluate antique tools you intend to use' but I haven't the time to devote to really doing it right at the moment. So you have that to look forward to.

Two important notes, however, that I do want to mention:

1. Antique blacksmith hammers are best avoided. While I do use antique hammers in wood and leatherworking, a hammer intended to use metal-against-metal can be over-hardened by years of use, and thus prone to chip or crack and throw the broken bits in your direction. You'll note as we go forward that all of the metal and forge work I do will be using new hammers.
2. I tend to avoid buying planes that don't have blades unless I'm ready to add $40-$50 (or more) to the purchase price to get a decent replacement that will fit.  When we get to the Worshipful Company of Joiners, we'll discuss what goes into making our own plane blades, and you'll get a better idea of why they're so expensive.

In the meantime, the sun is out and my workshop is calling. I've a tankard that needs hooping and some horns that need to be cut and shaped into useful items. Not to mention a workshop in dreadful need of clearing-out before I can hope to do any joinery worthy of the tools I inherited.

~ Scott