Question for hand tool types

[Garrett Lowell]

I have a friend who purchased a home in Jamestown, VA, right on the river. He is restoring the 150+ years-old place.

One room in the house had bookcases on either side of the fireplace (said fp is centered on the wall). The bookcase to the left had been removed. The bookcase which remains is made from 3x18" white oak for the carcase. My friend wants to recreate the missing bookcase. Unfortunately, he can only find 3x12 stock. The question is: how to join the wood with no glue to come up with 3x18 stock for the carcase of the replacement (his requirement). Was there a certain way this was done? Any suggestions or advice that I can pass on to him would be appreciated.

[alteran]

Why the no glue requirement?

[Garrett Lowell]

I think he believes that there was no glue used during the period the house was built.

[hikingchrs]

I belive that they had glue 150 years ago, it was made from horses.
Chris

[alteran]

Glue was used hundreds of years before that home was built. Perhaps he has other concerns?

[hikingchrs]

If you can not use glue maybe epoxy will be acceptable

[alteran]

Originally posted by hikingchrs:
If you can not use glue maybe epoxy will be acceptableWas that used in the period this house was built? smile.gif smile.gif smile.gif

[Garrett Lowell]

No, I think he just wants to be as true as possible to the house.

A little background on this gentleman: He is a direct descendant of the Picketts (yes, those Picketts). He has quit his job here, and is currently restoring his home, with materials from his land. He didn't want to cut down any of his oaks just for this bookcase (some of which are 15 feet in girth, he tells me), so he is using wood from fallen trees.
The only things in his home which use electricity are the refrigerator and the pumps on his oil-fired boiler.
He has no plans to return to work. He is only going to live off his land.

[alteran]

Is he planning to do all the work from fallen tree to finished bookcase with handtools? Sounds like an ambitious project.

[Garrett Lowell]

No, he had the lumber milled at the local lumberyard to the dimensions he required. He has the lumber ready to go, but he's not sure how to go about the joining.

[Hal Forsen]

Hide glue made from various animals ,(horse and rabbit come to mind) has been around since the days of the pyramid builders and would be appropriate to almost any period. This glue is still readily available and is easy to use.

HF

[Bob Smalser]

Hide and fish glue were used originally to lay up shelves and panels where stock wide enuf wasn't available, and Franklin makes both hot and cold hide glues today that are readily available at chairmaker suppliers like Highland Hardware.

If glue really isn't an option, then simply joint the boards and assemble the shelves unglued with the joints in the rear. Once filled with books, none of this will matter.

Boards were also typically cleated to make large panels back then...but that was a lower standard of work likely unsuitable for your book case.

The glueless joinery method that would produce the cleanest joint (that he is capable of cutting, given that he had to ask the question) would be a tapered sliding dovetail on the shelf bottom with the dovetail key made flush to the board surface and driven in tight. Can be done with a router.

http://www.dewalt.com/us/images/articles/wood_dovetails_004_4.jpg

http://www.springharvestfww.com/shakershelves.htm

[ 12-23-2004, 07:01 PM: Message edited by: Bob Smalser ]

[Garrett Lowell]

Thanks Bob, and Hal. I will pass this on to my friend, and he can proceed as he sees fit.

[Steve Lansdowne]

Heck, for authenticity sake, get him an old horse and let him create his own glue!

[Jay Greer]

Hi,
There are several ways to accomplish plank joinery sans glue on the plank edges. Blind Fox Wedged dowels, Blind Fox Wedged Floating tennons (The Chinese and Japanese join boat planks that way) or Blind Housing Dovetails. Any of the three will work, give support to the plank edges and will also be invisible.
Jay Greer

[George Roberts]

Have him wait until a large enough tree falls. Then have it milled to the proper dimensions.

[Mrleft8]

Sounds a little bit eccentric to me... One thought is to cut 2 boards to 10", put a 1" ship lap on one edge of each board, and nail the laps together.
3"x18" boards for a book case? What's it holding, the stone tablets with the 10 commandments?

[helvit]

if it's that critical, find the 18" material. This fellow will never be happy without it.
(And I don't blame him... my guess is that as a direct descendant of Wilson Pickett he might just have the original manuscript for Mustang Sally or even Funky Broadway to enshrine)

[Harry Miller]

How about some bronze drifts?

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

There are some things that cannot be recreated,unfortunately. A prime example is old growth lumber. Wide planks taken from trees in slow growth surroundings are a thing of wonder that are not readily available today.
A flat sawn 18" plank will not have the stability (or the good looks) of a similar quarter-sawn plank from long ago. Even if you can get a modern 18" quarter-sawn plank it will probably have too few growth rings to be as stable as the old stuff. Just trying to match plank width without considering wood movement over time could lead to early failure.
The best that can be done is a glue up of smaller quarter-sawn planks that have been chosen for their high ring counts and color match. Dowels or bisquits would be an advantageous addition for longevity.
Hot hide glue was known to the Romans and will be around for a long time yet because of unique properties that allow it to be renewed over and over. Hot hide glue is used to repair $500,000 colonial antiques so it should be suitable for stuff of lesser value from the same era.
Hope this helps.
Charlie

[Alan D. Hyde]

There ARE old growth oaks around the country big enough to make eighteen-inch close-grained quarter-sawn boards from.

Some of them are in Southern Indiana.

A WoodMizer or other portable sawmill rig can custom-saw him such boards, and the up-and-down saws in use 150 years ago left sawmarks closer to the bandsaw marks than to any other common currently-used power alternative.

Alan

P.S. Some links to sawyers may be found on:

www.woodmizer.com (http://www.woodmizer.com)

[Nick C]

It's possible that there was glue in the joints origanally but something like silverfish ate it over the years.

[Ed Harrow]

He oughta just charge...

[Garrett Lowell]

Well, I step away from the computer for a couple days, and everybody shows up! Lefty, if my pal had a lot more money, he'd be called eccentric. Alas, we (being his close friends) refer to him as a psycho. "Psycho" just endowed me with 53 "2x4s" (actual dimensions: 2.5" x 5"), 12 feet long, old growth white oak, which he found stacked in one of the barns on his property.
Jokes aside, he is a direct descendant of Gen. George E. Pickett. The only plays written are bound to be tragedies......

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

Alan,
Old trees do not equate to the "old growth" of 150 years ago.
One of the last great Eastern deciduous/conifer forests to be clearcut were in Bayfield and Ashland Counties in Wisconsin. It was done between 1890-1910.
A description of the forest at that time emphasized that the great deciduous trees of about 100 feet height were often overtopped by conifers that were taller yet. These emmmence hardwoods grew for hundreds of years in the shade. The tightness of the forest meant that trees would get tall and grow with very tight grain. The wood from that forest is still legendary.
Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of logs sank to the bottom of Chequamegon Bay on the way to the mills. In the last decade many of these logs have been brought up from the bottom. Some have brought as much as $10,000 at verneer mills. If wood of this quality were available in Southern Indiana or Ohio or Pennsylvania nobody would be diving to salvage what's on the bottom of Lake Superior.
The purpose of this diatribe is only to point out that the good stuff that's available today is not the equal of what came out of primeval forests long ago.
The country carpenter who built those bookcases long ago had choices of lumber that we can only dream about. Trying to duplicate his work with today's stock will require careful examination of what's available to avoid having those 18" wide planks corkscrew out of shape when the central heating comes on in the fall.
A very experienced cabinetmaker would be a useful addition to this project.
Charlie

[Garrett Lowell]

"A very experienced cabinetmaker would be a useful addition to this project."

I agree, Charlie, and I have made this suggestion. My pal Clay tells me that the original owner and his family built the house from materials harvested onsite, by themselves, and he wishes to continue that "tradition". I can't tell how old the wood in the other bookcase is, as the patina obscures the ring count. It's not cupped, warped, or cracked, that I can tell, but the lowest shelf has obviously been replaced.

[Paul Scheuer]

At what point does the missing bookcase become part of the authentic "patina" ?

[Alan D. Hyde]

Charlie, I made a point in my previous post of specifying "close-grained."

See Bob Smalser's post on the "Longleaf Yellow Pine" thread in the "Resources" Forum.

As he said, it ain't the age: it's the tightness of the growth rings, which depends upon the conditions under which the tree grew, which conditions affect the rate of growth.

http://pic3.picturetrail.com/VOL12/1104763/3075040/52135894.jpg

***

Alan

[Bob Smalser]

Yeah, Alan...for conifers... but the converse is generally true in ring porous hardwoods like oak, hickory or ash.

There fast growth with fewer rings is stronger because there are fewer large pores.

I can't get excited about age for age's sake...that doesn't guarantee good wood.

I also wouldn't waste my time trying to find 18" wide stock...there's plenty of logs available that'll provide 18" wide boards, but to mill a board that wide that won't warp on you requires a log at least a 40" log in DF and probably a 45" log in White Oak, depending on the sapwood thickness.

Otherwise you merely mill a wide board that has the small cups from near the pith in it....and they often cause warp in straighter DF, let alone WO.

That's why you "old growth" is fondly remembered in hardwoods...from the size of the good boards taken from it....not because the wood was any better.

Moreover, with age comes defect, and you'd be shocked at how much of a beautiful old growth DF becomes mere firewood. That's why we like to see the straighter ones harvested earlier, leaving the crooked ones standing for that irreplaceable critter habitat.

[ 12-28-2004, 04:18 PM: Message edited by: Bob Smalser ]

[Alan D. Hyde]

Having had many long discussions in Maine years ago about "punkin' pine," that's what I was thinking of, Bob. My first house was a Cape Cod built in 1800, with many of the original pine clapboards on it, and with all of the original pine floors still in it.

24" and better old white ("punkin")pine boards were not uncommon in 17th and 18th century Maine houses.

Many of them quarter-sawn and flat as a pancake after 200+ years...

Alan

[Paulyboy]

Originally posted by Garrett Lowell:
those[/i] Picketts). Who are those Picketts?

[Alan D. Hyde]

He's referring to General George E. Pickett, CSA, of Pickett's Charge fame.

Here's a link to a bio:

www.paulmartinart.com/GenGeorgePickett.html (http://www.paulmartinart.com/GenGeorgePickett.html)

And to info. on the famous charge:

http://www.civilwarhome.com/pickettscharge.htm

http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/gettysburg/getty3 2.aspx (http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/gettysburg/getty32.aspx)

***

Alan

[ 01-04-2005, 09:39 AM: Message edited by: Alan D. Hyde ]

[Kermit]

Now someone truly sensitive to the historical value of such a structure would make the repair obviously a repair. Ethical restorers do this, not wanting future folk to miss the fact that it's a repair. Done with furniture, musical instruments, original muzzleloaders...

Tell him to use glue. A building has a history, and that includes maintenance and repair.

Don't take this a an endorsement of vinyl siding, however!