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WOOD-WORKING. · Inventions of the Century

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Section twenty two of Inventions in the Centry. This is a liber Box recording.
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All liber Box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
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to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Mario Pineda. Inventions
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in the Centry by William Henry Dolittle woodworking in surveying the wonderful road along which
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have traveled the toiling inventors until these splendid fields of the present century have been
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reached. The mind indulges in contrasts and roverts to the fore gone period of
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man's deprivations, when man the animal was fighting for food and shelter, poor
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naked wretches. Wheresoever you are, that by the pelting of this pitiless storm,
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how shall your houseless heads, and on fed sides, your looped and
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widowed raggedness? The venue from seasons such as these, King lear the third
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fourth, when the implements of labor and the weapons of war were chiefly made
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of stone or bronze or iron, such periods became the age of stone or
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bronze or iron. And we sometimes hear of the ages of steam, steel,
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and electricity. But the age of wood has always existed. Wherever forests
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abounded. It was doubtless the earliest age in the industries of man, but
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is not likely to be the latest, as the class of inventions we are
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about to consider, although giving complete dominion to man over the forests, are
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hastening their destruction. As in every other class of inventions, there had been
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inventions in the class of wood working through the ages preceding this centry, in
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tools, implements, and machines, but not until near the close of the
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eighteenth century had there been much of a break in the universal toil by hand.
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The implements produced were, for the most part the result of the slow
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growth of experience and mechanical scale, rather than the product of inventive genius.
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Through the turning lath, the axe, the hammer, the chisel, the
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saw, the auger, the plane, the screw, and cutting and other
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wood shaping instruments in simple forms existed in abundance. The Egyptians used their saws
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of bronze. The Greeks deified their supposed inventor of the saw Talus or Perdix,
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and they claimed Theodore of Lamus as the inventor of the turning lathe.
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Although the main idea of pivoting an object between two supports, so that it
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could be turned while the hens were free to apply a tool to its shaping
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was old in the Potter's Will of the Egyptians, which was turned while the
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vessel resting upon it was shaped and ornamented by the hand and tools. It
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appears also to have been known by the Hindus or the Afrikaans. Pliny refers
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to the curled ships raised by the plain, and Ansonius refers to mills driven
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by the waters of the moselle foresawing marble into Slavs. Early records mentioned saw
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mills run by water power in the thirteenth century in France. Germany and Norway,
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and Sweden had them in the next century. Holland had them one hundred
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years at least before they were introduced into England. Fearful of the entire destruction
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of the forests by the wood jews in the manufacture of iran, and incited
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by the opposition and jealousy of hand sawyers, England passed some rigid laws on
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the subject in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which, although preserving the forests,
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gave for a long time the almost exclusive manufacture of iron and lumber to
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Germany and Holland. Even as late as seventeen sixty eight, a saw mill
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built at Limehouse under the encouragement of these Society of Arts by James Stenfield,
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was destroyed by a mob. Saw Mills designed to be run by water power
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had been introduced into the American colonies by the Dutch more than a century before
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they made their appearance in England. William Penn found that they had long been
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at work on the Delaware when he reached its shores in sixteen eighty two.
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It was nothing indigenous to the climate or race that rendered the Americans inventors.
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The early colonists, drawn from the most civilized countries of Europe, carried to
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the New World knowledge of the latest and best appliances known to the respective countries
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in the various arts. With three thousand miles of water between them and the
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source of such appliances, and between them and deserves of arbitrary power and laws
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to hamper efforts and enterprise, with stern necessity on every hand, prompting them
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to avail themselves of every means to meet their daily wants. All known inventions
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were put to use, and brains were constantly exercised in devising new means to
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aid or take the place of manual labor, which was scarce. Surrounded too
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by vast forests from which their houses, their churches, and their schools must
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be constructed, these pioneers naturally turned their thoughts toward woodworking machinery. The attention
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to this art necessarily created interest in and developed other arts. Thus, constant
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devotion to pursuits strenuously demanding labour Serbian devices evolved a raise of keen inventors and
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mechanics, so that when what had developed his wonderful application of steam to industrial
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purposes, America was ready to substitute steam for water power in the running of
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saw mills. Steam saw mills commenced to bus with the opening of the century.
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As to the relation of that humble machine, the sawmill, to the
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progress of civilization, it was once said, the axe produces the log hut,
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but not until the sawmill is introduced, doue frame dwellings and villagers rise.
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It is civilization's pioneer machine, the precursor of the carpenter, will write,
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and turner, the painter, the joiner, and legions of other professions.
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Progress is unknown where it is not. Its comparative absence in the Southern
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American continent was not the least cause of the triumphin advancement made there during three
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centuries and a half. Surrounded by forests of the most valuable and bariegated timber,
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with water power in mountain streams, equally neglected, the masses of the
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people lived in shanties and mud hobbles, not more commodious than those of the
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Aborigines, nor more durable than the annual structures of birds. Whatever man has
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not fixed and comfortable hums he is as regards civilization, stationary improvement under such
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circumscis anss has never taken place, nor can it. Miller in England in
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seventeen seventy seven had described in his patent as circular saw, and had On
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in seventeen seventy six had vaguely described a planing machine. But the inception of
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the marvelous growth in woodworking machinery in the nineteenth century occurred in England during the
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last decade of the eighteenth It was due to the splendid efforts of General Samuel
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Bentham, an O Brahma and Branch both as to metal working and woodworking machinery.
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General Bentham, a brother of the celebrated jurist Jeremy Bentham, had his
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attention drawn to the slow, laborious and crude methods of working in wood while
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making a tour of Europe and especially in Russia, and engaged in inspecting the
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art of shipbuilding in those countries in behalf of the British Admiralty. On his
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return seventeen ninety one seventeen ninety two, he converted his hum into a shop
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for making woodworking machines. This included planing, molding, rabbiting, grooving,
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morticing and sawing, both in coarse and fine work, in curved winding and
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transverse directions, and shaping wood in complicated forms. Of the amount of bills
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presented to and paid for by the Alberyalty for these machines, General Bentham received
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about twenty thousand pounds. These machines were developed and in use just as the
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new sentry approached. Thus, with the exception of the sawmill, it may
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be again said that prior to this century the mens mankind had to aid them
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in their work in metals. Any wood were confined to hand tools, and
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these were for the most part of a simple and crude description the ground work
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now being laid. This sentry advanced into a region of invention in tools and
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machinery for woodward working of every description, far beyond the wildest dreams of all
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former carpenters and joiners. Not only were the machines themselves invented, but they
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gave rise in turn to a host of inventions in metal working for making them.
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In the same line of inventions, there appeared in the first decade of
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the century one of the most ingenious of men, and the most fitting type
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of that great class of Yankee inventors who have carved their way to renown with
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all implements from the jack knife to the electrically driven universal shaping machine. Thomas
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Blanchard born in Massachusetts in seventeen eighty eight. While a boy, was accustomed
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to astonish his companions by the miniature wind wheels and water wheels that he whittled
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out with his knife. While attending the parties of young people who gathered on
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winter evenings at different homes in the country to pare apples, the idea of
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a pairing machine occurred to him, and when only thirteen years of age,
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he invented and made the first apple pairing machine, with which more apples could
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be paired in a given time than any twelve of his girld acquaintances could pair
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with a knife. At eighteen, while working in a shop, driving the
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heads down on tacks on an ant bill with a hammer, he invented the
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first tack forming machine, which, when perfected by him, made five hundred
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tax a minute, and which has never since been improved in principle. He
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improved the steam engine and invented one of the first envelope machines. He made
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the first metal lathe for cutting out the butts of garden barrels. But his
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greatest triumphs were in woodworking machinery. Challenged to make a machine that would make
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a gun stock, always before that time regarded an impossible task, its every
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part being so irregular, informed, he secluded himself in his workshop for six
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months, and after constant labor and experiments, he at the end of that
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time had produced a machine that more than astonished the entire world, and which
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worked a revolution in the making of all irregular forms from wood. This was
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in eighteen nineteen. This machine would not only make a perfect gun stock,
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but shoe lasts and ships, tackle blocks, axe handles, and a multitude
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of irregular shaped blocks which before had always required the most expert hand operatives to
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produce. This machine became the subject of parliamentary inquiry on the part of England,
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and so great were the doubts concerning it that successive commissions were appointed to
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examine and report upon it. Finally, the English government ordered eight or ten
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of such machines for the making of gunstocks for its army, and paid Blanchet
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about forty thousand dollars for them. He was once jestingly asked at the Navy
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Department at Washington if he could turn as seventy four. He at once replied,
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yes, if you will furnish mid block. Of course, infringers appeared,
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but he maintained his rights and title as first and original inventor after the
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most searching trials in Kurt. The generic idea of Blancher's lathe for turning irregular
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forms consists in the use of a pattern of a device which is to be
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shaped from the rough material, placing such pattern in a lathe alongside of the
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rough block, and having a guide wheel which has an arm, having cutters
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and which guide follows all the lines of the pattern, and which cutters,
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extending to the rough material, chip it away to the depth and in the
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direction imparted by the pattern lines to the guide, thus producing from the rough
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block a perfect representation of the pattern. In the midst of his studies,
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in the construction of his inventions, Blanchard's attention was drawn to the operations of
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a boring worm upon an old oak lug. Closely examining and watching the same
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by the aid of a microscope. He gained valuable likegays from the work of
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his humble teacher, which he incorporated into his new cutting and boring machines.
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His series of machines in gun making were designed to make and shape automatically every
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part of the gun, whether of wood or metal. His machines and subsequent
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improvements by others for boring, mortising, and turning display wonderful ingenuity. A
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modern mortising machine, for instance, is adapted to quickly and accurately cut the
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square or oblong haul to any desired depth with and length by cutting blades to
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automatically reciprocate the cutters both partically and horizontally in order to cut the mortise both
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as to length and depth at one time, and to automatically withdraw the cutters
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when they have finished cutting the mortise. They are provided with simple means for
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setting and fitting the cutters to do this work, and while giving the cutters
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a positive action, ample clearance is provided for the removal of the ships as
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fast as they are cut. From what such inventions will produce in the way
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of complicated and ornamental warmanship, we may conclude that it is a law of
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invention that whatever can be made by hand may be made by machine, and
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made better. Carving machines made their appearance early in this century. In eighteen
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hundred, a mister Watt of London produced one on which he carved medallions and
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figures in ivory and ebony. Also subsequently, John Hawkins of the same city
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and a Mystery Chevertone invented machines for the same purpose. Another Englishman, Braith
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Weight, in eighteen forty, invented the most attractive carving process, in which
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instead of cutting tools, he employed burning as his agent. Heated casts of
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previously carved models were pressed into or onto wet wood, and the charcoal surfaces
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then brushed off with hard brushes. After blanchards, turning lathes and boring apparatus
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appeared machines in which a series of cutters were employed, guided by a tracing
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labor attached to a carved model and activating the cutter to reproduce unmateial Placed upon
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an adjusting table, a copy of the model machines have been embedded, which
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consist of hard iron or steel rudders, on the surface of which are cut
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beautiful patterns, and between which wood previously softened by steam is passed and designs
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thus impressed darn. A similar process of embossing was devised in parties and called
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pyloplasty, by which steam soften wood is compressed in carved molds which give it
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vast relief impressions. But in the carving of wood by hand a beautiful art
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which has been revived within the past generation. There are touches of sentiment,
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taste, and human toil, which, like the touches of the painter and
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the master of music, appealed to cultivated minds in a higher than mechanical sense.
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The meals of the modern gods the inventors grind with exceeding and exact fineness,
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but the work of a human hand upon a manufactured iracle still appeals to
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human sympathy. The bending of wood when heated by fire or steam had been
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known and practiced to a limited extent, but Blanchard invented a clamping machine,
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to which improvements have been added, and by which ship timbers, furniture flaws,
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piano frames, carriage balls, stairs and house banisters and balusters, wheel
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rioms, staves, etc. Et cetera, are bent to the desired forms
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and without breaking. Bending to a certain extent does not weaken wood, but
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the stretching the same has been found to impair and destroy its strength. The
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principal problems which the inventors of the century have solved in the class of woodworking
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have been the adaptation to rapid working machinery of the saw and other blades to
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suburb the plane to smooth, the auger, the bit and the gamlet to
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bore, the hammer to drive, and the combination of all or a part
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of this to shape and finish the completed article. It was a great step
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from the reciprocating hand saw worked painfully by one or two men, to the
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band saw invented by a London mechanic, William Newbury, in eighteen o eight.
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This was an endless steel belt serrated on one edge, mounted on pulleys,
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and driven continuously by the power of steam through the hardest and the heaviest
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work. Pliable to conform to the phases of the wheels over which it is
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carried, it will bend with all these seniosities of long timber. No time
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is lost in its operation, and no labor of human hands is necessary to
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guide it or the object on which it works. At the Bnax Position,
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in eighteen seventy three, the first mammal saw of this description was exhibited.
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The saw itself was made by the celebrated form of Petting and Company of Parties
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upon Machinery, the drawings of which were made by mister bun Pelt of New
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York and constructed by Richards Loudun and Kelly of Philadelphia. The saw was fifty
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five feet long and sawed planks from a pine log three feet thick at the
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rate of sixty superficial feet per minute. The difficulty of securing a perfectly reliable
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world in the endless steel band was overcome by mister Perrin, who received at
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the Party's exhibition in eighteen sixty seven the Grand Cross of the Legion of Earner.
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Now gangs of such sauce may be found in America and elsewhere, and
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circular saws have also been added. Saws that both cut form and plane boards
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at the same time are now known. Boring tools, both for hand and
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machinery, demanded improved meant. Formerly, augers and similar boring tools had merely
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a curved, sharpened end and a concavity to hold the chips, and the
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whole tool had to be withdrawn to empty the chips. It was known as
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a pod auger. In eighteen o nine, Lemidieux, a Frenchman, invented
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an auger with two pods and cutting lips, a central screw and a twisted
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shank. About the same time, Lily of Connecticut made a twisted auger,
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and these screw forms twisted cutting tools of various kinds, with their cutting lips
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and by which the shavings of chips were withdrawn continuously from the hull as the
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cutting proceeded, became so improved in the United States that they were known as
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the American augers ambits. The planing machines of General Bentham were improved by Brahma
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and He and Mosley also greatly improved other woodworking machines and tools in England eighteen
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o two eighteen ten. We have before, in the chapter on metal working
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shown the importance of the slight rest, planner and lathe when combined, and
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which also are extensively adapted to woodworking. In Brahma's machine, a vertical spindle
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carried at its lowered extremity a horizontal wheel having twenty eight cutter blades, followed
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by a plane also attached to a wheel. A board was by these means
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perfectly trimmed and smoothed from end to end, and it was carried against the
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cutters by suitable moving means. William Woolworth of New York in eighteen twenty eight
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patterned a celebrated planing machine which became so popular and its use was regarded so
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necessary in the woodworking trades, that the patent was looked upon as an audious
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monopoly. It consisted of a combination of rollers armed with cutters, attached to
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a horizontal shaft revolving at a great speed, and of means for feeding the
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boards to the cutters with bentams. Brahmans blanchards and Woodward's ideas for a basis.
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Thus, in numerable improvements have been made in machinery by which wood is
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converted with almost lining rapidity into all the forms in which we see it,
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whether ornamental or useful in modern homes and other structures. Some machines are known
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as universal wood workers. In this a single machine is provided with various tools
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and adapted to perform a great variety of work by shifting the position of the
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material and the tools. The following operations can be performed on such a machine.
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Planing, beveling, tapering, tanoning, tonguing and grooving, groups trade,
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circular or angular, making of joints, twisting, and a number of
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other operations. The later invention by a Star of Philadelphia of a flexible shaft
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made up of a series of coils of still wire, given a leather covering,
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and to which can be attached augers, beads, or metal drills.
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The tool applied to its work from any direction, and its erection buried while
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at work, has excited great attention. Shingles are as old in the art
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as the framework of buildings. Rome was roofed with shingles for centuries, made
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of oak or pine tiles. Plane and fancy and slates have to a certain
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extent superseded wood shingling. But the wood will always be used where it can
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be found in plenty, as machines will now turn them out complete faster than
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they can be hauled away. A shingle is a thin piece of wood,
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thicker at one end than at the other, having parallel sides about three times
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as long as it is wide, having generally smooth surfaces and edges. These
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features are now given to the shingle by modern machines. A great log is
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rolled into a mill at one end, and soon comes out at the order
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in bundles of shingles, the log sawed into blocks, the blocks split or
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sawed again into shingle sizes, tapered planed in the direction of the grain of
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the wood, the complete shingles collected and bound in bundles, each operation by
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a special machine or by a series of mechanisms veneering. That art of covering
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cheap or ordinary wood with a thin covering of more ornamental and valuable wood,
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known from the days of the Egyptians, has been vastly extended by modern machinery.
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The practice, however, so emphatically denounced centuries ago by Pliny as the
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monstrous invention of paint and dyes applied to the woods or veinears to imitate other
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woods. As yet its spractitioners and admirers TM. Brunel in eighteen Ozer five,
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eighteen o eight the biased set of circular saws run by a steam engines
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which cut sheets of rosewood and mahogany one fourteenth of an inch thick with great
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speed and accuracy since that day, The benear planting machine for delicately smoothing the
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sheets, the strengthening machine for straightening scrolls that have been cut from lugs,
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the polishing machines for giving the sheets their bright and glossy appearance, the pressing
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machine for applying them to the surfaces to which they are to be attached.
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The hammering machine for forcing out superfluous glue from between eveneer and the piece to
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which it is applied. All of these, and numerous modifications of the same,
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have been embedded and resulted in placing in the hums everywhere many beautiful ornamental
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articles of furniture, which before the barrel rich only could afford to have special
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forms of machinery for making various articles of wood are about us. Numerous are
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the articles themselves. We appear before the house and know before entering that its
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doors and sells, clapboards and window frames, its sashes and blinds, its
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cornices, its embrasures and pillars and shingles, each or all have had a
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special machine embedded for its manufacture. We enter the house and find it is
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so with objects within. The flooring may be adorned with the beautiful art of
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marketry and parquetry, would mosaic work, the wainscoating and the frescoes and ceilings,
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the stairs and staircases, its carved and ornamental supporting frames and balusters,
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the charming mantle frames around the hospitable fireplaces, and every article of furniture we
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see in which we disapart. So too, it is with every useful wooden
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implement, an article within and without the house, the trays, the buckets,
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the barrels, the tubs, the clothes spins, the broom handles,
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the mobs, the ironing and breadboards, and outside the house the fences,
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railings and posts. Many of these objects entirely unknown to the poor of former
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generations, uncommon with the ridge and the machinery for making them unknown to all.
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It was a noble array of woodwork and machinery with which the Nations surprised
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and greeted the world at each of its notable international expositions during the century.
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Each occasion surpassed its predecessor in the beauty of construction of the machines displayed and
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efficiency of their work. The names of the members of this array were hard
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and uncouthed, such as the acts, the ads and the bid the auger
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bark cutting and grinding machines, blind sled, boring and tannoning, dogtail mortising,
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matching and planing, wood splitting, turning, wheeling and planing, wood
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bending, rain boring, thowwelling, fell in, joining, etc. Et
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cetera. These names and the clamor of the machines were painful to the ear,
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but to the thoughtful they were converted into sweeter music when reflection brought to
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mind the hard toil of human hands they had saved, the before unknown comforts
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and blessings of civilization they have brought and were bringing to the human race,
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and the enduring forms of beauty they had produced. To the invention of woodworking
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machinery, we are also indebted for the awakening of interest in the qualities of
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wood for the best number of artistic purposes. It was a revelation at the
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Great Philadelphia Exposition of eighteen seventy six to behold the specimens of different woods from
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all the forests of the Earth, selected and assembled to display their wonderful grain
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and other qualities, and showing how well nature was storing up for us in
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its silent shades. Those crowds which were weighing the genius use of invention to
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convert into forms abuse and beauty for every hum and of Section twenty two