Carpentry and Woodwork. Edwin W. Foster
| The Shop—The Most Interesting Place in the World on a Stormy Day | Frontispiece |
| FACING PAGE | |
| The Boy and his Jack Knife | 8 |
| Using the Veining Tool | 118 |
| Using the Jack Plane | 146 |
| Learning to Use the Crosscut Saw | 170 |
| Tools of the Seventeenth Century | 178 |
| The Correct Way to Hold the Chisel | 208 |
| Assembling and Finishing | 374 |
| Staining and Polishing | 484 |
CARPENTRY AND WOODWORK
I
INTRODUCTORY
Two boys sat on a log whittling. Conversation had ceased and they both seemed absorbed in their work. Presently the younger one became aware of the silence and glanced at the older boy. He gave an exclamation and jumped to his feet. "Why," he cried, "you are making a knife out of wood. Isn't it a beauty! Is it a dagger?"
"No" replied the other, "it is a paper-knife for opening letters and cutting the pages of magazines. It is for father's desk, for his birthday."
"It's a dandy!" continued the youngster. "How can you make such fine things? Why can't I do that kind of work?"
"You can do it," replied Ralph, "but just now there are several reasons why you don't."
"What are they?"
"Well, in the first place you start to whittle without having any clear idea of what you are at work on. It's for all the world like setting out to walk without knowing where you are going. If you start that way, the probabilities are that you will get nowhere, and when you get back and father asks where you have been, you say, 'Oh, nowhere; just took a walk.' That's the way with your knife work. You just whittle and make a lot of chips, and when you get through you have nothing to show for your time and labour. If you want to know a secret—I never start to cut without first making a careful sketch of just what I want to make, with all the important dimensions on it.
"Another reason you don't get any results is that you don't know how to hold your knife, and still another is that you work with a dull tool. Why, that knife of yours is hardly sharp enough to cut butter."
"Will you show me how to do that kind of work?" asked the youngster humbly.
"Yes; on certain conditions."
"What are they?"
"That you will do just as I tell you."
"Will you show me how to make a paper-cutter now?"
"There you go, right off the handle! You are like a young man learning carpentry; you want to start right in to build a house instead of first learning how to use your tools. Why, it has taken me two years in the manual training school to learn how to do this work. No, indeed, if you want to learn how to do woodwork like this you must begin on something simple, learn how to handle wood, and how to keep your tools sharp."
"All right," sighed the younger boy; "I am willing to take lessons and begin at the beginning. What shall we do first?"
"The first thing to do is to throw away your folding penknife. That kind is of very little use. The steel is so poor it won't hold a cutting edge for any time at all, and the knife has a treacherous habit of closing up on your fingers. I will give you a good Swedish whittling knife like mine, and we will start by putting a good cutting edge on it."
So the boys began the first lesson. The fun they had and the things they made, their many experiences, the patience required, and the great skill developed with tools are described in the following pages. What they accomplished, any other boy may do if he will but apply himself with all his energy.
II
FIRST EXPERIMENTS—THE KNIFE AND ITS POSSIBILITIES
The older boy, after a search through his treasure chest, selected a knife with a blade about two and a half inches long.
Incidentally, the smaller boy caught a glimpse of the inside of that chest and it made his eyes bulge—but that is another story.
Fig. 1. The whittling knife
"This knife," explained Ralph, "is one I used for over a year in school and it's the most perfectly shaped tool for whittling that I have ever seen. Of course knives come in hundreds of shapes for different purposes, and later on, when you have become skilled in using this one, we will try some others, but our first motto must be 'one thing at a time.' A knife with either blade or handle too long or too short is awkward, but this one seems to fit my hand, and undoubtedly will fit yours. Try it."
Harry took it and went through the motions of whittling an imaginary stick.
"Now," said Ralph, "we will go out to the wood pile and see what we can find. White pine makes the best wood to start on, because it is usually straight grained, soft, and free from sap; but it is getting scarce and expensive, so we must be economical, as it is a very easy matter to waste lots of lumber."
After some searching, they found part of a pine board, about a foot long and an inch thick. Ralph chopped out a piece with a hatchet and deftly split it to about an inch and a half wide. His skill was a revelation to Harry, who saw that even a hatchet could be used with precision.
"Now," said Ralph, "I want you to cut this piece of rough pine to a smooth, straight piece, just an inch square."
"Oh, that's easy," replied Harry eagerly. "Just watch me."
"Take care," said Ralph. "I said an inch square; anything less than an inch will be wrong. Just imagine that this is a problem in arithmetic and you are trying to find the answer. If you succeed in making it just an inch square the answer will be correct; anything larger or smaller than the exact size will be wrong. In the first place, hold your knife so that it makes a slant or oblique angle with the wood, like this (Fig. 2)," he said, taking the wood in his left hand and the knife in his right. "That gives what we call a paring action, and is much easier (Fig. 3) than the stiff way you were holding it, at right angles with the stick."