Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/545

Rh JOINERY.] BUILDING 485 Pugin, Clianccl Screens, 4to, 1851, and his Details of Ancient Timber Houses, 4to, 1836 ; Bury, Ecclesiastical Woodwork, 4to, 1847 ; Brandon, Analysis of Gothic Architecture, 4to, 1849 ; Dollman, Ancient Pulpits, 4to, 1849 ; A. Pugin, Ornamental Gables, 4to, 1831 ; and the following foreign publications : Joussc, Le Theatre, de Vart de Charpcntier, fol., 1650 ; Lc Muet, Manure de bien bastir, fol., 1623, translated by Pricke, fol., 1670 and 1675 ; Emy, L&quot;Art de la Charpcntcric, fol., 1841-42 ; Krafl t, L Art de la Char- pentcrv, fol., 1805; UArt de la Charpente, fol., 1819-22, and Supplement by Thiollet, fol., 1840 ; Viollet de Due, Dictionnaire, 8vo, 1857, &c. JOINERY. Joinery is one of the useful arts which contributes most materially to the comfort and convenience of man. As the arts of joinery and carpentry are often followed by the same individual, it appears at first view natural to conclude that the same principles are common to both these arts ; but a closer examination of their objects leads to a different conclusion. The art of carpentry is directed almost wholly to the support of weight or pressure, and therefore its principles must be found in the mechanical sciences. In a building it includes all the rough timber- work necessary for support, division, or connection ; and its proper object is to give firmness and stability. The art of joinery has for its object the addition in a building of all the fixed wood-work necessary for convenience or ornament. The joiner s works are many of them of a complicated nature, and require to be executed in an expensive material ; therefore joinery requires much skill in that part of geometrical science which treats of the projection and description of lines, surfaces, and solids, as well as an intimate knowledge of the structure and nature of wood. A man may be a good carpenter without being a joiner at all ; but he cannot be a joiner without being competent, at least, to all the operations required in carpentry. The rough labour of the carpenter renders him in some degree unfit to produce that kind of accurate and neat workmanship which is expected from a modern joiner ; but it is no less true, that the habit of neatness and the great precision of the joiner make him a much slower and less profitable workman than the practised carpenter in works of carpentry. In carpentry, as before observed, framing owes its strength to the form and posi tion of its parts ; but in joinery, the strength of a frame depends upon the strength of the joinings. The import ance, therefore, of fitting the joints together as accurately as possible is obvious. It is very desirable that a joiner should be a quick workman, but it is still more so that he should be a good one ; that he should join his materials with firmness and accuracy ; that he should make surfaces even and smooth, mouldings true and regular, and the parts intended to move so that they may be used with ease and freedom. It is also of the greatest importance that the work, when thus put together, should be con structed of such sound and dry materials, and on such principles, that the whole should bear the various changes of temperature and of moisture and dryness, so that the least possible shrinkage or swelling should take place. ?ress of In early times very little that resembles modern joinery sry. was known ; every part was rude, and joined in the most artless manner. The first dawnings of the art appear in the thrones, stalls, pulpits, and screens of our cathedrals and churches ; but even in these it is of the most simple kind, and is indebted to the carver for everything that is worthy of regard. Whether in these monuments the carver and the joiner had been one and the same person we cannot now determine, though we imagine, from the mode of joining in some of them, that this was the case. With the revival of classic art great changes took place in every sort of construction. Forms began to be introduced in architecture which could not be executed at a moderate expense without the aid of new principles, and these principles were discovered and published by practical joiners. As might naturally be expected, these authors had but confused notions, with their scanty geome trical knowledge ; and, accordingly, their descriptions are often obscure, and sometimes erroneous. The change from the heavy mullioned casement and its guard of iron bars to the sash windows necessitated some new method of protection, and boxing shutters were invented. The framed wainscot of small panels gave way to the large bolection moulded panelling. Heavy doors, which ivere fomerly hung on massive posts, or in jambs of cut stone, were now framed in light panels, and hung in moulded dressings of wood. The scarcity of oak timber, and the expense of working it, led to the importation of fir timber from the north, which gradually superseded all other material except for the choicest works. But the art is still far short of perfection, and in some respects it seems to have retrograded. It is seldom that large glued-up panels will now stand well. Mouldings of great girth give at the mitres, doors wind, and skirtings shrink from the floors in a way seldom seen in old houses. The sashes, perhaps, are made better than the heavy barred windows of a century and a half ago. In no other respect, however, has joinery made the progress which has been made in other arts. The improved state of machinery has also done but little for its excellence, though the circular saw-bench, the planing-machines, the moulding-machines, and the mortising-machines have done much to reduce the cost of labour. This last machine was suggested in the seventh edition of this work (1830), attention having been drawn to the subject from the improvements in the art of block- making, and it is now used in most of the large establish ments throughout the country. The joiner operates with saws, planes, chisels, gouges, Tools, hatchet, adze, gimblets, and other boring instruments (which are aided and directed by chalked lines), gauges, squares, hammers, mallets, and a great many other less important tools ; and his operations are principally saw ing and planing in all their extensive varieties, setting out, mortising, dovetailing, Arc. Descriptions of the tools, with instructions for using them, may be found in Moxon s Mechanick Exercises, 4to, London, 1677-80, and in Nichol son s Meclianical Exercises, London, 1812. There is likewise a great range of other operations, none of which can be called unimportant, such as paring, gluing up, wedging, pinning, fixing, fitting, and hanging, and many things besides which depend on nailing, &c., such as laying floors, boarding ceilings, wainscoting walls, bracketing, cradling, firring, and the like. In addition to the wood on which the joiner works, he requires also glue, nails, brads, screws, and hinges, and accessorily he applies bolts, locks, bars, and other fastenings, together with pulleys, lines, weights, white-lead, hold-fasts, wall-hooks, &c., &c. The joiners work for a house is for the most part prepared at the shop, where every convenience may be supposed to exist for doing everything in the best and readiest manner ; so that little remains to be done when the carcass is ready, but to fit, fix, and hang, that is, after the floors are laid. The sashes and frames, the shutters, back flaps, backs, backs and elbows, soffits, grounds, doors, drc., are all framed and put together, that is, wedged up and cleaned off, at the shop ; the flooring boards are pre pared, that is, faced, shot, and gauged with a fillister re bate ; and the architraves, pilasters, jamb linings, skirtings, mouldings, &c., are all got out, that is, tried up, rebated, and moulded, at the shop. The joiner very often turns the house he has to fit up into a workshop ; for benches, and a fire for his glue-pot, are nearly all he requires, should he not have the now usmil &quot; general joiner &quot; machine.