Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/547

Rh MOULDINGS.] BUILDING 487 Athol. It makes excellent steps for stairs, floors, framing, and most other articles. Mahogany, in joinery, is only used where painted work is improper, as for the hand-rails of stairs, or for the doors and windows of principal rooms. For doors it i.s not now so often used as it was formerly, its colour being found to be too gloomy to be employed in large masses. Lime-tree, and the different species of poplar, make very good floors for inferior rooms ; and may often be used for other purposes, in places where the car riage of foreign timber would render it more expensive. Lime-tree is valuable for carved work, and does not become worm-eaten ; but carving is at present seldom used in joinery. From these timbers, the oak and fir especially, the joiner obtains the battens, fillets, boards, and planks, with which he performs all his works, cutting them into scantlings and thin deals as he requires them. Battens are narrow boards running from half jan inch to an inch and a half or 2 inches thick, and from 3 to G or 7 inches wide. A piece of stuff of too small a scantling to be a batten is called a fillet. The term board is applied to sawed stuff when its width exceeds that of a batten, and its thickness does not exceed 2 inches or 2-- inches. The term plank is applied to large pieces of stuff whose width is great in proportion to their thickness, and whose thickness nevertheless does not exceed 3 or 4 inches. In London these terms are used in much more restricted senses than they are here described to mean, because of the fixed and regular sizes and forms in which stuff for the joiner s use is for the most part brought to market there. A batten, to a London joiner, is a fine flooring board from an inch to an inch and a half in thickness, and just 7 inches wide. A board is a piece cut from the thickness of a deal whose width is exactly 9 inches ; and nearly everything above that width, and not large enough to be called a scantling of timber, is a plank. Mouldings, in the Roman and Italian styles, as used in joinery, are generally composed of parts of circles, and differ somewhat from those used in stone. (See Plates Xlir., &c., illustrating the article ARCHITECTURE, in vol. ii.) Mouldings are almost the only part of modern joiners work which can, in strictness, be called ornamental, and conse quently that in which the taste of the workman is most apparent. The form of them should be distinct and varied, forming a bold outline of a succession of curved and flat surfaces, disposed so as to form distinct masses of light and shade. If the mouldings be of considerable length, a greater distinction of parts is necessary than in short ones. Those for the internal part of a building should not, how ever, have much projection ; the proper degree of shade may always be given, with better effect, by deep sinkings judiciously disposed. The light in a room is not sufficiently strong to relieve mouldings, without resorting to this method ; and hence it is that quirked and under-cut mouldings are so much esteemed. The following present FIG. 41. Hounded Edge. FIG. 42 Bead. FIG. 43. Torus. FIG. 44. Torus and Bead. the convex side to the eye : fig. 41 is merely a rounded edge ; fig, 42, of small size, is a bead ; fig 43 of larger size, a torus j and fig. 44 shows the torus and bead together. If there be a deep sinking under a bead (as fig. 45), it is called a quirked or cock bead ; if there be two FIG. 45. FIG. 46. FIG. 47. Quirked Bead. Double-quirked Bead. Heeds. FIG. 48. Ovolo. such sinkings, so as to show three-quarters of a circle in the bead, it is called (fig. 46) a double-quirked bead ; two or more beads, side by side fas fig. 47) are called reeds ; Fio. 49. Hollow. Fia. 50. Flutes. the fourth part of a circle, or half a bead (as fig. 48), is called an ovolo, or quarter round. A moulding composed of two convex parts is also called an ovolo, the upper part FIG. 51. Cavetto. of the curve being continued round into the bed similar to a quirk, as fig. 44. In concave mouldings a simple curved grooving, as fig. 49, is called a hollow, and two or more Fics. 53, 54. Forms of Cyma recta. such grooves are flutes, as fig. 50. A hollow forming the fourth part of a circle is called a cavetto, fig. 51 ; a FIGS. 55, 56. Forms oi Cyma reversa. deep hollow between two fillets, as used in base mouldings, is a scotia, fig. 52. Mouldings which are partly convex FIG. 57. Rebate. FIG. 58. Groove. Flo. 59. Necking. FIG. 60. Fillet. and partly concave, are of two sorts, the cyma recta, as figs. 53 and 54, and the cyma reversa or ogee, as figs. 55 and