How did they thickness the boards before the advent of machines

[tibi]

Hello,

I have a rather small project (kneeling chair), which I designed for myself (PC work & lower back pain). I would like to do it entirely by hand, as it would be a good practice for me.

I would like to ask how did they thickness boards before machines were used? Did they marked and thicknesses each individual board to become coplanar and parallel and then they found the thinniest board and thicknessed all remaining boards to this minimum thickness? For a machine it is easy to run all the boards again through a thicknesser and set it to the lowest thickness that was measured from all the boards, but if I have to layout the perimeter around each board according to the thinniest board found and plane every board to that thickness, then it seems to be a lot of work.

And before making all the boards coplanar and parallel, I cannot estimate the greatest common thickness, that will yield coplanar results from all the boards.

Thank you.

 

[Lorenzl]

Sawed them to size from the log? I would guess when you have made a few hundred boards you get rather good at it

Google could probably give you some guidance.

 

[tibi]

I have seen many videos and read some books on the subject, but everywhere it is explained how to plane and thickness an individual board, not how to do the whole project, when you want to have identical thickness on multiple boards. So I wanted to ask someone who milled the boards by hand and build actual furniture from them (if anyone is still alive).

 

[Ttrees]

Joint at least two best faces and achieve flat, make at least one parallel if not wanting to do three.
Match the rest of the faces to one of those flattened pieces and then find the lowest spot with the calipers/pencil gauge line.

A lot easier with a flat bench to find the lowest spot, and all the rest
And if a good lot of material needs to be removed, you could leave it this state before going down to the line, incase the flattened face moves.

Regarding your question though, look at Follansbee's channel for this information.

Tom

 

[sploo]

Boards would usually be rough sawn to a thickness known to have enough margin to produce a planed board of the required thickness for the design. A board could be too bowed to produce a good enough planed board, but you'd just ensure you chose a sufficient number of (reasonably straight) sawn boards to produce the planed stock you need.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Back when I started in the 60s and for a few years after until I had access to machines I did what was always done, and if that meant getting several parts to the same thickness the technique was common throughout. Naturally we started with material that was of a common rough sawn thickness so, for example, if I had to get a number of parts to finish at 18 mm I/we started with boards nominally 25 mm thick. We cut long boards to a length an inch (~25 mm) or so longer than was needed, then rough sawed a bit over the required width if required using a hand rip saw. Next was planing the face side and a face edge with whichever planes were best suited to the job, e.g., a no 5, a 6 or 7, sometimes a scrub plane.

It was basically get one face flat and one edge straight of all the selected boards. Then set a marking gauge to the required board thickness and mark all around every board from the face side, i.e., mark both edges and both ends of every piece and plane down to the gauge line. Finally, mark a width line on both faces from the face edge, with either a marking gauge or if the part was wide, maybe a panel gauge, and plane or saw and plane down to that line.

What makes hand processing relatively numerous boards to dimension by hand reasonably tolerable with planes is having the right type of planes and technique. For instance, you usually need to remove a lot of wood quickly to start with and I've had in my possession for nearly fifty years an old wooden try plane that, set rank, will remove a lot of wood quickly, and a mixture of diagonal, cross-grain and with the grain strokes can get the worst of the kinks out very quickly. True, the surface left behind is pretty scalloped and frequently has tear out, but but basically flat. It's at that point you switch to a plane with a more refined setting, e.g., a metal no 5 or no 7 to improve the quality of the face side's surface, and possible the face edge prior to undertaking the rest of the dimensioning.

Nowadays I wouldn't willingly take on a major job of hand truing and dimensioning, but it's certainly doable, and going back 150 years or so there were people in the trade in larger workshops whose only job, day after day, was dimensioning wood by hand for craftspeople further down the making chain to work with. Of course, back then, if they could get away with it, they'd only flatten one face and true up two edges; for example there's many an antique table rail I've come across that's true on the show faces and as rough as a badger's backside on the back face where it's not seen easily. Slainte.

 

[grumpycorn]

I think that a couple of hundred years ago the available boards could be a lot wider, so projects would be planned around what was an easy thickness to achieve, or what could be bought in from a mill.

I think though it’s as suggested - plane up a face side on each board and then see what the thinnest board is.

I’ve read that on some old furniture, components aren’t even thicknessed if they’re hidden, they’d just flatten one face and edge and just use it. Makes sense if you’re doing everything by hand!

 

[Droogs]

Richard has pointed out the main way to do it and it was certainly done when it was being paid for but generally if it is not seen or structural then it would not be worked, except to get it flatish so as not to impinged the piece going together.

 

[sawtooth-9]

You just have to go back to early ship building.
There is some great documentation of building the early Tasmanian trading ketches.
They cut a tree
Dug a pit
With a long hand - saw, one person in the pit and one above ground, the tree was cut lengthwise ( usually !/2 of the tree was used for the keel ) The other half was then pit sawn again to form two gunwhales.
The final dressing was done with an adze - to get the sizes needed
Planking was done the same way - with every second plank attached to the sawn frames using "tree nails " By the time the first stage of planking was done the alternate planks were seasoned and dry - these were called "shutters"
The drilling for the keel bolts was done with a hand auger, and each hole took 1 man a full day to drill. Later, with the first electric drills, 1 man could drill a hole in a matter of a couple of hours.
That's why we have machines - makes life easier and faster.
I would not have liked to be the one in the bottom of the pit !

 

[Jameshow]

I've regularly brought sawn boards they are cheaper and rather than getting 3/4 stock you can limit what you plane off and have an almost 1" thick table or chest of drawers top.

I tend to select the best and most simalar boards early on in the project.

Scrub plane them to a reasonable standard, match then up with alternate growth rings plane the edges to be jointed together.

Glue up and finally plane.

I've used them for stools and step Ladders too.

I'm no expert though.....just a "could do better!"

 

[Jacob]

Hello,

I have a rather small project (kneeling chair), which I designed for myself (PC work & lower back pain). I would like to do it entirely by hand, as it would be a good practice for me.

I would like to ask how did they thickness boards before machines were used? Did they marked and thicknesses each individual board to become coplanar and parallel and then they found the thinniest board and thicknessed all remaining boards to this minimum thickness? For a machine it is easy to run all the boards again through a thicknesser and set it to the lowest thickness that was measured from all the boards, but if I have to layout the perimeter around each board according to the thinniest board found and plane every board to that thickness, then it seems to be a lot of work.

And before making all the boards coplanar and parallel, I cannot estimate the greatest common thickness, that will yield coplanar results from all the boards.

Thank you.
View attachment 136785

Unless you are really going back to basics you buy sawn boards close to the thickness of the design components.
In turn you might modify the design to match up with what is available in sawn sizes so that you aren't wasting material
Before planing anything you cut the boards, rip saw and/or crosscut saw, close to size of each component of your design, with a good margin for planing, rule of thumb 6mm over the finished size. It's much easier to handle and less wasteful than reducing long/wide stock to size. Very short pieces you might leave together as one longer piece for ease of handing.
Then choose best faces and plane them flat.
Choose best edge and plane it straight and square to the face.
With marking gauge mark the other edge and rip saw or/and plane to it, square to the face.
Mark all round for thickness and plane the other side down to the marks.
Preferred plane for this sort of stock preparation would be a 5 1/2
You might need a rip saw for longitudinal cuts but a hand saw will do.
You then need tenon saw for the joinery, and mortice chisels.
Winding sticks help to show twist, a short straightedge (combi square ruler most used) for checking across for flatness. Straightness you check by eye.

 

[HamsterJam]

My guess is that back in the day, the boards processed by hand were not as accurately sized as the tolerances we we achieve using machines today.
Some of the craftsman’s skill will have been hiding the variances. i.e. it would be difficult to spot if one side of a table apron is slightly thicker than the others.

 

[Spectric]

With a long hand - saw, one person in the pit and one above ground, the tree was cut lengthwise (

I think that technique was normal, maybe not always with a pit but when I visited the Chatham dockyard this was how they cut logs down. The new guy got the job below and one day he would progress and get the nicer job above.

 

[Jacob]

My guess is that back in the day, the boards processed by hand were not as accurately sized as the tolerances we we achieve using machines today.
Some of the craftsman’s skill will have been hiding the variances. i.e. it would be difficult to spot if one side of a table apron is slightly thicker than the others.

True to some extent, if it didn't really need doing it might not be done, backs of thing often very rough.
Stock boards weren't processed by hand except being sawn to size, perhaps trimmed with axe or adze. The planing starts later!
Can be as accurate as you want if you use a normal marking gauge. n.b. the cheapo woody gauges are much nicer to use than those horrid little metal ones.

 

[Adam W.]

@tibi How far back in time do you wish to travel ?

 

[tibi]

@tibi How far back in time do you wish to travel ?

1850s/1900s

 

[tibi]

Back when I started in the 60s and for a few years after until I had access to machines I did what was always done, and if that meant getting several parts to the same thickness the technique was common throughout. Naturally we started with material that was of a common rough sawn thickness so, for example, if I had to get a number of parts to finish at 18 mm I/we started with boards nominally 25 mm thick. We cut long boards to a length an inch (~25 mm) or so longer than was needed, then rough sawed a bit over the required width if required using a hand rip saw. Next was planing the face side and a face edge with whichever planes were best suited to the job, e.g., a no 5, a 6 or 7, sometimes a scrub plane.

It was basically get one face flat and one edge straight of all the selected boards. Then set a marking gauge to the required board thickness and mark all around every board from the face side, i.e., mark both edges and both ends of every piece and plane down to the gauge line. Finally, mark a width line on both faces from the face edge, with either a marking gauge or if the part was wide, maybe a panel gauge, and plane or saw and plane down to that line.

What makes hand processing relatively numerous boards to dimension by hand reasonably tolerable with planes is having the right type of planes and technique. For instance, you usually need to remove a lot of wood quickly to start with and I've had in my possession for nearly fifty years an old wooden try plane that, set rank, will remove a lot of wood quickly, and a mixture of diagonal, cross-grain and with the grain strokes can get the worst of the kinks out very quickly. True, the surface left behind is pretty scalloped and frequently has tear out, but but basically flat. It's at that point you switch to a plane with a more refined setting, e.g., a metal no 5 or no 7 to improve the quality of the face side's surface, and possible the face edge prior to undertaking the rest of the dimensioning.

Nowadays I wouldn't willingly take on a major job of hand truing and dimensioning, but it's certainly doable, and going back 150 years or so there were people in the trade in larger workshops whose only job, day after day, was dimensioning wood by hand for craftspeople further down the making chain to work with. Of course, back then, if they could get away with it, they'd only flatten one face and true up two edges; for example there's many an antique table rail I've come across that's true on the show faces and as rough as a badger's backside on the back face where it's not seen easily. Slainte.

Thank you very much. This is pretty much how I have been working now. I have a wooden Mathieson & Sons jack plane with a very cambered blade that I use for quick wood removal. There is some tearout, but I can get the board pretty flat. Then I use no.6 Stanley, and rarely no.4, if needed. Most of the time, I can get the wood smooth with no.6 without the need of no.4. For me, sawing 30mm+ thick boards is more tiresome than planing.

 

[tibi]

Unless you are really going back to basics you buy sawn boards close to the thickness of the design components.
In turn you might modify the design to match up with what is available in sawn sizes so that you aren't wasting material
Before planing anything you cut the boards, rip saw and/or crosscut saw, close to size of each component of your design, with a good margin for planing, rule of thumb 6mm over the finished size. It's much easier to handle and less wasteful than reducing long/wide stock to size. Very short pieces you might leave together as one longer piece for ease of handing.
Then choose best faces and plane them flat.
Choose best edge and plane it straight and square to the face.
With marking gauge mark the other edge and rip saw or/and plane to it, square to the face.
Mark all round for thickness and plane the other side down to the marks.
Preferred plane for this sort of stock preparation would be a 5 1/2
You might need a rip saw for longitudinal cuts but a hand saw will do.
You then need tenon saw for the joinery, and mortice chisels.
Winding sticks help to show twist, a short straightedge (combi square ruler most used) for checking across for flatness. Straightness you check by eye.

Hello Jacob,

Thanks,this is the procedure that I generally follow. I always cut to length and width with some surplus, because planing whole boards is inefficient.

I have some oak boards that are leftover from a disassembled garden bed. It was originally painted with some brown water-based color. Some of the boards have too many cracks all over the place to be used and some are affected by some sort of fungus. so I need to plane the first face to see if the board is without the fungus. But it is a small project, so I will at least get rid of all the wood, than cannot be further used from the old garden bed.

As I do not have a planer and I do not have space for one, I will use electric hand held planer so get rid of the painted top to see quickly if the board underneath is usable or garbage.

 

[Jacob]

.......

As I do not have a planer and I do not have space for one, I will use electric hand held planer so get rid of the painted top to see quickly if the board underneath is usable or garbage.

I'd use an ECE scrub. Made for the job - old timbers, paint etc. Surprisingly fast and a pleasure to use. Doesn't matter if you nick the blade on a nail you just keep going (after removing the nail of course) Very tight camber (25mm radius? I'll check) gouges deep into the cleaner wood below.

 

[tibi]

I'd use an ECE scrub. Made for the job - old timbers, paint etc. Surprisingly fast and a pleasure to use. Doesn't matter if you nick the blade on a nail you just keep going. Very tight camber (25mm radius? I'll check) gouges deep into the cleaner wood below.

I have a similar one from Czech company Pinie. So I can use this.