Work like a Roman?

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A couple of comments. If I remember correctly from the series Montalbano set in Sicily the doors have a similarity to the one shown. Double doors and long. I suppose there is a continuation of Roman styles there.
More tv. Some of the best episodes of Time Team featured practical reproductions whether metal casting, pottery, stonework or woodwork.
 
JimB":3g2ra024 said:
A couple of comments. If I remember correctly from the series Montalbano set in Sicily the doors have a similarity to the one shown. Double doors and long. I suppose there is a continuation of Roman styles there.
More tv. Some of the best episodes of Time Team featured practical reproductions whether metal casting, pottery, stonework or woodwork.

What a superb series Montalbano was!!! I really must get the box set for Christmas...just so I can look at the joinery!! :mrgreen:

Thanks for reminding me Jim!

Jimi
 
bourbon":1rrjirpv said:
One of my hobbies is medieval re-enactment with a group of artisans. The group captain was a restoration carpenter for 32 years, He portrays a medieval village carpenter. We usually ask the public to name a modern woodworking tool and we can show them the medieval equivalent. We have not been beaten yet in 14 years of doing it. He could make that door easily and possibly in the middle of a field as well! BTW there is one tool that we cannot replicate in medieval times, can anyone guess what it is?

Well, I know brace auger bits were quite late, and I'd love to see a medieval spiral/Yankee screwdriver!

BugBear
 
AndyT":37qxroz0 said:
Well, adding to what is an interesting discussion, with some more speculation of my own...

I agree that the funny dowelled-in 'filler' bit in the middle is hard to explain but I don't think it was a six panel door. If the top and bottom horizontal rails had been longer, extending to the left, there would have been no need to haunch the mortices where the shutting stile joins them.
We don't know that they were haunched - it may just be a guess. The position of the dowels would make more sense if it was a stub tenon
Also, a cupboard door of double the width would have been inconveniently wide.
Actually surprisingly common in old furniture like big dressers. There are several such in my Regional Furniture Soc journal which has just dropped through my letter box, albeit Elizabehan and not Roman.
........The thing that surprises me most is the idea of letting in quite broad separate long grain pieces to take the mouldings. It's something I've not seen elsewhere. .....
This also is quite common in decorative joinery with raised panels (e.g. fancy Victorian front doors). You can't mould across the grain so you have to set in a long grain piece of moulding and whilst at it might as well do the long grain sides of the panel the same.
 
Hello,

If those tenons on the, what is now the closing stile, were haunched, I wouldn't expect the little short grain bit above the haunches to still be intact after all these years. If hey have cracked and long since dropped out, then the drawing would be correct as the tenon would be visible. However, if that bit is still intact, the notion of haunched tenons there would be an incorrect guess, and they would,indeed, be stub tenons. If stub tenons, the the door is definitely half of a wider one, there is no other conclusion to arrive at. Do we know if that area is intact? Is there a photo of the side of the door? I think the door is quite narrow, myself and could easily imagine a wider one being feasible.

Mike.
 
As I see it, the first assumption is that the rails and stiles are all ploughed through for the panels.
If the tenons are as drawn (haunched) they would look the same, viewed on edge, as if they were just stub tenons, sized to the groove, exposed by cutting a wider door in two.

As you say, a bit of damage would show the internal structure better, if it reveals some of a full length tenon.

I'll pop in to the museum again soon and have another look, but the door is in a glass case, some way back, and very dimly lit, so I don't expect to see anything more.

Overall though, I think the simplest assumption is that Bill Goodman got a good enough look at it to be confident that he had understood how it was put together.

Whatever the case, I think we can all agree that it's an impressive piece of work.
 
AndyT":2a2nk1i0 said:
.....
Overall though, I think the simplest assumption is that Bill Goodman got a good enough look at it to be confident that he had understood how it was put together......
He could be right but unless he verified it by taking it apart or X-raying etc. I think he's almost certainly got it wrong. Everything you can see on the surface says "sawn off door"
 
Consider the width of the hinge stile and then look at the other stile (munting ?) and imagine the width of it being the same if a moulding was present.
The top rail joint has 1 peg on the hinge side and if being done in a workmanlike fashion I would have thought 2 on the other side makes it look odd.
Now, taking that 2nd peg into question, it does seem pretty close to the end grain of the top rail to have been effective, but not so if that rail had continued past it.

Oh to see the edge where that side mortise is cut out :wink:
I think is was caused by both those mid rail mortises (of a wider door) being linked together somehow, maybe when the damage occurred in that area (see the break line?).
Or could it be that the groove for the missing panel was somewhat deeper there?

Any chance of playing the TATHS card Andy and bringing the door with you? :wink: :lol:
 
You've convinced me. Reading back through the posts, I agree that this is most likely a cut down door and that at least some of the tenons will be stubs into the grooves.

I think this is a good example of how valuable a forum discussion can be, bringing together different people with varied experience, who all spend a chunk of their time looking at and thinking about woodwork.

I do think Bill Goodman would have liked it too!
 
bourbon":17tf39i7 said:
One of my hobbies is medieval re-enactment with a group of artisans. The group captain was a restoration carpenter for 32 years, He portrays a medieval village carpenter. We usually ask the public to name a modern woodworking tool and we can show them the medieval equivalent. We have not been beaten yet in 14 years of doing it. He could make that door easily and possibly in the middle of a field as well! BTW there is one tool that we cannot replicate in medieval times, can anyone guess what it is?

Screwdriver?

Bod
 
The Romans loved symmetry.

That closing stile must be 3/4 of the central stile of a cut down door. I reckon whoever-it-was planed off enough to square off what's now the closing stile, to below the bottom of the panel groove, then let in the middle piece to hide the mortices where the second pair of muntins should be, but aren't. It would be neater and slightly quicker (probably) to let in one piece (into a clean mortice) than two small ones. Would you let the piece in first?

In the drawings, those haunched tenons on the closing stile have to be guesses. It might even be they're only as deep as the panel grooves run in the rails (no actual mortice at all).

This would make sense if it was originally a middle stile: the double dowels to keep it in place neatly more than to pull up the joint. They'd have been drawbored less "fiercely" than the others, because of the lack of material outboard on the tenon (so don't over-stress them).

If the drawbore dowels on the hinge side were strongly offset, it explains why there's only one per, too.

And the blindingly obvious bit (to me, anyway) is that this door is decorative. So symmetry: you'd make hinge and closing stiles as simlar as possible, and not have this odd arrangement of M+T to the 'wrong' bits.

That also helps with setting out: As it is now, it's not awkward, but it's unnecessarily fiddly (to my thinking, anyway).
To keep everything as square as possible throughout, you really want to set out the stiles together, not separately.

We also know the Romans used metal hinges on furniture, although not on human-sized doors to their houses. One account I've read says there was a pillar of harder hardwood fixed to the hinge-side stile, and pins made in the ends of that (into holes in threshold and lintel).

Is it possible that the wood where the metal hinges originally fitted is now missing, and some of the rail thickness was used to make the hinge pins when it was cheaply 'repurposed' ? If so, the door would have originally been better proportioned.

Perhaps I just saw too many Hollwood costume dramas as a child (Ben Hur, Cleopatra, etc.).

E.

PS: Andy, do you think there's some sort of overlap or loose tenon on the mitred decorative pieces? It looks as though the pins retain top and bottom which in turn retain the side pieces.
 
I've been looking round a bit as well.

This fragment of a frame and panel door with stuck mouldings was excavated in London in December 2012 - it's known to be Roman because of where it is - and the only thing that sets it apart from much later work is that it has those pins for hinges:

dscn2072.jpg


The rest of the story is here - http://walbrookdiscovery.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/knock-knock/ - but as far as I can see, there's no more detail available yet.

I just want them to dig up a complete Roman plough plane!

Apparently narrow plane irons have been found in Germany, suggesting that the rest of the tool was wooden and had rotted away - the London site is unusual in that it was continuously waterlogged, so lots of organic material has survived, including wooden writing tablets, a basket and 250 leather shoes!
 
I did think that i would get the answer from you all quite quickly. Yes, the tool was a screwdriver, as wood screws didn't come in until much later. However a screw is a fixing so I just hold up a hammer and a nail!!
 
I definitely think you could ask the museum for a better look...even if they don't let you touch it they should be able to let you get up close unders supervision....

Only a thought.

Jim
 
I've been into the museum again for another look, as promised. Unfortunately it's on the left hand side of a deep case so it's impossible to see the left edge. But standing looking at it and thinking 'this is a wider door, cut down,' all the details make sense.

The only new thing I saw that was not mentioned before is that the right side is rounded along the length but with the pins at top and bottom, that's no surprise at all.
 
The typical extraordinarily well-equipped hand woodworker of today (of which I count myself) would struggle mightily to reproduce this door in a reasonable timeframe (if at all), a door made ~1500 years ago.
 
CStanford":3n14d5bs said:
The typical extraordinarily well-equipped hand woodworker of today (of which I count myself) would struggle mightily to reproduce this door in a reasonable timeframe (if at all), a door made ~1500 years ago.
Depends on quantity (economies of scale) and your kit. For me the most time consuming bit would be making up a spindle cutter for the moulding. After that it's bog standard joinery with PT, morticer, spindle, TS (for the slots and bevels on the panels) and sundry hand tools. Soon be able to churn them out!
 
Jacob":38vjln70 said:
CStanford":38vjln70 said:
The typical extraordinarily well-equipped hand woodworker of today (of which I count myself) would struggle mightily to reproduce this door in a reasonable timeframe (if at all), a door made ~1500 years ago.
Depends on quantity (economies of scale) and your kit. For me the most time consuming bit would be making up a spindle cutter for the moulding. After that it's bog standard joinery with PT, morticer, spindle, TS (for the slots and bevels on the panels) and sundry hand tools. Soon be able to churn them out!

I was thinking in terms of hand work, as would have been the case with the Romans.
 
I was browsing the Internet Archive for woodworking books when I saw "Roman Woodworking" by Roger Bradley Ulrich:

https://archive.org/details/RomanWoodworking

This book presents an authoritative and detailed survey of the art of woodworking in the ancient Roman world. Illustrated with over 200 line drawings and photographs, Roman Woodworking covers topics such as the training and guild memberships of Roman carpenters, woodworking tools and techniques, the role of timber in construction and the availability of trees, and interior woodwork and furniture making. It also includes an extensive glossary of fully defined terms. This comprehensive book displays the accomplishment of the Roman woodworkers and their high skill and knowledge of materials and tools. Ulrich helps bring to light the importance of wooden projects and structures in Roman daily life and provides a wealth of information not only for classicists but also for those interested in the history of technology and the history of woodworking.

Unfortunately, the illustrations are not included on the version on that website.
 

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