Saw technique on period furniture

Regarding oversaw on half blind dovetails.  It has always been my understanding that this was a particular trait of English cabinetmakers, while the Germans and Continentals stopped at the scribe lines.  That may explain why a lot of the stuff you see in central PA have no overcutting since there was a large German influence, while the Philly area the over cut is more prevalent.  I have read this before and remember Chuck Bender talking about it last time I was in his shop.
 
"So, Mike, when did dovetails become the standard for drawer and carcasse construction in America"

I say during the William & Mary era, say 1700-1730. Prior to that, most furniture was made by joiners from riven (split) stock and drawers were side hung. The pit saw really killed the deal for joiners as furniture makers in America and opened the door for cabinetmakers with dovetailed construction, not only for drawers but the case as well.

Here is how Wallace Nutting decribes the change that took place at the beginning of the 18th century, his bias in favor of joined pilgrim/riven oak construction shows but he makes some valid points.

"There was no advance made by 18th century cabinetmakers, when they abandoned the scheme of frame and panel universal in the 17th century. Particularly in the great highboys and secretaries, the wide ends split. How could it have been thought possible, in a glued-up surface twenty-seven inches wide, that anything else would happen? The scheme of dovetailing everything was good, but the abandoning of panels was very unfortunate. The scheme was really the adoption of the board construction scorned in the 17th century. The consequence is today that large mahogany surfaces go to pieces, whereas the old oak goes on forever"
 
Dovetailed draws were actually being used frequently in the 17th century, although they were still in paneled cases, and Nutting is certainly correct about the durability of wainscott construction.
I may have missed your point, but I don't think pitsawing had much to do with the success or failure of joiners. There wasn't much pitsawing done in the colonies. I think even the Fairbanks house has watersawn floor joists. Maybe Follansbee will weigh in on this-Al
 
Al,
According to my information, pitsaws were the main industrial tool of 18th century america, indeed, pit sawers were one of most highly paid trades of the day. Although water powered saws were available in urban settings, unless one was within a very short distance, it was much easier to dig a pit and employ sawers to mill boards from logs.

"In early English North America, the pit saw was one of the principal industrial tools. It was a two-man saw (generally) operated over a pit across which the logs to be cut into boards were mounted. The saw was "a strong steel cutting-plate, of great breadth, with large teeth, highly polished and thoroughly wrought, some eight or ten feet in length" (Upham Hist. of Salem v1, p 191) with a handle on either end. The pit saw took at least two men to operate. One stood in the pit - the pitman, who was responsible for raising the saw on the backstroke - and the other was above - the sawyer, responsible for guiding the cut. The workers at a pit saw were some of the best paid in early colonial North America."


Although dovetails have been round for thousands of years ,generally speaking, they really were not  employed in furniture making until 18th century boarded construction
 
And so, according to this narrative, the golden age of cabinetmakers began, william & mary, queen anne, chippendale, hepplewhite/sheraton. At that point a saw comes into play again, the circular saw, some say invented by Tabitha Babbitt in 1813, a sister in the harvard mass Shaker community.
When the circular saw met steam power around 1850, the age of hand made furniture in america ended. It was a brief 150 years, much shorter than the joiners dominance however, a spectacular period that still inspires today.
 
Pit saws! I would consider this to be one of the most direct connection to slavery in the American furniture trade other than the actual harvesting of lumber. I would think to believe otherwise would be quite naive.
 
Did someone mention my name?
I saw parts of this thread, it has now wiggled quite a ways; but that’s the nature of these things. I do have a few comments. I believe that DTs did become common for case work in the late 17th/early 18th centuries…but that’s really outta my realm.

To say that prior to that most furniture was made of riven stock is a simplification. The joined work made in New England mostly used riven oak as its primary wood, but the most common secondary wood was millsawn white pine. Sawmills were operating in New England as early as 1634 or 35 in what is now Portsmouth, NH if I recall correctly. Certainly they were common in most Massachusetts towns by the late 1630s…sawing white pine boards mostly, although we do see some millsawn oak boards now & then in the furniture.

Pit sawing had little to do with New England furniture; it did play in house carpentry and particularly ship carpentry. I can count on one hand the number of documented pieces of 17th NE furniture that exhibit evidence of pitsawn surfaces. And have fingers left over.

For Nutting to say “…board construction scorned in the 17th century” is the most pinheaded thing I’ve read of his in a while. But he was a master at the pinheaded comment. ALL joiners, and many carpenters of the 17th century, either in New or Old England used boarded construction, in some cases, more than joined work. It’s just that their boarded work was nailed together, rather than dovetailed. In England these boxes & chests were almost always pitsawn oak. In New England the so-called “six-board” chests were millsawn white pine. cheap, therefore more common than joined work. They were/are ubiquitous.

For pitsawyers to be highly paid is quite a stretch, unless something happened in the eighteenth century very different from the seventeenth. Pitsawyers were pretty lowly workmen. Crucial, yet low-status for sure. So that history that James was quoting is bunk, says me. (sorry, James) – and the pitman doesn’t raise the saw on the backstroke, he pulls down to make the cut. The top man brings the saw up. Everyone always pictures the pit to be, well, the pits. I have done it a lot. I like the bottom much more than the top. To bring that saw up over your head requires great strength, and you are also balancing on an increasingly tenuous piece of timber. and walking backwards. The pitman has both feet on the ground, and is using gravity to aid him, and moving forwards.  The sawdust only gets to you when the wind blows wrong, down into the pit.

Have any of the 18th c  folks found evidence of pitsawn surfaces on furniture? Seems weird to me.  There, I’ve caused enough trouble tonight.
 
Peter,

Glad to hear someone else is name dropping you.  I was starting to feel like a stalker!

I've seen pit saw marks on some case Philadelphia pieces.  I've seen them on the undersides of Goddard and Townsend stuff (at that exhibit in the Met a few years back).  I've also seen rive marks on drawer components.  These marks seem to be more prevalent on New England furniture than London or Philadelphia pieces, at least the samples I have seen.

I'm not sure what Allan's original question was.  He was referring to a Schwarz article where Chris was outlining different strategies for efficient sawing.  It seemed logical to me, but I don't see how to attribute the same sentiment to early craftsmen.  And that wasn't Schwarz' intent as far as I could tell.  

My advice to Allan is to do what I think he is already doing- try building without power tools first, and see what you come up with.  In my experience, saws and sawing became the important tools and skills, not planes.  

I like Al Breed's discussion of the cult of tool.  I think I may disagree as I understand him.  For you Peter, I've seen the sorts of saws you use.  I was really hoping I could make you some more accurate saws before I closed shop.  I was wondering if early 17th c saws would have some profound effect on your work.  I even looked into the mech properties of hardened wrought iron (the material I think they used for saws then).  I was looking for a cheap substitute with similar properties.  

That said, we have saws that are copies from Moxon in Pennsbury Manor.  Our saws are steel.    One of my favorites is a saw we call "the bread knife" (you probably know the one from Moxon).  It looks improbable, but works fine.  We've quickly learned how to use it just about as well as a back saw.  So maybe Al Breed is right.  Maybe the focus on tools can cause us to loose sight of the work.  A good craftsman can make anything work.

On sawyers wages, I did some math using the Head account.  I figured when guys entered 2500 feet of board, we could approximate those boards as having an average width of 12" and calculate the cost per bd ft (assuming 1" thick pieces).  What I found was that 2500 feet of one species was generally equal to 3500 feet of another, when divided by the number of feet.  Said differently, the Head account had very similar "per foot" prices for different species.  Accounts from other sources seem to gravitate around the 1d/ft (or a little less) figure for sawn stuff.  Using my $1000/L1 conversion, that put their lumber abour the same price as ours $2-4/bdft.

I then calculated how many feet would need to be sawn by 2 men for each to make 5s/day.  (5s/day seemed to be the standard wage for Philadelphia journeymen almost throughout the 18th c).  I believe the answer was 350 linear feet.  I asked Underhill and Teb Boscana and Garland Wood.  I think it was possible to saw that much, if everything was prepared and ready.  But that isn't real life.  As a result, the prices in the Head account, as I figured it, would have made it hard for a sawyer to earn 5s/day.

Adam
 
Good Discussion!
So they cheated the pitsawyers on their wages huh, dang, i hate that considering the work involved. Of the 18th century pieces i have examined or collected over the years i have seen both pitsaw & the more vertical sawmill marks however what i mostly see are plane marks on the interior/backs of pieces. It seems they didnt bother with smoother type planes much on the interiors or backs of pieces.

Gee Wiz Peter, easy on the old man (nutting), i realize he got alot of stuff wrong but as far as wide single board dovetail construction splitting, he was correct. Of the 4 pieces of 18th century furniture i have now, every one of them built that way has a split/crack in them, either on the top or side of the case.

 
Speaking of Christopher Schwarz, i have never seen him post here, how come? I just finished reading his latest book "The Joiner & Cabinet Maker", a really well done account of wood working in early 19th century England. Very enjoyable read.
 
Thanks for the input, Peter.
I've looked at a lot of period stuff and seen only a few instances of pit sawing. I have seen some shop-resawn stock, however, where it was evident that they needed some thin stuff and just ripped it. I've seen this on the backboards of a Townsend three draw chest as well as in several pieces from Colchester, Conn. These resawn pieces have fine kerf patterns, as opposed to the rough pit saw marks.
Where I sit now is a mile from the Great Works River, one of the first waterpower sites in the colonies. As Peter pointed out, there were saw mills very early on. In the Piscataqua river area of southern NH and Maine there were at least 40 sites by 1660, if I remember correctly from an article by Richard Candee on waterpower in the region from years ago.
In England there was a lack of lumber and a bunch of sawyers. The sawyers actually burnt down a power sawmill because it put sawyers out of work. Here it was the opposite problem which is why you see little pit sawing except far from the population centers.-Al
 
I love these threads, even when, or perhaps especially when they wander.  I don't have a lot to add but I would comment on Adam's comments on wages.  It is extremely difficult to compare wages and currencies over centuries.  A sawyer's wage may certainly have been very low, but it had to be enough to survive on--or there would have been no sawyers except where slavery reduced the cost of labor and made job mobility impossible.  Once you have mills and transportation, pit sawing rapidly disappears, except when it is impossible to move the logs to the mill and sawing has to be done before the lumber is moved or on a construction site.  What is truly remarkable is the initiative and ingenuity that created the machine alternatives to this kind of labor in some parts of the world and led to progress in so many fields.
 
My understanding is that powered saw mills were used in the colonies because of labor shortages/high prices for skilled labor.

On comparing wages with folks living hundreds of years ago, it's too true that this is unscientific and hinky.  But if you try my $1000/L1 you will find it extraordinarily robust.

Likewise, my analogy, 18th c cabinetmakers were similar to modern auto mechanics is also instructive.  It seems there are more similarities than differences. 

Adam
 
Well, according to my info, pitsaws were used to mill logs into lumber when building the Capitol building in Wash DC
http://uschscapitolhistory.uschs.org/articles/uschs_dome-03.htm

Ditto the Univ of Va, according to Frank Grizzard"18. Water-powered saw mills, for instance, were only beginning to find their way into the Virginia Piedmont; hence much of the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of feet of raw lumber used in the building of the university was sawed by hand, in a pit-saw, by two-men crews. It was dirty, hard, time-consuming work. Wages for workmen were always low, and for slaves lower still (see appendix B). "
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/grizzard/intronote.html

To me though, all this is back & forth over wages, pitsaw VS water powered saw is kind of irrelevant, the important point is the SAW. Whether powered by 2 men, water or windmill, poorly paid or highly paid, at the end of the day it's the advance & availability of these saws ( which were basically all the same technology, no matter how powered)  that mattered.


 
Mount Pleasant (built c1760) appears to have mechanically sawn timber in it.  It's possible (evidence suggests*) water powered mills were in use in the early 18th c in the Delaware Valley.  I would assume powered saw operations would be concentrated in high population areas.  Wouldn't think 18th c Virginia, or early 19th c Washington DC would fit that definition.

I agree that the saws were important.  Along that vein, of particular interest to us may also be the quality of the lumber they produced.  Unlike modern lumber producers, pit sawyers could follow the grain of the wood.  In fact, it's easier for them to do so.  The resulting lumber would be more stable.  The samples I've seen from Williamsburg indicate that pit saw teams could produce dimensionally accurate lumber.  The surface qualities seem to rival some band sawn stock I've seen.

Adam
* In the account book of John Head, Head purchased lumber (actually, I think he paid for the lumber to be sawn) from a sawyer in Burlington City NJ, approx 25 miles up river from Philadelphia.  He also paid for "horlen" (hauling) the lumber to and fro.

We know there was at least one water powered saw mill in Burlington City along the river bank in the 18th c.  What I've never seen is how old it was.  Some folks have suggested Head sent his timber to Burlington specifically to access the powered mill, which may have been cheaper or produced material of higher quality.  Pit saw operations along Philly's river bank are documented in Head's time, so it's not like the Burlington site was the closest. 

It's also possible Head was patronizing fellow Quakers.  Many Quakers lived in Burlington.  The early 18th c  meeting still stands in High Street in there.  It's possible the journey was inconsequential.  The tide must be a good 3 knots.  I recall jumping off the bow of an anchored Cherubini 44 as a child http://www.cherubiniyachts.com/44_gallery.html and surfacing at the stern!  I can imagine it may have been easy to barge lumber on the river.
 
In Instruments of Change by the NH Historical Society, its noted that water-powered saw mills were being built in 1633 on the Piscataqua, near Al Breeds school, and by 1700, more than 60 had been built nearby. Between 1718-1719, over a million feet of lumber was produced. It would take a lot of pitsaws to keep up with that production.

From 1770-1775, over 1000 vessels left the Piscataqua for the West Indies, Europe and Africa, carrying 74 million bd ft of pine.

I would imagine that some of that lumber made it up the harbors into Phila, Wash DC, Baltimore, and maybe up river to Richmond. They probably sought to trade lumber for cheese steaks, bribery, inlays, and tobacco, in those respective regions. Well maybe not but its logical that good millsawn NH pine could have made it into regions that didn't have mills.

John
 
"I would imagine that some of that lumber made it up the harbors into Phila, ... They probably sought to trade lumber for cheese steaks,"

HAH! Thanks for the laugh, John!  I needed that.

Adam
 
John- Thanks for those stats on sawmills.
Remember that sawn pine boards were one, if not the, major export from the NE colonies in the early years.
If they used colonial boards in England for cabinet work, there's no reason why it wasn't, as John pointed out, sent throughput the colonies.-Al
 
I would agree that NH & Maine had many sawmills operating during the 18th c however i dont think that this was the case for most of the colonies. Most colonies did not have vast white pine forests nor contracts from the british navy to develop them.

While its true that this white pine was exported to other colonies, i doubt it made its way inland very much as the road transportation system in america during this period was primative and expensive. According to E Milton Burton "Overland transportation in the eight- eenth and early nineteenth centuries was slow and laborious. On land the usual method was by cart. Only a few logs, even if squared, could be loaded upon a single cart and at best the cart was capable of
traveling only a few miles a day. Even at low wages the cost of transportation must
have been considerable. Therefore, the cabinet-maker used the wood that grew
nearest to him and was most suited to his needs.

In 1740 mahogany was being brought into the port of Charleston in such quantities that the duty on it was repealed. At that time the Commons House of Assembly stated that "it was not the In-
tention of this House to lay a Duty on Mahogany Plank . . . And that the Public Treasurer of the Province do not demand or take any Duty for the same." 3 The duty had been 20 per 100 value. It was cheaper to transport a mahogany log by water from some island in the West Indies than it was to haul a log of some native wood a few miles by cart."

Here is a link to entire article http://www.archive.org/stream/charlestonfurnit006076mbp/charlestonfurnit006076mbp_djvu.txt



 
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