50 Fun Facts About Woodworking

Which joint, prized for resisting being pulled apart, classically attaches a drawer front to its sides?

Dovetail joints use interlocking trapezoidal pins and tails that cannot be pulled apart along the drawer's length, so once glued the drawer front needs no metal fasteners.

In the classic joint where a projecting tongue fits into a matching hole, what is the hole called?

The mortise is the hole and the tenon the tongue that fits it; one of the earliest known examples, about 7,000 years old, comes from the Hemudu culture in China's Zhejiang Province.

Wood from flowering, broad-leaved trees is called what?

The label is botanical, not about hardness: balsa is a hardwood softer than most softwoods, while yew and Douglas fir are softwoods harder than many hardwoods.

In woodworking, what does the term 'kerf' refer to?

The slot cut by a saw blade is the kerf; its width depends on the set of the teeth, so a careful cut is laid out to the waste side of the line.

Which Caribbean wood, so dense it sinks, is used for 'heavy' cricket bails and bearings?

Lignum vitae, from the Guaiacum genus, is the national tree of the Bahamas and the national flower of Jamaica; its self-lubricating resin made it the classic material for ship propeller-shaft bearings.

The Janka test measures a wood's hardness by embedding what into it?

A steel ball 11.28 mm in diameter is pressed halfway into the wood; that size leaves a dent of exactly one square centimetre, and the force required is the Janka rating.

Plywood gets its strength and stability from stacking veneers how?

With the grain of each layer at right angles to the next, plywood spreads stress in both directions and barely moves with humidity, because each veneer's movement across the grain is restrained by its neighbours.

What does MDF stand for?

Medium-density fibreboard is made by mixing wood fibre with wax and resin and pressing it under heat; large-scale production began in the 1980s in North America and Europe.

What lumber cut has growth rings perpendicular to the board face, prized in oak for its ray fleck?

Quarter-sawn boards cup and shrink less across their width than flat-sawn ones, and the cut exposes oak's medullary rays as fleck; in sapele the same cut yields a ribbon figure.

Which craft, from the French for "to variegate", applies pieces of veneer to a surface to form pictures?

Marquetry covers a whole surface with shaped pieces of veneer; unlike the older art of inlay (intarsia), nothing is cut out of the solid body underneath.

Which early civilisation is credited with inventing veneering and using varnish as a finish?

Egypt is credited with inventing veneering and with the first varnished finishes; whole chairs, beds and chests survive from its tombs, some more than 4,000 years old.

Who, with his wife Lady Yun, is regarded as the founding figure of Chinese woodworking?

Lu Ban, a carpenter and engineer of the Spring and Autumn period (771 to 476 BC), is honoured as the patron of Chinese builders, and legend credits him with inventing the saw.

Traditional Japanese carpentry is famous for building temples and houses using almost none of what?

Its interlocking joints evolved partly to cope with earthquakes and a hot, humid climate.

What is the Japanese word for a hand plane, which is pulled rather than pushed?

Kanna is the Japanese hand plane, a blade wedged in a wooden block and drawn toward the user; a nomi is a chisel, a ryoba a double-edged saw and a sumitsubo an ink line.

Which English furniture maker published The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director in 1754?

Thomas Chippendale published the Director in 1754 as a pattern book of his designs in Gothic, Chinese and rococo taste, and his name became shorthand for furniture in that style from Britain to America.

Which American religious sect gave its name to a minimalist furniture style built on simplicity and utility?

The Shakers, formally the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, built plain ladder-back chairs and cabinets whose clean lines reflected their belief that work was a form of worship.

Which California furniture maker, famed for rocking chairs, was the first craftsman to win a MacArthur fellowship?

Sam Maloof received his MacArthur fellowship in 1985; his hand-shaped walnut rocking chairs were owned by Presidents Carter and Reagan and are held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

George Nakashima's signature tables were made from large slabs with which feature left natural?

The edges were left as the tree grew them, bark removed but the live line kept; Nakashima joined slabs with butterfly keys in New Hope, Pennsylvania, after Antonin Raymond sponsored him out of a wartime internment camp.

Who hosted PBS's The New Yankee Workshop from 1989?

Norm Abram was already the master carpenter on This Old House when producer Russell Morash created The New Yankee Workshop around him in 1989; the show ran until 2009.

Roy Underhill's The Woodwright's Shop ran on PBS for 37 seasons teaching woodworking with what?

Hand tools and human-powered machines were the rule on Underhill's show, produced by UNC-TV in North Carolina; power tools were banished in favour of pre-industrial technique.

What does a SawStop blade carry so the brake can detect skin contact?

A small electrical signal runs through the blade; because the human body conducts electricity, skin contact changes that signal within milliseconds and triggers the brake, whereas dry wood does not.

When SawStop's brake fires, what does the spring push into the blade?

An aluminium block, driven by a spring, jams into the teeth and stops the blade in about five milliseconds as it drops below the table; the cartridge and usually the blade are then replaced.

Whose 1860s cast-iron hand-plane patents did Stanley buy for its numbered bench planes?

Leonard Bailey's designs, bought by Stanley in 1869, set the blade in a cast-iron body with a lever cap and adjusting screw; the Bailey and Bedrock patterns underlie most later metal planes.

Bailey bench planes are numbered according to what?

Their length sets the number: a No. 1 is just 5½ inches long and a No. 8 jointer 24 inches, rising through smoothing, jack, fore and jointer sizes.

Which small one-handed member of the family is the tool of choice for trimming end grain?

Block plane blades sit bevel-up at a low bed angle, 12 degrees in low-angle models, which slices cleanly across the cut end of a board instead of crushing it.

An adze differs from an axe in what way?

Its edge is perpendicular to the handle, so an adze is swung down to shave a surface flat, while an axe's edge lies in the plane of the swing; adzes go back to the Stone Age.

Which two-handled tool, with a short blade set in a sole, shapes curved chair legs?

Spokeshave bodies carry a short blade between two handles, the sole riding the curve as the tool is pushed or pulled; wooden bodies gave way to cast metal with industrialisation.

Instead of a mitre, inside-corner mouldings are often cut to each other's profile in what join?

Coped joints cut the end of one moulding to match the profile of the other, so an inside corner stays tight even when the walls are out of square; a coping saw makes the curved cut.

A standard mitre joint for a square corner has each piece cut at what angle?

45° on each piece adds up to the 90° corner; the joint glues end grain to end grain and is weak on its own, so woodworkers often reinforce it with a spline or key.

In frame-and-panel construction, what are the vertical members of the frame called?

Stiles are the uprights and rails the horizontals; the panel sits in a groove and 'floats' unglued so seasonal wood movement doesn't crack the frame.

Biscuit joinery uses small oval biscuits of compressed wood that do what when the glue hits them?

Swell is what the compressed beech biscuits do as they absorb water from the glue, locking into their slots; they are cut with the grain running diagonally for strength.

In which country was the biscuit joining system invented, in 1956?

Switzerland is where carpenter Hermann Steiner devised the system in 1956 as a way to join chipboard; his firm Lamello, based in Bubendorf, went on to make the machines.

A finger joint is also known by what other name, after what its cross-section resembles?

Comb joint is the other name, because the interlocking fingers in cross-section look like the teeth of a comb; it is often confused with the box joint used for box corners.

What is the craft of shaping wood on a lathe traditionally called?

Turnery is the craft of the lathe; unlike a metal lathe, wood lathe tools are held freehand against a rest with no fixed point of contact.

What was a 'bodger' in traditional English woodworking?

A turner making chair legs from green wood, the bodger worked in the beech woods of the Chilterns, turning legs and stretchers on the spot and selling them to the chair factories of High Wycombe.

What kind of foot-powered machine were the legs and spindles of a traditional Windsor chair turned on?

A pole lathe uses a springy pole and a cord wrapped round the work: a treadle pulls it down to spin the piece toward the tool, and the pole springs it back for the next stroke.

Steam bending works because heat and moisture do what to wood?

Soften them so they bend — heat and moisture make the lignin between the wood cells plastic; the piece is then clamped to a form with a steel strap outside to keep the outer face from tearing.

Shellac, once the dominant wood finish, is a resin secreted by what?

An insect, the female lac bug Kerria lacca of India and Thailand, secretes the resin on tree branches; 78 rpm records were pressed from shellac until vinyl took over.

Traditional 'hide glue' for woodworking was boiled down from what?

Animal collagen from hides and bones, boiled into gelatin, sets as it cools and can be reversed with heat and water; casein from milk was another early option.

Wood seasoned in a heated chamber rather than in the open air is called what?

Kiln-dried lumber reaches the 6 to 8 percent moisture wanted for indoor furniture in days or weeks, where air drying takes roughly a year per inch of thickness.

Woodworking machines that flatten one face of a board and then square an edge to it are called what?

Jointers carry a cutter head between two tables set a hair apart, so the board is flattened on one face and an edge squared against the fence; a thickness planer then makes the opposite face parallel.

A bandsaw's blade is a long toothed band welded into a loop and stretched between what?

Two or more wheels, one driven and the other tensioned, carry the band; the width of the band sets how tight a curve you can cut and the teeth per inch how fine.

Which power tool with a flat base and spinning bit cuts grooves, edges and moulding?

Router bits spin at up to about 25,000 rpm below a flat base, following a fence or bearing to cut grooves and profiles; the hand-tool ancestor is the router plane with a narrow blade under a broad sole.

Fine Woodworking magazine was launched in 1975 by which publisher?

Taunton Press, founded by Paul and Jan Roman in Newtown, Connecticut, launched Fine Woodworking in 1975 as its first title; early issues were printed in black and white with stapled covers.

Sloyd, the Nordic handicraft-based school system, began in 1865 in which country?

Finland is where Uno Cygnaeus founded the system, and its 1866 school decree made handicraft a compulsory subject; Otto Salomon's teacher-training school at Nääs later spread a Swedish version worldwide.

Wood grain refers to the arrangement of the wood's what?

Fibres running straight, spiral or interlocked give each board its grain pattern; planing against their direction tears the surface, which is why woodworkers read the grain first.

Notched wooden sticks dating to about 476,000 years ago, among the earliest woodworking finds, came from which site?

The Kalambo Falls finds in southern Africa predate the Clacton spearhead from England, which is about 400,000 years old.

Which Roman author devoted six books of his Natural History to trees and woody plants?

Though not a botanist, Pliny preserved much of Rome's knowledge of trees and their uses after most physical Roman woodwork was lost.

Before bronze arrived after 2000 BC, Egyptian woodworking tools were made from which metal?

Copper, cast and hammered, made the saws, adzes and chisels of the Old Kingdom; the metal is soft, so blades needed constant resharpening, and iron came into use only much later.

Softwoods come from which botanical group of trees?

Gymnosperms bear naked seeds, usually in cones; nearly all softwood comes from the conifers among them, such as pine, spruce, fir and larch, though larch drops its needles each autumn.