The Tools employed.
All mouldings in wood are worked out by planes made of the proper form, to leave the moulding in the wood when the plane has been passed over the part. The carpenter and joiner consequently require a vast variety of planes for these purposes, which constitutes the most expensive part of the expensive tools used by these workmen. These planes receive their names from the form they are intended to produce in the wood, such as rebating planes, O G planes, ovolo-planes, beading-planes, and so on.
The next most important tools used by both carpenter and joiner, are saws, of different sizes, for reducing the rough wood to the size adapted for the purpose to which it is to be applied. Small, fine-toothed saws, both long and thin blades, termed spring-saws, are used for cutting out small holes in wood, and for analogous purposes, when precision and nicety are required; these spring-saws are sometimes mounted in a frame on the same principle as that of the stone-mason’s saw, formerly described; but commonly, the blade of the saw, of whatever size it may be, is only fixed on a convenient handle, so that the whole blade of the saw may pass through the fissure it makes in the material. All saws are made of the best steel, highly tempered, so as to recover their form if bent by the resistance of the wood.
Next to the planes and saws, chisels are the most indispensable tool to the carpenter. These chisels are of different widths, adapted to different uses, and are not only used with a hammer or mallet, as the mason employs them, but also as cutting-tools, used by hand for finishing the re-entering angles of mortise-holes, or for finishing the ends of pieces of wood too small to be planed.
The carpenter employs gimlets for making holes for screws and nails. The gimlet is a short rod of steel, finished at one end into a sharp-pointed screw of one or two turns only, which, acting on the principle of that mechanical power, compels the tool to sink deeper and deeper into the wood, as the tool is turned round: and to enable the workman to turn the gimlet, it is fixed into a cross handle, which, acting as a lever, allows the friction of the tool to be overcome. Just above the screw point, the rod or shaft of the gimlet is fluted or hollowed out: the sharp edges of this fluted part cut the hole made by the screw end larger and smoother, and the hollow receives the chips or shavings cut off, and prevents them from clogging the hole and stopping the progress of the tool.
Augers are large tools shaped like a gimlet, and, acting in the same manner, are employed for making large holes for bolts, spikes, &c. Centre-bits are steel tools of different shapes made to fit into a bent handle something like the letter G, which, acting as a lever, allows of the tool being turned round and round by one hand, while by the other the workman holds the top of the handle steady and vertically over the point of the tool. Some of the bits or tools are for cutting out cylindrical holes, and are shaped at the cutting-edge like a chisel, with a small point projecting from the centre of the edge, on which the instrument turns in the wood and acts on the principle of a lathe. On each side this point, the chisel-edge is bent sideways in opposite directions, to allow of its ploughing up the wood before it with greater efficacy than it would do if it were not so formed.
The brad-awl, or nail-piercer, is a short steel wire, sharpened at the point into a flat chisel-edge, and put into a plain turned handle. This edge being pushed into the wood, and the handle turned round, the tool divides the fibre, and makes its way on the simple principle of a wedge, and does not cut away or remove any portion of the material, as the above-described tools do.
The carpenter uses nails and screws to fasten the different parts of his work together, and it is necessary to make a hole to receive them before they are driven in, or else the wood would split by the action of forcing the nail or screw into the solid material, and, indeed, it would be impossible to force a screw into the solid wood at all.
The screw is forced into the wood by being turned round and round by means of a blunt chisel, called a screw-driver, the edge of which is inserted into a notch cut in the head of the screw to receive it.