It is sometimes an advantage to “gouge”—i.e., to cut—out a bad knot and fill the cavity with wood, wood-paste, or carton-pierre.
A very beautiful stain can be given to wood by rubbing it with nitric or sulphuric acid, and exposing it to the heat of a fire. In this way American hickory can be made to look like rosewood. Pine becomes red, which grows darker with increased heat.
Mending Furniture.—There is but one rule for repairing creaky chairs and tables with loose legs. They must be carefully taken apart, which can be done with chisels, a knife, and hammer, and then glued and screwed or put together again as they were originally made. The old-fashioned rounds or rungs of chairs, now so seldom seen, were a great aid to strength and durability.
I have already remarked that when a drawer in a bureau table is troublesome by continually sticking or catching, take it out, find where it rubs, and plane away the obtrusive portion. If it is made of badly seasoned, green, warping wood, nail across it strips of tin. To which I add that doors of closets, cabinets, &c., which are shrunk must have strips of wood glued to their edges. In some cases strips of paper will do as a temporary substitute.
It is no exaggeration whatever to declare that two or three centuries ago the slight and trashily made article of furniture was a great exception, while at the present day it is the well-made, durable article which forms the rarity—to the great shame, be it said, firstly, of all furniture-makers, and, secondly, to fashionable “taste,” which prefers slightness to strength.
This trashy and flimsy lightness is vastly to the profit of the cabinetmaker, since he can thus utilise the cheapest and smallest pieces of worthless wood by turning them into supports for light étagères or shelves, cross-backs and legs of spider-like little chairs, and all parts of small curved sofas, which are to be duly puttied, French polished, or completely hidden in velveteen or rep. It is not unusual to see what is considered a handsomely furnished room in which there is not one absolutely well-made or strong article which would bear careful examination or turning up. It is a pitiful sight indeed to see a load of such furniture on its way from the cabinetmakers, or the mill where it is sawed out by steam, to the place where it is to be veneered or painted, glazed, and clothed into elegance. The pieces of refuse pine wood and American greenish-yellow poplar stuck together with glue, and as few short nails as possible, look so shammy and shabby! I have wondered, in beholding them, at the marvellous boldness of their makers, who could deliberately calculate the time that such stuff would endure before its débacle. And as it is all destined to be broken and mended sometime or other, it is the more necessary that the art of repairing should be studied. Unfortunately, badly seasoned deal cannot be repaired into well-seasoned oak. Yet he who will take the pains to ascertain the price of the latter will be amazed to learn that so few people have it made into good, solid, strong furniture. “It is not there that the expense comes in.” If the reader, having some sense or taste in art, would make his own furniture, employing an assistant at six shillings a day to do the rough sawing and planing, he would find that he could have strong, substantial furniture; and if he would add to this so much knowledge of panel-carving as he could acquire in a few lessons, he might make it beautiful.
A cement for wood is made as follows:—
| Caseine | 10 |
| Borax | 5 |
This is carefully worked into a thickish milk-like mass. It may be used as a glue for wood or as a paste for paper. It admits of many modifications. To make a very good waterproof cement for wood, as well as other purposes, take this cement when it shall have hardened, or after it has been applied, and wash it over frequently with a very strong extract of gall-apples. This forms, according to Lehner, an insoluble union with caseine.
A cement much employed in China to combine and make woodwork, basket-work, pasteboard, &c., waterproof is made as follows:—