Surrounded as we are in the modern home with beautiful and artistic furniture, and installed in comfortable and inexpensive houses, one does not appreciate the contrast which the life of the average citizen of to-day presents to that of his great-grandfather in the matter of his dwelling house appointments. A hundred years ago most of the dwellings of the middle and poorer classes were crudely made, with clap-boards and joists laboriously hewn with the broad ax, and the roof was covered with split shingles. Uncouth and clumsy doors, windows and blinds, were framed on the simplest utilitarian basis, and a scanty supply of rude hand-made furniture imperfectly filled the simple wants of the home. To-day nearly every cottage has beautifully moulded trimmings, paneled doors, handsomely carved mantels and turned balusters, all furnished at an insignificant price, and art has so added its Æsthetic values to the furniture and other useful things in wood, that beautiful, artistic and tasteful homes are no longer confined to the rich, but may be enjoyed by all. This great change has been brought about by the sawmill, the planing machine, mortising and boring machines, and the turning lathe.Pre-eminent in the field of woodworking machinery, and worthy to be called the father of the art, is to be mentioned the name of Gen. Sir Samuel Bentham, of England, whose inventions in the last decade of the Eighteenth Century formed the nucleus of the modern art of woodworking.The Saw was the great pioneer in woodworking machinery, and the circular saw has, in the Nineteenth Century, been the representative type. Pushing its way along the outskirts of civilization, its glistening and apparently motionless disk, filled with a hidden, but terrific energy, and singing a merry tune in the clearings, has transformed trees into tenements, forests into firesides, and altered the face of the earth, the record of its work being only measured by the immensity of the forests which it has depleted. It is not possible to fix the date of the first circular saw, for rotary cutting action dates from the ancient turning lathes. The earliest description of a circular saw is to be found in the British patent to Miller, No. 1,152, of 1777. It was not until the Nineteenth Century, however, that it was generally applied, and its great work belongs to this period. The preceding saws were of the straight, reciprocating kind. The old pit-saw is the earliest form, and in course of time the men were replaced by machinery to form the “muley” saw, the man in the pit being replaced by a mechanical “pitman,” which accounts for the etymology of the word. With the “muley” saw the log was held at each end, and each end shifted alternately to set for a new cut. The first development was along the lines of this form of saw, and to increase its efficiency the saws were arranged in gangs, so as to make a number of cuts at one pass of the log. This type was especially used in Europe, but on the up stroke there was no work being done, and hence half of the time was lost. This and other difficulties led finally to the adoption of the circular type, whose continuous cut and high speed saved much time and presented many other advantages. A representative example of the circular saw is given in Fig. 241.

With the increased diameter and peripheral speed of the circular saw, however, a grave difficulty presented itself. The saw would heat at its periphery, and its rim portion expanding without commensurate expansion of the central portion, would cause the saw to crack and fly to pieces under the tremendous centrifugal force. This difficulty is provided for by what is known as “hammering to tension,” i. e., the saw is hammered to a gradually increasing state of compression from the rim to the center, thus causing an initial expansion or spread of the molecules of metal of the central parts of the saw, which is stored up as an elastic expansive force that accommodates itself to the tension caused by the expansion of the rim, and prevents the unequal and destructive strain, due to the expansion of the rim from the great heat of friction in passing through the log.

Mounted upon a portable frame, this machine was put to its great work upon the logs in the forests of America, and for many years this type of sawmill held its sway, and an enormous amount of work was done through its agency. Among its useful accessories were the set-works for adjusting the log holding knees to the position for a new cut, log turners for rotating the log to change the plane of the cut, and the rack and pinion feed, by which the saw carriage was run back and forth. Following the rack and pinion feed came the rope feed, in which a rope wrapped around a drum was carried at its opposite ends over pulleys and back to the opposite ends of the carriage, which was thereby carried back and forth by the forward or backward movement of the drum.

The greatest advance in sawmills in recent years, however, has been the steam feed, in which a very long steam cylinder was provided with a piston, whose long rod was directly attached to the saw carriage, and the latter moved back and forth by the admission of steam alternately to opposite sides of the piston. This type of feed, also known as the shot gun feed, from the resemblance of the long cylinder to a gun barrel, was invented about twenty-five years ago, by De Witt C. Prescott, and is covered by his patent, No. 174,004, February 22, 1876, later improvements being shown in his patent, No. 360,972, April 12, 1887. The value of the steam feed was to increase the speed and efficiency of the saw, by expediting the movement of its carriage, as many as six boards per minute being cut by its aid from a log of average length. An example of a modern steam feed for sawmill carriages is seen in Fig. 242. With the modern development of the art the ease and rapidity of steam action have recommended it for use in most all of the work of the sawmill, and the direct application of steam pistons working in cylinders has been utilized for canting, kicking, flipping and rolling the logs, lifting the stock, taking away the boards, etc.

Beautifully finished furniture in quartered oak has always excited the pleasure, and piqued the curiosity of the uninformed as to how this result is obtained. Fig. 243 illustrates the method of sawing to produce this effect. The log is simply divided longitudinally into four quarters, and the quarter sections are then cut by the vertical plane of the saw at an oblique angle to the sawed sides, which brings to the surface of the boards the peculiar flecks or patches of the wood’s grain so much admired when finished and polished.

The Band Saw is an endless belt of steel having teeth formed along one edge and traveling continuously around an upper and lower pulley, with its toothed edge presented to the timber to be cut, as seen in Fig. 244, which represents a form of band saw made by the J. A. Fay & Egan Company, of Cincinnati. A form of band saw is found as early as 1808, in British patent No. 3,105, to Newberry. On March 25, 1834, a French patent was granted for a band saw to Etiennot, No. 3,397. The first United States patent for a band saw was granted to B. Barker, January 6, 1836, but it remained for the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century to give the band saw its prominence in woodworking machines. That it did not find general application at an earlier period was due to the difficulty experienced in securely and evenly joining the ends of the band. For many years the only moderately successful band saws were made in France, but expert mechanical skill has so mastered the problem that in recent years the band saw has gone to the very front in wood-sawing machinery. To-day it is in service in sizes from a delicate filament, used for scroll sawing and not larger than a baby’s ribbon, to an enormous steel belt 50 feet in peripheral measurement, and 12 inches wide, traveling over pulleys 8 feet in diameter, making 500 revolutions per minute, and tearing its way through logs much too large for any circular saw, at the rate of nearly two miles a minute. A modern form of such a saw is seen in Fig. 245. Prescott’s patents, Nos. 368,731 and 369,881, of 1887; 416,012, of 1889, and 472,586 and 478,817, of 1892, represent some of the important developments in the band saw.

When the band saw is applied to cutting logs the backward movement of the carriage would, if there were any slivers on the cut face of the log, be liable to force those slivers against the smooth edge of the band saw, and distort and possibly break it. To obviate this the saw carriage is provided with a lateral adjustment on the back movement called an “off-set,” so that the log returns for a new cut out of contact with the saw. Examples of such off-setting are found in patents to Gowen, No. 383,460, May 29, 1888, and No. 401,945, April 23, 1889, and Hinkley, No. 368,669, August 23, 1887. A modern form of the band saw, however, has teeth on both its edges, which requires no off-setting mechanism, but cuts in both directions. An example of this, known as the telescopic band mill, is made by the Edward P. Allis Company, of Milwaukee.

A saw which planes, as well as severs, is shown in patents to Douglass, Nos. 431,510, July 1, 1890, and 542,630, July 16, 1895. Steam power mechanism for operating the knees is shown in patent to Wilkin, No. 317,256, May 5, 1885. Means for quarter sawing in both directions of log travel are shown in patent to Gray, No. 550,825, December 3, 1895. Means for operating log turners and log loaders appear in patents to Hill, No. 496,938, May 9, 1893; No. 466,682, January 5, 1892; No. 526,624, September 25, 1894, and Kelly, No. 497,098, May 9, 1893. A self cooling circular saw is found in patent to Jenks, No. 193,004, July 10, 1877; shingle sawing machines in patents to O’Connor, No. 358,474, March 1, 1887, and No. 292,347, January 22, 1884, and Perkins, No. 380,346, April 3, 1888; and means for severing veneer spirally and dividing it into completed staves, are shown in patent to Hayne, No. 509,534, November 28, 1893.Planing Machines.—While the saw plays the initial part of shaping the rough logs into lumber, it is to the planing machine that the refinements of woodworking are due. Its rapidly revolving cutter head reduces the uneven thickness of the lumber to an exact gauge, and simultaneously imparts the fine smooth surface. The planing machine is organized in various shapes for different uses. When the cutters are straight and arranged horizontally, it is a simple planer. When the cutters are short and arranged to work on the edge of the board they are known as edgers; when the edges are cut into tongues and grooves it is called a matching machine; and when the cutters have a curved ornamental contour it is known as a molding machine, and is used for cutting the ornamental contour for house trimmings and various ornamental uses.

The planing machine was one of the many woodworking devices invented by General Bentham. His first machine, British patent No. 1,838, of 1791, was a reciprocating machine, but in his British patent No. 1,951, of 1793, he described the rotary form along with a great variety of other woodworking machinery.

Bramah’s planer, British patent No. 2,652, of 1802, was about the first planing machine of the Nineteenth Century. It is known as a transverse planer, the cutters being on the lower surface of a horizontal disc, which is fixed to a vertical revolving shaft, and overhangs the board passing beneath it, the cutters revolving in a plane parallel with the upper surface of the board. The planing machine of Muir, of Glasgow, British patent No. 5,502, of 1827, was designed for making boards for flooring, and represented a considerable advance in the art.With the greater wooded areas of America, the rapid growth of the young republic, and the resourceful spirit of its new civilization, the leading activities in woodworking machinery were in the second quarter of the Nineteenth Century transferred to the United States, and a phenomenal growth in this art ensued. Conspicuous among the early planing machine patents in the United States was that granted to William Woodworth, December 27, 1828. This covered broadly the combination of the cutting cylinders, and rolls for holding the boards against the cutting cylinders, and also means for tongueing and grooving at one operation. The revolving cutting cylinder had been used by Bentham thirty-five years before, and rollers for feeding lumber to circular saws were described in Hammond’s British patent No. 3,459, of 1811, but Woodworth did not employ his rolls for feeding, as a rack and pinion were provided for that, but his rolls had a co-active relation with a planer cylinder, or cutter head, in holding the board against the tendency of the cutter head to pull the board toward it. A patent was granted to Woodworth for these two features in combination, which patent was reissued July 8, 1845, twice extended, and for a period of twenty-eight years from its first grant, exerted an oppressive monopoly in this art, since it covered the combination of the two necessary elements of every practical planer.Following the Woodworth patent came a host of minor improvements, among which were the Woodbury patents, extending through the period of the third quarter of the Nineteenth Century, and prominent among which is the patent to J. P. Woodbury, No. 138,462, April 20, 1873, covering broadly a rotary cutter head combined with a yielding pressure bar to hold the board against the lifting action of the cutter head.In modern planing machinery the climax of utility is reached in the so-called universal woodworker. This is the versatile Jack-of-all-work in the planing mill. It planes flat, moulded, rabbeted, or beaded surfaces; it saws with both the rip and crosscut action; it cuts tongues and grooves; makes miters, chamfers, wedges, mortises and tenons, and is the general utility machine of the shop.

In Fig. 246 is shown a well known form of planing machine. Its work is to plane the surfaces of boards, and to cut the edges into tongues and groves, such as are required for flooring. This machine planes boards up to 24 inches wide and 6 inches thick, and will tongue and grove 14 inches wide.

Wood Turning.—To this ancient art Blanchard added, in 1819, his very ingenious and important improvement for turning irregular forms. A few efforts at irregular turning had been made before, but in the arts generally only circular forms had been turned. With Blanchard’s improvement, patented January 20, 1820, any irregular form, such as a shoe-last, gun-stock, ax-handle, wheel-spokes, etc., could be smoothly and expeditiously turned and finished in any required shape. In the ordinary lathe the work is revolved rapidly, and the cutting tool is held stationary, or only slowly shifted in the hand. In the Blanchard lathe the work is hung in a swinging frame, and turned very slowly to bring its different sides to the cutting action, and the cutting tool is constructed as a rapidly revolving disk, against which the work is projected bodily by the oscillation of the swinging frame, to accommodate the irregularities of the form. In order to do this automatically, a pattern or model of the article to be turned was also hung in the swinging frame, and made to slowly revolve and bear against a pattern wheel, which, acting upon the swinging frame carrying the work, caused it to advance to or recede from the cutting disc exactly in proportion to the contour of the model, and thus cause the revolving cutters to cut the block as it turns synchronously with the model, to a shape exactly corresponding to said model.

In Fig. 247 is shown a perspective view of Blanchard’s lathe, as patented January 20, 1820. H is a swinging frame, carrying the model T of a shoe last, and a roughed-out block U, partly converted into a shoe last. A sliding frame, fed horizontally by a screw, carries a pattern wheel K, that bears against the pattern T, and a rotary cutter E, acting against the roughed-out block U. The revolving disk-shaped cutter E is rotated by a pulley and belt from a drum, which latter is made long enough to accommodate the travel of the frame. The pattern T and block U are advanced to contact respectively, with pattern wheel K and cutter E by the swinging action of frame H, and as the pattern T and block U are slowly revolved, the travel of T against K is made to react on frame H and regulate the advance of U against E, with the result that the rough block U is cut to the identical shape of the pattern T.

Among modern developments in this art may be mentioned the patents to Kimball, No. 471,006, March 15, 1892, and No. 498,170, May 23, 1893, the latter showing ingenious means whereby shoe lasts of the same length, but varying widths, may be turned. A polygonal-form lathe is shown in patent to Merritt, No. 504,812, September 12, 1893; a multiple lathe in patents to Albee, No. 429,297, June 3, 1890, and Aram, No. 550,401, November 26, 1895; a tubular lathe in patent to Lenhart, No. 355,540, January 4, 1887; and a spiral cutting lathe in patent to Mackintosh, No. 396,283, January 15, 1889.

Mortising Machines have exercised an important influence in mill work in the joining of the stiles in doors, sashes and blinds, and in the making of furniture. The Fay & Egan machine is seen in Fig. 248. The self acting mortising machine was among the numerous early contributions of Gen. Bentham in woodworking machinery, and was described in his British patent No. 1,951, of 1793, a number of them having been made by him for the British Admiralty. Brunel’s mortising machine for making ships’ blocks is another early form described in British patent No. 2,478, of 1801. As representing novel departures in this art, the endless chain mortising machine shown in Douglas patent, No. 379,566, March 20, 1888, may be mentioned, and reissue patent, No. 10,655, October 27, 1885, to Oppenheimer, and No. 461,666, October 20, 1891, to Charlton, are examples of mortising augers.Special Woodworking Machines.—Of these there have been great numbers and variety. No sooner does an article become extensively used than a machine is made for turning it out automatically. Indeed, machines for cheaply turning out articles have, in many cases, led the way to popular use of the article by the extreme cheapness of its production.

Among various automatic machines for making special articles may be mentioned those for making clothes pins, scooping out wood trays, pointing skewers, dovetailing box blanks, cutting sash stile pockets, cutting and packing toothpicks, making matches, boxing matches, duplicating carvings, cutting bungs, cutting corks, making umbrella sticks, making brush blocks, boring chair legs, screw-driving machines, box nailing machines, making cigar boxes, nailing baskets, wiring box blanks, applying slats, gluing boxes, gluing slate frames, making veneers, bushing mortises, covering piano hammers, making staves and barrels, making fruit baskets, etc.

It is impossible to give in any brief review a proper conception of the immensity of the woodworking industry in the United States. It is estimated in the Patent Office that about 8,000 patents have been granted for woodworking machines. Besides this there are about 5,000 patents in the separate class of wood sawing, about an equal number for woodworking tools, and these, with other patented inventions in wood turning, coopering, or the making of barrels, wheelwrighting, and other minor classes, give some idea of the activity in this great field of industry.

The exports of wood and wooden manufactures from the United States in 1899 amounted to $41,489,526, of which $15,031,176 were for finished boards, $4,107,350 for barrels, staves and heads, and $3,571,375 for household furniture, but this is only an insignificant portion, for with a prosperous country, an abundance of wood, and a thrifty and ambitious nation of home builders, the home consumption has been incalculable.