Milestones in machining of wood.

A review of 10 inventions that have altered the course of industrial woodworking.

Wood has been an extremely kind partner with human development. It is readily available, resilient and easy to form into useful objects. So it has been valued by both primitive and modern man.

The phenomenal growth of the United States depended upon the new country's forests to provide homes for the new settlers and structures for the new industries that followed. Between 1800 and 1850, wood consumption per capita in the U.S. was five times greater than in England. By 1840, there were 31,000 sawmills in operation.

At that time, the value of wood products manufacture was second only to textiles in the nation's economy. So it is not surprising that the manufacture of woodworking machinery became a rapid-growth industry. In fact, design and manufacture of new and/or improved machines by American manufacturers set the pace for the rest of the world for many decades, extending well into the 20th century.

A study of the origins of wood machining takes us back to ancient times. Some historians say the pottery wheel or the quern (a machine for milling grain) were the very first woodworking machines. Adaptations of these machines are said to have functioned as crude lathes, and some furniture parts found in ancient tombs support these theories.

The lack of a prime mover was the greatest obstacle to the emergence of machinery of all types. Even in the first half of the 19th century, inventors were still patenting rigs operated by horses traveling in a circle to drive a gear works which provided a power takeoff shaft. One inventor felt that all of these rigs were hopelessly inadequate, and he designed one where the horses marched on a treadmill [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED].

Water wheels powered an over-and-under saw in Germany as early as the 1300s, followed by windmill-powered rigs in Holland.

Finally, steam engines came to the rescue, beginning in the 1700s. Units with outputs as small as 2 horsepower were finally available, so Old Dobbin lost his job [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED].

With that background behind us, we can now explore the major wood machining creations which have made this industry possible.

Milestone 1: Abrasive Planing

Primitive man used hard stones to shape and sharpen his tools. Crude wooden furniture appeared on the scene 2000 to 3000 years B.C., as evidenced by drawings found in Egyptian tombs. To make a smooth finish, stone blocks were used to rub the surfaces, along with sprinklings of sand, which got the job done [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED].

As furniture became more refined over the centuries, an excellent polish was demanded, and hand-rubbing with various types and gradations to cloth of crushed stone were used. And the gluing of abrasives to cloth or paper made it possible for workmen to do a more efficient job. This was such a good idea that it wasn't too long before sandpaper was being produced commercially, and various sandpaper-making machines were concocted. Figure 4 shows one of these in 1848.

The huge demand for finely finished furniture spurred the development of sanding machines to get rid of the hand-rubbing and scraping process. A three-disc sanding machine from 1850 is shown in Figure 5.

From these humble beginnings sprung the immensely successful 1890s drum sander (reviewed in Wood & Wood Products' 1996 Centennial issue) and a host of today's sanders, which are great grand-children of the machines developed between 1850 and 1900. Today, coated abrasives are of primary importance in both the woodworking and metal-working industries.

Milestone 2: The Frame Saw

Handsaws date from ancient times, and the over-and-under method shown in Figure 6 persisted for centuries. It is believed that the first truly mechanical sawmill was built in Holland in the late 1500s: a single-bladed sash-type saw. This worked so well that it wasn't long before multiple-blade machines emerged [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 7 OMITTED]. The Sash Gang survives and is still used in a few mills.

Milestone 3: The Circular Saw

The invention of the circular saw pre-dated the band saw by as much as two centuries, and was a major breakthrough. It was revolutionary because the cut was continuous rather than intermittent, as in the up-and-down movement of the frame saw. There have been references to small diameter rotary cutters used for "cutting gears for clocks... "perhaps as early as 1600.

But the first patent on a circular saw was Samuel Miller's #1150, issued in London in 1777. For more than a century after that, the circular saw was the major contributor to high production in sawmills and woodworking plants.

It took very large diameter blades for sawmill headrigs. The Pacific Lumberman of 1889 reported that the Pope & Talbot mill in Port Blakely, WA, had two double circular units, each fitted with 60-inch-diameter saws on top and bottom arbors.

The Henry Disston people were very proud of their 100-inch blade, shown in Figure 8.

Milestone 4: Sir Samuel Bentham's 1793 Patent on Rotary Planing and Molding

Bentham was a visionary who left the development of the hardware to others. The spindle shaper was one product of this thinking, but no power-fed machinery was indicated in his patent. The 1869 spindle shaper shown in Figure 9 - similar to basic machines made today - are only refinements of Bentham's 1793 thinking.

Bear in mind that at that time, planing and moulding were done with a hand plane using a straight knife for regular planing, and a plain knife ground to pattern made moulding cuts. A few carpenters were able to add a semblance of automation by pulling a hand plane with a winch, powered from a water wheel or a windmill [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 10 OMITTED].

Milestone 5: The Bandsaw 

It is surprising that it took most of a century after the patent in 1808 for the bandsaw to become a major factor in lumber manufacture. After all, you just make a steel belt patterned after a framesaw blade and run it on two pulleys!

Simple as that might seem, the blade was a major problem throughout most of the 19th century. It had to be flexible enough to pass around and conform to the wheels without failure from repeated bending at high speed. In 1808, steel manufacture was not highly developed, plus there was the problem of making a good weld. The first successful blades were made in France, and the M. Perin Company in Paris had nearly an international monopoly on band blade manufacture until 1870 when Napoleon III was defeated in the Franco-German war.

But even after the steel problems were solved, very few people understood how to properly sharpen and bench a blade. And those who did wouldn't share their knowledge. This was job protection and insured high pay for those who had the skills. All of this and developments to the present time are described in detail in the book, "BANDSAWS, Wide Blade & Narrow Blade Types." See Figure 11 for further comment.

Despite all the problems, today's bandsaws, with their tremendous kerf advantage, are indispensable.

The largest known bandsaws had 12-foot-diameter wheels and used 24-inch-wide blades 65 feet long!

Milestone 6: The Tenoner and Mortiser 

As soon as there was a handsaw, a hammer and a chisel, it was possible to securely join two pieces of wood together. The tenon could be sawn and the mortise could be made with the chisel. Many machines were devised to do these two jobs in the first half of the 19th century.

The single-end tenoner, with its sliding carriage and an assortment of belt-driven cutters, appeared early in the 19th century and did the job very neatly [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 12 OMITTED]. The double-end version did not emerge until 1866, when H.B. Smith got his patent.

The simplest mortiser design used a plain oscillating chisel. Other machines incorporated a borer, which proceeded the hollow chisel. Finally, a hollow chisel with the borer operating within the cavity of the chisel was developed.

Many machines were designed for wagon wheel manufacture, and the mortising of the hubs was a special job. Special machines for tenoning spokes also appeared [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 13 OMITTED].

Milestone 7: The Planer and the Moulder 

In 1802, the Bramah planer in England used a face-milling cutter to thickness and straighten lumber which was carriage-fed. In 1834, Thomas Daniels patented an improved carriage-fed machine to do the same job. Many of these machines were sold in the period before the American Civil War. One of the Daniels machines is preserved at the Smithsonian Institute.

One of the first manufacturers of roll-fed planers in America was Baxter D. Whitney [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 14 OMITTED]. His company specialized in single and double surfacers, and left the planer-matcher business to others. He thus escaped the wrath of the huge planer-matcher monopoly which prevailed in America from 1836 to 1856.

In addition to planers with rotating cutters, Whitney also made a fixed knife planer in 1857, as well as a power-fed scraping machine. Rotary planing at that time was still pretty crude, tending to leave irregular, scalloped surfaces. Fixed knife planing or a scraper solved the problem [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 15 OMITTED].

William Woodworth patented his machine for rotary planing of lumber on four sides in 1836. He and his partners built these machines [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 16 OMITTED], and sold them to operators who were set up in franchised territories. Franchisees charged $7 per thousand for custom planing, $3 of which went to the patent holders. This generated a huge profit and a war chest to intimidate anyone who might build or operate a machine designed for rotary planing of S45 lumber. Because of litigation costs, operators quickly settled and complied with patent-holder terms. When Congress extended the patent protection to 1856, there was a huge outcry, and well-founded allegations of bribery. This is described in detail in the book, "Planers, Matchers and Moulders in America, 1800 to 1985."

A number of fixed knife planers came on the market and they did circumvent the patent, but they were so tedious to set up and operate that most lumbermen surrendered to the Woodworth group. Immediately after the expiration of the patent, the patent holders disbanded and companies such as S.A. Woods, Fay & Egan, American and Berlin (P.B. Yates) then enjoyed good sales of their planer-matchers.

Apparently the Woodworth group did not choose to challenge manufacturers of moulders, which were primarily doing smaller detail work. But new moulders were being aggressively designed and sold by the above-mentioned planer manufacturers plus others, as described in the Centennial issue of W & P.

Milestone 8: The Blanchard Lathe 

As mentioned earlier, turning by potter's wheel is likely the first time wood was ever machine processed. Throughout the centuries, the lathe was a very simple machine with only occasional small improvements. These small improvements, plus the Blanchard invention, are the basis for wood-turning technology today.

Thomas Blanchard (1788-1864) was a very skillful machinist, and before age 30, his services were sought by the Springfield Arsenal in connection with title design and manufacture. The making of gun stocks was one of the most labor intensive parts of the rifle. Because of its irregular shape, workers spent a lot of time roughing them out on a spindle shaper, followed by a great deal of hand finishing.

In 1818, Blanchard received a patent on a machine for turning irregularly shaped parts. This machine formed gun stocks in a single automatic operation [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 17 OMITTED].

Protests by displaced workmen were loud, and Blanchard also received some criticism for his super-aggressive pursuit of this and other patents he held. But no one could deny the basic merit of his lathe. This is underscored by the fact that The Smithsonian Institute has reconstructed a copy of it for all to see. It is considered to be one of the most ingenious and highly successful mechanical inventions of the 19th century.

Milestone 9: The Dovetaller

Dovetailing is an ancient art, first accomplished by the simple expedient of hand-sawing the interlocking dovetail shapes. Dovetailed drawer corners are pretty much standard in fine furniture construction today, and because their shape forms a pleasing geometric design, some go out of their way to expose dovetails on certain parts.

During the 19th century, the government specified that ammunition boxes have dovetailed corners to insure that they were strong and moisturefree. Most large sawmills also operated a box factory, and there were simpler machines for corner notching the boxes, similar to today's hauncher. Some such machines might also do dovetails. The demand for higher production equipment was great enough that one company designed a double-dovetailer [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 18 OMITTED].

Milestone 10: Veneer Lathes and Slicers

It is surprising to learn that making veneers also had ancient origins, dating to early Roman times and before. The more affluent Romans were offended by the grain structure and defects inherent in solid wood furniture of that era, so veneers provided a decor compatible with their social standing. Making veneers was so labor intensive that only the wealthy could afford them. In fact, veneers were primarily used to beautify furniture until well into the 19th century.

Sawing of veneers was not easily done, and kerf losses were excessive. But many early machines were made that way. The 1805 machine by Brunel, the British mechanical genius, was probably the most elaborate. The 16-foot-diameter blade is reported to have been assembled with segmented saw sections. With low rpm but high rim speed, a smooth result was hoped for. Other smaller diameter veneer saws were also made. In fact, Coe Manufacturing Co. introduced a new veneer saw in 1905, and 1920s pictures show these units still going strong.

But in the end, the production of veneers is essentially accomplished either by fixed-knife slicing or by rotary lathes.

Veneer manufacture was an established industry early in the 19th century. The first U.S. patent (397) on veneer manufacturing machinery was a horizontal slicer with a 3-foot-long blade in 1837 by Joseph Skinner. It was horse powered.

An early variation on the slicer was the 1853 fixed-knife machine shown in Figure 19. Logs or flitches were rotated through the cut.

Two U.S. pioneers in manufacture of veneer-making machines, still active today, were Coe Manufacturing Company, founded in 1852, and Capital Machine Company, founded in 1887. Coe is widely recognized for its rotary veneer lathes, while Capital is recognized for its slicers.

Postscript

It is noteworthy that basic cutting of wood, even throughout the 20th century, still depends upon machine knives, saw teeth and, to a lesser extent, sanding. A multitude of improvements have been made in these methods, but no new means have emerged. As the 20th century draws to a close, there have been serious efforts to shape stacks of veneers with high-pressure jets of water, but so far it is not economic to do it that way.

Laser beams look much more promising. They have been used as guide lines for ripsaws, log scanning and optical scanning to determine surface roughness. But the cutting of wood by laser beam has been slow to happen, though extensive experimentation has occurred over the last 25 years.

When wood cutting by laser was first done, far-out thinkers were predicting a "kerfless" laser headrig for the sawmill. It may not be as far out as first thought. Now, at the end of the 20th century, laser-cutting units are being used on CNC work stations to replace rotary cutters, and they are machining small detail with great success when jobs are carefully specified. For heavy cutting, problems with charring and heat dispersal still remain, along with high cost.

When Wood & Wood Products publishes its 200th anniversary issue in 2096, the kerfless sawmill should be ancient history, and readers will be amused by the efforts to get the job done "way back" at the turn of the 21st century.

Editor's note: Chandler Jones was vice president of marketing at Stetson-Ross Machine company in Seattle, WA, before retiring in 1980 after 33 years. Since then he has published books on woodworking machines and their histories, plus articles in trade publications.