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Sawdust
The hardworking Cistercian monks lost their Abbey at Buckland in Devon with the Dissolution of the Monasteries Act during the reformation in England. In 1581 Sir Francis Drake used some of his pirated gains to buy the Abbey and convert it into a home. What surprised me most on a recent visit to the Abbey was the story behind the intricate oak panels. The feature wall in the dining room was made up of rail and stile interlocking oak panels, dark with age now; they would have shone golden when first installed. These oak panels were prized like tapestries and removed when the owner sold the house. Oak was a prized timber then as well as now and so little was wasted. I expect bits of oak off the wrecked Spanish Armada found their way into panels all over Britain. The Abbey is a wonderful celebration of lost craft skills that could be whimsical when need be. One interesting feature of the kitchen was the little owl hole in the stone framed leadlight windows. Owls would roost in the kitchen at night and feast on mice and rats while guarding the larder. Before the development of plywoods, Masonite, particle boards and MDF, the only way to produce a stable panel was to use moulding planes to create the pattern we take for granted when we see a modern panel door. Besides utilising smaller lengths of younger trees to create stiles, rails and panels the artisans who developed these panels in the past knew that timber shrinkage would be compensated by changing the direction of the timber components. These days routers and spindle moulders make quick work of what would have taken an age in the past. Over the years I have helped students build literally hundreds of panel doors in our workshops. On a walk through my recently renovated house I counted 83 rail and stile frames that I have built using the clever router bits featured on page 22 of this issue (the kitchen alone has 20 doors machined out of 22mm Kauri using a standard door making bit). Three casement windows were made using a similar set of roman ogee window bits. The 32mm-thick celery top pine window frames were made on our robust spindle moulder instead of a router. After having a couple of trial frames “spring” apart on me, I decided to reinforce the larger rail and stile window frames with a Festo Domino cut into the joint after the frames had been machined. The Domino just slipped in and locked the joint solid. I liked the window profile so much that I used it to construct the panelling in the attic as well as the Huon pine linen cabinet featured in our finishing pages. Good woodworking! Chris Clark © Paragon Media Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Powered by Net Maintain. |
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