Teaching > Architectural Conservation (HP 382) > Wood >

Woodworking Machinery — Historic

Automation

Resources • United States Patent and Trademark Office • Old Woodworking Machines • Facts On File, inc.

"An early example of automation was the flour mill designed by the American inventor Oliver Evans (1755–1819) in 1782. In Evans's mill, grain was transported to the second floor of the building by an elevator, a series of buckets mounted on an endless belt that ran inside a closed shaft. The grain was then dumped into a hopper directly above the millstones that ground the grain into flour, which was then deposited in the mill's basement. From here, the flour was carried by another elevator to a third-floor "hopper-boy," a device that stirred the flour with long, toothed arms. Gravity then took the flour to the boulter, a revolving cylinder that separated the flour from the bran. Very little human intervention was required during the mill's operation. Although Evans had a patent on the automated mill, like many patent holders he gained few financial rewards from it. The complete mill or its major components were freely copied, often by millwrights who simply followed the diagrams presented in an illustrated book that Evans had authored, The Young Miller and Millwright's Guide."

Oliver Evans' mill: continuous production line.

"Evans's mill was designed to do a single task in the same way, over and over again. A more versatile apparatus was the Jacquard loom and its predecessors. From the 18th century onwards, looms of this sort were used to weave cloth in a variety of patterns. Their significance lay in the fact that their operation was automatic; the mechanical actions of the looms were guided by punch cards. These cards introduced the idea of programming into machine operation, and were later to be a key means of data storage in early computer systems."
Automation, Facts On File, inc.

Interchangable Parts

 

"Until the early 19th century everything was hand made by a craftman. Every part was different even when serving the same function. You could not buy a new part. You had to go to a craftman and have it "tailor made" to replace the broken part. Needless to say such a process was time consuming and expensive, and sometimes impossible."

From Interchangeable Parts to Visual Basic, a Brief History, David Grimshaw, Ryerson University

Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin.

"While Eli Whitney is best remembered as the inventor of the cotton gin, it is often forgotten that he was also the father of the mass production method. In 1798 he figured out how to manufacture muskets by machine so that the parts were interchangeable. It was as a manufacturer of muskets that Whitney finally became rich. If his genius led King Cotton to triumph in the South, it also created the technology with which the North won the Civil War."

The Cotton Gin, The Eli Whitney Museum

"Whitney refined and successfully applied his revolutionary, "Uniformity System" of manufacturing interchangeable components. Faced with skepticism and delays in implementing his new production method, Whitney convinced President John Adams of the great significance of his innovative approach by demonstrating that randomly selected parts could be fitted together into a complete, working musket lock. Though it took ten years to deliver the last of the muskets, the federal government's investment and support enabled Whitney to prove the feasibility of his system and establish it as the leading source of the modern assembly line. He demonstrated that machine tools--manned by workers who did not need the highly specialized skills of gunsmiths--could produce standardized parts to exact specifications, and that any part could be used as a component of any musket. The firearms factory he built in New Haven, Conn., was thus one of the first to use mass production methods."

From Interchangeable Parts to Visual Basic, a Brief History, David Grimshaw, Ryerson University

"Jefferson was president when Eli Whitney duplicated Blanc's [gunsmith Honoré Blanc in 1790] demonstration 18 years later. No one realized it then, but Whitney was faking it. He'd carefully hand-crafted each part so they'd fit together. Whitney sold the government a huge contract for four thousand muskets. He took eight years to deliver them and then the parts weren't interchangeable after all.
But other Americans went on to make the method work. Before the Civil War, we had rifles with parts that could be swapped. After the war, we began making complex merchandise like sewing machines and typewriters with interchangeable parts."

No. 1252: Interchangable Parts, Engines of Our Ingenuity

"Whitney designed a new gun and the machinery to make it. His machine manufactured parts exactly alike. Each part would fit any of the guns he made. Whitney also created division of labour, in which each person specialized in making one part of the gun. The final step was merely to assemble the interchangeable parts."

Eli  Whitney, Ferdinando Family History

Patents

"In Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 , the Constitution empowers Congress "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Patent law must carefully balance the rights of the inventor to profit from his or her invention (through the grant of a temporary monopoly) against the needs of society at large to benefit from new ideas.

"The patent bill of 1790 enabled the government to patent "any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any instrument thereon not before known or used." The patent act of 1793 gave the secretary of state the power to issue a patent to anyone who presented working drawings, a written description, a model, and paid an application fee. Over time the requirements and procedures have changed. Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is under the auspices of the Commerce Department."

The Constitution and Patent Law, The Eli Whitney Museum

Mortiser

"Mortises and tenons are the nuts and bolts of woodworking, essential for joining separate pieces of wood to create rigid frames in houses, windows, doors, and furniture. They are of various sizes, shapes, and positions, most fairly simple but some extraordinarily complex.

"The mortise is a hollowed space of appropriate size to receive a rectangular shaped tenon. To make a mortise by hand, a woodworker used a marking gauge to scribe a rectangle that defined the area that would form the sides and ends of the mortise. He then bored a hole the same width as the mortise in the center of this space. If the mortise was large, additional holes were drilled to remove most of the wood. In the nineteenth century, house carpenters cut mortises with portable rotary and oscillating boring machines that functioned much like an egg beater, but with two handles. Once the hole or holes were bored, chisels were used to finish the sides and square the corners of the mortise...."

"Successful tenoning machines for simple tasks were first produced in the United States by Joseph Fay in 1831. The machine operated manually, cutting tenons in pieces that were 2-by-12 inches (5 cm by 30.5 cm) or less. One lever drove two cutters against a workpiece secured to a table, while a second lever lowered the cutters against the piece and then raised them to allow for a return. The motion was repeated with each thrust, cutting in a manner just like that of a rabbet plane. Furniture-makers; sash, door, and blind manufacturers; and carriage and railroad car shops used these machines to produce large numbers of identical parts. By the 1850s, machines could tenon two sides of a piece to produce standard parts for doors and windows.

Power-driven tenoning machines consisted of two basic types. Circular-saw tenoners used arrangements of circular saws working at right angles to each other, one set of saws cutting the shoulder of the tenon, the other cutting its length. Unlike the manually operated machine, the wood moved on a carriage past the cutters rather than the cutters moving past the wood. Circular-saw tenoners were capable of cutting large timbers.

The most common method for cutting tenons involved a rotary action. In such machines, two cutter heads with multiple knives revolved around a spindle. As the piece moved toward the cutters, they cut a square or rectangular tenon equal to the distance between the cutter heads. This machine operated much like a planing machine. This same principle also produced circular tenons by securing two cutters in a hollow frame that could be adjusted for cutting tenons of various diameters.

Mortising and Tenoning Machines, Facts On File, inc.

Directory of American Tools and Machinery Patents.

H. Branch Mortising Machine, New York, 1826, Patent No. 4,509X

"This is the first patent for a hollow-chisel mortiser, although the patent title suggests that the hollow chisels were not covered by the claims. (As is the case for many X-series patents, only a drawing survives; in fact, most of the drawings were made from the patent models after the 1836 patent-office fire.) The drawing shows multiple chisel-and-bit sets mounted horizontally and driven by a crank through gearing. As the mortising bits are cranked around, the workpiece advances towards the bits. It seems that this invention was not successful, and Greenlee Brothers & Co. can rightly claim (as they do in a 1942 mortiser brochure) that 'in 1876 the first successful mortiser was developed by Greenlee Bros. & Co.'"
Harden Branch Mortising Machine; Aug. 07, 1826; Patent No. 4,509X, Old Woodworking Machines

Planer

A planing machine employs revolving metal cutters to shave or chip the rough surface of a board or a timber in order to reduce its dimensions or to produce a smoother surface. The piece to be planed can be fed by hand or by a self-feeding mechanism and can pass over or under the cutters. By 1800, Samuel Bentham received various patents for planing machines in Britain. These patents established an important principle of using rotating cutters to allow for the continuous cutting of wood. In theory, this process was much faster than the ancient method of using various hand planes to smooth boards.
Planing Machine, Facts On File, inc.

The Woodworth planer patent, in its various reissues and extensions (Patent 5,315X, patent RE71, patent 80; extended until 1856), is probably the most historically significant patent for woodworking machinery. The drawing for this patent was provided in 1841, about the time that the owners were seeking to renew the original patent. US Patent 5,315X, Directory of American Tools and Machinery Patents.

Woodworth Planer (1828, 1836), William Woodworth, Hudson, New York

There are two Woodworth patents on planers, in 1828 and 1836. The first patent was issued before the patent-office fire and the major changes to patent laws (both in 1836), and was reissued in 1845; the second patent was obtained in 1836, very shortly after the new laws took effect. The first patent is the first verifiable planing machine that used both rotary cutter heads and feed rolls. The second patent provides a series of incremental improvements on the original design.
William Woodworth, Old Woodworking Machines

The earliest successful application of this principle has been associated with a patent granted to William Woodworth of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in 1828. The Woodworth planer used feed rolls and a rotary cutting cylinder. Boards placed on edge were clamped to a moving carriage and were passed through metal rollers until they met with a rotating cutting cylinder that was mounted vertically. By 1831, this type of machine could plane 2.5 to 2.7 m (8–9 ft) a minute, producing 400 to 500 planks a day. It held a virtual monopoly over the large and profitable market for tongue-and-groove floor boards used in the construction of buildings. But the early machine vibrated considerably because of its wooden frame and because it required better bearing designs. Most improvements in the machine followed the expiration of Woodworth's patent in the 1850s, when the machines became larger and operated at higher speeds, with powered, spring-pressured rollers, chip breakers, and more cutting knives in the cylinder. By 1853, these machines operated at 4,000 revolutions a minute, planing about 15 m (50 ft) of flooring a minute. Cutters required sharpening about once an hour. Improved models were able to dress all four sides of a board in a single pass.
The success of the Woodworth planer increased tremendously the quantity of dressed lumber, providing incentive to develop machines capable of boring, mortising, tenoning, and shaping, especially when better steel allowed for more durable cutters. Occasionally, the principles of the Woodworth planer were adapted for special purposes. By 1880, a planer could smooth 500 doors in a day. However, the Daniels planer was more commonly used in heavier work required by the railroads and carriage manufacturers. The Daniels machine employed a vertical revolving shaft with horizontal arms, the cutters being placed at the ends of those arms. A traveling bed delivered the work to the cutters, which operated above the work at a very high speed. Most of these machines were very large and heavily engineered, with cast-iron frames.
Planing Machine, Facts On File, inc.

Emmons Carriage-Feed Planer (1829), Uri Emmons, Freehold, New Jersey

US Patent 5467

"According to PM&M inA, Uri Emmons built a carriage-fed planer in 1824. The planer used knives mounted on rotating disks, and cut on both the forward and reverse travel of the carriage. It was, incredibly, hand-powered, and was known locally as the "Flim-Flam," which isn't surprising given the limited performance that could be expected from a hand-powered machine of this size. Emmons received patent no. X5,467 in 1829 for his wood planing machine. According to an 1852 article in SA, Emmons's design was superior to the 1828 Woodworth design, and in fact Woodworth's son had his father's patent reissued in 1845, incorporating Emmons's improvements. Check out patent no. RE71 for some wonderfully clear drawings of this machine. It is not clear whether Woodworth (or his estate) bought out Emmons, or whether they simply used his ideas once the Emmons patent had expired.
Uri Emmons, Old Woodworking Machines

Saws

N. Swift "Sawing shingles," Lebanon, Connecticut, Patent No. 4,802X

"This invention is a very early form of a tablesaw. The blade is mounted at the edge of the table, there is not really a table top as such, and there is no provision for adjusting the blade angle or the depth of cut. But it is the earliest patent (excepting those lost in the 1836 patent office fire) that looks at all like a tablesaw."
N. Swift "Sawing shingles;" Jun. 27, 1827, Patent No. 4,802X, Old Woodworking Machines

Barker Band saw mill, Ellsworth, Maine; 1836; Patent No. 9,303X

The patent covers the "elastic revolving belt saw and the manner of using the same." In other words, he patented the basic idea of the bandsaw. The idea of the bandsaw reportedly originated in France or England (William Newberry of London received an English patent in 1808 for a bandsaw, but he never went built a successful machine because of problems with making a viable blade), but this is the first known U.S. bandsaw patent.
The blade is described as "thirty-four feet long, nine inches wide, and one twelfth of an inch thick." The wheels are five feet in diameter.
Widespread use of bandsaws would have to wait for the necessary metallurgical improvements to make blades that could repeatedly flex without suffering fatigue and breakage.
B Barker Band saw mill; Jan. 06, 1836; ; Patent No. 9,303X, , Old Woodworking Machines

Joseph H. Tuttle Saw, Seneca, NewYork, Patent No. 9,807

USTPO image.

"Extended 7 years. Reciprocating sawblade that cuts in both directions. Besides the reissue, this design was improved in patent 118,198.The manufacturer is inferred from the assignees of the reissue, plus the fact that the patent was extended: patents cannot normally be extended if they are not being used."
Saw, Joseph H. Tuttle, Seneca, NewYork; Jun. 21, 1853; Patent No. 9,807

Shaping Machines

A shaping or molding machine uses metal cutters to shave the surface of a board or timber to produce a contoured edge. Typically, the work had been done by hand planes that were run with or across the grain of a piece of dressed lumber. The earliest machines employed a cutter fixed into a workbench with a fence for guiding the piece as it was passed over the cutter. However, as early as 1793, Samuel Bentham patented a shaping machine with various contoured cutters that revolved on a vertical shaft above a table. The machine could be cranked by hand or driven by belts as the workpiece was secured to a carriage and passed underneath the cutter. The principle resembled that of planing machines also designed by Bentham.

Molding machines developed more slowly than planing machines, for they produced articles less in demand than the simple floorboards, joists, sheathing, and dressed lumber made by planing machines. In addition, moldings had to be planed to a more precise finish than common building materials. Among early machines, only one end of the axle for the cutter was supported. Consequently, the machines vibrated to a considerable degree, which resulted in an inferior, wavy surface. Also, cutters were difficult to change and sharpen. Consequently, molding produced with a hand plane remained a far superior product until the 1870s. Until then, molding machines produced only cheap, simple goods that could be produced in large batches.

Molding machines improved considerably after 1860. Larger, heavier, cast-iron frames replaced earlier wooden frames, increasing substantially the cost of the machine but reducing vibration. Feed rolls provided a faster and more compact method of bringing the piece to the cutters than the older method of using carriages. Improvements in tool steel improved the quality of the cut and increased the time the machine could operate without the need for sharpening the cutters. Some machines made complex cuts using multiple heads and cutters. Increasingly, factory-produced molding supplied a tremendous demand for door panels, stair stringers, window sash, trim, furniture, and plow handles.

By the 1880s, variety molders were essential machines in most small- to medium-sized woodworking shops. Sometimes called paneling and recessing machines, they functioned like the modern router and were remarkably versatile shaping tools. Most often, two spindles projected above the surface of a table. When necessary, fences guided the work. The spindles rotated at high speeds in opposite directions, allowing the woodworker to cut with the grain without having to stop in order to reverse the spindle."
Shaping Machines, Facts On File, inc.