Introduction to Medieval Woodworking: Materials, Tools & Methods
Ranulf of Waterford
Introduction
This is Introduction to Medieval Woodworking: Materials, Tools & Methods - which pretty much sums up the three areas we're going to cover today.
I'll confess to a pet peeve: people tend to look at the Middle Ages as an undifferentiated lump. It isn't - at least when we're looking at woodworking. Woodworking during the Middle Ages evolved considerably from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance - in materials, tools, and methods. This means that we need to be careful about using the term "period" since what is accurate for one time or region may not be accurate for another.
Medieval woodworking encompassed a number of different trades - carpentry, joinery, wheelwrighting, cooperage, etc. What I'm going to focus on is joinery - the part that involves making furniture.
Materials
Introduction
Wood is a natural substance. It is intended to hold up trees, not be made into things.
Wood is composed of bundles of cellulose tubes held together with lignin - think of it as a bundle of soda straws. These tubes contain moisture and expand and contract as the wood either absorbs or releases moisture. This means that wood moves much more across the grain than along the grain. We'll look at the consequences of this when we get to the section on Methods.
Different woods have different properties; these are summed up in the wood handout. Medieval woodworkers knew these properties and exploited them. For example, a wagon wheel was normally composed of and Elm hub - since Elm doesn't split, Oak spokes - since Oak is both cheap and strong, and an Ash rim - since Ash is tough and flexible.
If we're looking at furniture, oak appears to have been the most common wood used in the Middle Ages - this probably has something to do with the fact that it's one of the most common trees in Western Europe. Oak is also fairly resistant to decay, which has probably led to it being over-represented in surviving pieces.
Despite what some of the English references will tell you, other woods were used for furniture. There's a lot of Walnut, especially looking at French and Italian work after the 15th Century. Pine was fairly common in Alpine regions. The Italians made use of Cypress and Poplar, especially for cheaper pieces.
Wood
Let's look at some of the commonly available woods:
Pine
I can't say enough about Pine - most of it bad. On the good side - it's cheap and it's easy to work (well, kind of - it's so soft it tends to mush instead of cut). On the bad side, it warps easily, dents if you look at it funny, and most of what you find at the local home center is really, really bad. Good, furniture grade pine is at least as expensive as Poplar.
Pine is a good wood to start out with, although it will teach you bad habits. It's also good for trying out new techniques since your mistakes won't be too expensive.
Poplar
Poplar is really under-rated - at least in my opinion. It's fairly inexpensive and works easily. On the down side it frequently has a nasty greenish tinge (although leaving the wood in the sun for a few hours will usually take care of that) and tends to fuzz when you work it.
Oak
Oak is the classic wood for medieval furniture making. On the down side, it can be tough to work and it's fairly expensive.
Walnut
Walnut's my favorite wood. It works fairly easily (harder than poplar, not as hard as oak), looks really good, and carves crisply.
Getting Wood
You can get pine, poplar, and red oak at your local home center. It's expensive, but it's already been planed and dimensioned. Buying wood at a lumberyard is cheaper, but you'll have to plane it yourself - although some places will plane and rip one edge for a fee. One thing to remember is that the modern ¾" thick board is usually either too thick or too thin for period furniture.
Tools
Tools are one thing that haven't changed much over the years. Roman tools recovered from Pompeii are not that different from those in use through the late 19th Century. A lot of what we see in the Middle Ages is the rediscovery or reintroduction of tools along with some minor modifications. This is a section I'm going to go through fairly fast while I play show and tell.
Axe
The Axe was the premier tool of the medieval carpenter. The axe was used for squaring timber. Joiners didn't use the axe much since their lumber usually came at least roughly squared.
Saw
The saw was used for cutting wood to length and width. Medieval saws were of both the framed and unframed types. Medieval art seems to show saws that cut both on the push stroke (like modern saws) and on the pull (like Asian saws). Sawing was mechanized on the Continent by the 14th Century.
Plane
Planes are used for smoothing and dimensioning wood. They are also used striking moldings. The plane was the tool that distinguished the joiner from the carpenter - in some places only joiners were legally allowed to use planes. To some extent this meant that planes were a status symbol and were treated as such. They are the tool most likely to have been decorated.
Chisel
A chisel is a piece of steel with a sharp edge on one end. Even as early as the 10th Century we are seeing some specialization between different types of chisels - such as flat chisels and gouges.
Boring Tools
The earliest boring tool was the T-handled augur - a metal bit with a handle attached crossways to the top end. By the 15th Century someone had figured out how to apply rotary motion resulting in the brace.
Methods
As we said earlier, wood moves. In unheated houses wood moves a lot in keeping with the seasons. To a large extent, the history of medieval joinery is an evolution of techniques for dealing with wood movement. Note that all three of these techniques overlap considerably and all three were in use late in period (and afterwards).
Boarded
This is the earliest method and consists of simply nailing the boards together. This is a fairly weak form of construction and will eventually fail due to wood movement. This problem is magnified with the size of the piece. Another problem is that unless your boards are perfectly flat there will be gaps along the joins.
Joined
The need to cope with wood movement eventually led to the development of joinery techniques. In classic joinery a piece is composed of a frame of solid wood that encloses panels. The panels are allowed to "float" in the frame and are able to expand and contract with the seasons. Movement is not an issue with the frame pieces due to the small sizes involved. The contrast between the stiles and the panels also lends itself to decoration. The use of thinner panels also allows a weight savings.
Casework
Casework uses dovetailed construction for the carcasse. Generally late for most pieces, although dovetailed chests and boxes are known from the 15th Century. This solves the problem of wood movement, at the expense of considerable time and effort.
Finishing
Once you've built your piece it needs to be finished. Finishing helps to protect the wood and also seals it against moisture loss - which helps to retard the wood movement we've been talking about. The most common period finish is paint, which seems to usually have been egg tempera over a gesso or parchment ground. In the Renaissance we begin to see oil and wax finishes.
We know almost nothing about period finishing formulas since these were usually protected as trade secrets. There are references in 14th Century account to wood being "varnished" but it is unsure whether this refers to varnish or some other kind of finish. Staining, graining, and other decorative techniques are known from late period examples, but may have been used earlier.