Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinet making, wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning.
Joinery is a part of woodworking that involves joining pieces of wood, engineered lumber, or synthetic substitutes, to produce more complex items. Some woodworking joints employ mechanical fasteners, bindings, or adhesives, while others use only wood elements.
Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenters traditionally worked with natural wood and did rougher work such as framing, but today many other materials are also used and sometimes the finer trades of cabinetmaking and furniture building are considered carpentry. In the United States, 98.5% of carpenters are male, and it was the fourth most male-dominated occupation in the country in 1999. In 2006 in the United States, there were about 1.5 million carpentry positions. Carpenters are usually the first tradesmen on a job and the last to leave. Carpenters normally framed post-and-beam buildings until the end of the 19th century; now this old-fashioned carpentry is called timber framing. Carpenters learn this trade by being employed through an apprenticeship training—normally 4 years—and qualify by successfully completing that country's competence test in places such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Australia and South Africa. It is also common that the skill can be learned by gaining work experience other than a formal training program, which may be the case in many places.
Softwood is wood from gymnosperm trees such as conifers. The term is opposed to hardwood, which is the wood from angiosperm trees. The main differences between hardwoods and softwoods is that the structure of hardwoods lack resin canals, whereas softwoods lack pores.
The jointer plane, also known as the try plane or trying plane, is a type of hand plane used in woodworking to straighten the edges of boards in the process known as jointing, and to flatten the faces of larger boards. Its long length is designed to 'ride over' the undulations of an uneven surface, skimming off the peaks, gradually creating a flatter surface. In thicknessing or preparing rough stock, the jointer plane is usually preceded by the fore plane or jack plane and followed by the smoothing plane.
A marking gauge, also known as a scratch gauge, is used in woodworking and metalworking to mark out lines for cutting or other operations. The purpose of the gauge is to scribe a line parallel to a reference edge or surface. It is used in joinery and sheetmetal operations.
A butt joint is a technique in which two pieces of material are joined by simply placing their ends together without any special shaping. The name "butt joint" comes from the way the material is joined. The butt joint is the simplest joint to make since it merely involves cutting the material to the appropriate length and butting them together. It is also the weakest because unless some form of reinforcement is used, it relies upon glue or welding alone to hold it together. Because the orientation of the material usually presents only one end to a long gluing or welding surface, the resulting joint is inherently weak.
John Hemmings was an American woodworker. Born into slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as a member of the large mixed-race Hemings family, he trained in the Monticello Joinery and became a highly skilled carpenter and woodworker, making furniture and crafting the fine woodwork of the interiors at Monticello and Poplar Forest.
In joinery, a groove is a slot or trench cut into a member which runs parallel to the grain. A groove is thus differentiated from a dado, which runs across the grain.
André Jacob Roubo (1739–1791) was a French carpenter, cabinetmaker and author. Roubo was born and died in Paris, and was the son and grandson of master cabinetmakers. Roubo wrote several highly influential books on woodworking, an achievement which was especially notable given his relatively poor background and self-taught methods.
Coping or scribing is the woodworking technique of shaping the end of a moulding or frame component to neatly fit the contours of an abutting member. Joining tubular members in metalworking is also referred to as a cope, or sometimes a "fish mouth joint" or saddle joint.
This glossary of woodworking lists a number of specialized terms and concepts used in woodworking, carpentry, and related disciplines.
The Governor John Langdon House, also known as Governor John Langdon Mansion, is a historic mansion house at 143 Pleasant Street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States. It was built in 1784 by Founding Father John Langdon (1741-1819), a merchant, shipbuilder, American Revolutionary War general, signer of the United States Constitution, and three-term President of New Hampshire. The house he built for his family showed his status as Portsmouth's leading citizen and received praise from George Washington, who visited there in 1789. Its reception rooms are ornamented by elaborate wood carving in the rococo style. The house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974, and is now a house museum operated by Historic New England.
Fine Woodworking is a woodworking magazine published by Taunton Press in Newtown, Connecticut, USA.
Aerolite is a urea-formaldehyde gap filling adhesive which is water- and heat-resistant. It is used in large quantities by the chipboard industry and also by wooden boat builders for its high strength and durability. It is also used in joinery, veneering and general woodwork assembly. Aerolite has also been used for wooden aircraft construction, and a properly made Aerolite joint is said to be three times stronger than spruce wood.
Alfredson's Joinery is a heritage-listed workshop at 28 King Street, Cooran, Shire of Noosa, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1930s to 1950s. It is also known as Alfredson's Pre-Cut House Workshop and Alfredson's Sawmill. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 27 November 2008.
Jennie Alexander was an American woodworker considered a pioneer in the woodworking world, "Instrumental in designing the now iconic two-slat post-and-rung shaving chair." She also coined the term "greenwoodworking" as a single word in her book, Make a Chair from a Tree: An Introduction to Working Green Wood.
A burnisher is a hand tool used in woodworking for creating a burr on a card scraper.
Furniture repair is the craft of making broken or worn furniture usable again. It may include the preservation of old furniture, which is referred to as restoration. The craft of furniture repair requires a number of different skills including woodworking, metalworking, wood finishing, caning (furniture), woodturning, and upholstery.
