Woodworking Glossary

From WoodworkersZone WoodWiki

Revision as of 15:49, November 11, 2007

Adhesive

• A substance commonly used in woodworking to bond two pieces of wood together.

Air Dried

• Wood dried "naturally", without the use of a kiln. Many woodworkers feel this results in wood with less internal stress. One rule of thumb indicates to allow one year of air drying for every inch of thickness of stock.

Annual Growth Ring

• A layer of wood that a growing tree puts on during the course of one growing season.

Apron

• A rail joined to legs just under a table top

Arbor

• A shaft on which a revolving cutting or polishing tool is mounted.
• A spindle on a cutting machine that holds work to be cut.

Back Bevel

• a micro-bevel on the backside of a plane iron (or planer, jointer knife). Some woodworkers claim back-beveling lessens tear-out on highly figured stock or wood with difficult grain. Chisels are not back-beveled,

Back Saw

• A fine-tooth crosscut saw with a metal reinforcing band along the back of a thin blade.

Baltic Birch (Plywood)

• a type of imported plywood that is typically considered "higher quality" (more plies, less voids) than much of the plywood available in big box stores. Note that Baltic Birch is dimensioned in millimeters, so when you buy a '1/4"' sheet, it's actually 6mm in thickness. The stock are commonly found in 5'x5' sheets, instead of the typical 4x8' sheets for plywood. BB is graded differently as well - "B/BB" is usually found here and patches on both sides is typical. Many woodworkers use 'Baltic Birch' as a generic term for products imported from Russia, Finland and other places. The higher quality makes Baltic Birch a great material for projects and an excellent substrate for veneering.

Bailey (Style) Plane

• a type of handplane design invented by Leonard Bailey for the Stanley Tool Works, where the frog, plane iron, cap iron are attached to the sole. This is probably the most common style of handplane ever made, as most lowcost replicas of Stanley planes are done in the 'Bailey style'.

Band Saw

• A machine that is named for a continuous steel blade welded into lengths dictated by the diameters of two or more wheels. The maximum work thickness is determined by the distance between the table top and the bottom of the upper blade guide in its highest raised position.
• Designed and generally used for cutting curves in a workpiece, but also commonly used for resawing a board into thin veneers.

Bedrock (Style) Plane

• a type of handplane design that was intended to be an improvement over the Bailey style planes in the way the frog is seated on the plane sole. Whether they are truly better than Bailey style is still the subject of debate. The modern hand plane maker, Lie Nielsen, makes their planes in the Bedrock style.

Bench Dogs

• Round or square pegs inserted into holes in the top of a workbench, against which the workpiece is braced. The dogs may be made of wood, plastic or metal.

Bench Plane

• a class of hand planes named for their frequent home on the work bench. Roughly speaking Stanley models #1 - #8 (and their equivalents) are considered 'bench' planes. Bench planes are "bevel down" planes, contrasted with block planes that are "bevel up" planes.

Birds-eye

• Found in wood in which the cell fibers are distorted into tight curls. Often resulting from the outgrowth of branches which failed to fully develop.

Biscuit

• an oval shaped piece of wood used to join two boards together. Biscuits come in three common sizes: #20 (about 1" width and 2 3/8" length), #10 (about 3/4" width and 2 3/16" length) #0 (about 5/8" in width and 1 13/16" length.) One manufacturer offers biscuits identified with "FF," for use in faceframe construction. This size biscuit requires a smaller blade in the cutting tool.

Biscuit Joiner

• a power tool with a small circular saw blade that cuts a crescent-shaped slot for a biscuit. Also called a Plate Joiner.

Block Plane

• a small bench plane, about 2" wide by 6 1/2" long. Block planes are 'bevel up' . There are two common types: standard and low-angle. The standard block plane usually has a 25* cutting angle on a 20* bed for an effective cutting angle of 45*. The low angle block plane puts a 25* cutting angle on a 12* bed for a 37* effective cutting angle. Block planes are general purpose shop planes.

Board Foot

• http://teefpickers.com/wiki/index.php?title=Board_Feet.

• A standard measure of "hardwood" quantity. ("Plywood" is measured in square feet, and "dimensional wood" (construction lumber) is measured in linear feet.)

• Equal to the amount of wood in a piece one foot square and one inch thick (144 sq/in.). The arithmetic formula used to calculate BF in a piece of hardwood is: (L x W x T)/144, where L=length, W=width, and T=thickness, all measured in inches. Note that thickness is typically calculated as "nominal" which is not the same as actual.

Bookmatch

• a grain matching technique, typically found in veneering. The board is resawn, then the two halves (or two pieces from the veneer flitch) are opened like a book. The result is often a symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing grain pattern.

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Box Joint

• A wood joint formed by means of interlocking notches or "fingers." Similar to "dovetail" joints, box joints consist of pins and tails. Pins can be considered the 'male' part of the joint, while the tails are the 'female.' In practice, the tails of a box joint are formed by cutting notches between adjacent pins.

Also called 'finger joints,' box joints are a good example of early machine joints cut using a template, called a box joint jig.

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Butt Joint

• A joint in which the flat, square end of one board fits snugly against the flat, square surface or edge of a second board. Butt joints often need reinforced with biscuits, dowels, glue blocks, or some form of mechanical fastener.

Card Scraper

• usually a small (4x6") rectangular piece of thin steel, although some are available with contours. Used as a final milling tool to remove previous milling marks. Many consider a card scraper to produce a surface ready for finishing. Especially useful for highly figured wood, or wood with difficult grain that would make planing difficult. Card scrapers cut with a burr, not a beveled knife edge.

Chamfer

• A decorative bevel (45°) along the length of an edge of a workpiece.

Chisel

• hand tool with a handle and a beveled iron (blade) as the cutting edge. Used to carefully remove wood. There are several types of chisels, the more common one's you'll encounter in woodworking are:
  • butt chisel - short chisel
  • bench chisel - typically with an iron about 6-8" in length and a 25° bevel. all three surfaces of the iron are beveled
  • mortise chisel - thicker and usually has only the front edge of iron beveled
  • skew chisel - resembles a bench chisel but the leading edge is skewed at about 30° to the sides.
• chisels come in a variety of widths. Bench chisels are often found in 1/8", 1/4", 3/8", 1/2", 3/4", 1" and 1 1/4" widths.

Chuck

• Used on drill presses or hand drills to hold the boring tool or bit.
• Used on lathes to hold the workpiece (headstock) or boring tool (tailstock).

Collet

• A type of split chuck used to hold cutting tools with small shaft sizes, such as those used by routers.

Common Grade Lumber

• A less expensive grade of hardwood lumber incorporating pieces that must include minimum clear face cuttings that are 4" wide x 2' long, or 3" wide x 3' long. Grading is done from the poorer side of the board.

Compound Miter

• A joint combining miter and bevel cuts.

Countersink

• Where the head of the fastener is below the surface of the board. Usually filled or plugged.

Cross Cut

• cut across the grain of a board

Dado

• a rectangular, flat-bottomed channel cut across the grain of a board.

Dovetail

• A flared tenon, usually combined with a corresponding mortise to provide an interlocking joint.

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Dowel

• A pin of various diameters and lengths inserted in a hole to reinforce or align joints, or to support shelving. Dowels may be made from wood or plastic (rarely metal) and may be smooth or have small grooves to reduce hydraulic pressure when used with glue.

Face Frame

• A combination of rails and stiles used on the front of cabinets, often to mask the visible plys of the sheet goods utilized in the cabinet construction.

Featherboard

• An accessory to milling operations designed to hold a workpiece flat against a tool surface or fence. It incorporates "feathers" (narrow fingers) that flex in the direction of travel but resist rearward movement or kickback. Often shopmade, but commercial models are available.

Fence

• A device used to keep a cutting tool (like a saw or router bit) at an evenly spaced distance from the cutting surfaces.

Figure

• A distinctive grain pattern that enhances the appearance of wooden surfaces, but often increases the difficulty of milling operations, particularly when the woodworker is using handtools.

Flat-sawn

• a way of cutting boards from a tree trunk such that the growth rings end up mostly parallel to the face of the board.

Forstner Bit

• a drill bit that's guided through the workpiece by both a center spur and the rim. Invented by Benjamin Forstner in the late 1800's. Useful for making flat bottom holes. Original forstner styled bits (identified by their short center points) are still made by the Connecticut Valley Manufacturing Company (http://www.convalco.com).

Four Square

• a term to describe milling rough lumber so that all four corners are square, 90° angles. One possible milling sequence for four-squaring stock with power tools is: joint one board face flat, plane opposite face parallel (and flat), joint one edge square to a flat face, then rip last edge square on the table saw.

Gillie

• A fairly good woodworker who has been banned from every forum on the WWW; routinely dies and comes back to life as an attention-getting device. His website is currently under construction.

Gouge

• A chisel with a curved blade. It may be sharpened on the inside or the outside of the tip, depending on its intended use.

Green Lumber

• This refers to moisture content, not color, and describes wood freshly milled into lumber from tree harvesting operations.

Grit

• The coarseness of material used in sandpaper or grinding stones. The larger the grit, the finer or less it will cut material.

Hardwood

• Wood harvested from a tree that is, botanically, an angiosperm. This roughly, but not exactly, corresponds to deciduous trees, those that drop their leaves seasonally. An example of a tree that is an angiosperm but does not drop its leaves in winter are the Live Oaks, such as Quercus virginiana. The term "hardwood" does not indicate the hardness of the wood itself, as many hardwoods are softer than the harder softwoods.

Heartwood

• Usually darker than actively-growing sapwood, it provides most of the structural integrity of the standing tree, and more stability as lumber.

Hollow Ground

• a sharpening technique for chisels, plane irons, etc. Placing the iron against a grinder wheel (e.g. see Tormek) puts a curve in the bevel.

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Jig

Jointer

• a woodworking machine used to flatten one side (either a face or an edge) on a board. Jointing a board is the first necessary step in 'four squaring' stock. A Jointer Plane is a large bench plane used to flatten one side of a board.

Kerf

• The width of the cut produced by the blade cutting the material.

Kickback

Kiln Dried

• wood that has been dried to the desired moisture content using a Kiln or Oven. Contrast with "air dried" when lumber is left to dry out in the environment. Kiln drying is typically much faster that air drying.

Knot

Laminate

MDF

Micro Bevel

• a sharpening technique where the tip of the chisel or plane iron is ground at a 1° or 2° higher angle that the rest of the bevel. The intent is to minimize the amount of metal that must be worked and reworked to keep the sharp edge. See Hollow Ground for an illustration.

Miter Gauge

Miter Joint

Moisture Content

• lumber, as a natural product, has a large amount of water. As the wood dries, the water content drops. Woodworkers look for wood in the 6-10% moisture content range. The moisture content in wood is expressed as a percentage of the weight of the wood when dried.

Mortise

Muntin

Plane (noun)

• a manually operated tool used primarily for removing stock from the surface of a board. There is a large variety of types and uses of planes defined above.

Plane (verb)

• reduce the thickness of a board, keeping both faces parallel. Commonly done with a dedicated machine called a "planer" (English: thicknesser), but also done with planes.

Planer

• see Plane (verb)

Plain Sawn

• See Flatsawn.

Plywood

• a engineered product, sheet-good type of lumber made by laminating several thinner sheets together. While laminating wood sheets dates back to the Egyptian era, the patent for modern day plywood was issues in 1865. The layers in modern plywood orient the grain of each sheet at right angles to one another. Plywood thicknesses may be less than the noted thickness - it is not uncommon to find plywood labeled as 3/4" thick to be 23/32".

Plywood Grades

• hardwood plywood quality is often noted by a 'grade'. For hardwood plywood the quality grade is noted by a letter and a number. The letter ranges from A (best) to D (worst) and applies to the face side of the sheet. The number runs from 1 (best) to 4 (worst) and grades the back side of the sheet. Note that softwood plywood and construction sheet goods may not use this grading style.

Pocket Hole

Quartersawn

• a way of cutting boards from a tree trunk such that the growth rings end up mostly perpendicular to the face of the board.

Rabbet

• a open sided rectangular channel or grove at the end of a board.

Rail

• The horizontal surface used to join (stiles) or support (legs) vertical structures.

Rasp

• hand tool used for removing and shaping stock. resembles a file, but often with larger, more aggressive teeth. There are three types of rasps: wood, cabinet and bastard. The wood makes the coarsest cut; the bastard the finest.

Resaw

• reduce the thickness of a board by sawing. As an example, a board one inch thick might be resawn into two boards 3/8" thick.(see "bookmatch) Commonly done with a band saw, but also with table saw or hand saw.

Riftsawn

• a way of cutting boards from a tree trunk such that the growth rings end up mostly at a 45° angle to the face of the board.

Rip

• cut along the grain of a board

Rough Lumber

Router

Router Lift

• mechanical apparatus for accurately changing the height of the router in a router table. Router lifts use a carriage to hold the router motor and a threaded rod to control the height change. Most are manual - a few are motorized.

Sapwood

Shaper

Shellac

• A natural product which can be used as a sealer or finishing product, depending on the percentage (cut) of shellac mixed with denatured alcohol. Shellac is usually not recommended as a top coat where it may be exposed to high moisture conditions.

Snipe

Softwood

Spalting

Spline

Spokeshave

Stickers

Story Stick

Stile

• The vertical portions of a face frame (see rail)

Table Saw

Tearout

Tenon

Tongue and Groove

Varnish

Veneer