Threads in Wood

Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., The, Jun 2003 by Packham, Jim

Figure 17 shows an old tool that was helpful in caring for textiles. Table and bed linens were smoothed out in this late-eighteenth-century linen press. Again, there are decorative touches that complement the quality of the tool.

The mallet handle of Figure 18 has been backed out enough to show a taper just behind the threading. When the handle is screwed in fully, this taper wedges the handle very firmly into the head. It is an effective solution to the old problem of loose mallet heads.

Other tools in which a wooden handle is fastened to a working head by means of wooden threads would include long-handled brushes, mops, and push brooms. The traditional push broom was made with two threaded holes for the handle. When the bristles acquired a lot of bend in one direction, the handle could be moved to the opposite hole. Tools with screw-mounted handles also made it easy to replace a broken handle, or to use the same handle with more than one tool.

You would be more likely to find a wooden nutcracker (Figure 19) in a souvenir shop than in an antique tool auction. Hut it is a working tool.

Two different marking gauges make use of threads in wood (Figure 20). In one, the two threaded nuts are clamped together to position the guide. In the other, a wooden thumbscrew holds the guide in place.

Several types of woodworking planes utilized wooden screws. Adjustment of the fence position for plow planes was provided in several ways, of which the use of two screw arms (Figure 21) is perhaps the most common method.

At the top of this plane's body, one can see a brass adjustment screw used to change the position of the plane's depth guide. Another brass screw (not visible) was threaded into the side of the wooden body to clamp the position of the depth guide. This brass thumbscrew has a 1/4-inch diameter with 20 threads per inch. The beech plane body was tapped directly to receive this thumbscrew. However, such finely pitched threads normally are too weak in wood, and they have broken with use in this plane. But they were another application of threads in wood.

A moving, or adjustable, sash plane was used to cut the inside moulding and the rabbet in one pass. It usually was made with two plane irons in one body, but sometimes it was put together from two separate moulding' planes, spaced apart by a shim and clamped together with wooden bolts and nuts such as in Figure 22.

The adjustable founding plane (Figure 23) sometimes is called a witchet. It was used to turn square stock into a roughly round shape such as in making shovel or rake handles. Most rounding planes were handmade, but this one is imprinted SUMMERS VARVILL, one of the Varvill family of planemakers in York, England. This rounder has a nicely shaped brass wear sleeve.

Coopers used several tools that were unique to their trade. One of these was the croze plane. The use of three screw stems to adjust the position of the croze cut was characteristic of croze planes (Figure 24) made in Europe. This croze plane has two nicker blades and a square croze blade, indicating that it was intended for making beer casks. This plane has decorative carving, is dated 1848, and has several indications of having been made by J. Augustin, a well-known planemaker in nineteenth-century Vienna.