The following is excerpted from “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry,” translated by By Donald C. Williams, Michele Pietryka-Pagán & Philippe Lafargue. It is the first English-language translation of the most important woodworking book of the 18th century.
While the title of this work implies that it is about marquetry alone, that is not the case. “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” covers a wide range of topics of interest to woodworkers who are interested in hand-tool woodworking or history.
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In addition to veneer and marquetry, this volume contains sections on grinding, sharpening, staining, finishing, wood selection, a German workbench, clock-case construction, engraving and casting brasses.
But most of all, “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” provides a window into the woodworking world of the 18th century, a world that is both strangely familiar and foreign.
Roubo laments the decline of the craft in the 18th century. He decries the secrecy many masters employed to protect craft knowledge. He bemoans the cheapening of both goods and the taste of customers.
And he speaks to the reader as a woodworker who is talking to a fellow woodworker. Unlike many chroniclers of his time, Roubo was a journeyman joiner (later a master) who interviewed his fellow tradesmen to produce this stunning work. He engraved many of the plates himself. And he produced this work after many years of study.
As the wood that one uses for cabinetmaking is for the most part very expensive, because it costs roughly 10 sols up to 30 sols, and sometimes even one crown per pound, according to the different types of wood, we have great interest in using these woods sparingly; that is why instead of making furniture or other pieces of cabinetry in solid wood, we have tried to execute splitting [sawing] wood into laminates, or very thin sheets, that one applies on the furniture cases made of ordinary wood.
It is not the carpenter-cabinetmakers who split [saw] their wood, but the workers [sawyers] who do only this work, and who saw not only for the cabinetmakers, but also for the musical instrument makers, and generally all those who use thin wood. These workers or sawyers are paid by the pound, that is to say, according to the weight of the piece of wood that they use, including the waste-wood and sawdust, rendering the wood close to two-thirds more expensive, which makes a piece made in this manner very important.
Veneer wood is split [sawn] at about a thickness of 1 line at most [1/12″ to 1/14″]; when one wants to spare it, one makes from 10 to 11 leaves from a thumb-thickness [inch], which is worthless because even before the veneer is polished, it has left only a half-blade of thickness [1/24″ to 1/32″], which is then reduced almost to nothing when the piece is finished; it is absolutely necessary to avoid making veneers this thin, although that is used a lot at the present. When one wants to cut up a piece of wood to make a veneer, one begins by choosing the side of the log that allows for the easiest sawing, the goal being to orient the wood for the best advantage, and to yield the largest sheets of the veneer; then one puts the piece of wood in the vise, and with a standing saw [a saw to be used while standing, and a vise designed to facilitate that action], one saws it to a thickness that one judges appropriate (which I am going to explain, after having provided the description of the bench or vise with a standing saw, and of the saw appropriate for this task).
The saw appropriate for cutting wood from India, which we name also the saw with vise, Figs. 1 and 2 [to increase or decrease the tension on the blade] is a little bit similar to the saw for cutting used by the woodworking builders [often known in the modern era as a frame saw]. It is composed of two verticals and of two crosswise or crossbeam elements, of which the ends project out and are round ed, so that the two sawyers can hold the saw easily. The middle of these crosspieces is convex on the outside, in order to give them more strength, and that they not bend while one increases the tension on the saw blade.
The inside [interior] of the vise saw is from 15 to 18 thumbs [inches] wide [or approximately 9 inches on either side of the blade], is about 3 feet long, as measured from within the crosspieces or support piece. The blade of the saw has a 4–thumbs [inches] depth, at least, and is held at each end by a frame of iron, through which passes the crosspieces of the saw, or, better said, of its chassis. These frames of iron, represented by Figs. 4, 5, 8 and 9, are made of iron plate, and the largest possible, so that the saw cannot turn easily, and one tightens a nut to that above, for putting there a screw a b, Figs. 4 and 5, which serves to control the tension of the saw blade.
On the outside of the cross-members one insets a steel contact plate attached with some screws, which prevents the pressure of the screw of the frame to not ruin anything nor to make any holes. See Fig. 3.
The blade of the saw, as I just said, is 4 thumbs [inches] size at least, tapering barely toward the back [away from the teeth]. We do not put a set on these sorts of saws, because that would eat up the wood excessively with an unnecessarily wide kerf, and one takes great care that the teeth be perfectly straight on the horizontal, and that their teeth be also perfectly equal in height, so that they grab all equally, and that they do not chatter, resulting in uneven thickness of the wood, which is also to be feared, which ruins so many sheets of veneer. The teeth of these saws should be spaced equally, about 5 to 6 lines from one tooth to the next one at least, and should be positioned in such a way that the bottom [what we now call the tip] of each tooth is level with one another, because being so arranged, they are less subject to become dull, which would happen unfailingly if they were made ordinarily, as is seen that almost all wood from India is hard, and consequently causes more resistance to the teeth of the saw. See Figs. 6 and 7, which represent one part of the saw blade viewed from the front and side, half-size.
The standing saw vise, represented in Fig. 11, is one type of small bench, about 3 to 3.5 feet long, by 2 feet high, at the base of which one puts the vise, which serves to hold in place the piece that one wishes to saw.
In order for this vise to be solid [a stout twin-screw face vise], it is good that the brace [the jaw] A, Fig. 11, have about 6 thumbs [inches] thickness, as well as the top of the bench, in which the screws enter,
which to be good, should have at least 2.5 to 3 thumbs [inches] in thickness, and the threads be long enough so that when there is a piece of wood8 to 10 thumbs [inches] thickness placed in the vise, there remains at least enough length of the screw in the bench, as observed in this figure. As this bench is very short, and is subject to vibration by the movement of the saw, one loads stones on the bottom shelf to make it more solid; but I believe it would be better to make the legs of the bench long enough to be anchored to the floor of the shop, then one makes a hole in front of the bench to set in the piece of wood to be sawn in order to not extend upwards more than 3 feet above the top of the vise, locating it thus both for the comfort of the sawyers and for maximizing the yield of the piece being sawn. Not all the standing saw vises are part of an overall bench, such as the one represented here, in Figs. 10 and 11; this is why ordinary vises attached to a little bench are less solid than making them as I propose here.
When one wishes to saw with the vise, one begins by placing the piece to saw in the vise, of which the screws tighten with an iron lever, that one removes after being worked, so that it is not in the way; then, with an ordinary saw, one begins to mark all the lines to be sawn on the end of the workpiece, just up to 2 to 3 lines deep [3/16″], then one uses the frame saw, Fig. 1, which is guided horizontally by two men, observing the advantageous slight incline on the side of the tooth rake, and of the lifting up of the blade while pulling back, so as to relieve it, and that it not bind in the wood, or at least that the sawdust does not obstruct it. See Figs. 10 and 11, which represents a vise press upright, viewed in perspective, with the sawyers located as they should be.
When one saws with a vise, one begins with the outside edge of the log, so that the first sheets sawn bend away from the log and facilitate the passage of the saw, which could not be the case if one sawed in the middle; as one does when one saws large pieces of wood being used by carpenters or by ordinary woodworkers, given that the frame saw blade is very thin, and that it has no set. Sawyers at a vise do not lay out or mark a line on the side of the piece that they wish to saw; but after having begun on the end with an ordinary saw, they continue the rest by eye, which they do very well, for the most part; they are very sure to saw their veneers not only very straight, but still perfectly of equal thickness, as well. See Fig. 11, which represents the cut of the bench or upright vise saw, and a piece of wood sawn into sheets just up to the middle.
To finish what this looks like at the cutting of wood appropriate to the cabinetmaker I have represented in Fig. 12, a saw named the carving saw, which serves to cut up not only hard wood, whether wood with the grain or cross-grain, or standing wood, but also coral, ivory and mother-of-pearl. The framework of these sorts of saws is all iron, of which the upper branch is widened on the outside, so that one can adapt the blade and set it as one judges appropriate, which is done in the following manner.
After having pierced a hole in the blade of the saw, b, corresponding with that of the lower arm of the frame of the saw, you put this one [arm], and the one that is opposite, in a vise or other thing capable of bending them [squeezing them together], in a manner that they tend to meet one against the other, and tightens them as much as is judged appropriate, to give the saw all the tension necessary; then the blade of the saw, being stopped at point b, one makes it enter in the upper arm of the frame, and one traces the place for the hole at point a, which one pierces to place there a peg; this being done, one again bends the arms of the frame, just until it gives liberty to pass the peg below, and which serves to hold the peg in place, as one can see in this figure.
The blades for these sorts of saws are very thin, and one does not give them a set, so they have a very narrow kerf and lose less material, and they pass easily; one thins them on the back [away from the teeth], which one does with a file that one passes down the length just until they are thinned enough as one judges appropriate; then one rubs them with sand to remove the unevenness that the filing could have made; this operation is called “demaigrir” [thinning], a worker’s term.
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