Several years have elapsed since I first published the House Carpenters
Assistant, which met with a ready sale of some seventeen hundred copies,
but in consequence of the death of the publisher the work is now out of
print. The object of the author is to revise the former work by omitting
the treaties on mathematical instruments, to make room for additional
matter that had been overlooked in the former work, in order to furnish
house carpenters and builders with a new and easy system of lilies
founded on geometrical principles for framing the most difficult L roofs
for cutting every description of joints and for finding the sections of
angular pieces at any point from a horizontal to a erpendicular, so that
their sides shall be in the plane on the sides they are connected with
for finding the form of the raking mould for a gable, to intersect with
the horizontal mould at any angle diverging from a straight line the
mitreing of circular mouldings the relative sizes of timbers framed to
support it given weight to the mitreing of planes oblique to the base at
any angle. Together with these rules, the author also presents tables of
the weight and cohesive strength of the different materials used in the
constructiorr of buildings as well as the weight required to crush said
materials, with a treatise on the adhesion of nails, screws, iron pills
and glue. Also an easy system of stair railing for straight end platform
stairs, which will enable carpenters to finish and complete a dwelling
without the assistance of a professional stair builder and to all this
is added a practical and mathematical denonstration of finding the
circumference and squaring the circle when the diameter is given. There
can be but little doubt that a work of this kind is needed by architects
and builders and especially by carpenters and workmen who are
inexperienced in the different kinds of labor which they are called upon
to perform. Many a journeyman carpenter has found himself suddenly
thrown out of employment simply because he was ignorant of the rules by
which he could perform some required task. It is rather for the benefit
of such than for the experienced workmen, that this volume is designed,
and should it be the means of promoting their interest or inciting them
to a study of the noble science and art of construction, the author will
feel well compensated for his Iabour. It is but due to aknowledge that
we have consulted the valuable works of Thomas Tredgold, for the
articles on the strength and weight of matials, also to Mr. Honetus M.
Albee, a skillful and experienced stair-builder for the method of
finding the distances to kerf the back string for circular
stairs.Carpentry is the art of cutting and jointing timbers in the
construction of buildings. To cut timbers and adapt them to their
various situations, so that one of the sides of every piece shall be
arranged according to a given plane or surface shown in the designs of
the architect, is a department of carpentry which requires a thorongh
knowledge of the finding of sections of solids, their coverings and the
various methods of connecting timbers, etc. The art of combining pieces
of timber to increase their strength and firmness, is called framing.
