Document # 46: The Radial Arm Saw: "Machine Sawing From On Top" (under construction)
In
the shaded box below, Mr William W. Klenke is describing the DeWalt radial arm
saw, Model JR, that was released on the market in 1929. In length, the
article is a mere two pages, but it describes how -- using a new type
of saw and shaper -- someone can build a "built-in Colonial corner
closet".
For
brief background on the development of the radial arm saw in the 1920s,
particularly the role of Ray DeWalt's contributions, click here: Appendix
18: On the
Origin of the Radial Arm Saw
(The author of the article posted , William H.
Klenke, was ab instructor of shopwork in the Central Manual Training High
School, Newark, N. J., a practicing architect, and the author of
Selected Furniture Drawings and many other books on craftwork.
Klenke
was commisioned by Popular Science's
Home Workshop Editor, Arthur Wakefield, to write a series of
(over-brief) articles for issues of 1929-1930 issues of PS
on tools for the homeworkshop.
Subsequently most of these same articles
re-appeared in two books published in 1930, edited by Wakeling : as
Chapter V, "Small Woodworking Machinery" in Things
to Make in Your Homeworkshop and as Chapter III,
"Small Woodworking Machinery", in Wakeling's Home
Workshop Manual. Both of these
woodworking manuals are given greater detail here.
The intent of Popular Science to publish two books on home
workshops in 1930 is obvious. Starting even before the 1920s, with electrification of
cities, the emergence
of the fractional horse-power electric motors, and the (scaled-down) power
woodworking tools designed for homes, the homeworkshop
movement had emerged as a movement of major proportions.
In its first issue in 1931,
only a year later, Popular
Homecraft (v 1 no 1 1931) boasted that 77,000 homeworkshops -- equipped with power
tools -- existed in America,
(Unfortunately, as is frequently true about statistical data of this type, PH does
not provide the source of these statistics, something that makes them
somewhat suspect. No doubt home workshops -- equipped with power
tools -- at the end of the 1920s existed in great numbers -- evidence
of this fact comes from several sources, including the demand for
woodworker's manuals and the emergence of Home Craftsman, Deltagram, and Popular Homecraft. Popular Mechanics' Shop Notes, begun early in the 20th century, was still being published, and Popular Mechanics and Popular Science carried articles about the equipping homeshops with power tools. Cick here for more discussion on this topic.)
Moreover, the fruits of the homeworkshop movement, promoted in
high school Industrial Arts curriculums throughout the 1920s decade was
paying off: in
1933, Arthur Wakeling, editor of the Home Workshop section of Popular Science, launched the National Homeworkshop Guild
In addition, several other matters associated with this article by Klenke are worth considering:
First,
remember
that Industrial
Arts, as a component of high school education, was in decline. (Klenke
is among the most prominent IA officials of this period.) Mass
production in furniture manufacture, where men to work in assembly
lines could be hired off the street, meant that lengthy apprenticeships
were definitely no longer appealing to young men as career choices. For
more about the impact of mass production upon the decline of the master
craftsman, click here:
Appendix 16: Amateur Woodworkers and the Hour Glass Analogy.) Enrollments in decline, IA instructors hustled to sustain their
existence by creating alternative reasons for boys to take course in
woodworking and related activities.
Second, anyone who
has read articles by such instructors of woodworking as Franklin H.
Gottshall -- I am thinking of Gottshall's classic 1937
woodworker's manual, How to Design Period Furniture
-- or even the flamboyant Wallace Kunkel -- as detailed in How to Master the Radial Saw
-- knows, realistically, that to attempt to construct a piece of
furniture of such complexity as this "Built-In Colonial Closet" that is
the focus of Klenke's article CANNOT be reduced to two pages of
text and images -- that is, photos and dimensional drawings of the
furniture to be constructed -- and a brief 10-step set of instructions.
Even the obligatory Materials List -- i.e., lumber and hardware,
including the dimensions of each piece of the project's parts -- is not given.
Third, generally
we recognize Wallace Kunkel as the leading champion of the Dewalt
radial arm saw, as a versatile tool; see his 1997 ring-bound book, How to Master the Radial Saw.
However, earlier professional woodworkers who promoted the radial arm
saw are Herman Hjorth -- a colleague of Klenke, who died in 1951 -- see Document
26: Herman
Hjorth on the Radial Arm Saw Home Craftsman Magazine
J-F 1950 and Robert Scharf, in
his 1956 Easy Ways to Expert Woodworking.
While Hjorth did not focus exclusively on the Dewalt, Scharff
does. Taken together, though, each of these gentlemen take a much more
detailed, instructional approach, and walk the reader, step-by-step,
through the process of constructing classic furniture designs such as
this colonial closet.
In
contrast to the helpful approach that Scharff and Kunkel, and others,
adopt toward the radial arm, Klenke seems downright mean-spririted.
Klenke is not the problem here, though, nor would I fault Arthur
Wakeling, Homeworkshop editor for Popular Science; instead, I lay the reason for the scant two pages the Popular Science allows for this article on a classic colonial furniture piece on a stingy editorial policy employed by Popular Science.
However, since I lack the "smoking-gun" evidence to make this
claim decisively, I must hope to find more information.
I
also need more information on the DeWalt Model JR radial arm saw.
What is the primary market? What is the cost? Any info is welcome
As
a project to accompany this brief
description of the overarm saw, I have chosen a built-in Colonial
corner china closet illustrated in Figs. 1 and 7. This style of closet
is exceedingly popular to-day. It is built in the corner and there-fore
utilizes space that is rarely used. It provides a very useful storage
and display space for beautiful china and glassware. Closets of this
type are often built in pairs.