Glossary H

HSS

See High Speed Steel

Half-round

A rounded convex member of a molding; half of a circle.

Source: Home Craftsman 4  January-February 1935 page 124

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Hammer

[under construction ]

In the gray shaded box below is the advice given to wannabe woodworkers in 1930 by Arthur Wakeling.

In the 1938 preface to Things to Make in Your Home Workshop, Wakeling notes that for almost two decades -- taking it back to 1918? -- he has edited the Home Workshop Department of Popular Science Monthly and "five years in directing the National Homeworkshop Guild ". (Be aware that the book itself was written in 1930 by Wakeling and several figures prominent Industrial Arts, including Emanual E Ericson, Herman Hjorth, William W. Klenke, but that Wakeling wrote the book's preface is written in 1938.) For additional details about the manual, Things to Make in Your Home Workshop, click on the link above.

HINTS ON DRIVING NAILS Hammer and nails are in common use in every household. Yet driving nails, the commonest of all mechanical operations, is not often done in such a way as to get the full holding power of the nails. A few plain facts about nails and their uses would, if they were carefully observed by the amateur woodworker, decrease the difficulties encountered and save much effort and subsequent disappointment the failure of joints. The proper way to hold a hammer is the first important thing to learn. The amateur has the natural feeling that the less of the handle he uses, the less likely he is to miss the nail. The truth of this is not borne out in practice, however, forafter one has become accustomed to holding the hammer handle at the end, as shown in Fig. 8, he will miss the nail if he tries the former method. It is safe to assume that the manufacturers of any good hammer know something about the best length of handle to use. The angle of a nail hammer or the "hang" of it will have to be sensed from experience. It will not take long before a person will automatically hold his hammer handle just low enough as the hammer strikes the nail. Source: Arthur Wakeling, ed. Things to Make in Your Home Workshop New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1930, pages 45-46

Hand Plane

see Plane

Hand Saw

This entry deserves much attention, more than I can afford right now. Below is an illustration designed to provide a "quick-and-dirty" answer for a question in the Qustion Box.

Fig. 9 shows a hand saw with the shapes and names of the various parts indicated. It can be toothed as a cross cut or as a rip saw. Its blade is taper ground, that is, the thickness is not the same in all parts of the blade. The butt and the blade along the entire length of the tooth edge are of equal thickness, but from the teeth to the back and from the butt to the toe, the gauge or thickness decreases gradually. Hand saws are used for cutting wood to size and for general purposes. A back saw, Fig. 10, is finer toothed and the blade is made of thinner metal of uniform thickness, consequently it is admirably suited to fine work. The metal back reinforces the blade and keeps it from buckling or bending when in use. Coping, turning and compass saws are used for sawing curves. In using the hand saw the wood should be held firmly over a saw horse with the knee against or on the wood. Fig. 11 shows the starting position with the left hand holding the board and at the same time guiding the saw. The first movement should be a short, slow, dragging stroke and the next a slow thrust, both without much pressure or weight applied to the saw. Once the saw kerf is started the saw is guided by the twist and slant given to the handle with the right hand. In sawing. it is always held at about the angle illustrated. Fig. 12 shows method of holding saw and work when finishing cut. The teeth of a cross cut saw act on a board something like a series of knives operated in pairs. The teeth are shaped as at A-Fig. 3. [In a process called "set", the teeth of a saw are designed to cut a kerf wider than the blade's thickness.] One tooth is beveled on one side, the next tooth on the opposite side. This makes an extreme point on each tooth, but one is on one side of the saw blade and the next is on the opposite side. A saw with teeth shaped like this, when drawn over a board, does in one operation exactly what a knife might be made to do in several, i. e., scores the wood in two places and chips out the particles between, C-D and E-Fig. 2. A saw constructed in this way would not, however, penetrate far into the wood until the blade would begin to bind. To overcome this the points of the teeth are bent outward, first one to one side, then the next to the opposite side. A saw with the teeth so bent is said to possess "set." Fig. 3 shows several views of a cross cut saw, with and without set, also its action on wood. The cut or crack made in the wood by the saw is called the kerf. A cross cut saw can also be made to cut in the direction of the grain but when used for this purpose its action is slow and unsatisfactory. The teeth of a rip saw are somewhat like chisels. They are not sharpened to a bevel on the edge and they are not pointed. As has been stated, the fibers in wood separate easily in the direction of the grain and are easily removed once they are cut. Cutting with the grain requires no scoring. A chisel pushed into the wood as at A-Fig. 5, only cuts across a group of fibers but the piece in front of it is easily forced out. If another chisel were pushed into the wood a short distance behind the first and in line with it, the result would be another piece of wood forced out. The rip saw works on this principle, each tooth being similar to a chisel. Like the cross cut saw, it would bind unless "set" to give clearance. Fig. 4, shows several views of a rip saw with and without set. Fig. 6 shows its action on wood. Source: Harry E. Wood and James H Smith, Prevocational and Industrial Arts Chicago: Atkinson, Mentzer, and Company, 1919, pages 6-7.

Hand Tools:

under construction 5-8-08

The Civil War period marked a turning point in tool design, as it did for so much Americana. Before that time, the word tool meant an implement that could make one thing at a time; mass-production tools then entered the scene, and the word tool, which had meant only "hand tool," took on many added meanings. Finally the word tool came to mean any item having to do with the production of an item; it could be the machine and also the building that housed the machine. Even the salesmen, the advertising gadgets, and the business offices are "tools of the trade." Generally speaking, hand tools made after the Civil War period lacked the simple beauty of those of the ante-bellum period. Things were made to sell quickly, things were made in large quantities so that they could be catalogued identically, and hand-made implements began to disappear. Wooden handles became "fancier," more curved and ornamental, but the severe beauty of folk art and primitive usage was lost. Saw handles became "trickier"; they were designed to appeal to the eye instead of to fit the hand. Axe handles, which had always been almost straight, as a good club should be, took on curves such as the "fawn foot" and the "scroll knob." By 1885, handles on axes and adzes had become almost too curved, but by the 1900s they settled down to a sensible and standard design, such as that of those you can buy now at the hardware store. Source:Eric Sloane, A Museum of Early American Tools New York: Ballantine Books, 1964, page 5

Hardwood/Softwood

Hardwood comes from a deciduous tree, Oak, Walnut, etc., ie, trees that shed their leaves each season. Softwood comes from Evergreen trees, trees that are green all season. The terms HARDWOOD and SOFTWOOD do NOT refer to the firmness of the wood.

Headstock

THE RIVETT BENCH LATHE ... with some of its attachments, ...has been patented in the United States by Mr. E. Rivett. —The lathe is intended for the finest work done by tool-makers, electricians, and machinists, and is highly finished all over, including the bed and feet. The headstock, spindle, and bushings in which it runs are of tool-steel, hardened,ground, and lapped, the spindle being 2 1/4 in. in diameter and the bearings 2 1/2 in. long. The end of the spindle is threaded for face-plates or chucks, and there is a draw-bar which extends through the spindle for holding split chucks, ... the rods extending through the spindle, which has a hole through it ...  Fig. 3 shows the quill used in milling,..... Source: English Mechanic and World of Science No. H31. Ano. 26, 1892.

"Heart"-Side

(see p. 228 of Paul Nooncree Hasluck, 1891.)

High Speed Steel (HSS)

Often abbreviated as HSS. Material used to make Jointer Knives, Shaper Cutters,  Saw  Blades and  Router Bits. Not as Hard nor as brittle as Carbide.

Home Mechanics

[Term is used as early as 1886. Need to find out how it morphed into a sort of masculine version of "home economics". At some point in its history, woodworking for boys is an explicit component.]

[draft 1-24-07- following adapted from johnson and newkirk] In the FOREWORD to their 1953 book, Home Mechanics, William H. Johnson and Louis V. Newkirk write that it has been prepared for use in teaching home mechanics to boys and girls. The home-care jobs and projects have been carefully illustrated and the instructions written in step-by-step procedures. Questions have been provided to emphasize important learning concepts. Section below is an an adaptation of John and Newkirk's Foreword.

The objectives of Home Mechanics are to:

give consumer knowledge and skill about selecting and using of the products that are a part of home living.

develop handy-man abilities with the ordinary hand tools and a variety of construction materials.

teach the use of handcraft for leisure-time activities in the home.

contribute to the development of the personality of the child and to further the social objectives of general education.  Home mechanics courses offer students opportunities to work as a member of a group or to assume responsibility for leadership.

The book treat five instructional units: (1) electricity in the home, (2) utensils and appliances, (3) plumbing and heating, (4) doors and windows, and (5) care of the home and garden.

Units contain consumer information, instruction for care and adjustment of home appliances, and equipment and craft projects that relate to the respective unit.

The authors claim that boys and girls who master the information and learn to do the manipulative problems the text explains and illustrates can cope with the everyday problems of home living.

 

Home Shop Movement

Horse Power (hp)

The unit of power measurement. 1 hp equals 33,000 ft-lb of work per minute. The woodworker is usually more interested in the electrical equivalent of 746 W - 1 hp. As a general guide for circular saws it is generally reckoned that a motor needs '4 hp for each lin (25 mm) depth of cut, though many saws have lower hp. When only thin wood or softwood is being sawn the motor can be of smaller hp.

Source: Vic Taylor, Wood-worker's Dictionary , Hemel, Hempstead, England: Argus Books,1987; Pownal, VT: Storey Communications, 1990, page 119.

Horizontal Mortiser

A useful power tool not popular today with amateur woodworkers, which is a pity. (The vertical mortiser is gaining in popularity, however. [more later about horizontal mortiser assemblies a feature of 1930s combination tools designed for amateur woodworkers.]

  image on left of horizontal mortiser  from Popular Science's 1941 giant home workshop manual Giant Home Workshop Manual

Household Art

A movement in middle-class home decoration in the late nineteenth century directed toward bringing "art" into the home. According to the material culture scholar, Martha Crabill McClaugherty, "The phrase 'household art'  was a generic term used throughout the last thirty-five years or so of the nineteenth century when referring to almost anything connected with buying or creating furnishings and decorations for the home."

It was primarily disseminated through books and articles written by tastemakers who believed that the home interior could exert moral influences and be a place for optimizing individual, amateur expressions. These writers sought to establish an artistic standard for the home that would be in harmony with the recently industrialized society of the late Victorian era. ...  The writers themselves did not use a consistent terminology; they used "household taste," "art in the house," "household beauty," "interior decoration," "house furnishing," and "domestic decoration" as synonyms. [McClaugherty]  chose "household art" from among these many phrases because it elucidates the over-all concern for an aesthetic approach to home interiors. Source: Martha Crabill McClaugherty "Household Art:Creating the Artistic Home, 1868-1893", Winterthur Portfolio 18, no 1 (Spring 1983), page 1.

 

Sources: Martha Crabill McClaugherty "Household Art: Creating the Artistic Home, 1868-1893", Winterthur Portfolio 18, no 1 (Spring 1983), pages 1-26