In the latest FWW magazine there’s a fine article describing Nancy Hiller’s recreation of a Gimson chest. It’s a handsome thing! One aspect is the joinery arrangement that has the whole of the side panels of the chest (with grain vertical) attached to the front & rear panels (with grain horizontal) using dowels. Ms Hiller mentions the worry that this might see a panel split if there’s significant moisture changes over the seasons, causing differential expansion & contraction of the side and front/back panels because of the grain running at right angles between the two.
She decided to go with that design anyway as the original has survived without cracking. Would you do this? Personally I wouldn’t, the reason being that no one can predict the degree of such moisture changes and therefore the degree of risk of a split. Perhaps the Gimson original has been is a very stable environment?
More to the point, a small amendment to the joinery could preserve that arrangement but reduce the risk of a split. Why not attach just the top half of the panels with glued dowels and the lower half of the panels with unglued dowels in a slot? The back and front can still be held together at the bottom by running a couple of joists under the chest’s floor. Perhaps they could even have through tenons – a Gimson motif in many other chests. (I made one-such myself albeit with frame & panel sides).
This would mean the chest was not identical to the original Gimson – although who would know just by looking?
Anyroadup, what do you think?
Lataxe
Replies
It's complicated and like you said, personal. I'd keep it as is.
You're take is similar to Steve Latta's... https://www.finewoodworking.com/2016/06/01/learn-from-antiques
"...for a reproduction woodworker the solutions are not always clear-cut. How far a builder strays from the original is a matter of compromise and choice. Some argue that we should build exactly like our forefathers did. But for me, “because they did it that way” has never been a very strong argument."
His argument is also based on the fact that he's seen failures in antique designs.
If I'm building a reproduction (which Nancy was) and I hadn't seen a failure, I think I'd stay true to the original. If a failure occurs it is part of the story of the piece.
From that same Steve Latta article:
"One shop in my region was determined to build veneered card tables the exact same way the originals were built. They did not cross-band the bricklaid cores, and they considered the inevitable split veneers to be part of the “charm” of working with solid wood. When I made a table that way for a friend years ago and the face veneer split, neither he nor I found the crack charming. After that, I made sure to cross-band my cores".
Or to put it another way, he prefered the "story of his piece" to be wholesome rather than a cracked non-charmer. :-) I can sympathise with that.
One strange thing about Nancy Hiller's Gimson piece is that the original is the first I've ever seen (or perhaps just noticed) with such a large cross-grain join. It's a new one to me, though, that piece. I suspect Gimson was well aware of the problem of differential wood movement in cross-grained joinery. He was early C20th rather than C18th. I wonder if there is a hidden bit of "slide" somewhere in the lower dowel joins of that original ....... ?
Lataxe
I saw the PDF today, there was nothing about the size of the pegs or how deep they were driven. The pdf stopped at the glue up, but the photos showed pegs in place. Curious qbout the pegs detail and order of operations.
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