Right!
It’s true that there don’t seem to be so many around today. I have 2, one that I bought knowing what it was and another that I found in a job lot I purchased years ago. I’d guess that for standard ovolos it was traditionally done with a gouge and a couple of saw cuts.
I bought a similar but simpler plane which apparently was for cleaning up wooden packing cases, taking old labels and scribbles off.
When I was attending technical college back in the late 1950s/ 1960s, we were always advised to purchase books by W. B. McKay, our tutors considered them to be some of the best authored textbooks available at the time. In fact, I actually received one as a prize. I have attached the original book and my certificate (with some personal details removed for security reasons).
Small world. The same A Collier I presume? Our History - Monument Tools
That's a nice prize. I received a bursary from the City and Guilds of London Institute during my recent carving MA.
But while you are doing the mortice in the stile itself it's very easy to go that bit further and chop out the haunch, rather than chopping it out of the rail in another operation. Either a depth stop on your mortice machine or a mark on your chisel does it.
Maybe that's deliberate rather than a bodge of some sort, but the thin wall left on one side of the mortice looks odd and would have to be very precise to fit the saw kerf alongside the tenon.
But there is enough left. Even at the bottom sash meeting rail where there is just a slender bridle joint (a tenon with the horn trimmed back) - sometimes dovetailed in heavier windows.
I'm beginning to think it's just a throwback to the late 19C heyday of the sophisticated special sash planes from Mathieson, Nurse etc. which had franking as a slightly speedier hand process. Quite a brief phase between the earlier practices and the advent of the spindle moulder, but at a time when sash windows were most prolific.*
Side hung casement the bars go through horizontally and add strength where there is most strain.
Hi Steve. That all looks fine to me. I tend not to run my top and bottom vertical bar through. I have seen so many bottom rails rotted out where the water has wicked up the end grain of the bottom mortise if it has been taken right through. Having said that, it is often down to poor maintenance, and not leaving enough gap under the bottom rail, or not adding a capillary groove. "Old Arthur" who I was apprenticed to, taught me to add what he called "shoulder creep" to the vertical bars. This just entailed cutting outside the line on the tenons to create a bit of pressure on the vertical bars to keep them nice and tight. Not so much if it's a hardwood job, but redwood softwood will crush in nicely if it's a wee bit tight I would recommend sticking to frankings if it was my job. From my experience, it is a common method used in the making of sash, using hand methods, and has been around for a few hundred years, and as I have already pointed out, it gives a better bearing surface for the wedge to sit against, and doesn't weaken the stile so much. It was also common practice in the workshop where I served my apprenticeship, and how I was shown at college, and has been present in every old sash I have ever took apart. I tend to take the opinion that by the end of the 19th century, when hand tool methods started to disappear, 300 odd years of joinery experience had got it all worked out.
R Bayliss, Carpentry & Joinery volumes 1 - 4 published 1961 by Huchinson. They are very comprehensive but lack the ' glamour' of the older books
You've discovered why franking isn't a particularly good joint. It amounts to being a stub tenon but with the grain in the wrong direction.
I have, but it seems incredulous that all the books show it and clearly many around here were taught it and use it. So I can’t help thinking I must be doing something wrong, but it’s very difficult to see what that might be.
