Woodworking Trivia

1. A cabin was a little nicer if puncheons were installed, but they had to be smooth or else barefoot kids would get splinters. What were puncheons?

From Quiz Building a Log Cabin, the Old Fashioned Way

Answer: Split logs used for flooring

Splitting a log in half produced two almost-flat surfaces that could be smoothed with an adze, requiring no tedious sawing. It wasted a lot of wood compared to sawing floorboards, but wood was cheap on the frontier and there was always more work to do. The puncheons were thinned on each end so they could rest on floor joists and a rough sort of floor was created, better than a dirt-floored cabin.

From Quiz Hand Tools for a Pioneer

Answer: broadaxe

After you score marks every 8-10 inches in a log, the broadaxe splits off the pieces between, creating a rough but approximately flat log surface. The axe is sharpened like a chisel, on one side only, so it tends to cut straight when used standing beside the wood. If cabin logs are flat inside and out, you can add furring strips outside to attach clapboards and lath inside for plaster, and you log house will look like a nicer frame house. But make sure the logs are done drying and settling. Big timbers also can be made square this way for a frame building. The broadaxe is heavy, but the weight does the work, like a heavy hammer that drives nails with less effort. The short handle is angled, to keep your knuckles safely away from the wood.

From Quiz General Woodworking

Answer: Tim Taylor

While Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor was on a TV show, "Tool Time" was a show within a show. ("Home Improvement" starring Tim Allen). Norm Abram hosts "The New Yankee Workshop", Scott Phillips is the star of "The American Woodshop", and my friend John Sillaots hosts Canada's "In The Workshop".

From Quiz Building a Log Cabin, the Old Fashioned Way

Answer: Chunks of wood or similar things to support the mortar that was "daubed" on

Original log cabins generally had little split chunks of wood inserted partially upright between the logs so they looked like books that had fallen slanted in a bookcase. They were the chinking, and mortar was pressed over and in between all the many little cracks inside and out, and that was the daubing. Other plentiful things could be used as chinking, such as corncobs, even stones, but wood was plentiful. Nowadays, "chinking" is almost always used to refer to what a pioneer would have called "daubing."

From Quiz Hand Tools for a Pioneer

Answer: wedges

Once you score a mark in a log with a hatchet or axe, you can insert a wedge. Usually an iron wedge is used first, but as the log starts to split open, a series of cheaper wooden wedges can be pounded in to keep spreading the split, till the log finally "pops" apart. Wooden wedges made of hickory, ash, elm, persimmon or other tough wood will probably be stronger than the wood you're splitting and last a while. In pioneer days, they were free for the making, compared to buying metal wedges.

From Quiz Wooden You Know?

Answer: Any wood that comes from a broad-leaved tree

Hardwoods are broad-leaved trees, or angiosperms. Their seeds have a seed coat, while those of the gymnosperms (conifers or evergreens) do not. All angiosperm wood is classified as hardwood, even though some, like balsa, is quite soft.

From Quiz Building a Log Cabin, the Old Fashioned Way

Answer: Lime, mud, straw

Mud was usually available from subsoil, so only lime needed to be purchased, but even then, ashes could be substituted for lime, and a binder such as straw, horsehair, Spanish moss in the south, or leaves in the fall would work as well. This mixture was shoved into the cracks in the chinking. A cabin built quickly with green logs and little or no underground foundation would be settling a lot in its first few months, so no daubing mixture could flex enough to remain sealed without cracking. Even after the initial drying and settling, humidity would change, so there was an expectation that replacing daubing would be an ongoing, inevitable chore, unlike today, where there's hope that the sealing between logs will be long-lasting.

From Quiz Hand Tools for a Pioneer

Answer: hewing hatchet

A hewing hatchet works like a broadaxe in miniature, smoothing the surface of smaller logs to be used for furniture, windowframes, sills, etc. A split tree can be made as smooth as modern rough-sawn lumber from the mill, ready for use in rough construction or further finishing. The chisel-style sharpening, on one side only, makes the hatchet slice flat but not dig too deep into the wood, similar to an actual chisel.

From Quiz Hey, My Guppy is on Television!

Answer: 110 lbs.

It weighs approximately 10 lbs. empty. A 20 gallon tank weighs 25 lbs. empty and 225 lbs. when full and a 50 gallon tank weighs 100 lbs. empty and a whopping 600 lbs. when filled! These are all approximate weights depending on the thickness of the glass. Most console sets will accept a standard 20 gallon aquarium. If not, then you will need to have your tank custom built or build it yourself. If you build your own, only the front needs to be glass since the tank will only be visible from the front.

From Quiz General Woodworking

Answer: Poplar

Poplar is a strong wood, often used in furniture construction. It does not take stain well, and is most often used where it cannot be seen, inside a chest of drawers, for example, or painted.

From Quiz Hand Tools for a Pioneer

Answer: adze

It's called a foot adze if it's on a long handle like a hoe, or a hand adze if it's more like a hatchet. It produces a smooth, slightly rippled surface on rough wood, better than a broadaxe, and could be used for flooring to avoid splinters, among many uses. If you're using a foot adze, old timers say to tilt your toes up and aim it right at the sole of your foot, planning to hit the wood, but at least if you miss, you avoid slicing along the side of your foot (ouch)!

From Quiz Hey, My Guppy is on Television!

Answer: stacking books underneath

Support brackets are typically L shaped, come in various sizes and can support different weights.

From Quiz Building a Log Cabin, the Old Fashioned Way

Answer: Loft

The problem with heating a cabin in winter was the heat always went up, while the people lay down. A low ceiling solved some of the problem, but even better, a loft with a ladder let people lie in the warmest part of the cabin without requiring a full second story or staircase.

From Quiz Hand Tools for a Pioneer

Answer: two-man crosscut saw

A two-man crosscut saw with coarse teeth will really get timbers sawn fast. Two people work best once they get a rhythm going, always pulling, never pushing, else the saw will buckle. It's relaxing and you get a short rest while the saw's moving away from you. Rip saws, with different teeth, also existed for sawing with the grain to turn logs into boards, but splitting logs with the grain was often faster than sawing, back in the days when straight grain without knots was normal.

From Quiz Building a Log Cabin, the Old Fashioned Way

Answer: Someone could unlatch the door from the outside and come in

A latch could be made entirely of wood and string, by fastening a springy piece of wood on the inside of the door and tying a string to it. Pull the string up, it unlatches. Let go of the string, it falls or springs down and catches in a latch on the wall. It could always be worked from the inside by grabbing the wood or the string. From the outide, it could only be worked if the string was fed through a hole in the door and allowed to dangle outside. If the family left the latchstring out, anyone could pull on it, unlatch the door and walk in, though it would be polite to knock first, of course. If the family entered the cabin and pulled the latch string in with them, a person outside would just see an empty little hole where the string was, but have no way to unlatch the door themselves, even if they were invited in.

From Quiz Hand Tools for a Pioneer

Answer: beedle

A beedle is a big sledge hammer. It could be made free at home by drilling a large hole, cutting the head to length, and inserting a handle. Hard, heavy wood like hickory, elm or persimmon made it last, and it was even better to get a blacksmith to put an iron band on each end. Wood also prevented damage to whatever you were hitting, whether you were convincing two framing pieces to finish slipping together, or using wooden wedges to split logs.

From Quiz Hand Tools for a Pioneer

Answer: froe

A froe splits wood to a thickness of an inch or less, or more if you want it thicker. The wood needs to be free of knots for it to work best, something that pioneers found easily in old-growth forests. It's an L-shaped tool. Hold the upright wooden handle and lay the horizontal blade where you want to split the wood. Hit it with a froe club till the slightly sharp blade finds a place in the wood to start splitting, then lever the blade back and forth with the handle to widen the split. At this point, one realizes the wisdom of making a "horse" for holding the wood secure. By adjusting the direction one pushes or pulls the blade and the pressure on the wood, an expert can produce wonderfully consistent boards several feet long.

From Quiz Hey, My Guppy is on Television!

Answer: dummy handle

Some dummy handles have decorative plates underneath as well.

From Quiz General Woodworking

Answer: The angle at which a saw tooth is set

The hook angle saw blade determines the amount of "grab" a saw has. It is the angle between the face of the tooth and a line perpendicular to the line of a saw's travel. A zero or negative hook is used in cutting metal where total control of the feed is essential. (Source: Oldham-usa.com)

From Quiz Building a Log Cabin, the Old Fashioned Way

Answer: Oiled paper or cloth

Oiled paper or cloth wasn't transparent like glass, but the oiling made it translucent, so some illumination came through from the brighter sun and sky outside. When the weather was good, simply leaving the window open was an option, and a window could be made with a shutter to close at night or during hard rain or cold temperatures, but then there was no light coming in at all on a rainy or frigid day. The oiled paper or cloth solved that. As soon as civilization neared, glass windows appeared, and some historians believe they may have come closer to the edges of the frontier than people think. Screen was quite rare and expensive, and metal bars did nothing to keep out rain or cold.

From Quiz Hand Tools for a Pioneer

Answer: hewing bench

No, this isn't a work bench, with a vice and all those goodies. It's lower and rougher. But if you use a hewing hatchet all day to turn limbs into square wood for furniture, you'll find the end of the wood soon sinks into the ground, and short pieces are hard on the back. A rock or brick helps, but dulls the hatchet if you hit it. A low bench made of strong wood costs nothing for a pioneer with a woodlot, is a blessing on a sore back and protects the hatchet's metal blade.

From Quiz Hey, My Guppy is on Television!

Answer: hand-sanding with coarse grit sandpaper

Medium or fine grit sandpaper is generally used to refinish furniture. Using a coarse grit could risk damaging the wood and is more commonly used when refinishing a hardwood floor.

From Quiz General Woodworking

Answer: Windsor

A windsor chair can contain up to 5 different species of wood, each carefully chosen to fulfill a specific part of the chair based on its strengths.

From Quiz Wooden You Know?

Answer: Router

Like drills, routers can accept many bits. But router bits are designed to cut or rout patterns, grooves, etc. into wooden pieces.

From Quiz Hand Tools for a Pioneer

Answer: jack plane

When a hewing hatchet or an adze isn't quite enough to smooth the wood to perfection, a plane will take care of that, maybe even a series of planes, a big jack plane to start and smaller planes to finish. a long plane removes dips and hollows, making the wood straight and flat.

From Quiz Hey, My Guppy is on Television!

Answer: moisture&humidity

This step should be completed out of doors or in a room with good ventilation.

From Quiz Wooden You Know?

Answer: Japanese saws cut on the pull stroke

US saws cut on the push stroke, which is harder work.

From Quiz Building a Log Cabin, the Old Fashioned Way

Answer: Add clapboard siding outside and plaster inside, with nice shingles and trim

A log house with vertical furring stripes on the outside and lathe on the inside, carefully made vertical without bulges or dips, could be covered with wood clapboards and plaster about as well as a frame house. The log house probably would be several years old, so a family could hope it had finished most of its settling. With nice window frames, a sawn shingle roof nailed to roofboards, and a good coat of paint, the house could pass for a frame one, except for the very thick walls, visible only at the door and window openings. Some homes to this day look like any old fashioned home, and it's hard to believe there's a hidden log house inside. What you usually won't find is the oldest, crudest log cabin preserved this way, with round logs and a mud chimney, because it was made to be temporary and torn down or demoted to a corn-crib or chicken coop when a better log home was built.

From Quiz Hand Tools for a Pioneer

Answer: beading plane

Planes aren't just for making surfaces flat. A beading plane makes a corner rounded with a little groove on either side, such as all along the eight feet of a 1x6 piece of floor molding. It hides any imperfection in the straightness of the corner, and makes the wood look decorated and finished, with a bit of easy work that's downright addictive to do. You'll often see this on exposed rafters, door frames, or the square parts of furniture like the framing under tables.

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Last Updated Nov 01 2025 5:50 AM

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