BUILDING.

The art of building comprises the practice of civil architecture, or the mechanical operations necessary to carry the designs of the architect into effect. It is not unfrequently called practical architecture; but the adoption of this term would have tended only to confuse, by rendering it difficult to make the distinction generally understood between architecture as a fine or liberal art, and architecture as a mechanical art. The execution of works of architecture necessarily includes building; but building is frequently employed when the result is not architecture: a man may be a competent builder without being an architect; but no one can profess himself a complete architect unless he be competent to specify and direct all the operations of building. A scientific knowledge of the principles of masonry, carpentry, joinery, &c. and of the qualities, strength, and resistance of materials, though of the utmost importance to an architect, is not sufficient of itself, without a minute acquaintance with a great variety of less ambitious details. Such are those which relate to the arrangement of a plan for the greatest possible degree of convenience on the smallest space, and at the least expense; its transference to the ground; the preparation and formation of foundations; the arrangement and construction of drains, sewers, and cess-pools; the varieties of walling with stone, and of bonding bricks in brick-work; the merit of the various modes of bonding and tying walls with timber and otherwise; the arrangement of gutters on roofs, to get sufficient fall, and to lead the water to the least inconvenient places for placing trunks to carry it down; the arrangement and formation of flues; the protection of walls from damps, of timbers from moisture and stagnant air, and of metals generally from exciting causes; the cost of materials and labour, and the quantity of each required to produce certain effects. Together with these, it is important to be practically acquainted with all the modes of operation in all the trades or arts required in building. Every thing must be clearly understood, or it will be impossible properly to specify beforehand, in detail, every thing and every operation to be done and performed; and minutely to estimate, beforehand also, the absolute cost involved in the execution of a proposed structure. The power to do the latter necessarily involves that of measuring work, and ascertaining quantities after it is done. These things may certainly be referred to the surveyor or measurer, but they are not the less incumbent on the architect, who cannot be said to be thoroughly master of building, or the practice of his profession, unless he be skilled in these operations.

The architect having furnished the specification and working drawings of his design, the first operation is the preparation of the foundation. (See article Stone-Masonry, sect. 60.) Much in this particular, it is evident, must depend on localities. It is not of so much importance that the ground be hard, or even rocky, as that it be compact, and of similar consistence throughout; that it be so constituted as to resist entirely and throughout, or yield equally to the superincumbent weight. In the latter case, however, there must be some contrivance to generalize the pressure, or the piers would sink away from the parts above and below the apertures. This danger is obviated, ií the soil be tolerably consistent, by turning inverted arches, as we shall show in its place; or, the soil being too soft to offer resistance[7:5:664] in the space occupied by a brick, by planking with timber or cast-iron frames, by laying one or more courses of strong thick paving stones, as wide at least as the whole extent of the footings of the walls, and each stone as large as may be; or, what in most cases is by far the best, by laying a compact mass of concreted rubble, sand, and quicklime, which will harden into a solid unbroken bed.

No foundation is more ineligible for a heavy structure than one that is rocky, especially if the rocks are in small masses, or, if a sufficient surface is offered of one mass, in strata which dip considerably: in the former case, from the rottenness of the soil in which rocks are generally bedded, and which consists for the most part of their detritus; and in the latter, from the liability of stratified rock to crack and slip, against which no precaution is available. Dry gravelly soils, again, are not only loose and infirm, but arc exceedingly liable to vacuities of various extent, which are hardly sufficiently provided against by piling: wet gravel is generally more compact, and may be better trusted both with and without piles, or with the concretion before mentioned. A deep compacted sand will be found firm if a sufficient surface of it be embraced by the footings, which should be wider in that than most other cases. In large and deep beds of alluvial deposits the heaviest building may be laid with security, if the precaution before suggested be attended to for the equal distribution of the pressure throughout. The city of New Orleans, in a delta at the mouth of the Mississippi, rests on a bed of mud, which is held together by a bonding of trunks and arms of trees, but on a broad level bed below. Here the only precaution taken in erecting a structure of the greatest magnitude is to make the trenches for the walls wide and level, and to floor the whole of their surface with thick planks properly bonded: on these the footings are laid, and if any settlement occurs, it is of the whole edifice, and no injury accrues to any part of it at any time. Clayey and chalky soils are generally understood to form the best natural foundations: in these, under ordinary circumstances, no preparation is required, though for very heavy and unequallypressing works, such as bridges, which are placed on piers made as small as they possibly can be, piling has been considered a necessary precaution. Indeed, except perhaps on an extensive horizontal bed of firm compact rock, no foundation can be considered better than that afforded by piling in a deep clay. (For the process of Piling, see the article under that head.)

In the ordinary processes of building, however, the artificial preparation of foundations hardly need be considered. Common prudence would refer it to professional management, when such is found necessary; and a work of this kind cannot contain sufficient information and instruction to qualify a man to act professionally on any subject, and more particularly on those subjects which demand initiatory practice and experience. We therefore proceed to the ordinary routine of practice.

The artificers whose trades come within the immediate range of the builder’s business are the following: Digger or excavator, bricklayer, mason, slater, sawyer, carpenter, joiner, plasterer, modeller, carver and gilder, plumber, smith, glazier, painter and decorator. Paving is done by the bricklayer or mason, as it may be of brick or stone, and tiling by the bricklayer.

Bigger or Excavator. — The digger works with a pickaxe and a spade or shovel. With the pick-axe he breaks down the soil if it be hard or very stiff, and throws it out with the shovel; but compacted sand and alluvial soil is spitted and thrown out with the spade alone, without previous breaking down. In the former case, the digger works onward, or with his work before him, and in the latter backward, or standing on the part to be thrown out, as a gar-

1 dener does. When rock occurs in a foundation, the assist-! ance of the quarryman is requisite to cut through or blast: it, as the occasion may require. The digger must be care; ful to produce a perfect level in every direction, and es-

pecially in trenches for walls; nor may this be done by pla-

cing again loose matter, but the level must be produced on the solid or undisturbed bed.

: Digger’s work is valued by the cubic yard, and is gene rally made to include, besides excavating, the removal of the soil and rubbish. The price per yard is therefore necessarily contingent on the stiffness of the soil, the depth to which the excavations may reach below the surface, and the.distance the stuff is to be removed; so that it is impossible to determine what, the cost maybe, without reference to each and all of these particulars, most of which must be different in every different place; and all are again affected by the local cost of labour or wages. A good excavator will dig and throwout, of common soil, into a basket or wheel-barrow, eight or ten yards per diem; but of stiff clay or firm gravel, not more than six yards. If the soil is to be carted away from the site of the proposed building, it may be more advantageously basketed out of the foundation, and deposited at once in the cart, whereby the labour of throwing or shovelling a second time is avoided; but if the soil is to be deposited in the immediate vicinity of the site, or thrown into a barge, wheeling is the quicker and more economical operation. The quantity of digger’s work is ascertained by multiplying the length of the excavation by its breadth, and their result by the mean depth for cubic feet: these divided by 27 will give the amount in cubic yards.

Erichlayer. — The manufacture of brick being made the subject of a separate article, we need only refer to that for information on the subject; and in the same manner the components and merits of mortars and cements will be found in sections 20 et seqq. of the article under the head Stone-Masonry. A few observations on the composition of mortar for bricklaying will nevertheless be necessary here.

Particular attention must be paid to cleansing the sand to be used for mortar, of every particle of clay or mud that may adhere to or be mixed up with it. Sea sand is objectionable for two reasons: it cannot be perfectly freed from a saline taint, and the particles are moreover generally rounded by attrition, caused by the action of the sea, which makes it less efficient for mortar than if they retained their natural angular forms. Lime should not be slaked until the moment it is to be mixed up with the sand in mortar, but the sooner that is done after it is burnt the better. The proportion of lime to sand is generally taken at one third or one fourth of the whole mass; but if both the materials be of good quality, that is, if the lime slake freely, and become a fine pungent impalpable powder, perfectly clear from argillaceous or any other foreign matter, and the sand clean and sharp, and of variously sized particles, one sixth of lime to sand is quite enough: more is injurious. The ingredients should be well mixed and beaten in a pug-mill, and as little water used as will suffice to make the compound consistent and paste like. Rain, or any other soft water, should be used for the purpose of making mortar, and not spring or hard water, though any other may be preferred to what is brackish even in the slightest degree. When mortar is made, if not immeuι-ately used it should be put into a close pit or case, and kept from the air, in which manner it will improve rather than deteriorate, though it be for weeks or even months: if however, the moisture be allowed to exude, it will set and be spoiled. When taken out to be worked up, it should be again well beaten, and wetted sufficiently to work freely, but no more: nor should it be re-made in this manner [7:5:665]in larger quantities than are required for immediate or daily use. A quick-setting cement, such as that which is most commonly used in building in this country, and known as Parker’s or Roman cement, can only be mixed or gauged as it is required for use. A bricklayer will keep a labourer fully employed in gauging cement for him alone. It is mixed with sand in the same manner that lime is in common mortar, in the proportion of about three or four of sand to one of cement, according to the quality of the latter; and the labourer, as he gauges on one board, supplies the mixture to the bricklayer fit for use on another board, a spadeful at a time: it must then be applied within half a minute, or it sets and is spoiled.

The average size of bricks in this country is a fraction under nine inches long, four and a half wide, and two and a half inches thick; and as their magnitude is limited by law, or rather by the duty imposed by law, the variation cannot be great. In consequence of this uniformity of size, a wall of this material is described as of so many bricks in thickness, or of the number of inches which result from the multiplying of nine inches by any number of bricks; a nine inch or one brick wall; a fourteen inch wall, or of one brick and a half (13⅛ inches would be more correct, in fact; for although a joint of mortar must occur in this thickness, yet the fraction under the given size of the brick is enough to form it); eighteen inch or two bricks, and so on. A half-brick wall is not, or ought not to be, known, except in partitions to fill in between quartering or upright timbers, when it is called brick-nogging; and then not more than six courses are laid without being bonded by a piece of wood, called an intertie, skew-nailed at each end to the quarters: brick-nogging is either flat or on edge, as the partition may be 4∣ or 2^ inches thick.

The great art in bricklaying is to preserve and maintain a bond, to have every course perfectly horizontal, both longitudinally and transversely, and perfectly plumb; which last, however, may not mean upright, though that is the general acceptation of the term, for the plumb-rule may be made to suit any inclination that it is wished the wall may have, as inward against a bank, for instance, or in a tapering tower; and also to make the vertical joints recur perpendicularly over each other: this is vulgarly and technically called keeping the perpends. By bond in brickwork is intended that arrangement which shall make the bricks of every course cover the joints of those in the course below it, and so tend to make the whole mass or combination of bricks actas much together, or dependently one upon another, as possible. The object of this will be understood by reference to the diagram, fig. 1. Here it is evident, from the arrangement of the bricks, that any weight placed on a would (supposing, as we are obliged to suppose, that every brick feels equally, throughout its whole length, a stress laid on any part of it) be carried down and borne alike in every course from b to c; in the same manner the brick d is upborne by every brick in the line e f and so throughout the structure. But this forms a longitudinal bond only, which cannot extend its influence beyond the width of the brick; and a wall of one brick and a half or two bricks thick, built in this manner, would, in effect, consist of three or four half-brick-thick walls, acting independently of each other, as shown in the plan at i, in the diagram, under fig. 1. If the bricks were turned so as to show their short sides or ends in front, instead of their long ones, certainly a compact wall of a whole brick in thickness would be produced; but the longitudinal bond would be shortened one-half, as at g c h, and a wall of any greater thickness, in the same manner, must be composed of so many independent one-brick walls, as at k, in the plan before referred to. To obviate this, to produce a transverse, and vet preserve a aood longitudinal, bond, the bricks are laid in alternate courses of headers and stretchers, or of ends and sides, as shown in fig. 2, thus combining the advantages of the two modes of arrangement a b c and g c h fig. 1, in a b c fig. 2. Each brick in fig. 2 showing its long side in front, or being a stretcher, will have another lying parallel to it, and on the same level, on the other side, to receive the other ends of the bricks showing as headers in front, which in their turn bind, by breaking the joint between them, as shown in the end of such a wall at d. Thus a well-bonded nine-inch or one brick wall is produced. The end elevations of the same wall at e and f show how the process of bonding is pursued in walls of one and a half and two bricks thick, the stretcher being abutted in the same course by a header; thus, in a fourteen-inch wall inverting the appearance on the opposite sides, as seen at β, and producing the same appearance in an eighteen-inch wall, as at f In the diagram under fig. 2, at g, is the plan of a fourteen-inch wall, showing the headers on one side and the stretchers on the other, and at h is the plan of the course immediately above it, in which the headers and stretchers are inverted; at k and i are shown, in the same manner, the plans of two courses of an eighteen-inch wall. This is called English bond. Thicker walls are constructed in the same manner by the extension of the same principle.

But a brick being exactly half its length in breadth, it is impossible, commencing from a vertical end or angle, to make a bond with whole bricks, as the joints must of necessity fall one over the other. This difficulty is obviated by cutting a brick longitudinally into two, or transversely into four, equal parts, making half headers. One of these is placed next to a whole header, inward from the angle, and forms with it a three-quarter length between the stretchers above and below, thus making a regular overlap, which may then be preserved throughout: these half headers are technically termed closers. (See the joints in the heading courses next the upright angle of the wall fig. 2, and the first joints inwards from the square ends by the headers in the plans at g and h.) A three-quarter stretcher is obviously as available for this purpose as a half header, but the latter is preferred, because, by the use of it, uniformity of appearance is preserved, and whole bricks are retained on the quoins or angles. In walls of almost all thicknesses above nine inches, to preserve the transverse, and yet not destroy the longitudinal bond, it is frequently necessary to use half bricks; but it becomes a question whether more is not lost in the general firmness and consistence of the wall by that necessity, than is gained in the uniformity of the bond. It may certainly be taken as a general rule, that a brick should never be cut if it can be worked in whole, for a new joint is thereby created in a construction, the difficulty of which consists in obviating the debility arising from the constant recurrence of joints. Great attention should be paid to this, especially in the quoins of buildings, in which half bricks most readily occur; and there it is not only of consequence to have the greatest degree of consistence, but the quarter bricks used as closers are already admitted, and the weakness consequent on their admission would only be increased by the use of Other bats, or fragments of bricks.

Another mode of bonding brick-work, which may be supposed to have arisen from the appearance of the ends of a wall according to the former mode of arrangement (see e and/ fig. 2), instead of placing the bricks in alternate courses of headers and stretchers, places headers and stretchers alternately in the same course, fig. 3. The plans below this at c and d are of two courses of a fourteen-inch wall,· with their bond, showing in what manner the joints are broken in the wall horizontally as well as vertically on its face. This is called Flemish bond. Closers are used [7:5:666]equally to English and Flemish bond, in the same manner, and for the same purpose; half bricks also will occur in both, but what has been said with reference to the use of them in the former applies even with more force to the latter, for they are more frequent in Flemish than in English, and its transverse tie is thereby rendered less strong. Their occurrence is a disadvantage which every care should be taken to obviate. The arrangement of the joints, however, in Flemish bond, presenting a neater appearance than that of English bond, it is generally preferred for external walls when their outer faces are not to be covered with stucco, or plaster composition of any kind; but English bond should have the preference when the greatest degree ofstrength and compactness is considered of the highest importance, because it affords, as we have already noticed, a better transverse tie than the other, and transverse tic is even more important than longitudinal.

It has been attempted to improve the bond in thick walls, by laying raking courses in the core between external stretching courses, and reversing the rake when the course recurs. This obviates whatever necessity may exist of using half bricks in the heading courses, but it leaves triangular interstices to be filled up with bats, as the diagram fig. 4 shows. This represents the plan of a thirty-six inch or three-brick wall with raking courses at «, between external rangesof stretchers, and lyingon a complete course of headers, and at 6 a wall of the same thickness herring-bonecl; courses of headers would bed and cover this also, and, in the second course above, the raking or herring-boning would be repeated, but the direction of the bricks inverted. It will be seen that the latter demands, in addition to the triangular filling-in bats at the outer ends of the diagonally placed bricks, half bricks to fill up the central line of interstices, rendering herring-boning more objectionable in that particular, though it has some advantages over simply raking, or thorough diagonal courses, in some other points. Neither mode should, however, be recurred to for walls of a less thickness than three bricks, and that indeed is almost too thin to admit of any great advantage from it.

Skilful and ingenious workmen are well aware of the necessity of attending to the bond, and are ready both to suggest and to receive and practise an improvement; but generally the workmen themselves are both ignorant of its importance and careless in preserving it, even according to the common modes. Their work should therefore be strictly supervised as they proceed with it; for many of the failures which are constantly occurring may be referred to their ignorance or carelessness in this particular.

Not second in importance to bonding in brick-work is, that it be perfectly plumb, or vertical, and that every course be perfectly horizontal, or level, both longitudinally and transversely. The lowest course in the footings of a brick wall should be laid with the strictest attention to this latter particular; for the bricks being of equal thickness throughout, the slightest irregularity or incorrectness in that will be carried into the superimposing courses, and can only be rectified by using a greater or less quantity of mortar in one part or another, so that the wall will of course yield unequally to the superincumbent weight, as the work goes on, and perpetuate the infirmity. To save the trouble of keeping the plumb-rule and level constantly in his hands, and yet to insure correct work, the bricklayer, on clearing the footings of a wall, builds up six or eight courses at the external angles (see fig. 5), which he carefully plumbs and levels across, and from one to the other. These form a gauge for the intervening parts of the courses, a line being tightly· strained from one end to the other, resting on the upper and outer angles of the gauge bricks of the next course to be laid, as at a and Z>, fig. 5, and with this he makes his work range. If, however, the length be great, the line will of course sag; to prevent which, it is carefully set and propped at sufficient distances. Having carried up three or four courses to a level, with the guidance of the line, the work should be proved with the level and plumb rule, and particularly with the latter at the returns and reveals, as well as on the face: a smart tap with the end of the handle of the trowel will generally suffice to make a brick yield what little it may be out, while the work is so green, and not injure it. Good workmen, however, take a pride in showing how correctly their work will plumb without tapping. To work which is circular on the plan, both the level and the plumb-rule must be used, together with a gauge-mould or a ranging trammel, to every course, as it must be evident that the line cannot be applied to such in the manner just described. To every wall of more than one brick thick, two men should be employed at the same time, one outside and the other in: one man cannot do justice from one side, even to a fourteen-inch wall. Inferior workmen and apprentices are generally employed as inside men, though the work there is of quite as great importance as exteriorly, except for neatness, and for that only if the brickwork is to show on the outside.

In the operation of bricklaying, the workman holds the trowel in his right hand, and with the left he takes up the bricks from the scaffold, and lays them in their places. Spooning or shovelling up mortar from the board with the trowel, he throws it on the course last laid, and with the point strews it over the surface to form a bed for that which he is about to set; whatever bulges or projects over the outer edge of the work below is struck off, and being caught on the flat face of the trowel, is put against the side or edge of the last brick laid in the new course. Then taking up a brick, he presses it down in its place until its upper and outer angle comes exactly to the line; and if this be not readily effected by the hand, a slight drawing blow with the obtuse point of the edge of the trowel does it, or a tap with the end of the handle both draws it and settles it down farther than the hand can press it. The small quantity of mortar that is pressed out in front, by this operation, being struck off, the joints are neatly drawn by compressing the mortar with the point of the trowel, and thus producing a fine smooth surface,—that is, if the work is to be seen; for if it is to be plastered, the rough face is left that the plastering may the more readily attach itself, and the joint is not drawn at all, but the workman proceeds in the same manner with the next brick in advance along the course, or to fill in behind the one he has laid in front to meet the work of his mate on the other side of the same wall. This is the common mode of laying bricks. They should not however be merely laid; every brick should be rubbed and pressed down in such a manner as to force the slimy matter of the mortar into the pores of the bricks, and so produce absolute adhesion. Moreover, to make brick-work as good and perfect as it may be, every brick should be made damp, or even wet, before it is laid, otherwise it immediately absorbs the moisture of the mortar, and, its surface being covered with dry dust, and its pores full of air, no adhesion can take place; but if the brick be damp, and the mortar moist, the dust is enveloped in the cementitious matter of themortar, which also enters the pores of the brick, so that when the water evaporates, their attachment is complete, the retention and access of air being thus altogether precluded. 1θ wet the bricks before they were carried on to the seallo would, by making them heavier, add materially to tιθ labaur of carrying: in dry weather they would, moreover, become dry again before they could be used; and for t ae bricklayer to wet every brick himself would be an unne [7:5:667]cessary waste of his time: boys might therefore be advantageously employed to dip the bricks on the scaffold, and supply them in a damp state to the bricklayer’s hand. A watering pot with a fine rose to it should also be used to moisten the upper surface of the last laid course of bricks, preparatory to strewing the mortar over it. In bricklaying with quick setting cements these things are of even more importance; indeed, unless the bricks are quite wet to be set with cement, it will not attach itself to them at all.

As mortar is a more yielding material, used in brick-work merely for the purpose of making the detached portions of the staple adhere, by filling up their interstices and producing exhaustion, and the object being to produce as unyielding and consistent a mass as possible, as much of it should be used as is sufficient to produce the desired result, and no more. No two bricks should be allowed to touch, because of their inaptitude to adhere to each other; and no space between them should be left unoccupied by mortar which may produce adhesion. When the bricks are a fraction under two and a half inches thick, no four courses of bricks and mortar, or brick-work, should exceed eleven inches in height; and if they are fully that thickness, four courses should not reach eleven and a half inches. The result of thick beds of mortar between the bricks is, that the mortar is pressed out after the joint is drawn, on the outside, in front; and being made convex instead of slightly concave, the joints catch every drop of rain that may trickle down the face of the wall, and are thus saturated; the moisture freezes, and in thawing bursts the mortar, which crumbles away, and creates the necessity which is constantly recurring, of pointing the joints to preserve the , wall. The diagram shows the section of a nine-inch wall, with the joints on the side a as drawn, and on the side b as bulged, in consequence of the quantity of mortar in them yielding to the weight above. This, too, is in addition to the inconvenient settling, which is the consequence of using too much mortar in the beds.

In practice, bricklayers lay the mortar on the course last finished, and spread it over the surface with the trowel, without considering, or caring for it, that they have put no mortar between the bricks of that course, except in the external edges of the outside joints; that the mortar is not, or ought not to be, so thin as to fall into the joints by its own weight; and that unless they press it down, half the height of the space between the bricks remains in every case unoccupied, and the wall is consequently hollow, incompact, and necessarily imperfect. To obviate this, it is common to have thick walls grouted in every course; that is, mortar made liquid, and called grout, is poured on to, and spread over the surface of the work, that it may run in and fill up the joints completely. This, at the best, is but doing with grout what should be done with mortar; and the difference between the two consisting merely in the difference in the quantity of water they contain, mortar must be considered the best; for the tendency of grout is, by hydrostatic pressure, to burst the wall in which it is employed; and, moreover, it must, by taking a much longer time to dry and shrink than the mortar of the beds and external joints, make and keep the whole mass unstable, and tend to injure rather than benefit it. Filling or flushing up every course with mortar is therefore far preferable, and may be done with very little additional exertion on the part of the workmen.

It is a very common thing for two sorts of mortar to be used in the same wall, a finer and whiter for the outside, and a coarser for the inside work; the former made of cleaner and finer sand, and a greater quantity of lime, than the latter, with the intention of exposing a better looking and more durable material to the view and the weather. The sand, we have already shown, ought to be as clean as it can be made for mortar under all circumstances; therefore there should be no possibility of making a difference in that particular; and the addition of a greater quantity of lime than is necessary to make good mortar makes it less durable, and occasions a sacrifice in an important quality for the sake of an unimportant advantage. Moreover, the mortar which contains the greater quantity of lime will yield or settle more than that which has the greater proportion of sand.

All the walls of a building that are to sustain the same floors and the same roof should be carried on simultaneously; under no circumstances should more be done in one part than can be reached from the same scaffold, until all the walls are brought up to the same height, and the ends of the part first built should be racked back, as at α b, fig. 2, and not carried up vertically with merely the toothing necessary for the bond, as at a b, fig. 3.

Brick-work should never be carried on in frosty weather, nor even when it is likely that frost will occur before the walls can be covered in and become so dry as not to be affected by frost. Covering an unfinished wall with a thick layer of straw, when frost may supervene, is a very useful precaution; on the straw, weather boarding should be laid, to prevent access of moisture from rain or snow. Merely wet weather may be guarded against by following the directions given above as to flushing every course of the work well up with mortar, so that no interstices be left into which water may insinuate itself, and by covering the walls with boards to act as a coping when the men are not actually at work on them; the joints in the face of a wall that is not to be plastered in any way should be protected in this manner with great care.

In ordinary practice the bricklayer’s scaffolds are carried up with the walls, and are made to rest on them. Having built up the walls as high as he can conveniently from the ground, and from a scaffold on trestles perhaps, he plants a row of poles, which vary in height from thirty to forty and even fifty feet, parallel to and at a distance of about four feet six inches from the walls, and from twelve to fourteen feet apart. To these, which are called standards, are attached by means of ropes other poles called ledgers, horizontally and on the inside, with their upper surface on a level with the highest course of the wall yet laid; and on the ledgers and wall short transverse poles called putlogs or putlocks are laid as joists to carry the floor of scaffold boards. These putlocks are placed about six or seven feet apart, according to the length and strength of the scaffold boards; and the ends which rest on the walls are carefully laid on the middle of a stretcher, so as to occupy the place of a header brick, which is inserted when the scaffolds are struck after the work is finished. On the floor of the scaffold thus formed the bricklayer stands, and the materials are brought to him by labourers, in hods, from the ground below, or they are hoisted up in baskets and buckets by means of a pulley wheel and fall. The mortar is placed on ledged boards of about three feet square, placed at convenient distances along the scaffold; and the bricks are strewn on the scaffold between the mortar boards, leaving a clear way against the wall for the workmen to move along unob-structedly. The workman then recommences the operation of bricklaying, beginning at the extreme left of his course, and advancing to the right until he reaches the angle or quoin in that direction, or the place where his fellow-workman on the same side may have begun. Thus he goes on with course after course until the wall is as high as he can conveniently reach from that scaffold, when another ledger is tied to the poles, another row of putlocks laid, and the [7:5:668]boards are removed up to the new level. The ledger and most of the putlocks, however, remain to give steadiness to the temporary structure, and so on to the full height of the wall, piecing out the poles by additional lengths as may be required. If a scaffold be very much exposed, and run to a great height, it must be braced. This is done by tying poles diagonally across on the outside to the standards and ledgers, and it may be further secured by tying the ends of some of the putlocks to the ledgers; but an outside scaffold should never be attached in any way to the building about which it stands. A scaffold should never be loaded heavily, as well on account of the work as of the scaffold itself; for the putlocks resting, as they do, on single bricks, in a green wall, they exert an injurious influence on it, which every additional pound weight on the scaffold must necessarily increase. A constant and steady supply of bricks and mortar on the part of the labourers, without overloading the scaffold at any one time, should be strictly required. It would indeed be an advantage if every scaffold were made with a double row of poles and ledgers, one being on the inside, within a few inches of the wall. This would obviate the necessity of resting the putlocks on the walls, and do away with putlock holes; but the inner row of poles would be constantly in the way of the bricklayer, who could not either set the bricks or draw the joints so well as if he were unobstructed. Access is given to scaffolds by ladders, and by inclined planes; the former are more commonly used externally, and the latter internally.

Arches in brick-work are plain, rough, cut, or gauged. Plain arches are built of uncut bricks, and the bricks being parallelopipedons, an arch built of them must be made out with mortar; that is, the difference between the outer and inner periphery of the arch requiring the parts of which an arch is made up to be wedge-formed, as at a, which the brick is not, the difference must be made in mortar, as at b, so that the inner or lower angles of bricks used for this purpose should absolutely touch, and the mortar should be more consistent than that used in ordinary walling; nor should the centre on which an arch of this kind is set or built be struck or removed until the work is absolutely dry, or rather all such arches should be set in cement which will dry immediately. In consequence of this inherent defect m uncut-brick arches, in extensive continuous works, such as sewers, tunnels, vaults, &c. it is advisable to make them in thin independent rings of half-brick or one brick thick, as the case may be; that is, a nine-inch arch should be in two half-brick arches, as at a, fig. 6, and an eighteen-inch arch in two one-bricks, as at b, each arch in the latter case being bonded in itself as in a common nine-inch wall with headers and stretchers. It is evident that, by this mode of structure, a greater quantity of the solid material comes into the back or outer ring or arch than into the lower one; and it they had been bonded together into one arch, as at c, all that difference must have been made up with mortar. Moreover, whatever pressure comes on the outer ring is carried by it directly to the inner or lower, from whose joints, however, the mortar cannot escape or be pressed out, the inner angles of the bricks, by meeting, preventing it below, and the bricks themselves of the upper arch, which conveys the pressure, are themselves opposed to the back of the same joints, so that its power of resistance is made equal to that of the bricks themselves, except at the ends; which, in such works as we have supposed, are remote, and may be protected by the use of cement in their joints, whilst mortar is used in the rest.

Rough arches are those in which the bricks are roughly cut with an axe to a wedge form, and are used over openings, such as doors and windows, when the work is to be plastered on the outside, or in plain back fronts, cuthouses, garden-walls, &c. when, however, they are neatly pointed with what is called a tuck or tucked joint Semicircular and elliptical arches are generally made plain, or without cutting the bricks; but arches composed of a smaller segment of a circle (vulgarly and technically called scheme arches), if not gauged, are cut or axed. Very flat arches are technically distinguished from the quicker segment, or scheme, by the term camber, from the French word cambrer i to round like an arch. It is arches of this kind which are generally employed over windows and doors in external work, and they too are either cut or gauged.

Gauged arches are composed of bricks which are cut and rubbed to gauges and moulds, so as to form perfectly fitting parts, as in masonry. Gauging is equally applicable to arches and to walling, as it means no more than the bringing every brick exactly to μ certain form, by cutting and rubbing, or grinding it to a certain gauge or measure, so that it will exactly fit into its place, as in the finer works of masonry. Gauged brick-work is set in a putty instead of common mortar, but it is seldom used except for arches in the fronts of houses, &c. which are to be neatly finished. These are for the most part straight, and are generally from eleven to twelve inches in depth, or the height of four courses of brick-work. Their value as arches will be best understood by reference to the diagram, fig. 7, by which it appears that all the material between the soffit of the straight arch or head of the opening b c, and the dotted line b f c, is useless, the intrados or soffit of the really efficient part of the arch being at that dotted line itself. This is the arc of an angle of 60°; its chord, the width of the opening, being the base of an equilateral triangle constructed on it, and the joints are the radii of a circle whose centre is at a. b d and c e, the continuations of the sides of the triangle or radii a b and a c, are technically termed the skew-back of the arch. Sometimes the arc is made that of a more acute angle, in which case the skew-back is less, that is, the external angles c b d, and b c e, are less obtuse; a smaller inavailable portion of the arch is thus left between the arc and its chord, but that portion is less securely retained under the flatter segment, because the joints or radii diverge less, or are more nearly parallel. These gauged arches being, as they for the most part are, but a half brick in thickness, and not being tied by a bond to anything behind them—for indeed almost the whole, if not the whole, of their height, is occupied behind by the reveal and the wooden lintel—require to be executed with great care and nicety. It is a common fault with workmen to rub the bricks thinner behind than before, to insureavery fine joint in front, which must tend to make it bowoutwards: it should rather be inverted, if it be done at all, though the best work is that in which the bricks are gauged to a perfect parallel in their lateral thickness. Fig. 8 is a transverse section of fig. 7, and the gauged arch, lintel, &c. in it showing the total disconnection of the gauged arch with any surrounding brick-work to which it might be bonded. The absurdity of constructing arches circular on the plan, especially in a thin unbonded shell of bricks, is so clear as hardly to require notice.

Gauged facing to a wall is exceedingly objectionable, unless the bricks used for the gauged work be originally a little larger than those which are to be worked in behind, whose size should be their gauge, otherwise no bond can be kept between the bulk of the wall and its face; and the same mortar or putty should be used throughout, of equal consistence, and with joints of equal thickness, or the work cannot be sound and compact.

Everything relating to the construction of niches, groins, domes, &c. may be referred to the articles Arch, Bridge? [7:5:669]and Stone-Masonry ; the difference between stone and brick, as far as the principle is concerned, being only in the comparative magnitude of the parts; for to make perfect arches, &c. it is clear that the bricks must be cut to the same forms that are required in stone.

It is generally held that nothing but its own components should be admitted into a brick wall, except what is absolutely necessary for its connection with the other parts of a building, such as wall-plates and wood-bricks (and that these should be avoided as much as possible), templates, lintels, &c. Wall-plates are required to receive the ends of the joists, and distribute the weight of the floor to which they belong equally along the walls. If the joists tailed singly on the naked bricks, their thin edges would crush those immediately under them, and the rest of the brickwork would escape immediate pressure altogether. Wallplates may be superseded by the use of templates; but this involves the necessity of framed floors, which are carried by a few large beams, under whose ends stout pieces of timber three or four feet in length are placed. These are intended, like a wall-plate, to distribute the weight over a considerable part of the wall, and prevent the necessity of placing the beam on the naked friable bricks, and are called templates. Lintels are used over square-headed windows and doors, instead of arches in brick-work. They are useful to preserve the square form and receive the joiner’s fittings, but they should always have discharging arches over them, and should not tail into the wall at either end more than a few inches, that the discharging arch be not wider than is absolutely necessary. If, however, discharging arches be not turned over them, the lintels should tail in at each end considerably, and have small templates or wood bricks placed transversely under them, as shown in the diagram, fig. 9. This indicates the elevation of the inside of part of an external wall with a window in it, and shows the lintel over the latter, with a discharging arch over it, and wood bricks under its ends, on the jambs of the opening. Discharging arches should be turned over the ends of beams, and templates also, as in fig. 10. They may generally be quadrants of a circle, or even flatter, and should be turned in two or more half bricks over doors and windows, and other wide openings, but over the ends of beams they need not be in more than one half brick.

Wood bricks are used to prevent the necessity of driving wedges into the joints of brick-work to nail the joiner’s work to. They are pieces of timber generally cut to the size and shape of a brick, and worked in as bricks in the inner face of a wall, where it is known the joiners have occasion for something of the kind. This is principally in the jambs of the windows and doors for their fittings, and along the walls, at proper heights, for the skirtings or wainscotting, as the case may be.

The use of bond timber in brick walls is objectionable, because of its liability to shrink and swell, to decay, and to be consumed by fire, in any of which cases the structure to which it belongs is either injured, endangered, or absolutely destroyed. It is, however, valuable to tie the angles of walls, and to distribute the various weights equally throughout the walls, thus tending to prevent irregular settlements, whether arising from any defect in a foundation, or from an extraordinary imposition of weight in any particular part. The objections to bond timber depend on contingencies against which it may be in a great degree protected by care and judicious management. If the timber be of a durable sort, sound and well seasoned, neither shrinking nor swelling need be feared if it be not placed in a damp situation, or where moisture can gain access to it; nor will it decay if it be entirely incased in any thing, t 0 the total exclusion of the external atmosphere. If timber be laid in the heart of a wall, it should be well imbedded in, and flushed round and over with mortar, as we have shown that bricks should be for other reasons; and if it be laid in the face of a wall, it should be only where its exposed face can be effectually protected from access of moisture, as when it is covered by the plasterer. Damage by fire is a remote contingency; and as it may be confidently asserted that bond timber was never the-part of a structure in which a fire commenced, except perhaps from some gross misplacement of it, it is moreover the last combustible part that a fire could reach, and therefore, when it is arrived at, almost all the damage that can be done has already accrued. Bond timber certainly may be, and constantly is, exposed to all the cited contingencies; but they generally arise from circumstances which it may be in a greater or less degree protected from. Flat wrought-iron bars have been recommended as ties in lieu of bond timber; but besides the equal liability of that metal to decay if it be exposed to damp or to a confined atmosphere, bars of it cannot be properly worked up or combined with brick-work; and its susceptibility of changes of temperature renders it far more unfit than timber to be compounded with materials whose greatest merits are firmness, and an inaptitude to change under any circumstances. The frangibility of cast iron makes it also exceedingly objectionable as a bond or tie in brick walls.

It will be generally found that a brick wall built with mortar and faced with ashlar has settled inward to a greater or less extent, as the work has been more or less carefully performed. Indeed in the nature of things it cannot be otherwise, unless the brick backing be worked in some cement which sets and hardens at once; for the outer face is composed of a layer of unyielding material, with few and very thin joints, which perhaps do not occupy a fiftieth part of its extent, while the back is built up of an infinity of small parts, with fully one eighth its height of joints, which are composed of material that must both yield to pressure and shrink in drying. Some part of the ill effect attendant on this is obviated by the bond-stones, which tail in or run through the wall, and tend to keep the discordant materials together; but still much of it remains: and besides this, the internal or cross walls, which have no stone in them, will either settle down and shrink away from the external walls, or drag them inward, as they happen to be well or ill bonded or tied. For these reasons, brick-work built in this manner with masonry should be executed with exceedingly well-tempered mortar, made with no more lime than is absolutely necessary to cement the particles of sand together, and the sand again to the bricks, worked as stiff as it can be, and laid in as thin courses as may be to answer the purpose required of it. Above all, work of this kind must not be hurried, but allowed time to dry and shrink as it goes on.

Discharging arches over vacuities having been disposed of incidentally, we have now only to speak of them under openings, in which situation their use is to distribute the superincumbent weight equally over the substructure, or along the foundation, as the case may be. For this purpose the arch is inverted, as shown in the diagram, fig. 14, and by means of it the weight brought down by the piers is carried along the footings, which are thus equally borne upon throughout their whole length. Arches of two half bricks are indicated here, that being sufficient for ordinary purposes, and to develope the principle; in large and heavy works, arches of three half bricks, and even greater, may be judged necessary. Any arc between a quadrant and a semicircle may be used with advantage; but an arc of less than 45° cannot be recommended for the inverted discharging arch under piers. If it should so happen that an old well or cess-pool, that cannot without great inconvenience and expense be filled up with [7:5:670] sound walling, or in some other efficient manner, or other irremediably bad place, occur in a foundation, and fall under a pier, the ground being sound on either side of it, a second discharging arch may be formed under the pier and over the unsound part, resting its legs on, or springing from, the inverted arch under the opening, and on the sound ground, as indicated by the dotted arch in the last quoted diagram, fig. 14.

Not the least important part of the bricklayer’s art is the formation of chimney and other flues. Great tact is required in gathering over properly above the fire-place, so as to conduct the smoke into the smaller flue, which itself requires to be built with great care and precision, that it be not of various capacity in different parts, in one place contracted to a narrow strait, and in another more widely expanded, and so on. With the present imperfect means of cleaning chimney flues, it is absolutely necessary that they be of a certain magnitude, which should be carefully maintained throughout; but it would be better that they were made oval, or with the angles taken off at least, than parallelograms in plan, as the practice is. Chimney flues are plastered or pargetted with a mortar in which a certain proportion of cow-dung is mixed, which prevents it from cracking and peeling off with the heat to which it is exposed. Experiment has proved that a tapering and nearly cylindrical flue of much smaller bore than is now required is the best for carrying away smoke; and with a more humane and more efficient mode of cleaning, such a one would be unexceptionable. Of course, too, the bore should be regulated by the size of the fire-place, or rather by the quantity of smoke to which it is required to give vent.

Sewers and drains which are not cylindrical should be built with concave bottoms, although the sides be parallel and the covering horizontal. The concave channel keeps the stream more together, and enables it the better to carry its impurities along with it; whereas a flat-bottomed drain offers a large surface for the particles of soil to attach themselves to, and the stream of water, being more scattered, is less efficient in force. All drains in houses and in other places where it may be necessary to open them at any time, should be of the form of which a i fig. 11, is a section, with a flat covering of stone paving, or large, strong, paving tiles, set and jointed with cement. Gunbarrel drains, as at 6, are the best in exposed situations, because they are the strongest; but as there is no mode of cleaning but by breaking them up, if they are too long to be raked, they should not be employed except with a considerable fall, and a frequent or constant stream of water through them, as from a pump-trough, rain-water trunks, &c. They are constructed on a barrelled centre, which the bricklayer drags on as he advances with his work, finishing as he goes. Large sewers, which are accessible from the ends by men to clear or remove any accidental obstructions, are best circular or elliptical; the latter of the two is generally preferred, because, in proportion to its capacity, its height is greater; but most frequently the sides of large sewers are made vertical and parallel, with a flat, inverted arch below, and a semicircular head, as at c. This form, however, it is evident, is disqualified to resist lateral pressure to any extent; nor indeed is the circular or elliptical sewer secure in its arched form, unless the weight above is sufficient to counteract any force the sides may be subjected to. No drain should have an inclination or fall of less than one quarter of an inch to a foot; and where the stream is infrequent and dull, as much more would be a great advantage. In building drains it is of great importance that proper traps should be constructed to prevent the return of smelR and the passage of vermin. At every sink there should be a bell-trap, and a well-trap within that, or near the hither end of the drain. Suppose a drain of the form of that shown at ö, fig. 11, nine inches wide and nine inches deep, leading from a kitchen or scullery to the common sewer of the house, in which it meets that which comes from the water-closet and other places. The bell-trap in the sink itself will prevent the return of smell when it is constantly in use, but it is liable to be broken and otherwise injured by the ignorance and impatience of servants and others, or it may become dry by evaporation in some situations; it is therefore necessary to have a trap not so liable to contingencies. Let a well be made eighteen inches or two feet in diameter, square or round, and two feet six inches or three feet deep, across and below the level of the drain, as shown in the plan, fig. 12, and longitudinal section of the same, fig. 13; it must be built around with brick, in cement, and be plastered on the inside with the same material, which will make it capable of retaining fluids. Uprightly across this well, and in the transverse direction of the drain, must be placed a sound piece of paving stone, so long that its ends maybe inserted in the sides of the well, as shown in fig. 12, and so wide that its upper edge shall touch the covering of the drain, and that its lower may reach six or nine inches down into the well below the bottom of the drain. Mortar or cement must prevent the passage of air between the upper edge of this trap-stone and the cover of the well and drain, and the trap is complete. The water coming from the sink flows along the drain from a to b (fig. 13), where it falls into the well, and filling it up to that level, it flows on again from c in the direction of d, to the cess-pool or common sewer, from which, however, no smell can return; for the trap-stone e, the lower half of which is thus immersed in water, completely bars the passage. It is evident, however, that if the well should leak, the water in it may fall below the lower edge of the stone, and the efficiency of the trap be destroyed; but if it be made perfect in the first instance, there can be no danger of any inconvenience that a bucket of water thrown in at the sink will not cure. It is from the drying up of the water in these well-traps (vulgarly called stink-traps') that uninhabited houses are so frequently offensive. It must be clear, moreover, that these traps form an effectual bar to vermin, and they may therefore be advantageously placed at the entrance of water-closet drains, to prevent rats from getting at the soilpipes, which they will gnaw and destroy if they can get access to them. Internal drains, or those which go through a house, should always pass under the doorways if possible, and above the inverted arch, which should be always found under them, in external walls at least. If, however, circumstances should render it absolutely necessary to take a drain through a wall, an arched ring or bull’s eye should be made for it to pass by.

Cess-pools should be made cylindrical, and be bricked round; but whether they are made to retain fluids or not, can seldom be a matter of consequence, as they are generally put in secluded places, where, if the object benot to get rid of the waste, there is seldom, at least, any desire to retain it. In towns and cities where the common sewerage is as complete as it should be, and water-closets are used instead of privies, cess-pools are unnecessary, as the soil becomes so much diluted by the water that goes down with it, that it flows readily enough through the private drains to the common sewer, and so on with the rest, to the common receptacle. Sometimes, indeed, it may be found necessary to clean out the well-traps, but this cannot often occur.

The construction of ovens and furnaces, and well-steen-ing, are certainly within the range of the bricklayers art, [7:5:671]but as they are not immediately connected with our present subject, they do not come within the scope of this article.

Brick and the paving is performed by the bricklayer. Brick paving is either flat, or on edge, in sand, or in mortar or cement. Brick flat paving in sand, that is, with the bricks laid on their broadest surfaces, and bedded in and on dry sand, is very slight and fragile, and brick flat paving set and bedded in mortar is very little better; for if the soil on which the paving is laid be light and sandy, the bricks are easily displaced by being pressed unequally; and if it be clayey it will probably be moist, and the thin porous brick absorbing the moisture, will generally become saturated, and present a damp, unwholesome floor. Paving with bricks on their edges, however, forms a much better floor, and is preferable to a stone paving, if the latter be laid on the ground without the intervention of footings. Brick-on-edge paving in sand is generally used in beer cellars, pantries, dairies, stables, &c. as its numerous open joints allow wasted or discharged fluids readily to escape; and it is both cool and dry under ordinary circumstances. In mortar or cement, bricks on their edges form a sound, dry floor; the smallness of the surface exposed by each brick in this manner leaves them of course less susceptible of partial pressures, and the depth from the soil to the surface is such that damp rarely shows through. The paving brick differs from the common brick only in thickness, its dimension in that direction being rather less than two inches instead of two inches and a half, and in being rather harder and more compact. Dutch clinkers are paving bricks, smaller and much harder than the English; they are six inches long, three inches wide, and one inch and a half thick, and are always set on edge and herringboned; that is, instead of being placed in parallel lines, they are set at right angles to each other thus,—with nevertheless a perfectly even face. Paving tiles are made nine inches and a half and eleven inches and a half square, though they are called ten inch and twelve inch or foot tiles respectively, the former being one inch, and the latter one inch and a half thick; they are set in courses, as stone paving would be. Paving tiles make a neater, but not so sound and durable a pavement, as brick on edge.

Tiling being much less in vogue than formerly, in consequence of the better appreciation of the superior qualities of slate for covering roofs, and the moderate cost at which slates are now furnished to the builder, it no longer maintains its separate artificer, but is performed, when it is required, by the bricklayer. It consists, for the most part, of two sorts—plain tiling and pan tiling. Plain tiles are simple parallelograms, generally about ten inches and a half in length, six inches wide, and five eighths of an inch thick; and each tile has a hole pierced through it near one end, to receive the wooden pin by which it is hooked on to the lath. The tiles are laid in mortar on the laths, which in this country are of oak or fir, with an overlap of six, seven, or eight inches. The greatest overlap or smallest gauge makes the securest work, though it does not present so good an appearance externally as a longer gauge does; and it requires, moreover, a greater number of tiles and laths, thereby adding materially both to the weight and the cost. The great overlap and the mortar are both necessary, nevertheless, to prevent the rain and snow from driving in between and under the tiles. Plain tiling requires the pitch of the roof to be at an angle of at least fiθ 0 , and is one of the heaviest coverings that can be used, though it is at the same time one of the warmest. The tiles, however, readily and rapidly absorb moisture, which they communicate to the laths and rafters under them, to the serious injury of both the latter; and the mortar in which they are set requires to be frequently pointed, the constant atmospheric changes to which it is exposed occasioning it to crumble and fall away in a very short time.

Pan tiles are parallelograms of irregular surface, straight in the direction of their length, which is thirteen inches and a half, but twisted to this form in the trans verse section. Measuring the whole surface across, a tile is nine inches wide, but in a right line from point to point not more than seven, and its thickness is half an inch; a small tongue or lip is bent down at one end, from its flatter convexity, on the under side, to hook it on to the lath by, instead of a wooden pin through it, as in a plain tile. Pan tiles are set dry or in mortar, on laths. They are not laid side by side, but overlapping laterally, thus; consequently all the overlap they have longitudinally is three or four inches only, or enough to prevent rain and snow from driving up under the upper, over the end of the lower tile; and thence pan tiling is but little more than half the weight of plain tiling. It is nevertheless a much less warm covering for houses, and is more liable to be injured by violent gales or gusts of wind, than the latter is; but again, it presents a far more pleasing appearance to the eye. Pan tiling will not bear a much flatter pitch than the other, but it is greatly improved by being pointed on the inside with lime and hair; sometimes indeed the whole of the work is, as we have said, set in mortar; but this mode has disadvantages to which pointing internally is not liable, and its superiority in other respects is questionable. To both pan and plain tiling there is a large concave tile used to cover the hips and ridges of a roof. These are not generally made to overlap each other in any situation, but are set in mortar, and fastened with nails and hooks fitted for the purpose.

When the top of a brick wall is not protected by a roof, it must be covered or coped in some manner, or it will soon be destroyed by the weather. Sometimes this is done by means of a course of bricks set across it on their edges in cement, and called a barge course, but it is a very imperfect covering, for water will trickle down the face of the wall on both sides, as the coping brick can be no longer than the thinnest wall is in thickness. Two double courses of plain tiles may be put side by side under the barge course, making a projection over either face of about one inch and a half; thus,—

This is much better than the barge course alone: but still the covering possesses no inclination outwards to throw the water off; the upper surfaces are all horizontal. The same objection exists to foot-paving tiles, which are also used as a coping; but none of these methods is available for any wall above nine inches in thickness. Stone coping, therefore, which may be made of sufficient width, and be both weathered and throated, is much to be preferred.

One of the greatest faults in the modern practice of building, both architecturally as a matter of taste, and practically as a matter of prudence, is, that these copings, and cornices which serve as such, do not project sufficiently to protect the face of the wall on which they may be placed, from the weather. A bold, massive, and well-projected cornice on a wall serves as a roof or pent-house to it, and, besides imparting great beauty to the plainest structure, protects the wall from the premature decay of [7:5:672]its upper part especially, and of the joints generally, if it be unplastered brick-work, which thereby calls for the constant repetition of pointing. Effective and pleasing cornices and blocking courses may be formed with uncut bricks alone; and these, set in cement, would, with judicious management, add materially both to the appearance and durability of brick-work, without the foreign aid of the plasterer or mason.

From the injury which accrues to· the joints of brickwork through bad management in its execution, and imperfect protection when executed, arises the necessity so frequent at the present day of pointing.

Sometimes frost will have supervened before the surfaces of the joints in a wall are dry; consequently the mortar bursts and peels away, and the whole then requires to be pointed. Preparatory to this operation the scaffold, if it has been struck, must be re-erected, the mortar raked out of the joints to a depth of about three eighths of an inch, or deeper if the injury have reached further ;—this can be done by a labourer ;—a brick-layer then goes over the whole with a hard hair-brush and water to cleanse and moisten the joints; and then, with mortar prepared for the purpose, he carefully fills them all up, and neatly draws them with his trowel. This mortar must be of the best quality; it is generally compounded with a certain proportion of forge ashes, which gives it a blue tinge, and greatly aids its power of resisting the action of the weather. Cement is sometimes used instead of this blue mortar. If the wall to be pointed be a front or other important one, in which peculiar neatness is required, every joint is marked with a narrow parallel ridge of a fine white putty, in the composition of which bone lime forms a principal ingredient. The former is called flat-joint, and the latter tuck-pointing. If it be an old wall that requires pointing, a scaffold must be erected before it; and where the putlocks cannot be rested on window sills and the like, half bricks are generally drawn from the wall to make rests for them, and restored again when the work is done. The former process is then gone through with a common wall; but if it require tuck-pointing, the whole surface is well washed, and then coloured, to look like new, before the pointing is done. The gauged arches over the windows and doors are always coloured, and the joints drawn with peculiar neatness. If in the original building of the wall the perpends have not been preserved, that is, if the vertical joints have not been made to fall perpendicularly in the alternately recurring courses, the workman in pointing stops up the old joints, which are irregular, with putty of a brick colour, and forms false new ones in the proper places.

The tools and implements mostly employed by the bricklayer are the trowel, the plumb-rule, the level, the square, the bevel, line-pins and lines, the raker, and the hammer, together with a hod and spade for his labourer. Besides these there are sundry others used in cutting and gauging bricks, and some which are peculiar to tiling and paving; but the most material operations can be performed with those enumerated here. A pug-mill and screens for mixing and tempering mortar are also auxiliaries of great importance. ’

Brick-work is valued by the rod. A rod of brick-work is a quantity whose superficies is 272∣ feet (taken in practice at the round number 272 without the fraction), and thickness one brick and a half. Reckoning the one brick and a half at thirteen inches and a half,—its average extent,— the cubic foot is to the reduced superficial foot as eight to nine, so that a cubic rod of brick-work consists of 306 feet, the result of 272 multiplied by nine and divided by eight. The reduced superficial rod, however, is that commonly used in practice; and the process of measuring, to ascertain the quantities and bring them to a standard, is as follows :—

The exact superficies of so much of a wall as may be of the same thickness is taken, and the number of bricks it is in thickness placed marginally; all the different portions or parts being of the same thickness are taken in like manner, and then deductions, as of window openings and doorways, are taken as such, in superficies, with their respective thicknesses placed marginally also. The dimensions, on being squared, are abstracted in half bricks, the deductions made of like thicknesses from like thicknesses, and the whole reduced by multiplying each quantity by the number of half bricks in the thickness of the parts of the wall which the margin expresses, and dividing the product by three (the number of half bricks in one brick and a half, the standard), the reduced quantity which results, divided again by 272, the number of feet in a rod, gives the quantity of rods and feet in the wall; as, for example,—The frontwall of a house is thirty-five feet in length on the ground floor. (Fig. 14.) It has a basement story twelve feet high from the top of the footings to the level of the ground floor, and two and a half bricks thick, which is a half brick more than the wall above. The footings are three spreading courses high, each course a half brick thicker than the one above it. In the basement wall there are a door and two windows, the former seven feet by three feet six inches between the reveals, and the latter five feet by three feet nine inches between the reveals also. The measurement of thus much will show how all the rest must be done.

The footings consisting of three equally spreading courses, the extent of the middle one both in length and breadth will be an average of them all, so that they may be taken in one height. To the length of the ground floor, thirty-five feet, must be added twice three sets-off of one fourth of a brick at each end of the basement, and of the two first courses of footings for the length of the second of them; this is equal to three half bricks, or thirteen and a half inches, which, added to thirty-five feet, makes thirty-six feet one and a half inch the dimension of length for the footings, by nine inches, their height; their average thickness, to be placed in the margin, is three and a half bricks, the highest course being three bricks, the second three and a half, and the third or lowest four bricks. That is the first quantity. The next is of the wall above. The length (one half brick, for the two sets-off, added to thirty-five feet, gives) thirty-five feet four and a half inches, by the height twelve feet, two and a half bricks thick. The deductions are seven feet by three feet six inches in one brick for the door, between the reveals, and seven feet four and a half inches by four feet three inches in one and a half brick behind the re-Ýeals, the rest of the thickness of the wall, an addition of one half brick being made to the height, and of two half . .

bricks to the width, because of the reveals. The windows are taken in exactly the same manner, with the same additions; but as the two are of the same size, their number
[table]
[7:5:673]

is marked against the one dimension. The dimensions are now to be squared, and the squaring is done by duodecimals, or cross-multiplication. 36 feet 11 inches × ∙9 inches = 27 feet 1 inch; 35 feet 4⅜ inches × 12 feet is =424 feet 6 inches, and so on with the rest. An abstract is then made of these quantities in two columns, the first is marked “one half brick,” and the second “deductions in that thickness.” In the first column is placed the first quantity, multiplied by seven, the number of half bricks in three and a half, which stands marginally to it; 24 feet 6 inches × 7 = 189 feet 7 inches. The second dimension follows in the same column, multiplied by five, the number of half bricks in its thickness; the next quantity is a deduction, that is placed in the second column, multiplied by two, the thickness of the part deducted being one brick, and the rest in the same manner. The abstract being completed, the columns are added, and the amount of the second deducted from that of the first, and the difference divided by three, which brings it to the reduced standard. Dividing now by 272, the number of rods and feet in the given wall appears to be 2 rods, 185 feet, 8 inches. The quantities are more generally abstracted in one-brick and one and a half brick columns, with deductions in other parallel columns, to which thicknesses they are all readily brought. The single column in one half brick is, however, assumed here as the more simple and the more easily explained.

It must be remembered, that in taking the return or end walls, the thickness of that which has been already taken in front is to be deducted from their length, or the anglepier or quoin will be taken twice. Work which is circular on the plan may be taken separately, and charged at a higher price altogether, or it may be measured as plain, and an extra taken at so much the superficial foot. Chimney breasts are taken as additional quantities, with the thicknesses they project, and the opening for the fireplace is deducted; but the flucs are measured as solid, the extra labour and mortar in forming and pargetting them being fully equal in value to the bricks saved.

A rod of brick-work will consume about 4500 bricks, though the number will be a few more or less than this, as the bricks happen to be below or above the average size, and as the joints are made thicker or thinner. The quantity of mortar, it is evident, will be affected by the latter consideration also; but in London it is generally reckoned at from ninety to a hundred striked bushels, or from four to four and a half cart loads, each containing about one cubic yard, to the rod. The labour on a rod of brick-work may be taken on an average at the wages of a bricklayer, and his assistant or labourer, for four days; this, however, does not include making and beating the mortar, nor scaffolding, which latter must be separately considered. Many things will, however, affect the time in which the work may be performed, both of the bricklayer and his labourer; the former can do one fourth as much more, at the least, in walls which are to be plastered, as in those in which he has to keep the perpends and draw the joints, &c., and more in thick walls than in thin ones; and the capability of the latter will depend, inversely, on the rate at which the former can proceed, on the distance he may have to carry the bricks and mortar to the foot of the ladder, and mainly on the height he has to carry the materials up the ladder. In great heights, however, the materials should always be hoisted.

Gauged arches are taken at so much per foot superficial, in addition to being measured in as brick-work. Both the vertical and horizontal surfacer are measured to obtain the superficies of the arch, or rather of the work upon it. Rough arches are also taken as an extra superficial quantity; but plain arches in vaults, &c. and discharging arches, are not considered extras, though an allowance is made for cutting to moulds, for inverted discharging arches, at per foot run.

If a wall be faced with bricks of a more costly sort than that of which the bulk is composed, or worked in a peculiar manner, it is calculated by the foot superficial, also in addition to its measurement as brick-work. It should be a matter of previous agreement whether or not there shall be an extra charge for plumbing quoins and reveals. Under ordinary circumstances no allowance is made for it; but oblique vertical angles, both internal and external, which require to have bricks neatly cut to form them, are taken at so much per foot running measure. External oblique angles are technically termed squint-quoins, and internal, birds-mouth. Oblique angles within a building are taken as run of cut splay. Cuttings to rakes or inclined straight lines are taken by the running foot also, but with reference to the thickness of the wall. Cuttings to ramps or concave lines are measured and valued in the same manner. Sailing or projecting courses, preparations for plaster cornices, and brick cornices themselves, are all taken at so much per foot run, according to the labour and materials involved in working them, over and above the regular charge for the brick-work by the rod.

Every thing, indeed, which adds to the labour of executing brick-work, and consumes more than the ordinary quantity of materials, is taken in addition, either by the foot superficial, or by the foot running, or in numbers, as the setting of chimney-pots, bedding and pointing door and sash-frames, &c. Bond-timbers, lintels, and wallplates, are generally measured in with the brick-work, on account of the trouble of bedding them, and the delay generally occasioned to the bricklayer in setting them. If they are not included with the brick-work, bedding them is an extra charge, at so much per foot run; and then filling in between the ends of the joists and beams generally requires to be taken also.

Brick-nogging is measured by the superficial yard, including the quarterings and interties, and making no deductions but for openings. Drains and sewers are measured by the foot run, according to their form and capacity. The quantity of materials consumed, and labour required in constructing them, maybe readily obtained by calculating the one, and observing the quantity a man with a labourer can execute under the circumstances, whatever they may be, within a given time.

Paving is measured by the superficial yard of nine feet; tiling by the square of one hundred feet ;—eaves courses, ridges, and hips, being extra charges, by the foot run. Pointing, whether to old or new work, is measured by the superficial foot; and the scaffolding for it, when scaffolding is required, is either included in the price per foot for pointing, or a charge is made for the use of it, together with the cost of carting, and the men’s time in setting up and removing it.

Mason. — We must refer to the separate article under the heads Stone-Masonry and Stone-Cutting for information on those subjects generally. It will, however, be necessary to give a few particulars here on masons’ work, as it has to do with other artificers’ works in the process of building, and especially with reference to various species of walling, or modes of constructing walls of stone.

From the regular and determined form of bricks, modes or systems for setting or arranging them may be formed, and any workman, by habit and an exertion of memory merelv, may become competent to build a brick wall as well as it can be built; but it is not so with stone used in common masonry walling. The workman in this material has for the most part to do with masses of all forms and of all sizes, and a continual exercise of the judgment is [7:5:674]required from him beyond the tact or skill which may be acquired by practice. For this reason workmen are generally less to be trusted to themselves, or to their own discretion, in stone than even in brick-laying or walling. The best or highest sort of stone walling is the easiest to set; it is that in which the stones are all tooled and gauged in regular parallelogramic figures, to range in courses and suit the thickness of the wall to which they are to belong; and the most difficult to execute properly is that in which amorphous stones are used,—the mason being allowed merely to dress them roughly with his hammer or axe, and fit them in as he best can to form the most compact mass: this is called rubble walling.

From the brittle nature of stone, great tact is required in setting, to prop or bear up the longer pieces in every part, or they will break across, and thus occasion more injury than could accrue if their whole mass bad been made up of small pieces. Very long lengths, therefore, should be avoided, even in regular tooled courses, with which the bearing is or should be perfectly even, and a settling down of the work itself is hardly to be feared. There is a certain medium which may be preserved; and although the object is obviously, in stone as in brick walls, to form a compact mass, as unbroken into parts as possible, a mason will act more judiciously in breaking a long stone into two or more shorter ones, and working them in in that state, though he thus makes two or more additional joints, well knowing that he has the power of counteracting to a certain extent the ill effect of joints made by himself, but that those made by accident are irremediably injurious.

The observations made in the section of this article on bricklaying, on the use of mortar, will apply here also. Of whatever quality the stone may be of which a wall is to be built, it should consist as much of stone and as little of mortar as possible. If it be inferior in durability and power of resisting the action of the atmosphere, &c. to the mortar, besides the certain fact that the mortar will yield until it has set hard, and so far act injuriously, no ulterior good is gained; and if the stone be the more durable material, the more of it that enters into the wall the better. Indeed, in rough walling, if the stones be pressed together until the more prominent angles on their faces come into actual contact, the interstices being occupied by mortar, it will be better than if a thick yielding mass were allowed to remain between them. Absolute contact, however, should not be permitted, any more than in brick-work, lest the shrinking of the mortar in drying leave the stones to such unequal bearing as the prominent parts alone would afford. Stone being generally of a less absorbent nature than brick, it is not a matter of so much importance that it be wetted before setting; nevertheless, adhesion on the part of the mortar is more certain and more complete if the stones be worked in in at least a damp state. What bond is, and the necessity for it, have also been shown in the preceding section; and bond is of not less importance in stone walling than in bricklaying. We have also hinted above at the greater difficulty of understanding, forming, and preserving it in the former, and can now only add a few observations in addition that can be of any use, and these with reference to rubble walling particularly. Instead of carefully making the joints recur one over the other in alternate cours t es, as with bricks and gauged stones, the joints should as carefully be made to lock, so as to give the strength of two or three courses or layers between a joint in one course, and one that may occur vertically over it in another. In bonding through a wall, or transversely, it is much better that many stones should reach two thirds across, alternately from the opposite sides, than that there should be a few thorough stones, or stones extending the whole thickness of the wall. Indeed, one of the many faults of stone-masons is that of making a wall consist of two scales or thin sides, with thorough stones now and then laid across to bind them together, the core being made up of mortar and small rubble merely. This is a mode of structure that should be carefully guarded against. There is no better test of a workman’s tact and judgment in rubble walling than the building of a drywall, or a wall without mortar, affords ;—walls are frequently built with mortar that without it would have fallen down under their own weight in a height of six feet, in consequence of their defective construction;—thus rendering it evident that they are only held together by the tenacity of the mortar, which is very seldom an equivalent for a proper bond of stone. Masons are very apt to set thin broad stones on their narrow edges to show a good face, by which the wall is injured in two ways; it tends to the formation of a mere case on the surface of a wall, and it for the most part exposes the bed of the stone to the atmosphere, as a stone is more likely to be broad in the direction of its bed than across it.

Rubble walling is either coursed or uncoursed. In the latter sort, fig. 15, the work is carried on with stones of any sizes, as they may occur, and without reference to their heights, somewhat in the manner of the Cyclopaean walling of antiquity; the interstices of the larger being filled up with smaller stones. For this work the mason uses no tool but the trowel to lay on the mortar, the scabling hammer to break off the most repulsive irregularities from the stones, and the plumb-rule to keep his work perpendicular. The line and level are equally unnecessary, as the work is independent of considerations which are affected by them. An attentive and intelligent workman will, however, make a sound wall with this species of construction, by fitting the stones well together and packing them with as little mortar as possible, yet filling every crevice with it, and carefully bonding through to secure compactness, transversely at the least.

In coursed rubble walling, fig. 16, the line and level are used, the work is laid in courses, each course being carefully brought up to the same level in itself, though no attention is paid to uniformity in the heights of the different courses. For this species of walling the stones are generally roughly dressed by the workman in the gross before he begins building. He is careful to get parallel beds to them, and he brings the best face of each stone to a tolerably even surface at right angles to the beds; the ends, too, receive some little attention, and for this purpose he uses an axe in addition to his scabling hammer. The quoins in coursed rubble walling are generally built with peculiar neatness and precision, and they are set to serve as gauge courses for the rest. This, when well executed, makes a sound and excellent wall. It presents, however, rather a rough and homely appearance, and in finer works must be covered with stucco or cement, or faced with ashlar.

Ashlar is an external rind of gauged stones in equal courses, having tooled or closely-fitting joints to give a wall a neat and uniform appearance; it is axed, tooled, or rubbed, as may be thought most in character with the structure, or that part of it to which it is to belong. Ashlar stones, or ashlars as they are commonly called, are made of various sizes on the surface, as the character or the edifice may require or convenience demand, and vary in thickness from five to eight or nine inches. Some o the ashlar stones must, it is clear, be used transversely as bond stones, or the facing, having nothing to connect it with the wall behind, would soon totter and fall, born stones are generally put in alternate courses, with the backing to the jambs of openings, such as windows, an oftener, if these do not recur within a length of five or six [7:5:675]feet; the bond stones themselves, too, should not fall in the same vertical chain, except when they are in the jambs of openings, but break in their alternate courses. Ashlar is commonly set in a fine mortar or in putty. It is generally recommended that ashlars should not be made regular parallelopipedons, but run back irregularly to tooth in with the backing, the vertical joints being left open from about an inch within the face of the wall, and the upper surface or bed of the stones made narrower than, though perfectly parallel to, the lower. These things may exert a slightly beneficial influence under some circumstances; but the mode of construction involved is so radically bad, that unless the backing is set in a quick-setting cement, or be so well packed as to be proof against its general tendency to settle away from the ashlar facing, no means of the kind can materially improve it. A well-compacted wall of coursed rubble, the courses being frequently made up of whole stones and faced with ashlar, may be made tolerably sound and trust-worthy. Brick backing, with ashlar facing, cannot be considered as good, though it has the advantage of not requiring battening and lathing for inside plastering, as the stone-backed wall does. Uncoursed rubble with ashlar has all the disadvantages of both the preceding, with nothing to recommend it above either of them.

There are, besides, many sorts of walling or modes of structure arising from the nature of the materials furnished in various localities. That of most frequent occurrence, perhaps, is a manner in which either broken or rounded flints are used. These depend almost entirely on the mortar with which they are compacted, and on a coursed chain, which is commonly introduced at short intervals of larger stones or bricks, to act as a bond; the quoins, too, in this species of structure are generally constructed of dressed stones or brick.

Whatever objections lie against bond timber in brickwork apply with equal force at least to the use of it in stone walls; and it is of less importance generally as a tie in the latter than in the former, because a chain may be made by means of metal cramps and dovetails of wood or cast iron. A chain of this kind does not distribute pressure, however, as well as a chain of timber bond does, because of the liability of the material to fracture when it is borne upon unequally, and therefore may not be considered an equivalent for wall-plates or templates.

Discharging arches, it must be evident, are as necessary in and to stone walls as to walls of brick, and they may be treated much in the same manner.

Rubble walls are scaffolded with single, and ashlar fronted or other gauged stone walls with double fronted scaffolding, the former tailing one end of the putlocks in on the wall, and the other having an inner row' of standard poles and ledgers parallel to the outer, making the scaffold entirely independent of the wall. In some places, however, it is the custom to dispense altogether with an external scaffold in building stone walls, particularly with gauged stones. With light and plain work this may be done without much inconvenience or retardation; but if the work be heavy or delicate, considerable delay and incorrectness result. Sometimes the finer work, such as that to mouldings, flutes, and foliate or other enrichments, is merely boasted or roughed out before the stones are set, and finished afterwards. This can be done well only from a secure floor or scaffold, on which the workman may move freely.

When walls are not entirely of masonry, in the ordinary course of economic building, stone is frequently used lor copings, cornices, string and blocking courses, sills, landings, pavings, curbs, steps, stairs, hearth-stones and slabs, and chimney-pieces; to these may be added, quoins and architectural decorations, or dressings for windows, doors, &c., though both the former and latter are not unfrequently executed in plaster composition, or cements. Copings (see Glossary to the article Architecture) to cover walls, parapets, &c., are worked with a plain horizontal bed, two vertical faces, and an inclined or weathered back or upper surface; either forming an acute angle with the outer and wider, and an obtuse angle with the inner and narrower face, to throw the water off, as shown at a, fig. 19; or to both sides from the middle, as at b; the latter is technically termed saddle-back coping. In both cases they arc made to project over the wall or parapet on both sides; and in the projected part of the bed under the edge or edges towards which the inclination is given, a channel or groove, called a throat, is cut, to intercept the water in its inclination to run inwards to the wall. On gables or other inclined planes the coping is neither weathered nor throated, as the water is necessarily impelled along its course to the lower end, and not over the-sides. To protect the separate stones of a coping course from the danger of being displaced by high winds or other accidental cause, and to form a chain through its wholé length, the stones are linked together by cramps of copper or iron let into their backs and run with lead. These metals, however, especially the iron, for the most part act very injuriously, from their exceeding susceptibility of atmospheric changes, and their greater or less tendency to oxidation; indeed, the stone invariably suffers more than the work benefits from the metal cramps. Tenons, dowels, joggles or dovetails of stone, or of hard wood or cast iron, applied so as to be protected from the weather, would be far better, and would answer every desirable purpose sufficiently. Cornices (vide ut sup.) are but ramified copings, and are or may be subjected to the same general laws. Care must be taken, however, in arranging them, that their centre of gravity be not brought too far forward, in the anxiety to project them sufficiently, lest they act injuriously on the wall by pressing unequally, and their own safety be also endangered. String courses (vide ut slip.) economically, in contradistinction to architecturally, are meant to protect a set-off in a wall, by projecting over its lower face in the manner of a coping (see fig. 17, at c); the beds are worked parallel, and the outer face vertical or at right angles to them, but so much of the upper surface is weathered or sloped off as protrudes from the upper part of the wall to carry the water off; and, for the reason above stated with regard to copings, the lower bed just within the outer face is throated. A stone string course, cramped or dove-tailed as above, forms an excellent chain round a brick wall; but the part of it in the wall should be of the exact thickness of one, two, or more courses of brick. A blocking course (vide wt’ sup.) is either a very thick string projecting over or flush with the face of the lower part of the wall, or it is a range of stone over a crowning cornice to bring the centre of gravity more in on the wall than it otherwise would be; in the former case it is treated exactly as a string, excepting that, if it be flush below, there is no occasion for a throat; and in the latter it has a horizontal bed, parallel vertical sides, and a weathered back or upper surface. Sills (vide ut slip.) are weathered and throated like the parts of a string course (see fig. 17, at a and b) ; they are laid across the feet or bases of window openings, &c. to receive the sash-frame, and carry the water off from the wall below; distinct sills in the same line may, indeed, be considered as an intercepted string course. In the ordinary practice of building, window sills are seldom set in brick-walls until they are absolutely required to set the sash-frames on; or they are set but not bedded, except at the ends. The object of this is to prevent any settlement that may occur in the piers [7:5:676]from breaking the sills across on the unyielding part of the wall under the windows. A necessity for this, however, can only arise from bad construction; for with inverted arches under the openings, and a good bond in the brick-work, all would settle together, and the sills might be completely bedded across at once. Landings are platforms of stone, either over an area before a door, at the head of a flight of stairs, or as the floor of a balcony. They are made four, five, six, or eight inches in thickness, according to their extent and bearing; if not of one piece of stone, they are of nicely jointed pieces joggled and plugged together, and are worked on the face and edges just as their situation may demand. Stone pavings are of various kinds, and are prepared, shaped, and laid in various ways. Stone paving that is not exposed to the sun and air, if next the ground, should be laid on footings of brick or stone, or it will be constantly damp if the soil be close and clayey; but in yards, open areas, &c. it may be laid on the ground, bedded in sand, and jointed with mortar or cement. Stone paved floors are either on brick arches, or on a timber floor prepared for the purpose: the latter is a very bad mode of supporting paving, as the impression derived from the presence of the latter is, that the floor is incombustible; but if it be bedded on combustible material, the danger to human life in the event of fire is greater than if the stone paving did not exist at all. It is worked, cut, and set more or less expensively, according to circumstances. A curb is a range or course of thicker and stronger stone to bound a pavement, and is either flush with the paving, showing as a step on its outer edge, or raised above it to receive a balustrade, and shows on the outer side as a blocking course; in the latter situation it is generally joggled and plugged in the joints. The term step or steps alone is generally understood to mean external steps, whether arranged in long or short flights, or the single step in a doorway into which the door frame is tenoned. A step should have a plain horizontal bed, and a very slightly weathered tread or upper surface; the front or riser worked plain and vertical, or with a moulded nosing, and the back sunk with a joggle or bird’s-mouth joint to receive the step or landing above or behind it. Stairs are but a flight or combination of steps used internally; the principles upon which they arc constructed will be found under the heads Stone-Masonry and Joinery. Hearths are the stone flooring of fire-places; and a slab is that part of the floor of a room which lies immediately before the fire-place and along the extent of its front. This slab is supported by a flat brick arch called a brick trimmer, which is turned from the chimney-breast under the hearth on one side, to the trimmer joist on the other. (See a section of all these at fig. 18.) Chimney-pieces consist simply of mantle and jambs; that is, the vertical sides, and the architrave or transverse covering with its shelf or cornice. The parts of a chimney-piece are generally put together with an adhesive plaster or cement, and affixed to the wall or chimney-breast behind with cramps, hold-fasts, and plugs. The material of which chimneypieces are composed varies from the coarsest stone to the finest marble; and thelabouron them varies to a still greater extent. Quoin-stones are gauged and wrought blocks with parallel beds and vertical faces, placed on the angles of buildings with the intention of adding to their beauty and strength; they are used either with brick or stone walls, and are generally made to project before the face of that to which they are attached, mostly with a weathered angular joint, or with a rectangularly grooved or moulded one. The quoins are coursed with the rest of the wall if it be of stone, and are made to occupy the exact space of a limited number of courses of brick in a brick wall. (See fig. 17.)

Masonry to receive architectural decorations is generally worked into the walls as they are carried up; but as thcy are seldom homogeneous either in matter or construction, the result is mostly the converse of what it purports to be, for the work is more frequently weakened than strengthened by the decorative masonry. Stones of which columns are to be composed, whether each column is to be of one stone or more, are generally roughly boasted out before they are set, and are finished afterwards to traversing moulds and templets with a plumb-rule, whose sides are cut to the diminution, whatever it may be. Flutes are cut at the same time and in the same manner. The beds of the joints in columns should be worked with the greatest precision, that they may fit firmly and closely together; they must not, however, be worked hollow to make a close joint externally, or the arrises will chip off. It is considered a good plan to put a piece of thin milled lead between the beds, cut circular, and extending to within a short distance of the surface, and that the rest be filled with a fine adhesive putty, made as nearly of the colour of the stone as possible. This makes a solid bed, and protects the arrises effectually; but it will not do so well for slight columns, because it narrows the bed so materially. A joggle or dowel of hard wood or cast iron let into the core might be a sufficient counteraction, and it would certainly add to the stability of a polylithic shaft. The other parts of a columnar composition maybe sufficiently cramped and joggled together with wood and metals, according to the situation, though it may be again remarked, that neither the one nor the other should be used, except where they can be protected from the access, even, of the atmosphere.

Stone walling is generally measured by the perch of twenty-one feet superficial, at a standard of eighteen inches in thickness, or a cubic quantity of thirty-one feet six inches. Sometimes it is taken by the rod of 272 feet, like brick-work, but at the eighteen inch standard instead of the fourteen inch, or a brick and a half, as in the latter species of walling. The perch, however, as first stated, is the standard of this country. The quantities may be ascertained in the same manner that they are in measuring brick-work, the number of inches the wall is in thickness being substituted in the margin for the number of brick lengths. In abstracting, the superficial quantities may be taken out in columns under the different thicknesses; the amount of each column being multiplied by the thickness in inches, and divided by eighteen, gives the reduced quantity; but if the work be taken in cubic quantities, it is evident that the three dimensions of every part multiplied together brings the whole at once to cubic feet, and no further process is necessary, unless it be required to bring the total quantity into reduced perches, which may be done by dividing it by thirty-one and a half.

The custom being different in different places with regard to the double measurement of quoins or angle piers, and as to whether openings, such as windows and doors, shall or shall not be deducted, because of the greater care and trouble required in setting and plumbing quoins and reveals, these particulars should be made matter of previous agreement. Perhaps the best way is to take the quantities exactly, and allow a running measurement extra on the parts requiring more than the usual quantityorlabour, or, the nature of the work being of course obvious beforehand, the price per perch, per rod, or per foot cube, on the exact quantity, may be made to include the proposed extras. In the same manner, chisel-dressing (that is, facing the stones neatly and truly with the chiseD, whether plain or sunk, may or may not be charged extra, according to agreement, or, in the absence or a previous agreement, to the custom of the place. 0 [7:5:677]ascertain the value of stone walling, the cost of every thing that enters into some fixed quantity on the spot must be calculated, for almost every thing connected with it varies in almost every place. The original price of the stone at the quarry; the expense of carrying it from thence to the place where it is to be worked up; its texture or comparative hardness, which will materially affect the quantity of walling a mason may execute in a certain time; the cost on the spot, of lime and sand, and the height to which stones must be carried or hoisted from the ground; must all be ascertained and considered, as well as the wages of masons and labourers, and the sort of walling proposed to be executed.

Stone used in string and blocking courses, sills, copings, cornices, steps, quoins, columns, entablatures, &c. is measured by the foot cube, and the work on it is taken as plain, sunk, or moulded, by the foot superficial. The dimensions for the cubic quantities are taken on the unreduced block, or rather on the greatest breadth and thickness which the finished work exhibits; for instance, the string course, which appears in section at c, fig. 17, would be taken as of the thickness throughout which it holds in the wall; and in the same manner, the thickness of the sill at b would be taken under the wooden sill of the sash frame, which must have been the original thickness of the whole scantling. Stone sawed into thin slabs for paving, chimney pieces, &c. is taken by the superficial foot, at a certain thickness, the value being ascertained from the cubic quantity and the cost of sawing on the surface, whilst some articles, being of a fixed breadth and thickness fitting them to peculiar purposes, are taken by the running foot; but both these latter modes suppose labour included.

Plain work is the even surface produced on stone by the chisel, without the necessity of taking away more than the mere inequalities, and is equivalent to what the joiner calls trying-up, that is, making the surfaces perfectly straight both longitudinally and transversely, and so that it shall be quite cut of winding, which indeed is a term to express the result of trying-up. Sunk work arises from the necessity of chiseling or hacking away below the level surface of the plain work, such as the weathering of copings, string courses, cornices, &c.; and mouldings cut in stone produce what is called moulded work. Sunk and moulded work are either straight or circular; circular plain work is certainly spoken of, but incorrectly, for every flexure in stone must be produced by sinking. The joints and beds, that is, the upper and lower horizontal sides, and the vertical ends of stones, arc taken as plain work, as well as their faces and edges, if they have been wrought with the chisel to produce the surface; or their superficies are taken as sawing or half plain work, if the surfaces are as the saw left them. An extra charge is made on plain work for rubbing to produce a smooth unchannelled surface; and again, a higher charge is made for plain work if it be equally channelled or furrowed in vertical lines over the surface; this latter operation is technically termed tooling. Whenever any two surfaces meet in an oblique angle, one of them may be taken as sunk work, and it will generally be that which is not parallel to its opposite side. It is valued at about two sevenths more than plain work; and circular sunk work, that is, circular in the direction of its length, at about one sixth more than straight sunk. Moulded work is measured by girding the moulding or mouldings with a cord or tape, carrying it into all the quirks, and round all the arrises; the dimension thus given is multiplied by the length for the superficial quantity. This is valued at about one fifth more than sunk work, and circular moulded at about one half more than straight. Narrow jointings, groovings, throatings, jogglings, &c. are taken by the foot run. Mortises, holes, notches, cramps, dovetails, &c. arc numbered and charged at so much a piece, according to the labour and cost involved in making them. The common pavings, landings, copings, sills, and steps generally used in London for ordinary purposes, are of a laminated stone from Yorkshire, and they are for the most part worked to size and shape in the quarry, so that there can be very little labour on them beyond the mere fitting and setting, making mortises, fitting coal-plates, traps, &c. when such are required, unless they be rubbed, which occasions, of course, an extra charge. York pavings and landings are taken by the superficial foot, at such a thickness; and copings, sills, steps, &c. by the foot run, according to their size.

Plasterer, &;c. — No art in the economy of building contributes more to produce internal neatness and elegance, and no one is less absolutely important, as far as the use and stability of a structure are concerned, than that of the plasterer. Its very general application, too, is of comparatively late date; for wainscotted walls, and boarded or boarded and canvassed ceilings, or naked joists alone, are frequently found in houses of even less than a century old, both in this country and on the Continent.

The plasterer, as the term imports, works in plastic, adhesive compositions, which are laid on walls, both internally and externally, to stop crevices, reduce inequalities, and produce an even, delicate surface, capable of receiving any decoration that may be applied to it, either in colour or otherwise. These compositions are as various as the modes of applying them, the rudest being a compost of loam, a marly clay, and lime; this is used only for the commonest purposes, and being laid on in one coat, is washed over with a thin mixture of lime and water, which process is termed white-washing; the highest work of the plasterer is the making an imitation of marbles and other costly stones, of the purest calcined gypsum, mixed with a solution of gum and isinglass, and colouring matter to produce the required imitation. For the more common operations of plastering, however, comparatively few tools and few materials are required. The plasterer is attended by a labourer, who supplies his boards with mortar, and by a boy on the scaffold with him to feed his hawk; he is necessarily furnished with a lathing hammer, a laying-on trowel, a hawk, floats, brushes, jointing trowels and rules, moulds and straight edges, together with a screen, spade, rake, and hod, for his labourer, and a feeding-spade or server for his hawk-boy. The lathing hammer is chequered on the face with indented lines, to make it less liable to slip over the head of the nail; the upper or back part of the hammer is made like a hatchet, but very narrow, and on its inner side or edge there is sometimes a square nick or groove, by means of which the workman is enabled to draw a nail that has gone awry. The laying-on trowel is a thin plate of hardened iron or steel, ten inches long and two and a half inches wide, rounded at one end and square at the other end or heel; it is very slightly convex on the face; and to the back, about the middle of it, the spindle or handle is rivetted in at right angles, which, returning in the direction of the heel parallel to the tool, fits into a rounded wooden handle, by which the workman grasps it. The plasterer is obliged to keep this implement particularly clean and dry when he is not actually using it, lest it rust in the slightest degree, as it is clear that the brown oxide of iron would sadly discolour his finer work on touching it again with the trowel. The hawk is a piece of wood about ten inches square, to receive a small portion oř mortar on, for the convenience of carrying it readily up to the wall or ceiling, to be there delivered and spread by the trowel. The hawk is traversed across the back by a clove-tailed piece, [7:5:678]into which the wooden handle is fixed at right angles, and by this the workman holds it in his left hand. A hand-float is a piece of board shaped something like a plastering trowel, with a ledge-handle to it, and is used to rub over the finished work, to produce a hard, smooth, and even face. A quirk-float is of wood also, and is angularly shaped to work in angles; and a derby is a long two-handed float, which is that principally used in forming the floated coat of lime and hair. The plasterer s brush is broad and thin, with a stout or slight row of coarse or fine hair, as it may be required for rough or fine work. Jointing trowels are thin plates of polished steel, of triangular shape, the point being a very acute angle; the handle is adapted to the heel or base of the tool. They are of three or four different sizes, and are principally used in making good cornices, and joining them at their internal and external angles, which is called mitering. Jointing rules are auxiliary to the jointing trowel. Moulds are pieces of hard wood cut to the contour of cornices or separate mouldings, to assist the workmen in forming them readily. For work of any importance the moulds are cut in copper plates, which are inserted in the wooden stock, and narrow pieces of wood are fixed to the moulds transversely, to guide and steady them along the screeds. A straight edge is a board of considerable length, shot perfectly straight on one edge, to bring the plastering on a wall or ceiling to a perfectly even surface, by traversing itin every direction. A screen is a large parallelogramic wooden frame, on which metal wires are fixed at regulated distances from each other, to act as a sieve. This is propped up in nearly a vertical direction by a counter-frame hinged to it like a common step ladder, and the coarser materials which enter into the composition of plastering mortar are thrown against its outer face, to separate the particles which are too large for the purpose from the finer. The sand and lime, too, are mixed much more efficiently and completely by screening them together than in any other manner. The spade and hod are like those of the bricklayer’s labourer. The rake is used to separate the hair used in the mortar, and distribute it throughout the mass. The hawk boy’s server is about the size and shape of a common garden hoe, but the handle is in the direction of the instrument. With it the boy rebeats the mortar on the board, to destroy any set it may have taken, and delivers it in small pats or portions on to the plasterer’s hawk.

The plasterer’s materials are laths and lath nails, lime, sand, hair and plaster, of which are formed coarse stuff or lime and hair, fine stuff, gauge stuff, &c.; and besides these, a variety of stuccoes and cements, together with various ingredients to form colouring washes, &c. are more or less in request.

Laths are narrow strips of some straight grained wood (in this country they are generally of fir, though oak laths are sometimes used), in lengths of three and four feet, or to suit the distances at which the joists or quarterings are set, and in thickness a quarter and three eighths of an inch; those of the former thickness are called single, and those of the latter lath and a half. Lath nails are either wrought, cut, or cast, and of course vary in length to the thicker and thinner laths; cast nails are in common use in this country with fir laths. Coarse stuff is composed of ox or horse hair from the hide, in addition to the lime and sand mortar of the bricklayer and mason; this is intended to act as a sort of bond to net or tie it together, by being distributed throughout the whole mass, and in single hairs if it were possible. The hair should be as long as it can be procured, and free from grease and filth of every kind. Road drift is unfit to be used for mortar, unless it be completely cleansed from all animal and vegetable matter, and of all mud and clay. Loamy or argillaceous earths are constantly used in the composition of this mortar, as its quality is thought unimportant, so that it can be made to hang together. The presence of clayey matter making the mortar unctuous and tenacious, they are used without or with very little hair; the consequence is, that the slightest injury affects the work made with them. The mortar thus composed readily absorbs and retains moisture, bursts, and crumbles away; and if it be effectually protected from injury of that kind, it becomes rotten in a comparatively short space of time, and frequently is the means of decay in the laths, and even in the larger timbers. Nothing but clean sharp sand should be used with the lime and hair in the composition of this, any more than of brick mortar. Fine stuff is a mortar made of fine white lime, exceedingly well slaked with water, or rather macerated in water to make the slaking complete; for some purposes a small quantity of hair is mixed up with this material. Fine stuff very carefully prepared of the finest powdered lime macerated so completely as to be held in solution by the water, thus forming a mere paste, which is then allowed to evaporate until it is of a sufficient consistence for working, is called putty. Gauge stuff is composed of about three fourths of putty and one fourth of calcined gypsum or plaster of Paris; this may be mixed only in small quantities at a time, as the plaster or gauge renders it liable to set very rapidly. Bastard stucco is made of two thirds fine stuff', without hair, and one third of very fine and perfectly clean sand (the cleanliness or purity of sand may be determined by the facility with which it may, when in a moist state, be struck off from the hand without leaving a soiD; and common stucco is composed of about three fourths of clean sharp sand and one fourth of the best lime, well incorporated. This must be protected from the air from the time it is made until it is required to be laid on the walls. The cement best known and most commonly used in this country is called Parker’s, or Parker’s Roman cement. This material, when of good quality, with fine clean sharp sand, in the proportion of about three of the former to one of cement, and well executed, forms an admirable external coating for walls, and is generally preferable to any other with which we are acquainted.

The various coatings of plastering are thus designated: On laths, plastering in one coat simply is said to be laid, and in two coats, laid and set. In three-coat plastering on laths, however, the first is called the pricking up, the second is said to be floated, and the third set. On brick or stone walls, without the intervention of laths, plastering in one plain coat is termed rendering; with two coats, a wall is said to be rendered and set; and in three, rendered, floated, and set. Before the plasterer begins to lath a ceiling, he proves the under face of the joists, to which he has to work, by the application of a long straight edge, and makes out any slight inequalities in them, when the work is not to be of a very superior description, by nailing on laths or slips to bring them as nearly even as he can. When the inequalities are great, or if the work is to be of fine quality, he recurs to the carpenter, who takes oft inordinate projections with his adze, and nails on properly dressed slips where the joists do not come down low enough, and thus brings the whole to a perfect level. This operation is called firring, that is, putting on pieces of fir, though it is vulgarly termed and frequently spelt furrmll∙ If it be a framed floor of ceiling joists the plasterer has to work to, it is tolerably sure to be straight; but the carpenter must have firred down on the beams or binders to the level of the ceiling joists, from end to end of thθ m ∙ When the ceiling joists are nailed to the beams or binders, however, nothing of this kind need be necessary. If a [7:5:679]ceiling is to be divided into compartments or panels, the projecting or depending portions must be bracketed or cradled down to receive the laths. It is an important point to be attended to in plastering on laths, and in ceilings particularly, that the laths should be attached to as small a surface of timber as possible, because the plastering is not supported or upborne by its adhesion or attachment to the wood, but by the keying of the mortar itself, which passes through between the laths, and bends round over them. If then the laths are in constantly recurring contact with thick joists and beams, the keying is as constantly intercepted, and the plastering in all such places depends entirely on the portions between them which are properly keyed. Under a single floor, therefore, in which the joists are necessarily thick, a narrow fillet should be nailed along the middle under the whole length of them all, to receive the laths and keep them at a sufficient distance from the timber, to allow the plastering to kcy under it; and thus too the surface might be made more perfectly even, by blocking out the fillets, and contrariwise, as it is in single floors that inequalities mostly occur. This being all arranged, the plasterer commences lathing. The laths should be previously sorted, reserving the crooked and knotty, if there be such, for inferior works, and selecting the best for the work of most importance, so that the workman shall find none to his hand that is not fit to be brought in. Taking a lath that will reach across three or four openings, he strikes a nail into it on one of the intermediate joists, at about three eighths of an inch from the one before it, and then secures the ends of that and the one that it meets of the last row with one nail, leaving the other end of the lath he has just set to be secured in the same manner with that which shall meet it of the next bay in continuation. It is of importance also that he pay attention to the bonding of his work, either by using longer and shorter laths in bays or squares, and in breaking the headings, or with laths of the same length, the first and last courses or bays only having the bond formed by half laths. In lathing on quartering partitions and battened walls, the bonding is not a matter of much importance; nor is the thickness of the timbers behind the latter of so much consequence as in a ceiling, because the toothing which the thickness of the lath itself affords to the plastering is enough to support it vertically; but, nevertheless, the more complete the keying, even in works of this kind, the better, as the toothing above will not protect it from any exciting cause to fall forwards, or away from the laths. The thinner or weaker sort of lath too is generally considered sufficiently strong for partitions, whilst the stronger is used for ceilings. Thin weak laths, if used in a ceiling, are sure to produce inequalities, by sagging with or yielding to the weight attached to them. A chance one or two weak ones in a ceiling of otherwise strong laths may be the ruin of the best piece of work. Care should be taken therefore not to allow a thin lath, or one of unequal thickness, to go on to a scaffold with thicker and more equable ones, lest the workman should, through carelessness or otherwise, put it up with the rest. When the lathing is completed, the work is either laid or pricked up, according as it is to be finished with one, two, or three coats. Laying is a tolerably thick coat of coarse stuff or lime and hair brought to a tolerably even surface with the trowel only; for this the mortar must be well tempered, and of moderate consistence,—thin or moist enough to pass readily through between the laths, and bend with its own weight over them, and at the same time stiff’ enough to leave no danger that it will fall apart, a contingency, however, that in practice frequently occurs inconsequence of badly composed or badly tempered mortar, or bad workmanship, sufficient force not having been used with properly consistent mortar to force it through and form keys. If the work is to be of two coats, that is, laid and set, when the laying is sufficiently dry, it is roughly swept with a birch broom to roughen its surface, and then the set, a thin coat of fine stuff, is put on. This is done with the common trowel alone, or only assisted by a wetted hog’s bristle brush, which the workman uses with his left hand to strike over the surface of the set, while he presses and smooths it with the trowel in his right. If the laid work should have become very dry, it must be slightly moistened before the set is put on, or the latter, in shrinking, will crack and fall away. This is generally done by sprinkling or throwing the water over the surface from the brush. For floated or three-coat work, the first, or pricking up, is roughly laid on the laths, the principal object being to make the keying complete, and form a layer of mortar on the laths to which the next coat may attach itself. It must, of course, be kept of tolerably equal thickness throughout, and should stand about one quarter or three eighths of an inch on the surface of the laths. When it is finished, and while the mortar is still quite moist, the plasterer scratches or scores it all over with the end of a lath in parallel lines from three to four inches apart. The scorings should be made as deep as possible without laying bare the laths; and the rougher their edges are the better, as the object is to produce a surface which the next coat will readily attach itself to. When the pricked up coat is so dry as not to yield to pressure in the slightest degree, preparations may be made for the floating. Ledges or margins of lime and hair, about six or eight inches in width, and extending across the whole breadth of a ceiling or height of a wall or partition, must be made in the angles or at the borders, and at distances of about four feet apart throughout the whole extent; these must be made perfectly straight with one another, and be proved in every way by the application of straight edges: technically these ledges are termed screeds. The screeds are gauges for the rest of the work; for when they are ready, and the mortar in them is a little set, the interspaces are filled up flush with them; and a derby float or long straight edge being made to traverse the screeds, all the stuff that projects beyond the line is struck off, and thus the whole is brought to a straight and perfectly even surface. To perfect the work, the screeds on ceilings should be levelled, and on walls and partitions plumbed. When the floating is sufficiently set and nearly dry, it is brushed with a birch broom as before described, and the third coat or set is put on. This for a fine ceiling that is to be whitened or coloured must be of putty; but if it is to be papered, ordinary fine stuff, with a little hair in it, will be better. Walls and partitions that are to be papered are also of this latter, or of rough stucco; but for paint the set must be of bastard stucco trowelled. This coat must be worked of exactly the same thickness throughout, to preserve to the external surface the advantage that has been obtained by floating. For all but this last mentioned, the set on floated work, the trowel and brush are considered sufficient to produce fine and even work; but trowelled stucco must moreover be hand-floated. In this operation the stucco is set with the trowel in the usual manner, and brought to an even surface with that tool to the extent or two or three yards. The workman then takes the handfloat in his right hand, and rubs it smartly over the surface, pressing gently to condense the material as much as possible. As he works the float he sprinkles the surface with water from the brush in his left hand, and eventually produces a texture as fine and smooth almost as that of polished marble. The process of plastering on the naked brick or stone wall differs but little, except in names, from.
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that we have described as the mode on lath. The single coat, or equivalent for laying, on lath, is rendering, and it need differ only in the quantity of hair, which may be less than is necessary for laying, and in the consistence of the mortar, which may be made more plastic, to work easier, and because in a moister state it will attach itself more firmly to the wall: the wall, however, must itself be wetted before the rendering is applied. The set is the same, and is put on in the same manner as to two-coat work on lath. For three coat, or floated work, the first or rough rendering should be made to fill up completely whatever crevices there maybe in the work behind it, and be incorporated with it as much as possible. As its name imports, its surface may, indeed should, be rough; but it is not scratched or lined as the similar coat on lath is: for this, too, the wall must be previously wetted, that the mortar may the better attach itself to it. For the floating, screeds must be formed as before described, and the consecutive process is exactly the same as on lath, both for the floated and for the set coat. In almost every case in which plastering is to be floated, the workman finds a guide for the feet of his wall screeds in the narrow grounds which the joiner has previously fixed for his skirtings; from these lie plumbs upwards, and makes his work perfectly flush with them.

Mouldings and cornices, as large combinations of mouldings and flat surfaces are called, in the angles of rooms, immediately under their ceilings, are formed with running moulds, and are generally executed before the setting coat is put on the walls and ceiling. If the cornice do not project more than about an inch and a half, or two inches, from the ordinary work, a backing of lime and hair will be sufficient; and if any one part only happen to be more than ordinarily protuberant, a row of nails from six to twelve inches apart stuck into the wall or ceiling in the line of that part will give it sufficient support. But if the general mass of the cornice be more than that amounts to, and extend above six or eight inches along the ceiling, it must be bracketed out, and the bracketing lathed and pricked up, as for ordinary work. This pricking up, or other preparation, must of course be perfectly set before the cornice is run; and there should be one fourth of an inch at least of clear space between the preparation and the mould in the nearest part. A wooden screed or parallel straight edge is tacked with brads on to the wall, and another on the ceiling, if the cornice be large and heavy, as guides or gauges for the mould, whose rests are chased to fit them; and then one man laying on gauge stuff in an almost fluid state with an angular trowel, another works the mould backwards and forwards over it, which strikes off what is superfluous, and gives the inverse of its form to the rest. The mould is never taken down from the work at right angles to the line of it, but is drawn off at the end, so that none of the parts of the moulding or cornice is injured or torn by it, which must otherwise frequently be the case, from the peculiar forms at times given to the details. If a cornice be too large and heavy to be executed at once, it may be done in the same manner at two or more times, in so many parts; and if any part or parts of a moulding or cornice is to be enriched, the space for it is left vacant by the mould, and the enrichment is afterwards supplied. As a cornice cannot be completed up to the angles by the mould, it is worked by hand in those situations to a joint. The joinings are termed mitres, and in forming them the plasterer uses the jointing tools we have already described. Models for enrichments arc made by the modeller, according to the design or drawing submitted to him, and from them the plasterer makes wax moulds, or, as in ordinary practice, the modeller supplies the moulds in which the ornament is cast in plaster of Paris. If the ornament be in recurring lengths or parts, as is usually the case, only one length or part is modelled, and casts of as many as are required are taken from the mould; some single ornaments, again, which are very large, require to be moulded and cast in parts, which are put together by means of cement. WTιen the cast ornaments are sufficiently dry the pieces are scraped and trimmed, the joints made clean and even, and they are set in the cornice with plaster of Paris, with white lead, or with a composition called iron cement, as the case may require. If the castings have something in the cornice to rest upon, the first will do; but if there is nothing to retain or attach them but the cement, one of the two latter must be used. Flowers and other ornaments in ceilings which are too large and heavy to be trusted to adhesive matter alone, must be screwed on to wooden cradling behind and above them.

In plastering a wall with common stucco, and its use is mostly for outside work, the first thing to be done is to remove the dust from it by brushing, and then wetting it very completely with water; if the wall to be stuccoed be an old one, or one of which the joints have been drawn, the mortar of the joints must be chipped or even raked out, and the bricks picked, to expose a new and porous surface to the plastering before brushing and wetting. The wall is then covered with stucco in a fluid state, applied with a broad and strong hog’s bristle brush, like common white-washing. When this is nearly dry the stucco must be laid on as in common rendering, unless the work is to be floated, when the process is nearly similar to that in floated plastering. Screeds must be formed at the highest and lowest extremities of the wall, or of that part of the wall which is in the same vertical line, and is not intercepted by string courses, and be returned at the angles, putting the whole surface into a sort of frame. These must be made perfectly straight and plumb, so as to be quite out of winding, by the careful application of the plumb-rule and straight edge. Inner vertical screeds must then follow at three or four feet apart across the whole surface, and be made to range exactly with the outer ones, and then the interstices must be filled in as before. As the work is made good it must be well rubbed with the hand-float, as in the execution of trowelled stucco internally, to compress the material, and produce a hard, even, and glossy surface. Preparations for cornices and other projections from the straight surface of the work must have been previously made in or on the brick or stone-work, by the protrusion of bricks, tiles, or whatever may be best suited to form a core, and the mouldings and cornices are run with moulds, in the manner described for the same things internally, only that in work of this kind no plastic material but the stucco itself is used; that is, there is no preparation of any softer material than the stucco itself put under it. In running cornices in this material, workmen are very apt to mix a little plaster of Paris with the stucco to make it set under the mould, and thus give sharpness and fulness to the mouldings; but this should not be permitted; for the plaster is not qualified to stand the weather as the stucco is, and, if mixed with it, will produce premature decay. (For information concerning the various modes of preparing it, see the article Stucco). V hen the stucco is perfectly dry, it may be painted in oil colours, or be coloured in distemper; and in either case it is generally ruled over the surface with a lead point, to give it the appearance of gauged stone-work.

Rendering in Roman cement is executed almost exactly in the same manner as stucco rendering is, on y that it is laid on the saturated wall directly, without t ιe preliminary operation of roughing in, or washing the surface with a solution of the material. The same process, [7:5:681]too, is followed in floating this cement, and with the same exceptions; and as, in addition to its superior hardness and capacity for duration, it is a quick-setting cement, it is far preferable to any of the common stuccoes for running cornices, mouldings, &c. Roman cement, or, as it is vulgarly called by most persons concerned in the operations of building, compo, a contraction of composition, may, like stucco, be painted in oil or coloured; but instead of a size colour, which is used for almost every other purpose in plastering, the colour for this composition is mixed with diluted sulphuric acid. This too may be lined and tinted to imitate stone and stone-work of any description.

It may not be amiss here to refer to the causes of the premature decay which takes place in stuccoes and cements when used externally as a coating to walls. The primary cause is the presence of muddy earth and decayed animal and vegetable matter in the sand used with the lime and cement. To this may be added frequent impurities in the limes and cements themselves, particularly of argillaceous matter in the former, and sometimes to the too great proportions of lime or cement to sand. These things might, however, remain quiescent for a long time, if the work were well protected from access of moisture, which is the grand exciting cause. The paint, or distemper wash, on the surface, is generally sufficient to prevent the rain which may beat against a vertical face from penetrating, especially if the work have been well hand-floated and trowelled, to make it close and compact; but the evil arises from exposure above, and from the numberless horizontal unfloated surfaces which are constantly presented. These receive and collect the water, and convey in streams over the vertical surfaces what is not immediately absorbed; and the work thus becoming saturated, frost seizes and bursts it, or warmth calls the vegetative powers of the impurities in it into action, and the whole is covered with a green sward. Let the sand of which a plaster composition is to be formed, whether with lime or cement, be washed until it no longer discolours clean water, and be well compounded with cementitious matter free from the impurities with which it is so frequently charged; let the work be well hand-floated and trowelled, particularly on the backs or upper horizontal surfaces of projections, and protected above by projecting eaves or otherwise; and the work, with common care and attention to paint or distemper at intervals, will last as long as any thing of the kind can be expected, or is found, to last anywhere.

A cheap and useful covering for external walls which are protected by projecting eaves, in plain buildings, is rough cast. This is executed in the following manner. The surface is first roughed in, or rendered with lime and hair; and when that is set dry, another coat of the same material is superadded, laid as evenly as it can be without floating, and as soon as a piece of two or three yards in extent is executed, the workman lays on it an almost fluid mixture of fine clean gravel and strong lime, which have been well mixed together. This is immediately washed with any ochreous colour that may be desired, and the whole dries into one compact mass.

In renovating and repairing plastering, the whole surface is first well washed to remove the dirt which may have attached itself, and as much of the earthy matter of the previous coat of whitening or colouring as will come away; any injuries the work may have received, such as cracks and fractures, are then repaired; and when the new stuff is quite dry, the joinings are scraped to produce an even surface, and the whole is again whitened, or coloured once or twice, or oftener, as may be required, to make it bear out well. Stuccoed walls which have been painted must be well rubbed with pumice stone, to take off the old paint as much as possible before they are newly painted. j

Plastering is measured in feet and inches, and valued by the yard superficial of nine square feet. It is taken under separate heads according to the nature and description of the work, such as, rendered; rendered and set; rendered, floated, and set; and with lath, for the lathing and plastering are valued together; lathed and laid; lathed, laid, and set; and lathed, plastered, floated, and set. Whitening and colouring are taken under separate heads, and the quantities of them are reduced to yards also. Work done in narrow slips, such as to the jambs and soffits of doorways and other openings, is measured by the foot superficial, and so are the backs of niches, niche-heads, &c. Arrises, or external angles and quirks, are taken extra by the running foot, and beads and other very small mouldings are measured in the same manner. Larger mouldings, however, and cornices, whether plain or enriched, are taken by the foot superficial, and the quantity is ascertained by multiplying the length, minus once the projection, by the girth, of the moulding or cornice, which is best determined by measuring its mould with a tape or cord. Enrichments are either numbered or taken at so much the running foot, making the modeller’s an extra charge, if the design was original and required special modelling and moulding; and mitres are taken at so much a piece beyond a limited number. This number, in an ordinary room, is generally the four which necessarily occur in its four angles, making those which are usually occasioned by the projection of the chimney-breast extra; but it is not an uncommon practice to bring them within the limit, and count only all that may occur above eight, for no difference is made between internal and external angles. Circular work, whether it be convex or concave, of every kind, may be charged about one fourth higher than straight. Stuccoes and other compositions are also valued by the yard, and according to the description of the work, with almost similar exceptions to those mentioned with regard to common plastering. Used externally, however, all the arrises or external angles, throatings, grooves, chamfers, &c. are taken as extra by the running foot at such a width.

In the practice of measuring plasterer’s work, it is customary to take the whole surface at first, and then whatever deductions there may be. Thus the side of a room is measured over all, from the upper edge of the skirting grounds up to the cornice. The windows and doors are deducted by taking to the outside of their framed grounds for the width, and from the skirting grounds up to the top of those of the door or window for the height. If there be more than one of each, or either of them, to deduct, of course the same dimension will serve for all, multiplied by as many times as each deduction occurs. A ceiling also is generally taken over the whole surface, from cornice to cornice, a chimney-breast or other projection being made a deduction. It is a moot point whether the plasterer should not be allowed that part of the ceiling and wall which is covered by the cornice, as he has actually finished the whole except setting. When the cornice is bracketed, however, he may fairly claim up to the brackets.

Scaffolding is not generally made an extra charge with new work; but with old work it is, if scaffolding be necessary; for, under ordinary circumstances, the plasterer is enabled to wash, stop, and whiten the ceilings and walls of rooms from trestles, with boards laid across them. In lofty saloons and halls, churches, &c. scaffolding.is indispensable, and must then be charged. A scaffold is necessary, too, to a front that is to be plastered in any way; but it may be afterwards washed, repaired, and coloured, from a ladder, without the intervention of a scaffold.
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Slater. — The principle on which slates are laid is that which is employed in plain tiling. To a roof with projecting eaves, a wide board is placed over the rafters feet; but when the eaves tail into gutters, the gutter-board is made wide enough to receive the eaves-course. For light slating it is necessary to board a roof all over. This is done by the carpenter, and is called sound-boarding; but for strong heavy slates, fillets or battens are better; and these are laid by the slater himself, to suit the length of his slates. Three inches wide and one inch thick is a sufficient size for them, if the rafters be not more than twelve inches apart. Against gable or party-walls, a feather-edged board called a tilting fillet is laid to turn the water from the wall.

Before he begins to work on a roof, the slater shapes and trims the slates on the ground. With a large knife or chopper called a saixe, sax, or zax, he strikes off the unevennesses on one side of a slate, making it as nearly straight as he can; he then runs a gauge along it, marking the greatest width the slate will bear, and, cutting to that line, makes it perfectly parallel. He next, with a square, brings the thickest and best end to right angles with the sides, generally by chopping, but sometimes by sawing; and then marking upward from the squared foot or tail, makes two nail holes, where, by calculating the gauge the slate in hand will bear, he knows the fillet must come. All the slates being thus ganged to width, dressed, and sorted in lengths, they are then carried on to the roof by the labourers in rotation, beginning with the longest and largest for the lowest courses. The first course the slater lays is little more than half the length of that which is intended to cover it, and is necessary to break the joints at the eaves. This is called the doubling eaves-course; and the covering eaves-course is brought to the same footline, completely to cover it. Then to ascertain the gauge: From the length of the slate deduct the bond, which should never be less than two inches, and need not be more than three and a half inches, and the half of what remains will be the gauge. Thus, if the bond be fixed at three inches, and the slate is two feet three inches in length, the gauge will be one foot. This gauge or margin is set up from the foot of the eaves-course at each end, and a line strained to mark it along the whole length, and so on, to the ridge or top, where another half-course is required to complete the work, and that is in its turn secured by a covering of sheet lead. To a hipped roof care is taken to complete every course up to the angle, by cutting slates to fit its inclination; and these are also covered by an overlap of sheet lead. In nailing a slate, it must not be strained or bent in the slightest degree, or it will certainly fly in some sudden atmospheric change, to which it is of course constantly liable, even if it escape fracture., from being trodden on by the workmen themselves or by others. Copper, being less liable to oxidize from exposure to common causes than any other metal that will answer the purpose, is generally used for slate nails. Zinc is also used for the purpose; and iron tinned and painted nails are sometimes substituted by dishonesty on the part of the workman or builder, or bad economy on that of the proprietor. Slating should be well pointed on the inside, or torched, as the operation is sometimes termed, with lime and hair, to keep out the wind, and prevent snow from driving in, which it will do in an almost incredible manner if it be not thus hindered. Particular attention should be paid to this, as the neglect of it occasions more damaged ceilings than even broken slates, and more catarrhs than arise from broken panes of glass.

A very light and neat covering is produced, by laying wide slates side by side, and covering their joints with narrow slips bedded in putty, the overlap at the ends being no more than the bond is with the usual mode. It is known as patent slating, and was introduced by the late Mr Wyatt, though he never obtained a patent for it. Indeed it is in principle the mode which was adopted in ancient Greece in covering the roofs of temples. Neither boards nor fillets are used, the slate bearing from rafter to rafter, and to the rafters the slates are screwed. The covering slips are also screwed, as well as bedded in putty. Slating of this kind may be laid at no greater elevation than ten degrees; whereas, for slating in the ordinary way, the angle should never be much less than twenty-five degrees, though large slates with a three and a half inch bond, carefully laid and well pointed, may perhaps be trusted at a rise of twenty degrees.

The mode above described of ascertaining the gauge or margin by the bond, is equally applicable to every sort of roof-covering that is made up of small inflexible parallelogramic slabs or tablets; and it should be borne in mind that the greater the angle is at which the rafters rise, or, in technical language, the higher the pitch of the roof, the less the bond may be, and vice versa. With slabs or tablets that vary in length, too, as slates generally do in this country as they are brought to market, it is the bond which it is of importance to observe; but if they are of an invariable length, as tiles are, it is sufficient that the gauge or margin be attended to.

The best slate this country produces is from the quarries of Bangor in Caernarvonshire, and of Kendal in Westmoreland. Good slate is also procured in the neighbourhood of Tavistock in Devonshire, and in some parts of Scotland. The scantlings of slate are cut in the quarries to set sizes, and these are split into tablets, thicker or thinner according to the size of the slab and the capacity of the slate, for the inferior qualities are neither so compact in material, nor so clearly laminated or schistose, as the superior, and will not therefore rend so freely. The sizes of slates best known in the British market are distinguished by the names of ladies, countesses, duchesses, and queens. Ladies measure fifteen inches by eight, countesses twenty inches by ten, duchesses twenty-four inches by twelve, and queens thirty-six inches by twenty-four; and they are esteemed in proportion to their magnitude. Besides these, there is a slate which equals the queen in extent of surface, but is of very much greater thickness; this is called Welsh rag. A smaller slate, again, which is less indeed than the lady, and is cut from the refuse of large scantlings, is called a double. In size it does not often exceed twelve inches by six. Westmoreland slates are thick and heavy like the Welsh rag, but do not generally run so large.

The best slate is of a bluish-grey colour, and breaks before the zax like well-burnt pottery, and will ring in the same manner on being struck. Whitish or light greycoloured slate is for the most part stony: dark blue or blackish slate, on the other hand, cuts very freely; but it absorbs moisture, and decays rapidly.

Slater’s work is measured by the square of a hundred superficial feet. In a parallelogramic piece of slating, as in a gabled roof with projecting eaves, the length along the eaves by the breadth or height from that to the ridge, with the addition to the latter dimension of the gauge or margin for doubling the eaves, will give the quantity of one side. Projections for chimney-shafts or breasts, skylights, &c. must be deducted; but an addition must be made of the run round them by six inches, for cutting and waste. In a hipped roof the length from point to point of the eaves on one of the long sides of a quadrilateral roof, by the breadth or height, with the addition as before, will give that side and half of each of the en s, The other side will, of course, in the same manner, indu e [7:5:683]the other halves of the ends. The length of the hips taken as a superficial dimension in feet, or by twelve inches, is added for cutting and waste, and valleys are taken and added in the same manner when they occur.

Carpenter. — For the scientific principles of carpentry we must refer the reader to the article under that head, and to the articles Roof, Strength of Materials, and Timber. Here we have merely to speak of the practical details of carpenters’ work in the operations of building,— indeed, of carpentering, or the practice of carpentry, considering it as a mechanical art.

The carpenter works in wood, which he receives from the sawyer in beams, scantlings, and planks, or boards, which he cuts and combines into bond-timbers, wall-plates, floors, and roofs. He is distinguished from the joiner by his operations being directed to the mere carcass of a building,—to things which have reference to structure only. Almost every thing the carpenter does in and to an edifice is absolutely necessary to its stability and efficiency, whereas the joiner does not begin his operations until the carcass is complete; and every article of joiners’ work might at any time be removed from a building without undermining it or affecting its most important qualities. Certainly, in the practice of building, a few things do occur which it is difficult to determine to whose immediate province they belong; but the distinction is nevertheless sufficiently broad for general purposes. The carpenter, with the bricklayer or mason, and some of the minor artificers, constructs the frame or hull; and the joiner, with the plasterer and others, decorates and rigs the vessel: on the former the actual existence of the ship depends, and on the latter depends her fitness for use.

The carpenter frames or combines separate pieces of timber by scarfing, notching, cogging, tenoning, pinning, and wedging; and the tools he uses are the rule, the axe, the adze, the saw, the mallet, hammers, chisels, gouges, augers, hook-pins, a square, a bevel, a pair of compasses, and a gauge, together with the level and plumb-rule; besides these, planes, gimlets, pincers, a sledge hammer, a maul or beetle, wedges, and a crow-bar, may be considered useful auxiliaries, though they are not absolutely necessary to the performance of works of carpentry.

To scarf is to cut away equally from the ends, but on the opposite sides, of two pieces of timber, for the purpose of tying or connecting them lengthwise. This is done to wall-plates and bond-timber, and especially to beams when they are required of greater length than can be procured without joining. (See Carpentry.) The usual mode of scarfing bond and wall-plates is by cutting about three fifths through each piece on the upper face of the one and the under face of the other, about six or eight inches from the end, transversely, making what is technically termed a calf or herf, and longitudinally from the end, from two fifths down on the same side, so that the pieces lap together with a sort of half dovetail. The heavy supervening weight of the wall and joists renders it impossible that they should be drawn apart without tearing the fibres asunder or lifting the weight. (See fig. 20.) Nevertheless these joints are generally spiked, and it is always required that they be made to fall in or under a pier. Notching is either square or dovetailed: it is used in connecting the ends of wall-plates and bond-timber at the angles, in letting joists down on beams or binders, purlines on principal rafters, &c. Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, fig. 21, show varieties of notches applied as we have described. No. 1 is a simple square notch or halving of the ends of bond-timbers or wall-plates at a right angle; No. 2, a dovetailed notch. No. 3, the notch most commonly used: it is similar to No. 1, but that the ends are allowed to run on so that the one piece grasps the other, and each forms a cog to the other. No. 4 is an oblique-angled, dovetailed notch; and No. 5 shows how joints are notched or let dow n on beams and binders, and purlines on principal rafters. A notch is cut into the under edge of the joist or purline an inch or an inch and a half in depth, and considerably shorter than the beam, binder, or rafter is in thickness. Notches are also cut down on the upper angles of the bearing pieces as long as the rider is thick, as deep as the notch before described of the latter is, and so far in as to leave a thickness on its own edge equal to the length of the notch in the riding joist or purline. In the diagram one joint is indicated in its place let down in the notch, and another indicates the notch in its own edge, and leaves exposed the notches in the binder. Cogging, or cocking as it is vulgarly termed, is the last-mentioned species of notch extended on one side, and leaving a narrow tooth or cog alone in the bearing-piece flush with its upper face, No. 1, fig. 22. It is used principally in tailing joists and beams on wall and tern-plates, and the cog is here made narrower, because the end of the joist or rider coming immediately beyond the plate, that part which forms the shoulder of the notch would be liable, on being strained, to be chipped off or torn away, if it were not kept as long as possible; and it is not of so much importance to guard against weakening a wall-plate which is supported along its whole length, as a beam, binder, or principal rafter, which rests on distant points alone. No. 2 of the same diagram shows another mode of tailing on joists and beams by a dovetail notch, which, to distinguish it from the flat notches, Nos. 2 and 4, fig. 21, is called cocking, or cogging also, though the operation decidedly is not cogging. This is a good mode if the timber be so well seasoned as not to be likely to shrink more; but it would be improved by allowing the rider to take a bearing in a notch like that to No. 1 before the dovetail commenced, as at No. 3, for in the ordinary mode it is weakened in a point of great importance.

Tenoning implies mortising also, as a matter of course. They are the names of the two operations necessary to one result,—that of producing a connection between two pieces by inserting part of the end of one into a hole of similar size cut in the side or edge of the other. A tenon is formed by cutting in on each side or edge of a piece of timber, near its end, transversely, to a certain depth, or rather, leaving a certain part of the breadth or depth uncut, and then cutting in longitudinally from the ends as far from each edge as the transverse cuts have been made in depth, thus removing two square prisms and leaving a third undivided. This is the tenon. An excavation in the side of a piece of timber, of a certain depth, in the direction of its thickness, parallel to its edges, and bounded lengthwise by lines at right angles to them, is a mortise. Tenons and mortises are made of exactly corresponding size, and are most frequently at equal distances from one or the other side or edge of the two pieces to be conjoined; and for the most part, too, every angle formed in the process of tenoning, both internal and external, is a right angle. Tenons are called joggles in sonic situations, when they are not intended to be borne upon; and their use is merely to keep the piece of timber to which they belong steadily in its place, without being liable to slight accidents from lateral pressure or violence. In combining timbers by means of mortises and tenons, to produce as great a degree of strength as possible, it must be obvious that the object to be kept in view is to maintain the end or tenon of the one as large and efficient as it may be, and weaken the other as little as possible in forming the mortise. For the efficiency of the mortised piece in a horizontal bearing, it is clear that as much of its thickness should be below the mortise as possible, as at a, fig. 23; for if it be put low, as at b, the superincumbent weight on [7:5:684]the tenon would more readily split or rend it in the direction of the grain, as indicated; but the case is inverted with the tenoned pieces. With the mortise at a the tenon could only have the efficacy of so much of the piece to which it belongs as there is of it above its under surface, which is a very small part of its depth; whereas with the tenon at b it would command the power of the greatest part of the piece. To guard as much as possible against the danger of too great a mortise and too small a tenon on one side and the other, and to obviate the difficulty arising from the efficiency of one or the other of the two pieces being affected by putting the tenon too high or too low, a compound, called a tusk tenon, is used for almost all horizontal bearings of any importance, especially to joists and binders, to trimmers, beams, girders, brestsummers, &c. The body of the tenon in this is a little above the middle of the end, and it runs out two, three, or four inches, or more, as the case may require. Below it the tusk protrudes, and above it the shoulder is cut down at an obtuse angle with the horizontal line, giving the strength of the whole depth of the timber above the under tusk to the tenon, and giving it a bearing in a shallow mortise, whilst a greater depth of the mortised piece than the tusk rests on receives the body of the tenon, and so protects its comparatively narrow margin from undue pressure. The diagram No. 1, fig. 24, shows the tusk tenon, with the section of a beam into which it is mortised; and No. 2 indicates perspectively the appearance of the mortise in front. See also Carpentry.

Pinning is the insertion of nearly cylindrical pieces of wood or iron through a tenon, to detain it in the mortise, or prevent it from being drawn out by any ordinary force. For this purpose the pin is inserted either in the body, or beyond the thickness, of the mortised piece, as indicated at a, fig. 24, or at a, fig. 25. Wedging (see bb, No. 2, fig. 25) is the insertion of triangular prisms, whose converging sides are under an extremely acute angle, into or by the end of a tenon, to make it fill the mortise so completely, or bind it so tightly, that it cannot be easily withdrawn. The wedging of tenons also assists in restoring to the mortised piece of timber much of the strength it had lost by the excision of so much of its mass, which indeed the tenon itself does if it fit closely in every direction; but the assistance of the wedge renders the restoration more perfect than the tenon could be made to do of itself, by compressing the fibres of both, longitudinally to those of the one, and transversely to those of the other, thus removing the tendency of the mortised piece to yield in any degree in the weakened part, though it cannot make up the loss in its tenacity occasioned by the section of its fibres.

In scarfing, cogging, and notching, the shoulders are always cut in with the saw; but the cheek is for the most part struck out with the mallet and chisel, or adze, as may be most convenient. Tenons should be made entirely with the saw: mortises are generally bored at the ends with an auger whose diameter equals their thickness; the intervening part is taken out with a wide chisel, cutting in the direction of the fibre; and the ends are squared down with a chisel whose breadth just equals the thickness of the mortise. Wood pins must be rent to insure the equal tenacity of their whole mass. Wedges are cut with the saw, but straight grained stuff is always preferred for them.

Bond-timbers and wall-plates should be carefully notched together at every angle and return, and scarfed at every longitudinal joint. The scarf shown at fig. 20 is sufficient for the purpose; and the notch at No. 3, fig. 21, may be preferred where notching is required; neither pinning nor nailing, however, can be of great use to either the notch or the scarf. Bond-timbers are passed along and through all openings, and are not cut out until such openings are to be permanently occupied, that is, windows with their sash-frames, &c. because they assist in preventing irregular settlements, by helping to carry the weight of a heavy part along the substruction generally, instead of allowing it to press unduly upon the part immediately under it.

Whatever notches and cogs for beams and joists are required in wall and tern-plates, should be made before they are set on or in a wall; for, as they are always bedded in mortar, any thing that may break the set must be avoided.

It is incumbent on the carpenter to supply the bricklayer or mason with wood bricks in sufficient quantity, and to direct him where they should be placed to receive the joiner’s fittings, or the battening, which the carpenter himself may have to put up for the plasterer.

The framed quartering partitions which may be required should be set up in every story before the beams and joists of the floors are laid, that their horizontal timbers may be notched on to the wall-plates, and that the joists or binders may be notched on to them if occasion require it; but they should be fixed rather below than above the level of the wall-plates, because they are not liable to settle down so much as the walls, though even that will depend in a great degree on the nature of the walling, and its liability to yield.

The carpenter makes and fixes or sets centres of all kinds, whether for single arches, vaults, or drains. The striking out of the centres, in the first instance, is necessarily contingent on the arches to be turned on theiŉ, for the forms of which the carpenter must look to the bricklayer or mason, whose instructions for describing arches will be found under the head Stone-Masonry. Large centres are framed in distinct ribs, and are connected by horizontal ties; whilst small ones are made of mere boards cut to the required sweep, nailed together, and connected by battens notched into or nailed on their edges. Precision and stability are nevertheless equally and absolutely necessary, as it is impossible for an arch to be turned or set correctly on an incorrect or unstable centre.

The timbers or frame-work of floors is called naked flooring, and it is distinguished as single, double, and framed. Of these the first, under ordinary circumstances, is the strongest. Single flooring (see No. 1 and 2, fig. 29) consists of one row or tier of joists alone, bearing from one wall or partition to another, without any intermediate support, receiving the flooring boards on the upper surface or edges of the joists, and the ceiling, if there be one, on the lower. Joists in single floors should never be less than two inches in thickness, because of their liability to be split by the brads or nails of the boards if they are thinner; and they should never be much more, because of the keying of the ceiling, which is injuriously affected by great thickness of the joists. Twelve inches from joist to joist is the distance generally allowed; that dimension, however, from centre to centre of the joists would be better. Strength to almost any extent may be given by adding to the depth of the joists, and diminishing the distance between them; and they may be made firm, and be prevented from buckling or twisting, by putting struts between them. These struts are short pieces of batten, which should not be less than an inch, and need not be more than an inch and a half thick, and three or four inches wide, placed diagonally between the joists, to which they are nailed, in a double series, or crossing, as indicated by the full and dotted lines in the diagram, fig. 26; and they should be made to range in a right line, that none of their effect may be lost; and these ranges or rows should be repeated at intervals not exceeding five or six feet. The struts should be cut at the ends with exactly the same inclination or bevel, to fit closely. Great care should be taken, too, not to split the struts in nailing; but the trouble of boring [7:5:685]with a gimlet is saved by making a slight nick or incision with a wide-set saw for each nail, of which there should not be less than two at each end; and the nails used should be clasp-nails. If the struts were notched into the joists, it would add very materially to their efficiency, but perhaps not in proportion to the additional labour it would involve. This strutting should be done to single flooring under any circumstances, as it adds materially to its firmness, and indeed to its strength, by making the joists transmit any stress or pressure from one to another. The efficiency of single flooring is materially affected by the necessity which constantly occurs in practice of trimming round fire-places and flues, and across vacuities. Trimming is a mode of supporting the end of a joist by tenoning it into a piece of timber crossing it, and called a trimmer, instead of running it on or into the wall which supports the ends of the other joists generally. A trimmer requires for the most part to be carried or supported at one or both of its ends by some of the joists, which are called trimming joists, and are necessarily made stouter than if they had to bear no more than their own share of the stress. Commonly it is found enough to make the trimmers and trimming joists from half an inch to an inch thicker than common joists. In trimming, tusk tenons should be used; and the long tongue or main body of the tenon should run not less than two inches through, and be draw-pinned, and wedged, moreover, if it do not completely fill the mortise in the direction of the length of the latter. The principal objection, however, to single flooring is, that sound readily passes through, the attachment of the boards above and of the ceiling below being to the same joists throughout. Another objection, and one already referred to, is the necessity of making the joists so thin, not to injure the ceilings, that they with difficulty receive the flooring brads in their upper edges without splitting. A partial remedy for both thesê disadvantages is found in a mode sometimes adopted of making every third or fourth joist an inch or an inch and a half deeper than the intervening joists; and to these, ceiling joists are notched and nailed, or nailed alone, as shown in the diagram, fig. 26. This, by diminishing the number of points of contact between the upper and lower surface, for the ceiling joists must be carefully kept from touching the shallower joists of the floor, is less apt to convey sound from one story to another, and allows conveniently thin joists to be used for the ceiling without affecting those of the floor. It clearly, however, involves the necessity of cogging the deeper joists down so much more on the wallplates on which their ends rest.

Double flooring (see sections No. 1 and 2, fig. 27, and plan No. 3, fig. 29) consists of three distinct tiers of joists, which are called binding, bridging, and ceiling joists. The binders in this are the real support of the floor; they run from wall to wall, and carry the bridging joists above and the ceiling joists below them. Binders need not be less and should not be much more than six feet apart, that is, if the bridging or flooring joists are not inordinately weak. The bridging joists form the upper tier, and are notched down on the binders with the notch shown at No. 5, fig. 21. The ceiling joists range under the binders, and are notched and nailed as shown at No. 1, fig. 27; but the notch must be taken entirely out of the ceiling joists, for the lower face or edge of the binder may not be wounded by any means or on any account, and moreover no good would be gained in any other respect by doing so. VVhen it is an object to save height in the depth or thickness of this species of floor, the ceiling joists may be tenoned into the binders, instead of being nailed on to them; in this case the latter must be chase-mortised on one side, tor the convenience of receiving the former when they are themselves set and fixed. A chase is a long wedge-formed groove of the breadth or thickness of the mortise, of which it is indeed an elongation, so that the tenon at one end of a ceiling joist being inserted in the regular mortise in the binder prepared for it, that at the other end is driven along the chase up to its place in the mortise in the next binder. When ceiling joists are thus chase-mortised, their lower or under faces are allowed to come a little below the under face of the binders, and the space across is firred down by slips not wider than the ceiling joists are thick. No. 2, fig. 27, shows a transverse compartment, or bay, of a floor in this manner; but it is not so good a one as the preceding; for, besides weakening the binders, by cutting so many mortises and chases in them, it is almost impossible to give the ceiling floor the degree of firmness and consistency it possesses in the other way, besides requiring the firring down on the binders. The same space would be better gained by cutting the bridging joists so much lower down; as they may, with the sort of notch indicated above, be let down fully half their depth without great injury to either bridging joists or binder, for they can always be made to fit tightly or firmly, and very little more labour is involved in notching deeply than slightly.

Flooring is said to be framed when girders are used together with binding, bridging, and ceiling joists. (See sections No. 1 and 2, fig. 28, and plan No. 4, fig. 29.) Girders are large beams, in one or more pieces, according to the length required, and the size and strength of which timber can be procured. They are intended for longer bearings than mere binders may be trusted at, and may be strengthened to almost any extent by trussing; but to be efficient, the height of the truss must always be greater than the depth of the beam itself, and the strength is increased by extending that height as the space or bearing increases. A truss is indeed a wooden arch, whose lateral thrust will of course be greater the smaller the angle subtended by it, and vice versa. It has been a commonly received opinion, that a truss within the depth of a girder adds materially to its strength; but experiments have proved that very little advantage is gained by such a one when executed in the best manner, and that, badly executed, the beam or girder is weaker with the truss than without it. Binders are made dependent on the girders by means of double tusk tenons, and on and to them the bridging and ceiling joists are attached in the manner before described. No. 1, fig. 28, shows the transverse section of a compartment or bay of a framed floor; No. 2 the same longitudinally of the girder, and of the bridging and ceiling joists, and transversely of the binders. No. 1, fig. 29, is the plan of a single floor of joists tailing in on wall plates with two chains of struts, and trimmed to a fireplace. No. 2 is a floor similar to No. 1, with ceiling joists nailed to deeper flooring joists at intervals, as shown in fig. 26. No. 3 is the plan of a double floor; and No. 4 is that of a framed floor of joists, bays of which are shown in section at fig. 27 and 28.

Partitions of timber are called quartering partitions, and they are generally framed. Common quartering partitions which rest on a wall or floor, and have nothing to carry, consist merely of a sill, a head, and common uprights to receive the lath for plastering: these last may be simply joggled or tenoned into the head and sill, in the manner shown at c, fig. 23, and stiffened by struts or stretching pieces put between them and nailed. When, however, a quartering partition is over a vacuity·, or rests only on certain points, and has, moreover, to sustain a weight, a floor perchance, it is framed and trussed with [7:5:686]king or queen posts and braces, on the principle of a roof; and the filling in of common uprights or quarters for the laths is generally performed by joggling them at one end into either head or sill, and nailing them securely to the raking braces. In the diagram No. 1, fig. 30, it is supposed that an opening or doorway is to be made in the partition, so that the timbers of the truss are placed around it with queen-posts, and a small internal truss is put over the doorhead to prevent it from sagging, and to carry the long part of the partition, which we suppose required to bear a floor, so that the partition acts also, in fact, the part of a trussed girder in the most available form. No. 2 presents another method of framing a similar partition.

Shoring or propping up walls 'or floors, shoring for sewers, &c. is done by the carpenter. In appearance it is a simple operation, and under ordinary circumstances it really is so; but nevertheless it often demands the exercise of considerable skill and tact to determine and to counteract the tendency the part or thing to be supported has in one direction or another.

Pugging floors, firring down joists, and bracketing and cradling for plastering, and some other things, are operations performed indifferently by the carpenter or joiner, for they are not necessarily connected with the one more than the other of these two mechanical arts.

The labour of carpenter’s work is valued by the square of one hundred superficial feet whenever it will admit of being so measured, and the timber is as generally valued by the cubic foot. It is customary for the carpenter’s work to be measured at the same time with the walls and roof covering, or when the carcass of a building is completed, and before the joiner and plasterer commence their operations; for then it is all still exposed, and may be correctly and certainly measured, whereas much must be taken on trust if the measurement be deferred until the works are completely finished.

Bond timber, wood bricks, and wall and tern-plates, are taken under the same head, and are reduced to cubic feet of timber at so much per foot, including the labour of every kind on it. The naked flooring is taken on the surface from wall to wall, with a description of the nature of it, whether it be single, double, or framed—if trimmed to chimneys, party walls, stairs, or to any thing else—if notched or cogged to wall-plates and partition heads—the number and size of the large timbers, ceiling joists as notched and nailed to wall-plates, and as framed or notched and nailed to binders or common joists; and every thing indeed that affects the quantity of labour required in forming it. The superficial feet are reduced to squares for the labour and nails involved and used in forming and fixing or setting the floors. The timbers of which the flooring is composed are then taken in detail and in cubic quantities, and are said to be without labour, or with no labour. Roofing is measured in the same manner, by the superficial square, for labour and nails, taken on the common rafters from ridge to heel; the length of a rafter by the length of the roof for one side of a common span, and repeated or doubled for the other, noting also a description of the roof, whether it be lean-to or shed roofing, if on purlines and with struts; common span-roofing; curb roofing; span roofing with purlines and collar beams, strutted or otherwise, from walls or partitions; span roofing with framed principals, tie-beams, king-posts or queenposts, straining beam, straining sill, struts, purlines, poleplates, and so on or as the case may be, and this too for labour and nails. All the timbers are then taken, measuring every one to the extent of any tenon or tenons at its ends, in cubic quantities also, and as without labour. Bolts, bars, straps, stirrups, &c. are taken separately, and their dimensions noted ‘from which to ascertain their weight. Gutter-boards and bearers are measured and valued by the foot superficial, according to the thickness of the former. Rough boarding for lead on flats, and sound boarding for slates or lead, are taken superficially, and reduced into squares. Centring to vaults is measured on the periphery of the arch, or round back of the centre, for the breadth, by the length, and is valued by the square; to apertures in the thickness of walls, by the foot, and to camberarches, by number, so much a piece. Quartering partitions are measured by the square for labour and nails, and the material is taken by the cubic foot. Battening to walls is also measured by the square, but the stuff is generally included with the labour, as in boarding. Cradling and bracketing is valued by the foot superficial, and with reference to the quantity of stuff required or worked up. Any planing that may have been necessary, and it will happen at times on beams, joists, &c. when it is not intended to have a ceiling under the floor, is charged by the foot on the surface, and any beading or other moulding by the foot running.

It sometimes happens that a superficial quantity for labour and nails on framed timber cannot be obtained; in that case the timber is measured by the cubic foot as framed, or with the labour of framing included with its own cost, &c. In this case, however, it is necessary to make a distinction between one quantity and another, as the labour employed upon an equal quantity of stuff in framing some parts of a roof is much greater than is required in most floors. Many things, such as strong door and window frames, that are to be worked into the walls, story-posts, brestsummers, &c. are always taken as framed timber, with any addition that may occur of wrought, rebated, beaded, &c. as the case may be.

The price or value to be attached to the varieties of carpenter’s work depends almost as much on the texture or hardness of the timber employed, as on its cost. What the timber itself should be charged at may be thus determined. To its price in the gross at the timber merchant’s must be added the cost of carriage to the spot where it is to be employed, which will be so much the load of fifty cubic feet, or so much per foot; then to the cost of each cubic foot of timber add the price of four superficial feet of sawing, which will form a fair average for the variously sized scantlings, and one eighth of the increased amount to it as an allowance for waste in cutting up and working. This gives the actual cost, to the builder, of the timber as it is worked up; and if it is to be charged as with no labour, his profit and a remuneration for his own labour of superintending, &c. alone remain to be included. If, however, labour of any kind is to be charged with the stuff, it should be added first, and the builder’s profit, &c. taken on both, or on the increased amount for the price per foot. The cost of labour depends so much upon such a. variety of circumstances, that it is impossible to aid the inquirer materially in apportioning prices for the various operations. In this, as in other things, it is well, when the parties are not otherwise qualified to determine a scale of charges, to observe the time a man or a certain number of men are employed in executing so much work of a certain description, and compare the quantity by measurement with the time employed in executing it, or rather with the wages of the workmen for the time. In fixing a price for labour in carpenter’s work, the size of the timbers, and the heights they have to be hoisted, together with such scaffolding and machinery for hoisting as may be fount necessary, if the timbers be heavy, and the height and expense great, must be considered. As the timber used in shoring is not consumed, a charge is made for use and was e to the amount of one third of its value if it be much cut up, and one fourth if but little, in addition to the labour of s£ ' ting up and taking down, whatever that may be.
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Joiner. — The principles of joinery also will be found in an article under that head in another part of this work; here we have merely to do with the modes of operation, and the tools employed by the workman, together with the manner of estimating or determining the value of his work.

The distinction between the operations of the carpenter and the joiner is shown in the commencement of the preceding section on the trade of the former. A man may be a good carpenter without being a joiner at all; but he cannot be a joiner without being competent, at least, to all the operations required in carpentry. It is, indeed, very truly remarked in the article Joinery, “that the rough labour of the carpenter renders him in some degree unfit to produce that accurate and neat workmanship which is expected from a modern joiner ;” but it is no less true that the habit of neatness and the great precision of the joiner, make him a much slower and less profitable workman than the practised carpenter, in works of carpentry.

The joiner operates on battens, boards, and planks, with saws, planes, chisels, gouges, hatchet, adze, gimblets and other boring instruments, which are aided and directed by chalked lines, gauges, squares, hammers, mallets, and a great many other less important tools; and his operations are principally sawing and planing in all their extensive varieties, setting out, mortising, dovetailing, &c. A great range of other operations, none of which can be called unimportant, such as paring, gluing up, wedging, pinning, fixing, fitting, and hanging, and many things besides which depend on nailing, &c. such as laying floors, boarding ceiling, wainscotting walls, bracketing, cradling, fiering, and the like. In addition to the wood on which the joiner works, he requires also glue, nails, brads, screws, and hinges, and accessorily he applies bolts, locks, bars, and other fastenings, together with pulleys, lines, weights, white-lead, holdfasts, wall-hooks, &c. &c.

Battens are narrow boards running from half an inch to an inch and a half or two inches thick, and from three to six or seven inches wide. A piece of stuff of too small a scantling to be a batten is called a fillet. The term board is applied to sawed stuff when its width exceeds that of a batten, and its thickness does not exceed two inches or two inches and a half. The term plank is applied to large pieces of stuff whose width is great in proportion to their thickness, and whose thickness nevertheless does not exceed three or four inches. In London these terms are used in much more restricted senses than they are here described to mean, because of the fixed and regular sizes and forms in which stuff for the joiner’s use is for the most part brought to market there. A batten, to a London joiner, is a fine flooring board from an inch to an inch and a half in thickness, and just seven inches wide. A board is a piece cut from the thickness of a deal whose width is exactly nine inches; and every thing, almost, above that width, and not large enough to be called a scantling of timber, is a plank.

The joiners’ work for a house is for the most part prepared at the shop, where every convenience may be supposed to exist for doing every thing in the best and readiest manner; so that little remains to be done when the carcass is ready, but fit, fix, and hang, that is, after the floors are laid. The sashes and frames, the shutters, back flaps, backs, backs and elbows, soffits, grounds, doors, &c. are all framed and put together, that is, wedged up and cleaned off, at the shop; the flooring boards are prepared, that is, faced, shot, and gauged with a fillister rebate; and all the architraves, pilasters, jamb linings, skirtings, mouldings, &c. are all got out, that is, tried up, rebated, and moulded, at the shop.

When the carcass of a building is ready for the joiner, the first thing to be done is to cut the bond timber out of the openings, set the sash frames, and fill them with old sashes or with oiled paper on frames, to exclude the weather, but admit light. The flooring joists are then proved with straight-edges, and any inequalities in them are removed with the adze; the flooring boards are next cut down to their places, and they are turned with their faces downwards until the ceilings are done; but first the pugging floors, if any are intended, are formed, and the pugged clay is put in on them. Floors are in ordinary cases either straight joint or folding, and are edge or face nailed. Folding floors are those in which three, four, or five boards are laid at a time, with their heading joints all on the same joist, and of course in the same straight line. In laying them, one board being firmly nailed to the joists at the extremity of the floor, another is laid parallel to it at the distance of the width of three or four others, or rather within their width, and these are then forced down and nailed, the forcing having brought all the joints up close. This is a bad mode, however, and should never be used. Straight joint flooring is when every board is laid separately, or one at a time, the heading joint or joints being broken or covered regularly in every case. Straight joint flooring may be with square joints, when it is entirely face nailed, or it may be dowelled or tongued, when it is side or edge nailed only. Dowelling is the driving pins of wood or iron half their length into the edge of the last laid board, the outer edge of which has been skew-nailed, their other ends running into holes prepared for them in the inner edge of the next board, in the way the head of a cask is held together, and then its outer edge is skew-nailed in the same manner, and so on. Tongueing is effected by grooving both edges of every board, and fitting thin slips and tongues into them, as described in the article Joinery. The boards are forced together by pressure applied to the outer edge; wedges with iron dogs driven into the joists are commonly used, but they are very objectionable instruments. The nail used in face-nailing floors is called a flooring brad; it has no head, but a mere tongue projecting on one side of the top of the nail, which is put in the direction of the grain, that it may admit of being punched in below the surface level, otherwise the superficial inequalities could not be reduced when the floor was completed, because of the projecting heads of the nails. For side or edge nailing, however, clasp-nails, nails whose heads extend across on two of the opposite sides, are used.

Another early operation the joiner has to attend to, is the fixing of the framed door and window and the narrow skirting grounds (see fig. 35) to which the plasterers may float their work. The skirting grounds are generally dovetailed at the angles, and are well blocked out, so that they may not vibrate on being struck, or yield to pressure when the plasterer’s straight-edge passes roughly over their surface; they must also be set with the utmost truth and precision. When the floors are cut down and the grounds fixed, the joiner’s operations in a building should be suspended until the plasterers have finished, or nearly so, and then the floors may be laid. By deferring this operation until that period, the workmen of the two different trades are prevented from interrupting each other, and indeed injuring each other’s work; and joiners always find employment in the shop preparing, as before intimated.

The preparation flooring boards receive, is planing on the face, shooting on the edges, and gauging to a thickness; the common fillister, or stop rebate plane, being used to work down to the gauge mark, from the back of every board, and about half an inch in on each edge. When a board is to be laid, it is turned on its face in the place it is to occupy, and the workman with his adze cuts away from the back over every joist down to the gauge rebate, [7:5:688]so that on being turned over it falls exactly into its place, and takes the same level with all its fellows, which have been brought to the same gauge; then follows the process of laying as before described, and the result must, if the work be done well, be a perfectly even and level surface. The slight inequalities of surface which may occur are reduced with a smoothing-plane, the brads being previously punched below the surface if the floor be face-nailed. See the article Joinery, sections 35 and 36.

In getting out skirtings, if the work be of a superior description, the boards should be tried up as if for framing in every particular except bringing to a width, which need not be done. The face edges, however, must be worked with great precision, and moulded or rebated as the case may require. Rebating or tongueing will be necessary when the skirting consists of more than one piece, that the different pieces may be made to fit neatly and firmly together; and all but the lowest piece must of necessity be brought to a width, as well as tried up in other particulars. A skirting in a single width is called by that term; but when it is made up of more than one part it is designated a base: the lowest board is then called the skirting board, and the upper the base moulding or mouldings. (Fig. 31 and 35.) The reason why the skirting board is not brought to a width is, that the labour would be lost according to the ordinary mode of fixing it. The board is applied to its place with its lower edge touching the floor; but as the most perfectly wrought floor will be likely to have some slight unevenness of surface so close to the wall, a straight-edge would not fit closely down it in every part. The board is therefore propped ιιp at one end or the other until the upper or faced edge is perfectly parallel with the average line of the floor, or rather to be perfectly level. A pair of strong compasses, such as those used by the carpenter, is taken, and opened to the greatest distance the lower edge of the skirting board is from the floor throughout its length; the outer edge, near the point of one leg of the compasses, is then drawn along the floor, whilst the point of the other, being kept vertically above it, is pressed against the face of the board, on which it marks a line exactly parallel to the surface of the floor, indicating, of course, every, even the slightest irregularity there may be in it. If the floor be not a very uneven one, the excluded part may be ripped off with the hand or the panel saw, which may generally be made to follow the traced or inscribed line exactly; if, however, the line be a very irregular one, having quick turns in it, the hatchet must be used. This operation is called scribing, and the result of it is evidently to make the skirting fit down on the floor with the utmost precision. Care must be taken, in performing the operation, that the upper edges of the skirtings be not only level, but that all which are in immediate connection be scribed to an equal height, that their upper edges may exactly correspond. Sometimes skirtings are let into a groove in the floor, as indicated in the diagram, fig. 35, and thus a slight degree of shrinking is made of less importance, and scribing rendered unnecessary. Before skirtings are fixed, vertical blocks are put at short intervals, extending from the floor to the narrow grounds, and made exactly flush with and true to the latter, and are firmly nailed. These form a sound backing, to which the skirtings may be bradded or nailed; and so prevent them from warping or bending in any manner. If, however, the skirting be not very wide, and be sufficiently stout to stand without a backing, a fillet only is nailed along the floor as a stop for its lower edge; but this is rendered unnecessary if the skirting be tongued into the floor, as the tongue will answer every purpose of a stop. The ends of skirtings should be tongued into each other when it is necessary to piece them in length; and on returns or an gles the end of one should be tongued into the returned face of the other in the square parts, and mitred in the oblique-angled or moulded.

When a chair-rail or surbase is required, grounds similar to those for the base are fixed to range like them with the face of the plastering; the surbase itself must be wide enough to cover the grounds and the joints formed by them and the plastering, completely; it is in effect a cornice to the stereobate and the space intervening it, and the base is generally understood to be wainscotted, though it is more frequently plastered.

In framing or framed work, the outer vertical bars which are mortised are called styles; and the transverse, those on whose ends the tenons are formed, are called rails. (Fig.32.) In doors, particularly, the open spaces or squares formed internally by the rails and styles are divided in the width by bars parallel to the styles. These are tenoned into the rails, and are called mountings, or, vulgarly, muntins. The frame being formed by trying up, setting out, mortising, and tenoning, the inner or face edges of the styles, and of the highest and lowest rails, and both edges of the muntins and of the inner rails, are grooved with the plough to receive the edges and ends of the filling-in parts, or panels of the frame-work. Panels are either flat, raised, or flush. (Fig. 33.) Flat panels are no thicker than the grooves into which they are fitted, and consequently their faces are as much below the surface of the framing as the groove is in from each side of the styles and rails. Raised panels are thicker than the groove in the framing, but are not so thick as to reach the surface; nor is the panel thickened through its whole extent. It fits exactly into the groove, and thickens gradually for an inch or two, and then sets off at a right angle with the surface, increasing suddenly three or four sixteenths of an inch. A panel may be raised on one side only, or on both sides. Flush panels are rebated down from one face to the distance the plough groove is in from the surface of the framing; and the back of a panel thus rebated on one side is worked down to be even with the other edge of the groove, leaving a tongue to fit it exactly; for if it be required to make panels flush on both sides, it is generally effected by filling in on the back or flattened side with an extraneous piece. Framing is not, however, often finished in the manner above described, especially with raised and flush panneis; mouldings are generally introduced, and are either struck or worked in the solid substance of the framing, or in separate pieces or slips, and laid in with brads. If a moulding be struck or laid in on one side onlý, and the other is left plain, the framing is described as moulded and square, a flat panel being in that case understood; if the panel be raised the framing will be described as moulded with a raised pan¢l on one side, and square or flush the other. It may be moulded with a flat panel, or moulded with a raised panel, on both sides; and the moulding may, as before intimated, be either struck in the solid, or laid in in any of the preceding cases. Mouldings which are laid in round the panels of framing are neatly mitred at the angles, and bradded, to appear as much as possible as if they were struck in the solid. In nailing or bradding the mouldings, the brads should be driven into the frame-work, and not into the panels. With a flush panel, however, the moulding is always either a bead, or a series of beads called reeds ; and is, in the case of a single bead, which is most common, always struck on the solid frame, and the work is called bead-flush; but reeds are generally 7 struck on the panel in the direction of the grain, and laid in on the pane across it, or along the ends; this is termed reed-flush. Fins panels in inferior works have a single bead struck on their sides in the direction of the grain alone, the ends abutting plainly, as in the first diagram of a flush panel, and this is [7:5:689]termed bead-butt, the fact that the panels are flush being inferred. The plainest quality of framing, in which it is square on both sides, is used in the fittings of inferior bed-rooms, inner closets, and the plainer domestic offices, but always internally; framing moulded on one or both sides, in rooms and places of a greater degree of importance, and in places where the work may be more generally seen; in some cases a flat panel may be enriched by a small moulding laid on its surface, leaving a margin between it and the larger moulding at its extremities; this may be done in drawing-rooms and apartments of that class, especially if they be in an upper story; and raised panels should be confined to the framed fittings of diningrooms and other apartments on a ground or principal story. Framing with flush panels is almost restricted to external doors, &c. one side of a door being bead-flush, and the other flat and moulded, perhaps, or the face may be moulded with a raised panel, and the back bead-flush; and this for principal entrances. Bead-butt framing is found in external doors to offices, &c. Doors are made four panelled for the most part when the panels are flat and the framing square, six panelled when the latter is moulded, and six, eight, or even ten panelled when the framing is of the superior descriptions. Doors which are hung in two equal widths to occupy the doorway, and are hung to the opposite side posts or jambs of the frame, are said to be double margined; that is, the styles or margins are repeated necessarily in the middle where they meet. Doorways are fitted with jamb linings, and architraves or pilasters. Jamb linings may be framed to correspond with the door on the outer faces; and when they exceed nine or ten inches in width they should always be so, or they may be solid. Narrow and plain jamb linings to inferior rooms are rebated on one side only, and the rebate forms the frame into which the door is fitted. To superior work they are rebated on both sides, as if it were intended to put a door on each side. The jambs are fixed to the inner edges of the grounds; and if they are wide, and not framed, backings are put across to stiffen them; and these backings are dovetailed into the edges of the grounds. Architravesand pilasters are variously sunk and moulded, according to the fancy of the designer. They are fixed to the grounds with their internal edges exactly fitting to the rebates in the jambs, and they form the enriched margin or moulding of the frame in which the door is set. Architraves are mitred at the upper angle, but pilasters have generally a console or an enriched block or cap resting on them, to which they fit with a square joint; both the one and the other either run down and are scribed to the floor, or rest on squared blocks or bases, which may be the height of the skirting board, or of the ^liole base.

The parts of the outside frame of a sash are distinguished by the terms applied to the similar parts of common framing. The upright sides are styles, and the transverse or horizontal ones, which are tenoned into the ends of the styles, are rails; but the inner frame-work or divisions for the panes are called merely upright and cross bars; the upright being the mortised, and the cross bars the tenoned, nevertheless, as with the outer frame-work. (Fg. 31.) Sashes are got out like common framing; the parts are tried up, set out, mortised and tenoned, exactly in the same manner, allowance being made in the length of the rails and all tenoned pieces, in the setting out, as in common framing also, for the portions of the mortised styles and upright bars, which are worked away in forming the moulding and rebate. The meeting rails of sashes which are in pairs, to be hung with lines, are made thicker than the other parts by the thickness of the parting bead, and they arebevelled or splayed off, the one from aboveand the other from below, that they may meet and fit closely.

λVhen the frame-work is completed, although it cannot be put together because of what has just been referred to, ' the rebate is formed by the sash fillister on the further part of the face edge, and the moulding struck on its hither angle. These things being done, the moulded edges are either mitred or scribed at the shoulders and haunches, and the sash may be put together. If sash bars are mitred at the joints they require dowels in the cross bars to act as tenons; but if they can be scribed, dowelling is not required. Sashes are either fixed or hung with hinges, or with lines, pulleys, and weights. Fixed sashes are put into frames, of which every part may be solid but the stop, which must be put in behind the sash to detain it. Sashes hung with hinges require solid rebated frames; but there can be no stops to them except their own movable fastenings, and the outer stop, which of course the rebate furnishes. Sashes hung with lines require cased frames to receive the pulleys and weights. The sill of the frame is made, as in the former cases, solid, is sunk and weathered, and is generally made of a more durable material than the rest of the frame; the sides in the direction of the thickness of the frame are of one and a quarter or one and a half inch board, very truly tried up, and grooved to receive a parting bead; for it must be obvious that sashes hung with lines to run vertically up and down within the height of the frame must be themselves in two heights, and must pass each other in two separate and distinct channels. The ends of these boards are fixed into the upper face of the solid sill below, and into a similar board parallel to the sill which forms a head above, and they are called pulley pieces, or styles, because they receive the pulleys, which are let into them near their upper ends. Linings from four to six inches in width, and from three fourths of an inch to an inch in thickness, are nailed on to the edges of the pulley pieces, and to the sill and head above and below, inside and outside in the direction of the breadth of the sash frame, and are returned along the head in the direction of its length. The outside linings are made to extend within the pulley pieces about half an inch, to form a stop for the upper and outer sash; and the inside linings are made exactly flush with their inner faces. The casing is completed by fixing thin linings on to the outer edges of the outside and inside linings, parallel to the pulley pieces, to prevent any thing from impeding the weights. Thin slips called parting beads are fitted tightly into the grooves previously noticed in the pulley pieces, but they are not fixed, as the upper sash can be put in or taken out only by the temporary removal of the parting bead. An outer or stop bead is mitred round on the inside to complete the groove or channel for the lower sash; the stop bead covers the edge of the inside linings on the sides and head, and is fixed by means of screws, which may be removed without violence when it is required to put in or take out the sashes. A hole covered with a movable piece, large enough to allow the lead or iron weight to pass in and out, is made in each of the pulley pieces, so that the sashes may be hung after the frames are set, and to repair any accident that may occur to the hangings in after-use. (Fig. 34.) It may be here remarked, that sash-frames require greater truth and precision from the workman than any thing else in the joiner’s work of a building; and unless the stuff employed be quite sound and perfectly seasoned, all the workman’s care in operating will be thrown away. The fittings of a window which has boxed shutters consist of back linings, grounds, back, elbows and soffit, together with shutters and back flaps, and architraves or pilasters round on the inside to form a moulded frame. (Figs. 31 and 34.) Back linings are generally framed with flush panels; they fit in between the inside lining of the sash frame and the framed ground, to both of which they are attached, and [7:5:690]form the back of the boxing into which the shutters fall back. They are tongued into the inside lining by their inner edge, and on their outer edge the ground is nailed, and they are set at right angles to the sash-frame, or obtusely outwards, as the shutters may be splayed or not. The back is the continuation of the window fittings from the sash-sill to the floor on the inside; the elbows are its returns on either side under the shutters, and the soffit is the piece of framing which extends from one side of the window to the other, across the head, the width or extent of the shutters. These are all framed to correspond with the shutters on the face; but, as they are fixed, their backs are left unwrought. Window shutters are framed in correspondence with the door and other framed work of the room to which they belong, in front, and generally with a flush panel behind: the back flaps are in one or two separate breadths to each shutter, according to the width of the window and the depth of the recess; they are made lighter than the shutters themselves; and they should, when shut to, present faces exactly corresponding with those of the shutters, both internally and externally. The shutters are hung to the sash-frame with butt hinges, and the back flaps are hung to their outer styles with a hinge called a back flap, from its use. The shutters and their back flaps are hung in one, two, or more heights, as may be found convenient. The moulded margin round the boxings of a window on the inner face are made to harmonize generally with the similar parts of the doors of the room or place to which it belongs. The fixing and hanging of window fittings or dressings are hardly less important, for the accuracy required, than the making and fixing of the sash-frame itself; the slightest infirmity or inaccuracy in any part will be likely to derange some important operation. Sashes, it may be remarked, are never fitted until the frames are immovably fixed, so that if there be any inaccuracy in the latter, the sashes are cut away or pieced out to make them fit; but, as they are intended to traverse, the fitting in that case can only apply to one particular position, and in every one but that there must be something wrong. Any incorrectness in the sash-frame, again, must throw the shutters and their back flaps out; indeed the sash-frame, though apparently a secondary part of the arrangement, is that which affects all the rest beyond anything else. When sashes have been fitted, a plough groove, wide and deep enough to receive the sash-line, is made in the outer edges of the styles, for about two thirds of their length, at their upper ends. They are then primed and glazed, and when the putty is sufficiently set the joiner hangs them. He is furnished with sash-line, tacks, and iron or lead weights, which are generally made cylindrical, with a ring at one end, to which the line may be attached. A sash is weighed, and two weights are selected which together amount to within a few ounces of the same gravity. The line is then passed through the pulley, which was previously fixed in the pulley style; the end is knotted to a weight which is passed in at the hole left for the purpose, and at a sufficient distance, which a common degree of intelligence will readily determine; the line is cut off and the end tacked into the groove in the style of the sash.

Glue is used principally in putting framed work together, but not at all in fixing; and even for the former purpose it is much less used by good workmen than by inferior ones. When the stuff is well seasoned, and the trying up, setting out, mortising, and tenoning, are well and accurately executed, there is no necessity for glue on the tenons and shoulders; the wedges alone need be glued, to attach them to the sides of the tenons, that their effect may not depend on mere compression. Joiners are generally furnished with a cramp, with which to force the joints of framing into close contact; it is either of wood acting by means of wedges, or of iron with a screw. This, too, is unnecessary with good work, every joint of which may be brought perfectly close without great violence of any kind. The cramp will sometimes give bad work the semblance of good, but it cannot make it really so. If any cracking and starting be heard in the joiner’s work of a new building, it generally indicates one of two things; either the cramp has been required in putting the framing together, or, having been put together, it has been forced out of winding in fixing, and the constrained fibres are seeking to regain their natural position. A good workman does not require a cramp, nor will his work, if he has been supplied with seasoned stuff, ever require to be strained; and consequently the cracking and starting of joiner’s work indicates unfit stuff or bad work, or perhaps both. It is true that glued joints will sometimes fly; but when they do, there need be no hesitation in determining the presence of both bad work, and stuff in an improper state.

Floors are measured and valued by the square of a hundred superficial feet; but any thing beyond the mere flooring, such as the mitred borders generally put as a margin to the stone slab of a fire-place, is taken extra by the foot superficial, or running, as the additional work may be above or below three inches in width. The first important thing to note in measuring a floor is the thickness of the boards, by which to determine the cost of the principal material. A floor of boards unplaned on the face, and shot on the edges, laid folding, is the roughest that can be supposed; with the boards wrought or planed on the face, and laid in the same manner, will be the next in advance; and straight joint flooring, in all its varieties, is the most troublesome, and consequently the most expensive in common and general use. Whether the boards be wide or narrow is a consideration to be noted, an equal surface being of course more rapidly covered with wide than with narrow boards; whether they be gauged, and if brought to a thickness throughout, or only rebate gauged, and cut down on the joints with the adze; in what manner the heading joints are formed and secured; how the longitudinal joints are executed, whether square, ploughed and tongued, or dowelled; and whether the boards are face or edge nailed. Solid frames, as for outside doors, &c. are measured and valued by the cubic foot, labour being calculated upon the stuff according to the nature and extent of what may have been applied to it.

λVith trifling and unimportant exceptions, every thing else in joiner’s work that exceeds three inches in width is taken by the superficial foot; and the dimensions are taken on the finished and fixed work, so that allowances must be made for whatever waste*may have been of necessity made. The stuff worked up by the joiner is always supposed to have been in planks and boards a certain number of quarters of an inch in thickness, so that whatever the finished work may stand, it is taken as of the thickness which in quarters of an inch it is next below; thus, if the -styles of a door stand at even less than an inch and seven eighths, it is taken as a two-inch door; for a piece of framing is always considered to be of the thickness of its outer frame-work, the description determining the substance of the panels. Framed grounds are measured round on the outside for the length; their width is not that or the frame, but of the styles and head as they actually are; and their thickness that of the stuff before it was planed at all. Narrow grounds are taken by the foot running, their width being noted in the description of them. Jamb linings are measured to the full length they may be of by their width, the thickness being noted, together with a description of the work on them,—if they are single or double rebated, if framed, and in what manner, &c.
[7:5:691]

The dimensions of a door are generally taken within the rebates in which it is to hang, with its thickness and description noted,—as of four, six, or eight panels, moulded on one or both sides, with flat or raised panels, &c.; if it be double margined, that is stated, and the amount of the lap or rebate in their meeting styles is added to the width, to increase the superficies by so much. The hinges with which a door is hung, and the lock or other fastenings which may be on it, are taken, with a description of their sizes and qualities, immediately after the door itself. If sashes are in a solid frame they are taken alone, but sashes in cased frames are measured in and with the frames. To the clear height between the sill and the head, three inches are added for the thickness of the sill, and four inches for the depth of the case at the head, for the height; and to the width between the pulley-styles is added eight, nine, or ten inches, as the case may be, for the breadth of the casing on each side, for the width; these give the superficies of the sashes and frame. The sashes and frame are described, with the thickness of the former, which determines that of the latter; the sill is described as sunk or merely weathered; the pulley-styles as of such a thickness; the pulleys, line, and stuff employed in the different parts of the frame as of such and such qualities and sorts; and whether the sashes be single or double hung, with what fastenings, &c. The boxings for the shutters are taken in a superficial quantity, as square or splayed, if circular on plan, whether with a flat or quick sweep, or if circular headed, and straight on plan. The back linings, the backs, elbows, and soffits, the shutters and the back flaps, are all measured by the superficial foot, according to their thicknesses and descriptions, the hinges and fastenings of the shutters and back flaps being numbered and noted independently of them. The capping to backs is taken by the running foot; and elbow cappings are numbered. Moulded architraves are taken superficially, the length by their girt, or by the run at such a girt. Skirtings are measured superficially at such a thickness, as scribed or tongued, as square or moulded, or rebated for base moulding, as the case may be. Base and surbase, and indeed all other moulding which girds at four inches and above, should be taken superficially; and mouldings which are of less girt may be taken by the run if they be taken independently of the other work, or that to which they belong, at all. A moulding projecting from the face of the work to which it belongs may be assumed as independent of it; whereas a receding one, if it be small, will merely add the character of moulded to the work, and if large will qualify all in immediate connection with it to be taken as a superficial quantity of moulding. All circular work, or work which diverges from a straight line, is noted and charged proportionally to the additional labour and waste of stuff involved; the shorter the radius of the arc, or quicker the sweep, the higher must be the proportioned charge. Things which have been bent to their fleeted form are less costly in proportion than those which must have been worked in the solid or glued up in thicknesses.

Stairs are measured by the superficial foot, the length of one step being taken by the breadth of a step and riser, increased by once the thickness of the former for a quantity, and this multiplied by the number of steps there may be of the same kind; that is, when the steps are flyers; for in winding steps the treads and risers are taken in separate dimensions, for greater accuracy. The thicknesses of the steps and risers are noted, as well as the mode in which they are worked; they have either rounded or moulded nosings, are housed into the string, or have returned nosings, the riser being mitred to the string or to cut brackets on the ends of the steps. Curtail ends to steps are numbered. I he frame-work or bearers on which the stairs rest is included with the stairs themselves. String-boards are taken according to their thickness and the quantity of work on them; the grooves or housings in them are numbered. The capping on a close string is taken by the run; but when the nosings of the steps are returned, the strings are said to be cut; and if there are any cut and mitred blocks, they are numbered. Stair skirting is taken as raking and scribed, and as straight, circular, ramped, or wreathed, by the foot superficial; wooden balusters are taken by the run, and the mortises or dovetails in which they are set are numbered; newels are taken by the run for the stuff and the fixing, and the turnings on them are numbered. Hand-rails are said to be merely rounded, or moulded; they are measured by the running foot; and a distinction is kept up between the straight, the circular, the ramps, the wreaths, and the scroll; nuts and screws in their joints are numbered.

All sorts of framing, whether it be fixed or hung—all linings above three inches in width—all sorts of ledged work, such as plain doors and shutters, partitions in lofts and stables, bracketing, cradling, &c.—must be measured superficially. All narrow linings, very narrow skirtings, staff beads, fillets, water trunks and spouts, legs, rails, and runners to dressers, groovings, flutings, reedings, cappings, &c. and any work on superficial quantities that does not pervade the whole, but is in itself peculiar, should be taken lineally, or by the running foot. Insulated parts, such as short, interrupted grooves, blocks, pateras, brackets, trusses, cantilevers, holes, mortises for articles taken lineally, mitres to cornices, heads and feet to flutes and reeds, &c. are numbered and charged at so much a piece. Ironmongery goods employed by the joiner are numbered under their different heads, and charged as fixed; that is, to the price of a lock is added a charge for the labour employed in fitting and fixing it, and whatever accessories it may have required which are not included in its own cost, such as screws, &c. to a rim or dead lock. To the price of hinges, however, only the cost of screws should be added, as the fixing of them is usually included in hanging the work to which they are attached.

The cost at which joiners’ work can be executed can only be determined by calculation and observation. The cost of the materials employed may be readily determined by dissecting a piece of work and reckoning its contents; but the labour depends on so many contingencies, that very accurate observation indeed is necessary to determine the quantity that may have been required to produce a certain result. In carpenters’ work, the material forms the principal part of the charge; but in joiners’ work the materials are for the most part of far less importance than the labour which has been expended on them. The stuff employed in a sash must be costly indeed to amount to as much as the labour of making the sash; whereas, in most doors, under ordinary circumstances, the materials may cost as much as the labour.

Sawyer. — The labour of the sawyer is applied to the division of large pieces of timber or logs into forms and sizes to suit the purposes of the carpenter and joiner. His working place is called a saw-pit, and his almost only important tool a pit-saw. A cross-cut saw, axes, dogs, files, compasses, lines, lamp-black, black-lead, chalk, and a rule, are all accessories which may be considered necessary to him.

Unlike most other artificers, the sawyer can do absolutely nothing alone: sawyers are therefore always in pairs; one of the two stands on the work, and the other in the pit under it. The log or piece of timber being carefully and firmly fixed on the pit, and lined for the cuts which are to be made in it, the top-man standing on it, [7:5:692]and the pit-man below or off from its end, a cut is commenced, the former holding the saw with his two hands by the handle above, and the other in the same manner by the box handle below. The attention or the top-man is directed to keeping the saw in the direction of and out of winding with the line to be cut upon, and that of the pit-man to cut down in a truly vertical line. 1he saw being correctly entered, very little more is required than steadiness of hand and eye in keeping it correctly on throughout the whole length. It is the custom to project so much of the log over the first transverse bearer as can be done without rendering it liable to vibrate or be insecure; and when all the cuts proposed are advanced up to that bearer, the end is slightly raised to allow the bearer to be passed out beyond the termination of the advanced cuts. The advantage of, or rather the necessity for, the movable handle at the lower end of the saw is now evident, the top-man removing the saw readily from cut to cut from above, his mate having merely to strike the wedge in the box one way or the other, to fix or loosen it.

It is absolutely necessary that the top-man should stand in such a manner on the log or piece operated on, that a line down the centre of his body shall fall exactly upon the line of the cut he is to work on, and be as exactly perpendicular to it and to the plane of the horizon. He must, therefore, when the cut is near the outer edge, be provided with a board or plank, one end of which may rest on something firm at a short distance from the log, and the other on or against it, to put the outer foot on, and so keep himself in such a position that he may always, and without constraint, see his saw out of winding, and so that a spectator standing on the fore end of the pit may see the saw an imaginary line passing down the centre of the workman’s body, and the line of the cut in exactly the same vertical plane. The labour of the top-sawyer should consist solely in lifting the saw up by the handle as high as his arms can carry it, and that of the pit-man in drawing it down with a slight pressure or tendency onward, sufficient to make it bite into the timber as much as Ins strength will enable him to make it cut away. The only assistance the pit-man should give in lifting the saw is in holding it back that the teeth may not drag against the cut in the ascent; and all the top-man should do in cutting downward is to keep the teeth steadily and firmly in contact with the part to be eroded. Good workmen may work with a narrower or closer set to their saw than bad ones can, though the wider or more open set saw is more liable to make bad work. It works more slowly and consumes more stuff than the close set; but it is not so likely to hang in the cut with the unnecessary pushing up of the pit-man and jerking down of the other, as if it were set more closely. A good top-man, nevertheless, is of much more importance, though he be badly mated, than the converse. Indeed the best possible pit-man could not work satisfactorily with a bad top-man, and therefore the latter is always considered the superior workman, and on him devolves the care of sharpening and setting the saw, &c. In the operations of the carpenter and joiner much depends on the manner in which the sawyers have performed their part. The best work on the part of the carpenter cannot retrieve the radical defects in his materials from bad sawing; and although the joiner need not allow his work to suffer, bad sawing causes him great loss of stuff and immense additional and otherwise unnecessary labour. Planks or boards, and scantlings, on coming from the sawpit, should be as straight and true in every particular, except mere smoothness of surface, as if they had been tried up on the joiner’s bench; and good workmen actually produce them so. Saw-mills, too, by the truth and beauty with which they operate, show the sawyer what may be effected; for though he can hardly hope to equal their effect, he may seek to approach it.

Sawyers’ work is valued at so much the hundred superficial feet; the sawing on a board or squared scantling being once its length, by a side and an edge, or half the amount of its four sides. In squared timber, however, it is generally valued at so much per load of fifty cubic feet, four cuts to the load, any cuts exceeding that number being paid for at so much per hundred feet; in this case the length of the cut by its depth gives the superficial quantity of sawing in it. Pieces again of determined and equal length and breadth, such as the deals and planks commonly used for joiners’work in this country, admitting of a regulated scale, the sawing that may be required in them is valued at so much the dozen cuts.

Modeller. — The modeller copies, in a solid material, the drawings of designs which may have been prepared for enrichments, in whatever material they are to be cast, whether in plaster, in metals, or in composition of any kind, for the plasterer, smith, or decorator. The model is made in a finely tempered and plastic clay, or in wax; and the modeller works with his fingers, assisted by a few ivory or bone tools for finishing off neatly and sharply, and for working in parts which he cannot reach with his fingers. He is generally the best workman who can do most towards producing the required forms with his fingers unassisted by artificial tools, as a greater degree of ease and freedom almost always results from the use of the hands alone. The model being completed, it is moulded, that is, moulds are made fitting it exactly in every part, and fitting exactly to each other at the edges, and in these, casts are made to any extent that may be required.

The modeller having some pretensions to be considered an artist rather than a mere artificer, he is for the most part paid according to his merits as such, rather than for so much time, according to the ordinary mode of determining the value of artificers’ works.

Carver and Gilder. — The carver is strictly an independent artist, whose business it is to cut ornaments and enrichments in solid and durable material, such as wood and stone, so that, like the modeller, he must be paid according to the taste and power he may exhibit in his works, rather than as a common artificer. Carving has, however, been in a great measure superseded by modelling and casting, so that the carver is hardly known in economic building except in connection with the gilder. Gilding may indeed be applied to castings as well as to carvings; but the former being, almost as a matter of course, less sharp and spirited in their flexures and details, as well as less firm in substance than the latter, castings can less bear to be further subdued by the application of foreign matters to their surfaces than carvings may.

Gilding is the application of gold leaf to surfaces, which require, however, to be previously prepared for its reception. The work is first primed with a solution of boiled linseed oil and carbonate of lead, and then covered with a fine glutinous composition called gold size, on which, when it is nearly dry, the gold leaf is laid in narrow slips with a fine brush, and pressed down with a piece of cotton wool held in the fingers. As the slips must be made to overlap each other slightly, to insure the complete covering of the whole surface, the loose edges will remain unattached; these are readily struck off with a large sable or camel-hair brush, fitted for the purpose; and the joints, if the work be dexterously executed, will be invisible. This is called oil gilding, and it is by far the best fitted for the enrichment of surfaces in architecture, because it is durable, and is easily cleaned, and does not destroy or derange the forms under it so much as burnished gilding does. This latter requires the work to be covered with [7:5:693]various laminae of gluten, plaster, and bole, which last is mixed with gold size, to procure the adhesion of the leaf. The most durable mode of gilding metals in common use is by amalgamation.

The surfaces generally operated on by the gilder are so diverse, that the real value of his work can be determined satisfactorily only by taking his time and the materials employed and consumed in executing a piece of work.

Plumber. — Lead, as the name imports, is the material in and with which the plumber operates. The previous preparation, casting and milling of lead into sheets, pipes, &c. and the composition and uses of solder, will be found described under the head Plumbery.

The principal operations of the plumber are directed to the covering of roofs and flats, laying gutters, covering hips, ridges, and valleys, fixing water trunks, making cisterns and reservoirs, and laying on the requisite pipes and cocks to them, fixing water-closet apparatus, setting up pumps, and applying indeed all the hydraulic machinery required in economic building. His tools are knives, chisels, and gouges for cutting and trimming, rasps or files and planes for fitting and jointing, a dressing and flatting tool for the purposes its name expresses, iron hammers and wooden mallets for driving and fixing, ladles in which to melt solder, grozing irons to assist in soldering, a handgrate or stove which may be conveniently moved from place to place, for melting solder and heating the grozing irons, a stock and bits for boring holes, and a rule, compasses, lines and chalk for setting out εmd marking, together with weighing apparatus, as the quantities of most of the materials used by the plumber must be either proved or determined by weight. A plumber is always attended by a labourer, who does the more laborious work of carrying the materials from place to place, helps to move them when they are under operation, melts the solder and heats the grozing irons, attends to hold the one or the other, as neither may be set down or put out of hand when in use, and assists in some of the minor and coarser operations. In boarding roofs, flats, and gutters for lead, clasp-nails or flooring brads should be used; and the first care of the plumber should be to punch them all in from an eighth to a quarter of an inch below the surface, and stop the holes carefully and completely with putty, or a chemical process will ensue on the slightest access of moisture if the iron heads of the nails come in contact with the lead, and the latter will, in the course of no long period, be completely perforated over every one of them. Neither should lead in surfaces of any extent be soldered, or in any manner fastened at the edges, without being turned up so as to make sufficient allowance for the expansion and contraction which it is constantly undergoing during the various changes in the temperature of the atmosphere. It may be taken, indeed, as a general rule,, that solder should be dispensed with as much as possible. Like glue to the joiner, it is indispensable in many cases; but like glue also, it is in common practice made to cover many defects, and much bad work, that ought not to exist.

Sheet lead, whether cast or milled, is supplied of various weight or thickness; and it is always described as of such a weight in pounds to the superficial foot. This varies from four to ten or twelve, so that the weight to the foot being ascertained, the whole weight of any quantity of the same thickness may be determined by admeasurement. There are very few purposes, indeed, in building, in which lead of less than six pounds to the foot should be used, and very few in which the weight need to exceed ten. For roofs, flats, and gutters, under ordinary circumstances, eight-pounds lead is a very fair and sufficient average; for hips and ridges, lead of six pounds to the foot is thick enough; and for flashings five-pound lead need not be objected to. Cast lead is to be pιeferred for the former purposes, because its surface is harder, and it is somewhat less susceptible of meteoric vicissitudes than milled; but the latter bends better, and, presenting a neater appearance, may be preferred for hips, ridges, flushings, &c. As the sheets are generally made of limited length and breadth, the cast being about sixteen or eighteen feet, and the milled from the latter dimension to twenty-five feet in length, and the one and the other seldom exceeding six feet wide, to avoid soldering, the lateral joints are made on rolls, and longitudinally in falls or drips. A roll is a piece of wood made about two inches thick and two or three inches wide, rounded on one edge, and fixed with that edge uppermost, so as to come a few inches within the width of a sheet of lead, that the edges may be turned up and folded round and over it, being lapped by, or lapping the similar edge of the adjoining sheet, (Fig. 37.) Lead sufficiently stout, dressed neatly and closely down to the boards under it, and over the rolls at its edges, will require no fastening of any kind, unless it lie on a very inclined plane, and have no stop below. Rolls occur for the most part in roofs and flats, and drips principally in gutters. The drip is formed in the first instance by the carpenter in laying the gutter boards according to an arrangement with the plumber. It is a difference made in the height of the gutter of about three inches, where one sheet terminates in length, and meets another in continuation. The end of the lower is turned up against the drip, and that of the upper is dressed down over it, so as effectually to prevent water from driving under it. Gutters should have a current of at least a quarter of an inch to the foot, and in flats it should not be much less; ends and sides which are against a wall should turn up against it from five to seven inches, according to the circumstances; and the turning up under the slates, tiles, or other roof covering, to a gutter, should be to the level of that against the wall at the least. The turning up against the wall should be covered by a flashing. This is a piece of lead let into one of the joints of the wall above the edge of the gutter lead, and dressed neatly down over, to prevent water from getting in behind it. (Fig· 36.) Lead on ridges and hips not being in sufficient masses to be secured by its own weight, must be secured by nails.

In making cisterns and reservoirs, unless they be cast, the sheets of lead must of necessity be joined by soldering; but the water they are intended to contain protects the lead from the frequent and sudden changes it is in the other more exposed situations subjected to.

Water trunks and pipes are made of a certain number of pounds weight to the yard in length, to every variety of bore or calibre that can be required. Water trunks or pipes are fitted with large case heads above, to receive the water from the gutter spouts, and with shoes to deliver the water below; they are fixed or attached to the walls of buildings with flanches of lead, which are secured by means of spike nails. Service and waste pipes to cisterns, &c. are generally supported and attached by means of iron holdfasts.

Plumbers’ work is for the most part estimated by the hundredweight of a hundred and twelve pounds, though there are of course many things which must be taken in detail, by the pound weight, by number, and even by size. It has been already shown in what manner the quantity of lead consumed may be determined, whether it be in sheets or in pipes; the weight per superficial foot of the one, and per lineal foot or yard of the other, being known, and it is always ascertainable, the dimensions of the various parts or portions of the work readily give the total amount in hundredweights or tons. The waste of lead [7:5:694]in working is very trifling, as cuttings all go to the melting pot again with little or no loss but that of refounding or casting; and even old lead is taken by the lead merchant in exchange for new, at a very trifling allowance for tare and the cost of rc-working. Water closet apparatus, pumps, cocks, bosses, ferules, washers, valves, balls, grates, traps, funnels, &c. can all readily be counted and noted according to their sizes and peculiarities; and so may the various requisite joints in pipes, and attachments of cocks, &c. to the pipes, which must also be taken in addition to the articles themselves. The prices of all these goods, from the sheets of lead and the pipes, to the smallest articles used by the plumber, may be ascertained from the wholesale merchants and manufacturers; an addition of thirty per cent, to these prime costs will, under ordinary circumstances, afford the builder or tradesman an ample profit, and payment, with sufficient profit on them also, for labour, solder, and nails, excepting cost of carriage, and any other contingent expense, which must be added to the gross. The materials may, however, be taken with a recognized profit added to the prime costs and the actual labour expended; and solder and nails worked up maybe reckoned from observation, or account kept of the workmen’s time, &c.

These things are mentioned more particularly, because a nefarious custom has obtained in this country, and is still allowed to a very great extent, by which the plumber is permitted to take not only an extortionate profit on his goods, but actually to charge twice for labour and the accessories. There is nothing more common than to find in a plumber’s account a charge for lead (meaning sheet-lead) and labour, at so much per hundredweight,—charges for pipe of a certain bore or diameter at so much per foot,—for so many joints in pipe of such a size,—that is, for the labour and solder consumed and expended in making them,—and so on through all sorts of things, the account winding up at length, or being interspersed from time to time, with so many pounds or hundredweights of solder, and so many days’ work of plumber and labourer I The now prevalent custom of artificers’ work being done by general builders by tender and contract, has considerably lessened the injury to the public from this abuse, and proved it to be really so by the moderate profits the same men will content themselves with if they make a tender, who would persist in charging at the old rate if they were instructed to do the work without being bound by a contract. Such too is the effect of custom on the courts of justice in England, that the abuse referred to has been protected by them, and probably would be so still, because it was the custom and had been allowed!

Smith and Founder. — The goods supplied by the smith are charged by the pound according to the quantity of labour on them, and the founder has generally an average charge for iron castings at so much per hundredweight or per ton. The working up or fitting and fixing of iron-work devolves for the most part on the carpenter in whose favour it is taken, generally however, in combination with some of his own peculiar works.

Glazier. — The business of the glazier may be confined to the mere fitting and setting of glass; even the cutting of the plates up into squares being generally an independent art, requiring a degree of tact and judgment not necessarily possessed by the building artificer. (See the articles Glass, Manufacture of, and Glass-Cutting.) The glazier is supplied with a diamond cutting tool, laths or straight-edges of various lengths, a square, a glazing-knife, a hacking-knife, hammer, duster, sash-tool, and rule; and his materials are simply glass, putty, and priming or paint.

The glass is supplied by the glass-cutter in squares or panes, of the sizes and qualities required for the particular work to be executed. The putty is made by the glazier himself or by a labourer, of fine clean powdered chalk or whitening, and linseed oil, well mixed and combined, and kneaded to the consistence of dough. No more putty should be made at once than is likely to be worked up in the course of a day, as, the oil drying out, it becomes hard and partially set, and is therefore less available for its purposes. Priming is a thin solution of white, with a little red, lead in linseed oil. When the sashes come to the glazier from the joiner, they have been fitted into their places, and only require to be glazed before they may be permanently set or hung. Supposing that no preliminary process is required, such as stopping (the result of bad joiner’s work) and knotting (and knotty stuff should not be admitted in sashes), the sashes require to be primed. The priming is laid on every part of the sash except the outer edges of the styles and of the bottom and top rails, with the sash tool or painting brush, that is, if the sashes are intended to be painted; for if not, the rebates only must be primed. The object of this is to prepare the material of which the sash is composed for the reception of the putty, which would not otherwise attach itself so readily as it does after this preparation. The priming being sufficiently dry, the workman cuts the panes of glass down into their places, making every one fall readily into the rebates without binding in any part; indeed the glass should fit so nicely as not to touch the wood with its edges any where, and yet hardly allow a fine point to pass between it and the sash-bar or rebate, the object being to encase it completely in putty, and yet that the putty should not be in greater quantity than is absolutely necessary. The glass being fitted or cut down, the workman takes the glazing-knife in his right hand, and a lump of putty in the palm of his left, the sash being laid on its face, that is, with the rebates upward, before him; with the knife he lays a complete bedding of putty on the returning narrow stops of the rebates, all round to every pane. This being done, the panes of glass are put in on it as they have been fitted, and every one is carefully rubbed down with the fingers, forcing the putty out below and around the edges of the glass, until they are nearly brought into contact with the wood or other material of the sash. The rebates are then filled in with putty behind, the mass forming exactly a right-angled triangle, its base being the extent of the stop of the rebate, and its perpendicular the depth from the glass to the outer edge of the rebate; the third side or hypothenuse is neatly smoothed off, and the sash being then turned on its edge and held uprightly by the left hand, the protruded putty of the bedding is struck off with the knife, and the section of it neatly drawn. The sashes are now deposited on their faces, to allow the putty to set, and then they may be hung and painted. To very large squares, and to plate-glass, small tacks or spuds are used; but it is much better to do without them if prudence will permit it.

Lead-work, as it is termed, is the glazing of frames rather than of sashes with small squares or quarries of glass, which are held together by reticulations of lead; and these are secured to stout metal bars, which are fixed to the window frames. The leaden reticulating bars are grooved on their edges to receive the quarries, and are tied by means of leaden ribands or wires to the saddle bars, which, in their turn, are affixed to the stouter bars before mentioned, if the bay or frame be so large as to require both.

Glazing is valued by the superficial foot, the squares or panes being measured between the rebates in which they are set. The value of plate-glass is very much affected by the sizes of the panes, every additional inch in extent of surface adding materially to the cost of production o the whole piece or plate; it must therefore be carefully [7:5:695]noted according to its magnitude. Common window glass is divided into best, seconds, and thirds, and is charged higher as the panes increase in size, because for large panes the table cuts to waste more than in cutting small ones. In ordinary practice, panes containing two superficial feet and under are classed together; then from two feet to two feet six inches, and so on; and according to the quality of the article. Flatting, bending, grinding, staining, &c. are all subjects of separate and independent charge.

Lead lights are taken by the superficies generally of a hundred feet, lead and glass being included in the same charge, which, however, depends on the size of the quarries. Stay and saddle bars are taken separately, according to their number and magnitude.

Painter. — The processes of economical painting will be found described in an article under the head Painting. The real object of painting is to protect wood, metals, and stuccoes from being readily acted upon by the atmosphere, by covering their surfaces with a material which is capable of resisting it. A continued succession of moisture and dryness, and of heat and cold, soon effects the decomposition of woods, causes oxidation in most of the metals used for economical purposes, and destroys the generality of stuccoes if their surfaces be exposed nakedly to it. A solution of ceruse or white lead in linseed oil spread over them prevents these injuries in a great measure, and for a considerable period of time; and as the application of such an unction can be repeated without much trouble or expense as often as occasion may require, it may be said to furnish a protection against the cited contingencies. In addition to the utility of painting, it is also available as an ornament, by bringing disagreeably or diversely coloured surfaces to a pleasing and uniform tint, or by diversifying a disagreeable monotony of tint, to suit the taste and fancy; and this is done in a great measure by the addition of various pigments to the solution before mentioned.

The painter works with hog’s bristle brushes of various sizes, which, with the exception of pots to hold his colours, a grinding stone and grinder or muller for grinding or triturating them, a pallet and a pallet knife, are almost his only implements. His materials are comparatively few also; but for some purposes these require a great variety of ingredients, the preparation and combination of which, however, devolves principally on the manufacturer or colourman, and not on the painter himself.

The first thing the workman has to attend to in painting wood-work, is to prepare its surface for the reception of paint, by counteracting the effect of any thing that may tend to prevent it from becoming identified with the material. Thus, in painting pine woods of any kind, the resin contained in the knots which appear on the surface must be neutralized, or a blemish will appear in the finished work over every resinous part. Inequalities or unevennesses of surface, too, must be reduced with sand-paper or pumice-stone, or made up with putty. The necessary process for killing knots, just referred to, will generally leave a film, which must be rubbed down; and the heads of nails and brads having been punched in, will present indentations, which should be stopped. In painting or laying on the colour, the brush must be constantly at right angles to the face of the work, only the ends of the hairs, in fact, touching it, for in this manner the paint is at the same time forced into the pores of the wood and distributed equally over the surface; for if the brush be held obliquely to the work, it will leave the paint in thick masses wherever it is first applied after being dipped for a fresh supply into the pot, and the surface will be daubed but not painted. Painting, when properly executed, will not present a shining, smooth, and glossy appearance, as if it formed a film or skin, but will show a fine and regular grain, as if the surface were natural, or had received a mere stain without destroying the original texture. Imitative grainings, however, and the varnishes which are intended to protect them, and make them bear out, necessarily produce a new and artificial texture; and for this reason they are all to a greater or less extent disagreeable, how well soever the imitations may be effected.

As it must be presumed that all the wood submitted to the operations of the painter, which has passed through the hands of the joiner, was already well seasoned and properly dry, it is only necessary to say generally, that work should be free from moisture of any and every kind before paint is applied to it, or it will at the least prove useless, and probably injurious rather than beneficial. This remark applies alike to wood and to plastered work, both internal and external; that is, whether they be subjected to the more violent changes of the weather or not. Dampness or moisture in woods, and stopped in or covered up with paint, will, under ordinary circumstances, tend to their destruction; and in stuccoes it will spoil the paint, and most probably injure the plastering itself too.

Painters’ work, on extended surfaces, is valued by the yard superficial, according to the number of coats, or the number of times the paint has been applied to the surface, and to the manner in which, and matter with which, it is finished. On skirtings, surbases, narrow cornices, reveals, single mouldings, sills, string courses, &c. it is measured by the foot run; sash-frames and the squares or panes of sashes are numbered, the latter by the dozen; and so are other things which do not readily admit of being measured. Rich cornices, expensive imitations, &c. are taken by the foot superficial; and preparations before the work can be commenced are most fairly charged for by the time they occupy and the materials they consume. The work is taken as one, two, three, four, or more times in oil, common colour; or so many times finished of a certain colour that is more expensive than what is called common; or as so many times, and flatted of such a colour, the flatting being an extra coat; or as painted so many times, and grained and varnished. Common colours are those which are produced by the addition of lamp-black, red-lead, or any of the common ochres to white-lead and oil; blues, greens, rich reds, pinks, and yellows, &c. being more costly, are taken as such. Unflatted white is a common colour; flatted, it classes with the rich colours. If the same surface be painted of two different tints, it is said to be in party colours, and an allowance is made in the price for the additional trouble of finishing in that manner. Carved mouldings and other enrichments having to be picked in with a pencil or small brush, that the quirks, &c. be not choked up, must be taken extra, by the run or by number; and if the picking in be in party colours, the labour is necessarily greater than if the work be plain.

What is termed decorating, is divided between the painter and the paper-hanger. Decorations must necessarily depend upon the taste and skill required or employed in producing them; and the remuneration must also of course be contingent. Decorative papers are paid for by the piece or yard, á piece being made in this country twelve yards long and twenty inches wide, and the hanging is charged at so much the piece. Borders are charged by the yard for the material, and by the dozen for hanging. Sizing and otherwise preparing the walls are considered extra to the charges for hanging. (π. h.) [7:5:696]