Parts of a Board

Wood has a grain. Grain runs along the length of a board. If you run down the length with your hand, you will find that it feels smooth to rub it in one direction, and rougher to rub it in the other, like when you rub a shark. The smooth direction is with the grain, while the rough direction is against the grain. Moving perpendicularly to the grain is known as cross grain.

Figure 8-1: The parts of a wooden board.

Wood is stronger along the grain than it is across the grain. This is extremely noticeable if you've ever split firewood with an ax. The ax readily chops the wood in one direction, even with a minimum of force. Try to chop it perpendicularly, however, and you will merely succeed in putting a dent in it.

With a carpentry project, you want to break it down to all the individual pieces of wood and how they will all attach together. First we will look at how to turn wood boards and sheet goods into those individual pieces; this includes cutting the pieces to the right length and width, making them thinner or thicker along the edge, cutting them at an angle, at a curve, cutting irregular shapes, and turning them. If you have rough lumber or irregularly shaped pieces of wood, we will see how to turn that into wood boards later in the chapter.

Figure 8-2: On this chair built for the Santa Fe Opera, you can see how the frame is constructed from a number of individual pieces of wood. A is a regular board cut to length and width. B is two boards glued together, with a curve cut out of the end. C is two boards glued together and turned on the lathe.

Cutting Wood to Length and Width

Cutting a board along the grain is called ripping. You rip a board to get it to a specific width. The quickest and most accurate way to rip a board to width in most prop shops is with the table saw.

Cutting a board perpendicularly to the grain is called a crosscut. Most of the time in a prop shop, you would use a miter saw, a chop saw, or a radial arm saw to crosscut a board to the length you need. A saw blade for ripping is different from a saw blade for crosscutting in the number of teeth, and how the teeth are angled and shaped. However, you can get combination blades, which allow you to crosscut on the table saw as well.

A portable circular saw (or “circ saw”) is useful for ripping or crosscutting, particularly when a board is too unwieldy or large to maneuver on your stationary machines. You can mark a line along where you want to cut and freehand, or attach a straight guide or rail that the saw can follow along for greater accuracy.

For larger sheet goods, a panel saw can be useful for crosscutting. A panel saw holds the board upright, and a circular saw on a track moves to make the cut. You do not have to move the board itself, which is helpful when using heavy sheet goods. A panel saw can also rip boards by rotating the saw 90°, and pushing the wood through it.

Figure 8-3: A stop block on a miter saw allows you to repeatedly cut pieces to the same length without having to measure and mark each one.

Figure 8-4: This solid wood tabletop was too wide to make from a single board, so several planks of poplar were glued along their edges. While edge-to-edge joints in lumber are the strongest glue joints and require no reinforcement, many props carpenters prefer to use biscuits, dowels, pocket hole screws, or other means to line the boards up more precisely. The clamps should be placed evenly along the edge. A clamp may cause the boards to bow as they dry, so alternate your clamps along the top and the bottom to ensure no bowing occurs. For this tabletop, I also clamped a piece of steel box tube along the edge to help keep it flat while drying. The Last Cargo Cult, the Public Theater, 2009. Scenic design by Peter Ksander.

You can also cut a board with a handsaw. Like circular saw blades, handsaws come with rip, crosscut, or combination blades. While ripping a long board to width by hand can be quite a chore, crosscutting a small piece by hand can sometimes be quicker than looking for an outlet, plugging an electric saw in, making the cut, then unplugging and rolling the cord back up.

The Table Saw

The table saw is one of the most common machines found in a prop shop, and is one of the most useful and versatile as well. Statistically, the table saw is also the most dangerous, so it is worthwhile to describe its safe usage.

Figure 8-5: Though table saws can have major variations, most share some basic features seen in this photograph. The blade sticks up through a “throat plate.” An adjustable rip fence allows you to set the width of the board you wish to rip and keeps the material parallel to the blade as you feed it through. The two channels on either side of the blade are miter tracks, which let you run a miter gauge to make perpendicular cuts (or cuts at other angles.) Never use the miter gauge and rip fence at the same time. You can find or make many other jigs that use the miter tracks. Below the table, in the front is a wheel that controls the height of the blade. The wheel on the left side controls the angle the blade is tilted at; on most table saws, you can tilt it anywhere from 0° to 45°—sometimes more. This saw also has a blade guard that doubles as a dust collector (you can see it in the corner—it is painted yellow and pushed aside for clarity in this photograph).

Be sure the rip fence is locked securely in place and is exactly parallel to the blade before making the cut. Hold the material firmly against the fence at the point right before it enters the blade; never push it to the side at a point past the blade. Only run a straight edge along a rip fence; a wavy or uneven edge will cause the material to shift back and forth as it runs along the rip fence. If the material does not move perfectly straight through the blade, it can suddenly catch on the blade, and the force will shoot the material back at you.

To avoid injury in the case of an inevitable kickback, position yourself to the side of the wood you are pushing through. Should the wood shoot backward, it will fly past you rather than slamming into your stomach or groin (be sure no one is working behind you).

The speed of the table saw blade may also lift the material up as it moves through the blade, so keep a hand firmly pressing down on the material as well. When using the miter track, make sure the wood is secure in whatever accessory you are moving it with.

Kickback may happen because the wood tries to squeeze itself back together as you cut it, and it pinches the blade. Wood can be under a lot of internal stress, which is relieved as you cut it (this happens particularly often with cheap construction lumber like two by fours). You will hear the blade slow down and start to whine as this happens; you may also see the kerf of the wood closing up as it exits the blade. When this happens, stop your cut; do not back the wood out. Turn the machine off while keeping one hand firmly on the material to keep it from going anywhere. Wait until the blade has completely stopped spinning before taking your hands off or attempting to remove the wood. Some machines have a large off switch that can be easily pressed with your knee.

A riving knife is a useful safety feature on some table saws. It is a thin finger of metal that rises up just past the blade and keeps the wood from closing back onto the blade. Because a riving knife is mounted to the same part of the table saw as the blade, it travels with it when you change the height or the angle. It does not need to be removed for crosscuts or blind cuts, and so should be left on at all times.

The other danger of a table saw is contact with the blade. For most cuts, the blade should not stick more than ¼″ (6 mm) above the top of the material you are cutting. The throat plate (the typically red or orange oval of metal that surrounds the blade) also serves as a guide to keeping your fingers away from the blade; your fingers should never enter the throat plate zone while the blade is spinning. If you need to handle the wood within the throat plate zone, use a push stick. Feather boards are also handy attachments for keeping the wood firmly in place close to the blade. Never cross your arms over the blade while it is spinning. If you want to grab the cutoff piece of wood on the left of the blade, use your left hand, because your right hand would have to cross the blade to get it. I did just that in high school, and my right hand was not high enough; in a fraction of a second, the blade nicked my thumb and I could see straight down to the bone. Never push the wood with your hands directly behind the blade; should you slip, you can push your fingers right into the blade. Never pull the wood from the other side. It is sometimes necessary to enlist the help of another to “catch” the wood as it comes off the end of the table saw, particularly for larger pieces. The helper should not pull, push, or otherwise manipulate the wood. They need to support the wood as lightly as possible.

Most modern table saws have blade guards, which keep anything directly over the blade from coming into contact with it. This still does not protect your hands if you reach in from the sides. You should keep all guards and safety features in place at all times. If, for some reason, you have to perform an operation that requires removing one of the safety items, be sure to put it back on as soon as you are finished. Before doing that, though, ask yourself if you really need to remove the safety features, or if you can perform the task in another manner.

Some larger saws now come with “flesh detection” technology. If a finger comes into contact with the blade, the saw will stop instantly before the skin is even broken. Most such devices require replacing the whole mechanism once it is activated, which can cost over a hundred dollars. While this is a hefty cost, it is far cheaper than having to replace a finger. Most will let you temporarily bypass the flesh detection if you are cutting wet wood or other materials that can accidentally set it off.

Making Wood Thinner or Thicker

Feeding a board through a planer shaves a tiny amount off the top (usually between 1/16″ to 3/32″ or 5 mm to 1.5 mm). A few passes through a planer can get a whole board to a precise and consistent thickness, or trim several boards to an equal thickness. A planer creates a lot of dust and wood chips, so hook it up to a dust collector whenever possible.

You can also plane a board by hand, though this takes a lot more time and labor, especially to make a truly flat board. Using a hand planer for more than just the occasional small piece is not realistic with the deadlines of your typical prop shop.

Figure 8-6: Because gluing large boards together uses a lot of clamps, multiple boards can be stacked on top of each other to share clamps.

If you want to get two thin boards out of a single thick one, you may be able to resaw it. Resawing is where you turn the board on its edge and cut it along its thickness. This is typically done on a large band saw (called, coincidentally, a resaw) with a very wide blade. If your board is not too wide, you can run it through a regular band saw. If your board is especially narrow, you can even resaw it on your table saw, though this is particularly dangerous; raising the blade all the way leaves a lot of exposed teeth and makes the board more susceptible to binding. Running the board through on its edge also makes it harder to balance and keep upright.

If you need pieces that are thicker than the lumber you have, you can glue them together face to face. Find out more about gluing later in this chapter.

Cutting at an Angle

You will occasionally need pieces cut at an angle, rather than just parallel or perpendicular to other surfaces. A miter box allows you to cut specific angles (usually 45° and 90°) with a handsaw. A miter saw lets you set the angle to anything within a whole range. Miter saws can use a handsaw or be electrically powered (also called a chop saw or drop saw). A compound miter saw will also allow you to cut a bevel into your board.

To cut a long edge at an angle (sometimes known as a taper), you can either use a power tool like a circular saw or jigsaw with a rail following that angle, or use a special taper jig (constructed or purchased) with a table or band saw.

To cut an edge or end at an angle to the face of a board (known as a bevel), many machines allow you to adjust either the blade or the table within a range of angles; on power tools, the shoe (sometimes called the “soleplate”) can  be adjusted. The shoe is the metal plate on the bottom of a tool that is placed on the material being cut. Routers, router tables, and shapers can also be equipped with angled bits to cut specific angles.

You can, of course, employ any number of hand tools, such as saws, chisels, and planes, to achieve the same results, albeit more slowly.

Cutting Curves and Irregular Shapes

For boards and sheet goods, you have a number of options for cutting curved or irregular-shaped profiles. The band saw is the most popular workhouse for these cuts, while a scroll saw is employed for finer and more intricate details. The jigsaw is a useful powered hand tool; a reciprocating saw can be used too, though it is harder to control with precision. To cut by hand, carpenters find a coping saw or fretsaw to be most useful.

For shaping beyond flat or angled curves, props carpenters may employ belt sanders (hand or stationary), as well as rasps and files for more controlled shaping. Grinders with sanding disks and rotary tools (Dremels) can remove a lot of wood quickly as well.

For adding more controlled edge profiles to a piece of wood, a router is often employed. Round-overs, bull noses, chamfers, and all sorts of molding profiles can be cut into an edge of a wood with this versatile tool. Information on more complicated shaping and carving can be found in Chapter 13.

Figure 8-7 and 8-8: A band saw can cut curves and irregular shapes out of a sheet of wood. The minimum radius that can be cut is determined by the width of the blade. For tighter curves, you can make cuts from the edge to your pencil line, so as you cut, the offcuts free themselves and your blade has room to maneuver.

Figure 8-9: A jigsaw is like a hand version of the band saw. Use it when you can't fit your material on the band saw, or when you need to cut interior shapes out. When cutting an interior shape, drill a hole in the off-cut section so you can fit the jigsaw blade inside.

Figure 8-10: David Levine uses a router in a handmade jig to cut the channels in the design on the back of this chair. Tea: A Mirror of Soul, Santa Fe Opera, 2007. Scenic Design by Rumi Matsui.

Sometimes you don't want to cut a curve from a solid chunk of wood; you want to bend the entire piece of wood. Thin sheets of wood can take a gentle curve. For more severe curves, wood can be steamed, which makes it temporarily more flexible.

Figure 8-11 and 8-12: The three raised details circling the center of this bar unit were created by laminating seven layers of lauan and wiggle wood together. The lauan was thin enough to bend around the gentle curve of the front, while the wiggle wood was needed to make the sharper curves on the ends. Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them, the Public Theater, 2009. Scenic design by David Korins.

Figure 8-13 and 8-14: This bar had rounded corners that were made by kerfing a long strip of plywood. From the outside, the grain is uninterrupted along the whole length, which is not the case if you cut the curve from a giant block of wood.

You can buy sheets of bending plywood (also called “wiggle wood” or many other names described later in this chapter). You can also kerf a sheet or board of wood. This involves cutting parallel grooves nearly all the way through the wood along the surface that needs to curve. You may also purchase sheets of lumber that are already kerfed.

Whether using thin sheets, bending/wiggle boards, or kerfed pieces, you also need a way to hold the curve. The quickest and most common way is to cut formers, which follow the path of the curve you wish to create. Usually you cut a former for the top and the bottom, though for larger pieces you may wish to have one or two in the middle as well. You connect the formers with a series of stringers, or boards. The stringers will also give you additional points along the path of the curve to glue and/or fasten your curved board to.

Another way to hold a curve is to laminate (glue together the faces of) several pieces of thin board together. When you laminate two or more sheets of wood together while bent in a curve, they will maintain at least some of the shape of that curve after the glue dries and the supports are removed. The more sheets you laminate together, the more rigid the curve will be.

Figure 8-15: Each layer of this giant “cake” was made by cutting an identical circular former out of plywood for the top and bottom. The formers are connected with stringers that are flush against the outside to provide additional places to staple the bending ply to.

Figure 8-16: The interior curves along the spine of this “S” were too severe to make with the same wiggle wood I used for the exterior curves. I soaked and then laminated four layers of cardboard to achieve the bend.

Turning

A lathe is used to create pieces with axial symmetry. Objects with axial symmetry have a top and a bottom, but no front, back, or sides. No matter which way you rotate it along the central axis, the outline remains the same. A lathe spins a piece of wood, and the artisan uses a cutting tool to cut or scrape away the wood, creating a surface in which all the wood along the circumference is at the same distance from the center.

Making a piece on a lathe is called turning. Lathes can be used to construct all manner of furniture legs, candlesticks, bowls, gun and cannon barrels, baseball bats, and more, so their use in a prop shop is necessary to replicate many of these items. You can attempt to shape these pieces without a lathe, but achieving perfect axial symmetry is incredibly difficult. Many lathes can also be employed to turn pieces of dense foam.

Figure 8-17: Lathes use specific lathe tools with various edges to cut the wood as it spins along its axis. A tool rest braces the tool as it is manipulated by hand.

Figure 8-18: A lathe duplicator allows you to cut a profile and follow it to turn identical props out of multiple pieces of material.

Joinery

The glue used most often in carpentry is PVA. “Wood glue” or “carpenter's glue” is a type of PVA with working properties that make it suitable for woodworking. Some old-school carpenters still prefer to use animal hide glue, which needs to be heated in a double boiler. This is often best left for repairing joints that have been previously glued with hide glue. For convenience's sake, you can find hide glue in bottled form at woodworking supply stores.

Unlike other materials, when using PVA glue on wood and lumber products, you want smooth surfaces in the joint rather than surfaces roughed up with sandpaper. Sand the joint surfaces to 200-grit or higher to get the smoothest and tightest fit you can. PVA glue shrinks as it dries and will pull away from one or both surfaces unless you keep the two pieces clamped. Keep your wood joints clamped for a minimum of twenty minutes; more time will not hurt the joint. Clamp firmly, but not tightly; the wood should not be crushed or deformed under the clamps. While the clamps can be removed after twenty to thirty minutes, the glue still needs twenty-four hours to set. You can continue working on the piece, but do not place the joints under stress until the glue is fully set.

In an optimum glue joint, the PVA is applied to both sides of the joint, though for props, applying glue to one side is often adequate. Spread it out evenly with a cheap paintbrush, roller, or squeegee. Let it soak in for a few seconds, then clamp the pieces together. Ensure that you have even pressure along the entire glue joint. You may even use weights as clamps, especially for larger pieces that cannot be clamped in the middle. You should see a bit of glue being squeezed out of the joint as you clamp. If not, you have not used enough glue. If you use too much glue, it will squeeze out and drip down the wood. Besides making a mess and wasting glue, the glue will soak into the wood and prevent wood stain from properly sticking. If this surface is hidden or being painted, a few drops here and there will not hurt anyone; better too much glue than too little.

When clamping two pieces together, the glue may cause the pieces to slide around and become misaligned. It can be helpful to line the pieces up first, then tack a few nails in strategic locations to keep the pieces from shifting as you tighten the clamps. If you are gluing together several pieces to make a larger piece, you can keep the pieces a little large at this point, and cut them to the proper length and width after they have been glued together.

If your prop will spend significant time underwater (I'm talking about boatbuilding, not using furniture in outdoor theatre. A little rain, or even a lot of rain, will not soften PVA), then you may wish to use a resin instead. Carpenters prefer either epoxy resin or urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin. UF glue is especially helpful for laminating thin sheets or veneers because it is thin and has a long working time. Contact cements are sometimes used when applying laminates or veneers, though their downside is that once the two sides touch, they cannot be repositioned. Both UF glue and contact cements are potential carcinogens and require proper ventilation and respiratory protection. Green glue (3M Fastbond 30-NF) is sometimes used as a less toxic alternative.

Cyanoacrylate (super glue) is useful for attaching small wooden decorations to props, or for creating nonstructural props out of tiny pieces of wood. However, it becomes far more expensive than wood glue when used in the quantities needed for furniture building.

Joinery is the range of methods for attaching two or more pieces of wood together. Joinery is a subject that can fill many other books. In prop making, we rarely have the luxury of time to lay out and cut more traditional joints, and since we are not creating pieces for permanent enjoyment, we only need to know a few joints to begin with.

Joints can also help with construction by giving shoulders and edges to make lining the pieces up foolproof, or to hold a piece together before gluing. These shoulders and edges may also mean that for the joint to fail, the wood itself needs to break rather than just the dried glue or fastener.

Figure 8-19: Joints where end grain meets end grain are the weakest and require reinforcement in addition to just glue.

Figure 8-20: Joints where end grain meets long grain are in the middle, and usually require more than just glue to hold together.

The workhorse of traditional Western furniture makers is the mortise and tenon, which provides one of the strongest joints possible. A mortise is a square hole that runs part of the way through one piece, while the tenon is a square projection extending from the end of the other piece. Cutting a square hole requires either a specialized mortising machine, or a mortising attachment for your drill press. You can also use a regular bit in your drill press as well as a router or shaper and then square off the ends by hand with a chisel. It does not matter how clean or straight the bottom of the mortise is; traditional woodworkers actually prefer to leave a gap so the tenon has room to expand and contract with humidity.

Figure 8-21 to 8-23: Joints where long grain meets long grain are strongest whether edge to edge, face to face, or edge to face. These joints can be held together solely with glue.

As the mortise and tenon joint requires some specialized tools and setup and careful planning, it is usually reserved for joints that need to withstand a lot of force and for shops that can devote the time and care to achieve these kinds of joints.

You can achieve some simple but strong joints with the tools you have already been using for woodworking. Half laps, halved joints, and bridles can be cut on the band saw, the table saw, with a router, or by hand. Halved joints give a lot of strength to two pieces that cross each other in the same plane. Bridles, especially tee bridles, not only give a lot of good gluing surface to a joint, but their shape helps lock the two pieces in location.

Figure 8-24: A mortise and tenon joint.

Figure 8-25: A half lap joint.

Figure 8-26: A tee bridle joint.

Grooves, Dados, and Rabbets

Many joints utilize a straight slot or channel cut in one or both pieces of wood being joined. Depending on the direction, length, and position of this cut, it can have one of several different names.

If the slot runs parallel along the grain, it is known as a groove. If it runs perpendicularly across the grain, it is known as a dado (or, alternatively as either a housing or a trench). If it is located on the edge or the end (so that it creates an “L” shape), then it is a rabbet. If it runs all the way from one side to the other, it is a through groove, dado, or rabbet. Otherwise it is stopped. You can combine any of these terms, so you may have a “stopped dado,” or a “through edge rabbet.”

Grooves and edge rabbets are easily cut on the table saw by dropping the blade height so it doesn't cut through the whole thickness of the board. A dado or end rabbet can also be cut on the table saw using a crosscut sled or miter gauge (never use a sled or miter gauge in combination with your table saw's fence, as it will cause kickback. Crosscutting with a table saw in general is much more dangerous than ripping, so proceed with caution).

Figure 8-27: Illustrating the differences between dados, rabbets, and grooves.

You can also cut slots with a radial arm saw if your shop still has one; most shops have replaced these with miter saws, which are unable to cut slots with any accuracy. A router, router table, or shaper with a straight bit are the other tools and machines that are helpful in making these cuts. For boards that are not too wide, it is even possible to turn the board on end and make the cuts with a band saw; these may not be as accurate or smooth as with the previous tools I mentioned, though a well-maintained band saw and an accurate fence or other jig can get it close.

Making stopped, as opposed to through, grooves, dados, or rabbets with power tools and machines will leave a rounded edge; for a truly square end, you need to finish it off by hand with a chisel. You can, as with anything in this chapter, use hand tools (saws, chisels, and/or special planes) for the whole process of cutting slots and channels, but in props, we seldom have the time.

Figure 8-28: Cutting grooves on a table saw with a miter gauge that runs in the miter track. There is a stop block attached to the rail so the grooves can be cut in the same spot in multiple pieces of wood, but notice how the stop block does not extend past where the wood starts to come into contact with the blade; if it did (or if you used the table saw's fence as a stop block), you would risk kickback.

Mechanical Fasteners

Nails and staples are needed to strengthen glue joints involving the end of a board. Without glue, nails and staples will eventually come loose. Screws provide a stronger bond and are less likely to come loose. Screws with glue provide a very strong bond, while screws without glue give a strong but removable joint, so you can take your prop apart for transport or to reuse materials after the production.

Figure 8-29: Screwing directly into wood can cause it to split, especially near the end (left). A pilot hole with a countersunk hole (center) will let you drive a screw in without splitting (right).

Nuts and bolts can be used to make temporary joints as well, such as when you wish to make a “knockdown” joint so a prop can be taken apart into smaller pieces for easier transport, or if you want to attach something like a caster, which can be removed after the production and returned to your stock. Nuts and bolts are also useful for making attachments that will undergo enough stress to pull a screw right out of the wood. Find out more about mechanical fasteners in Chapter 5.

Figure 8-30: Countersunk screws can be hidden with wood putty.

Figure 8-31 to 8-33: Pocket holes allow strong joints with screws that can be hidden from view. A jig (either homemade or one of many commercially available ones) is used to drill a hole at an angle (usually about 15°) through the face of one board toward the end. When a screw is driven into that hole, it comes out of the end and into the piece of wood next to it. It provides a much stronger connection than driving a screw through that second piece of wood into the end of the first, and can often be used without glue. It is also useful when attaching one end to another end or edge, such as in frames. The screws can be hidden, but you can still have easy access to take the joint apart.

Figure 8-34: A biscuit joiner cuts a semicircular slot into the edge of a board. A football-shaped biscuit slides into these slots to join two pieces of wood together along their edge. Though the majority of prop shops that use biscuits will employ a handheld biscuit joiner, shops dedicated to wooden furniture construction may opt for a larger tabletop biscuit-joining machine.

Reinforcing Joints

A spline is a thin piece of wood, plywood, Masonite, or other material inserted between two pieces of wood being joined.

A biscuit joiner (or plate joiner) is a specialized machine that cuts slots to hold a biscuit, which is an ovular type of spline made from highly compressed wood that expands from the glue which is applied.

Dowels

In traditional furniture making, dowels are used to strengthen joints where screws or other fasteners will detract from the visual appeal. With the right tools and setup, dowels can be a very fast method of making joints, and so are very useful to the props artisan. You can buy pre-made dowels; these typically have rounded ends to ease insertion, and ridges along the side that allow the glue to squeeze out as they are pushed into the hole. The tricky part of making dowels is ensuring that the holes are lined up and run in a straight line. Commercial jigs exist that aid this; otherwise you need to be extremely precise with your measuring and marking.

Figure 8-35: When two pieces of wood need to be joined that are too thin for glue to be applied or hold mechanical fasteners, a glue block may be added to strengthen the joint. A glue block can be part of the original structure, or it is used to repair a joint that has come apart and cannot be put back together without reinforcement.

If you cannot line your holes up precisely, or you want to add a dowel for reinforcement to pieces which are already joined, you can use a through-dowel joint. Drill all the way through one piece into the other one. Add some glue to the hole and push the dowel in from the outside. If the dowel is longer than the hole, cut it flush when the glue is dried; otherwise the hole can be filled. This does result in a visible joint, though some period furniture incorporates visible dowel joints in their design.

Figure 8-36 to 8-38: A commercial dowel jig allows you to drill holes perpendicularly into the middle of a board's end. Dowel centers fit into the holes and allow you to precisely mark where to drill on the mating piece of wood. The dowels are fitted halfway into the holes.

Figure 8-39: The joints on this chair are pulled apart slightly so you can see the dowels in action. This chair is dry fit, meaning it is fully assembled with no glue added. This is a good way to check the snugness and precision of all your joints before you make the connections irreversible. Pride and Prejudice, Elon University, 2012. Scenic design by Natalie Taylor Hart.

Faking It

To save time and money, you do not have to make all the parts of your furniture functional. For instance, if you have a dresser with many drawers, they do not all have to actually open. Some can just be false fronts permanently attached to the face. In many cases, though, it makes sense to make everything functional to allow the blocking to evolve during rehearsals. If the director changes his or her mind about which drawer the actor should open, you do not want to hold up rehearsal to rebuild the dresser to allow this to happen. Of course, if you are building a filing cabinet with dozens of drawers and only one needs to open, it may be too costly to make everything functional. In such cases, you can just build one drawer that can be moved to whichever opening the director decides to use, and attach the fake drawer fronts to the rest when the decision is final.

Figure 8-40: If the edges will be painted, you can simply fill and smooth them with wood putty or whatever your preferred filling material is.

Figure 8-41: Edge veneer is a very thin strip of wood that often comes with an adhesive already applied to one side. The adhesive is melted by heating it with a special veneer iron, or just a regular clothes iron, and forms a very strong bond when it cools back down.

Figure 8-42: You can cut your own veneer or thin strips of wood and glue them on yourself.

Figure 8-43: Attaching a full thickness of wood to the end is called a nose. It does make a visual difference to the top, though some real tables have this look, either from a frame or from breadboard ends.

Figure 8-44: You can attach a reveal to the bottom of your sheet of wood. This leaves the end grain exposed, so is usually only suitable when filling and painting rather than when staining or leaving bare.

Figure 8-45: This table was meant to look as though it was constructed with a through mortise and tusk tenon. The wedges and tenons that stick out of the other end of the leg are actually just applied to the surface of the leg. Henry IV, PlayMakers Repertory Company, 2012. Scenic design by Jan Chambers.

Figure 8-46: This table has a few fakeries to keep the weight down. The legs are hollow boxes rather than a solid post. The top uses thick boards along the perimeter to create the illusion of a thick top, but the interior boards are thinner. Abundance, Triad Stage, 2015. Scenic design by Robin Vest.

Often, you need to make a large sheet of wood look thick, such as when you are making a top for a table. It may be too expensive to use a solid piece of wood with that thickness, and it will add a lot of unnecessary weight. You can give the illusion of thickness (in scenery this is called a reveal).

Carcass Work

A carcass is any type of furniture shaped like a box or a case, such as dressers, wardrobes, and grandfather clocks, as opposed to those made of just the frame, such as chairs and tables. While traditional cabinet and furniture makers have developed numerous techniques over the centuries to build this kind of furniture “correctly,” the props carpenter relies on much more trickery to build these kinds of pieces quickly and efficiently.

A props carpenter saves time by building the basic box shape of the piece, either a frame or a solid piece made of sheet goods such as plywood, then layers moldings, boards, and spacers on top to make the construction appear more complex than it really is. This kind of work requires a lot of breaking down of the parts of the prop and planning it all out ahead. If you are not careful, you can make the piece too big. Suppose the piece should be one foot wide. You start by building a box that is one foot wide. Then you add a fake frame on either side out of ¾″ thick boards, followed by a piece of molding on each side that is ½″ thick; your box is now 1′ 2½″ wide. You can also easily make the piece too heavy by just stacking solid pieces of wood on top of each other to build up the profile until your piece of furniture is essentially a solid cube of wood.

Figure 8-47: This pedestal began as a basic box made of ¾″ plywood. I cut a square out of the center of each piece and attached a smaller sheet of ¼″ lauan behind it. Molding covers the exposed plywood edges and completes the illusion that this pedestal had an inlaid panel. The bottom is made from cove molding.

Finishing Up

It is good practice to run your own hands all over your prop before handing it off. Wood, especially rough wood, can give splinters, and you don't want to injure your actors as they use your prop. Better to catch any problem areas before someone else gets hurt. Give your prop a light sanding all over. Pay particular attention to the edges and corners. You can break the edges, which means giving a slight round-over with sandpaper or cutting a barely visible chamfer to all the exposed edges. This gives a finished look, keeps the edges from being too sharp, and prevents future splintering.

Wood Stain

While you can paint and dye wood to change its color and appearance (covered in Chapter 16), you can also use wood stain, which is unique to this material. Wood stain is an oil or dye that penetrates into the pores of wood to color it. Wood stain will not obscure the grain pattern of the wood, nor will it show off brush strokes. Many tints of wood stain are designed to make one species of wood look like another species, though you can also find modern stains in a whole range of non-natural colors, like blue, green, and pink. For further control over the color, you can apply different stains on top of each other, or you can mix two or more stains together.

Wood stain comes in both oil- and water-based formulas. Water-based formulas can be cleaned with soap and water, dry faster, and release far less harmful vapors as they dry. Water-based stains can also be applied over oil stains which have fully dried. Oil-based stains offer better penetration and create more durable finishes. Their slower drying time also helps them create a more even finish. They require better ventilation and even the use of a respirator when being applied; they can release fumes for eight to twelve hours after being applied, causing dizziness and headaches, so they need to be left to dry away from workers or actors. Because props need to be built quickly but do not need to last a long time, water-based stains are often the better choice.

Figure 8-48 and 8-49: This quaich was turned and carved out of poplar and then stained to make it look like sycamore. La Donna del Lago, The Metropolitan Opera, 2015.

Stir the wood stain well before using. Be sure to work in a well-ventilated area. You can brush on wood stain with either a bristle or a foam brush (only use synthetic bristles with water-based stains), or wipe it on with a soft and clean rag. Wipe the excess stain off with another clean and dry rag. You can either wipe it off immediately after applying, or wait five to ten minutes to wipe for a more intense color.

A stained piece of wood must be sealed with a clear protective coating, as the stain will rub off onto skin and fabric. You can buy stains that are mixed with a polyurethane sealer. These allow you to stain and seal in one step. The disadvantage is that you cannot add more coats of stain over the top, since the surface is already sealed.

Because wood stain must penetrate the wood, it will only work on bare wood, or over a piece of bare wood that has been sealed with a special kind of “staining sealers” used to even out the application of stain. If stain is used on top of finished wood or some other material, it may take a very long time to dry and can wipe off easily.

The fumes are a particular problem with wood stain; even after it has been dried off, a piece of stained wood can continue giving off smelly fumes for a day or so. If staining, always plan to do it when you can keep it away from the actors until the smell goes away. Allow it to dry in a well-ventilated area where none of the other props artisans need to work as well. I do a lot of carpentry, and I have become so sensitized to the fumes that only a few minutes of exposure will bring on a headache.

Stain can last for years, so don't throw away old cans if they still contain a useful amount.

Types of Wood and Buying Wood

The two major types of wood are hardwoods and softwoods. Softwood is generally used in construction, while hardwood is used in furniture making and hand props such as handles, staffs, and boxes. As a prop builder, you can stick with the most common species and use stain or paint to mimic the rest. If you are working on an important hero prop that will be shown close up on film, it may be worth it to buy a small amount of specialty wood; keep in mind that all woods behave differently, and the first time you work with a new species, it may not cut or chisel the way you think it will.

Softwood in North America typically includes pine, fir, and spruce. Sometimes these species are referred to collectively as either SPF lumber (Spruce, Pine, Fir) or “whitewood.” In Europe and England, common construction timber includes Scots Pine (sometimes called “red” in the United Kingdom), or a mix of spruce and fir (called “white” in the United Kingdom). Variations of these species differ around the globe, so the pine you buy in London is different from the pine you buy in southern California.

Softwood is sold in three grades: construction, common, and clear. Clear (also known as “select”) is free of knots and other defects. It can be twice as expensive as common grade lumber. Many lumber yards use the terms “construction” and “common” to refer to the same grade of lumber. Construction lumber has knots and other defects, and can be more warped, twisted, and cupped than clear lumber. The dimensions are usually less precise than clear lumber as well.

Wood for construction is great for framing, but it has its limitations when making furniture or smaller pieces. It is more likely to tear than to cut cleanly, it is easy to dent, and the grain patterns are not as nice.

Furring strips are very rough pieces of wood meant only as nailing surfaces on the inside of walls. Their sides are often rounded, and their dimensions are not very precise, but if you need to make “rustic” props, they fit the bill nicely.

Dimensional Lumber

Dimensional lumber is how you find your construction and clear grade softwood, as well as some hardwood boards. Almost everyone is familiar with boards known as one by threes and two by fours. These refer to their nominal sizes; a two by four actually measures 1½″ × 3½″.

In metric countries, measurements refer to the actual size and are given in millimeters. In some countries, you can still ask for a “2×4,” and they will give you the standard size of wood used for stud wall construction, though it may actually be 45 mm × 90 mm, 35 mm × 75 mm or something else entirely.

Rough Lumber

Rough lumber is wood (usually hardwood) that has come straight from the saw mill. The saws at mills are particularly aggressive and leave noticeable marks on the surfaces of the wood. Some rough lumber may even have pieces of bark still stuck to the edges. None of the surfaces are flat, straight, or square. The thickness and width will not be consistent throughout the whole board. You can surface or mill the sides yourself, or have the lumberyard do it for an extra cost. You can get “surfaced one side” (abbreviated to S1S), “surfaced two sides” (S2S), or “surfaced four sides” (S4S), which is sometimes called “planed all around” (PAR). Some stores sell common sizes of popular hardwoods already planed.

In North America, rough hardwood is sold in quarters, so a 1″ board is called a 4/4 board. Be prepared to lose anywhere from 3/16″ to ¼″ (5 mm to 6 mm) of your rough lumber when it is surfaced. A 4/4 piece will end up being 13/16″ thick, so if you want your finished piece to be 1″ thick, you actually need to buy a 5/4 board. Many metric countries use a hybrid measuring system when it comes to wood, so you may end up asking for the thickness in quarters and the length in meters.

The widths and lengths of rough lumber depend on the log it was cut from, and will vary with every visit to the lumberyard. Many lumberyards and timber merchants allow you to pick out your own boards from the piles, so you can be sure to get the widths and lengths you need. If you are ordering over the phone, ask what widths they have in the thickness you need. You can also order a certain amount of board feet in “random width and lengths” (RWL). You have no guarantee of having boards at a specific length or width, though they are generally never less than 3′ long or 2¾″ wide. Figure on losing up to a half an inch (12.7 mm) in width once you surface the edges. Always “pad” your lumber order and add a contingency for waste.

Names of common sizes of dimensional lumber compared to their actual measurements.

The cost of rough lumber is calculated in board feet. A board foot is equal to the amount of wood in a 1″ board that is 1 foot by 1 foot (or 144 cubic inches). To calculate how many board feet you will need, take the length, width, and thickness in inches, and divide by 144:

(Length × Width × Thickness) ÷ 144 = board feet

Metric countries may calculate the price in cubic meters, or may charge by the length based on a specific width and thickness.

Often, a thicker board will have a higher price per board foot than a thinner board; a lumberyard might sell 4/4 poplar at $3.20 a board foot and 5/4 poplar at $3.35 a board foot. In some cases, especially wide boards may cost more; a 5/4 poplar board that is over 10″ wide costs $3.55 a board foot at this imaginary lumberyard. (Real lumber prices vary greatly depending on where you live and can change rapidly over time, so these prices are for illustrative purposes only.)

Surfacing Rough Lumber

If you do not purchase your rough lumber surfaced, you will need to flatten the faces and get the edges square and straight before cutting your board into individual pieces. You need a planer and a jointer to do this.

A jointer lets you surface the first face until it is flat. Like the planer, the jointer cuts a small sliver of wood off as it passes over a rapidly spinning head that holds two or more knives. You only remove 1/16″ to 3/32″ (0.5 mm to 1.5 mm) with each pass, so you may have to run your board through a few times. Next, turn the board 90° and surface an edge so it is square to your face. Surface the other face on the planer, and bring the wood to your desired thickness. You can rip the board to width on the table saw and cut it to length with your miter saw.

Figure 8-50: Run the shortest possible piece of wood through your planer or jointer. In this diagram, we need three pieces of wood from a long board with a pronounced bow to it. When you run the full length of the board through, a lot of wood is wasted making it flat. You end up with a thinner board than if you cut it into three pieces first before surfacing it. Cut your pieces a little oversized in case you uncover a defect that needs to be cut away.

It is possible to finish your wood with just a planer if you don't have a jointer. Take multiple light passes through the planer until both sides are flat, and continue to your desired thickness. You can cut one edge square using a circular saw and a rail, or you can run it through your table saw with a special sled.

If you do not have a planer and jointer, you will have to plane your wood by hand, which can take a long time and is usually not suitable for prop making other than in small doses.

Wood-Based Products

Prop builders use all sorts of wood-based products other than traditional lumber. Most of these sheet goods come in standard sizes of 4′ by 8′, or 1200 mm by 2400 mm. Some stores will sell smaller cuts, and some of these can be special-ordered in larger sizes.

Plywood is made from several veneers of lumber laminated together with the grain in each layer running perpendicularly to the ones next to it. This allows you to use it over long spans without having to worry about splitting along the grain.

Plywood uses the letters A, B, C, and D to grade the quality of the surface, with A being the nicest. Since plywood has two surfaces, two letters may be used. AA (or just A) would be the highest grade (and most expensive). If you only see one side of the plywood, AC can be a more economical choice. CDX is some of the cheapest plywood (the X just means an exterior glue was used).

Construction stores typically carry softwood plywood for construction sheathing; besides having defects, it can be twisted and warped. It is the cheapest option however. Hardwood plywood offers nicer surfaces and more strength. Aircraft and marine plywood are some of the most structurally sound and flattest plywoods you can get, with marine plywood offering water resistance as well.

Though common sizes of plywood are listed as ¼″, ½″, and ¾″, the actual sizes are often 1/32″ thinner: 7/32″, 15/32″ and 23/32″. The metric equivalents of 7 mm, 12 mm, and 19 mm are the actual thicknesses.

Medium Density Fiberboard, or MDF, uses sawdust, waxes, and resins to make a highly uniform and dimensionally stable sheet good. Because it has no grain, it lacks the strength that real wood and plywood has. It does, however, give you one of the smoothest and most uniform surfaces for painting or attaching veneers and laminates to.

Figure 8-51: MDF gives a very clean edge when routing along curves like in these ornate dressing screen panels. Dirty Blonde, Triad Stage, 2015. Scenic design by Ji Ji Young Chang.

Medium Density Overlay, or MDO, is a cross between plywood and MDF. The interior layers are plywood, while the outermost layer on each side is MDF. This gives it the structural strength of plywood but the clean and smooth surface of MDF.

High Density Fiberboard, or hardboard, is more commonly known by one of its most popular brands, Masonite. It is similar to MDF, just stronger, denser, and harder. It is also frequently tempered on one or both sides, giving it a super-slick surface useful for painting high-gloss treatments.

Low density fiberboard (LDF) is commonly called particleboard or chipboard. It is useful as an economical substrate (an underlying layer that will be hidden from view) to hold heavy textures or laminates.

Lauan, or lauan plywood, is a type of tropical hardwood (Philippine mahogany) that is useful because it comes in hard, rigid, and very thin sheets. A quarter-inch thick sheet of lauan is far lighter than and practically as strong as a ¼″ sheet of plywood or MDF.

Wigglewood, Bending Lauan, Bending Board, Bending Plywood, Bendy Ply, Flexply, or Wacky Wood are all brand names given to plywood in which multiple plies of material have the grain running in the same direction, thus making them bendable.

Figure 8-52: Particleboard is used here as a cheap base for attaching upholstery foam to this fully-upholstered sofa. Other Desert Cities, Triad Stage, 2015. Scenic design by John Coyne.

Figure 8-53: This presidential desk uses sheets of lauan to simulate raised panels. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, the Public Theater, 2009. Scenic design by Donyale Werle.

They typically come in 4′ by 8′ sheets, and can be bent either horizontally or vertically depending on which way the grain runs. If the grain runs lengthwise, it is referred to as “column” or sold as 4′ by 8′, because you can use it to wrap around an eight-foot-tall column. If the grain runs widthwise, it is referred to as “barrel” or 8′ by 4′, because it can wrap around a barrel that is four feet tall.

You can also find single veneers of wood that are especially “bendy.” Common species include bending poplar, bending birch, and bending maple.

Paper can also be compressed and mixed with glue to make sheet goods. One of the most common sheet goods found in theatrical and film set construction is Homosote. Homosote is useful as a substrate, or even as a heavily textured surface; a faux brick facade is easily made by carving Homosote. It is also useful as a sound-deadening material, especially when placed between a prop and its casters. Another brand known to many theatrical and film folks is Easycurve (formerly known as Upson Board). This compressed paper product can conform to curves like wiggle wood. The same company also makes Upsonite, which is like a cross between Homosote and heavy cardstock.

Figure 8-54: Cardboard tubes come in a wide range of diameters, from the thin ones used to mail posters or found inside rolls of carpeting, to the larger round concrete forms seen here in this photograph. These are often referred to by one of the most popular brands: Sonotube.

Figure 8-55: Cardstock is frequently used as the substrate for rolled arms and other curved parts of furniture that will be upholstered. It is much lighter and cheaper than other materials; though it will not curve as cleanly as those materials, once you cover it in foam and fabric, you will not see any of those imperfections.

Molding

Molding is a strip of material with various profiles along it. Though you can find plastic and even metal molding, the vast majority is still wood or wood-based. The profile can be a continuous shape, or it can consist of a repeating pattern either carved or molded into it. Molding, or “trim” (or “trim molding”), is used to decorate the edges of materials and to cover the transitions between different surfaces, like between the top and apron of a table. Antique furniture design has a whole design vocabulary of traditional molding use, so it is helpful to understand a bit about the different kinds of molding and how to make or fake them.

Lumberyards, builders' suppliers, and home improvement stores frequently carry a selection of common molding types. Stores that specialize in decorative wood carvings and furniture parts will have more fanciful molding types. You can also find them at furniture and antique restoration shops. Frame shops sometimes have smaller lengths of molding, and if you only need a little bit, you can just knock a regular picture frame apart and use that.

Figure 8-56: Common examples of molding with a continuous profile. Top row (left to right): Ovolo or quarter-round; cavetto or cove; cyma (cyma recta); ogee (cyma reversa). Bottom row (left to right): Half-round; astragal; bead; reeding.

Figure 8-57: Common examples of molding with a carved profile. Top to bottom: Egg and dart; fluting; rope molding.

You can also make your own molding. Though it's possible to make it by hand with various molding planes, most props artisans use either a router, router table, or shaper to make molding. These allow you to cut a continuous profile directly along the edge of a piece of wood. If you wanted to make a strip of molding that can be attached to a prop, it may be safer to rout it on a wide piece of wood, than rip the molding part off after, since manipulating a thin strip of wood along a router or shaper blade is a dicey proposition. You can purchase a vast variety of cutting profiles to make nearly any molding imaginable; you can also run your router over an edge more than once with different cutting heads attached to invent your own custom profiles.

A mill workshop or scene shop may have a “molder,” which is a machine resembling a planer. Rather than a straight blade that shaves the top of a board, it has a shaped blade that shaves a molding profile over several passes. Molders can make very wide molding profiles, which are rarely needed in props, but it is helpful to know that these machines exist for those rare occasions.

Carved and patterned moldings are less straightforward to automate. Unless you have a CNC router or carving machine, you are going to have to either purchase pre-made molding or carve it by hand; you can also fake it with other materials, either by stamping, stenciling, or casting. You might also use something like upholstery fringe, rope, Ethafoam, or even heavily textured paper that you can stiffen with glue or resin and paint over.

Figure 8-58: For larger and more complex molding profiles, you can piece together smaller moldings, along with spacers, plain boards, and castings, to construct something that looks like a single piece.