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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Jeff Drum, post: 563832, member: 6444&quot;]Yes, I know Follansby from his appearances on PBS Roy Underhill show, and I have seen plenty of pinned joints. And you are correct about the importance of steam power in the changes seen in American furniture. But you have the way in which steam power was applied to the making of furniture incorrect.</p><p><br /></p><p>By far the most tedious, time consuming and dangerous part of preparing wood for furniture was the splitting of logs into usable planks of wood. That used to be done with a pit saw, and it was dangerous, slow, and dirty work: <img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Pitsaw00.jpg/393px-Pitsaw00.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Circular saws able to replace that work were invented, but they needed to run at much higher speed than could be achieved by animal or water power, so that is where steam power was first and most crucially employed in woodworking:<img src="http://shagbarkfarms.com/public/Forums//AmericanMill.gif" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Note that this was done at the lumber yard and not by the craftsman - craftsmen, who turned the planks of wood they bought into furniture, did not have large and expensive steam engines because they didn&#039;t need them. Some of the large factories in New England probably had them, as well as water power. But until the mid 1800&#039;s the New England factories did not produce a significant quantity of furniture; since a lot of it was still made by craftsmen working in small teams scattered all over the country. Production in a central factory didn&#039;t make sense until steam powered locomotives. So it wasn&#039;t really until electric power was available that small workshops and craftsmen would have the same power tools found in factories.</p><p><br /></p><p>So then what do you look for to decide whether something was made before or after the application of steam power? You look at the unfinished surfaces of large pieces of flat wood. In other words, you look at the drawer bottoms, or the bottoms of table tops, or the inside surfaces of the side pieces of wood. Which is why I pointed out way at the top of this thread that the drawer bottom in this piece has a hand planed surface - and NOT a circular saw cut surface. From the birdseye piece: <img src="https://www.antiquers.com/attachments/p3301251-jpg.171317/" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Compare that to a different stand made at a later time and shown in an earlier thread. See the telltale curved lines under the table surface - that DOES show a circular saw cut: <img src="https://www.antiquers.com/attachments/dscf7613-jpg.169887/" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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