This book is included in the Self Reliance Shelter section.
Preface
Several years have elapsed since I first published the House Carpenter's Assistant, which met with a ready sale of
some seventeen hundred copies, but in consequence of the death of the publisher the work is now out of print.
The object of the author is to revise the former work by omitting the treaties on mathematical instruments, to make
room for additional matter that had been overlooked in the former work, in order to furnish house carpenters and
builders with a ne\v and easy system of lines founded on geometrical principles for framing the most difficult roofs;
for cutting every description of joints and for finding the sections of angular pieces at any point from a horizontal to
a perpendicular, so that their sides shall be in the plane of the sides they are connected with; for finding the form of
the raking mould, for a gable, to intersect with the horizontal mould at any angle diverging from a straight line; the
mitreing of circular mouldings; the relative sizes of timbers framed to support a given weight: to the mitreing of
planes oblique to the base at any angle.
Together with these rules, the author also presents tables of the weight and cohesive strength of the different
materials used in the construction- of buildings as well as the weight required to crush said materials, with a treatise
on the adhesion of nails, screws, iron pins and glue. Also an easy system of stair railing for straight and platform
stairs, which will enable carpenters to finish and complete a dwelling without the assistance of a professional stair
builder. And to all this is added a practical and mathematical demonstration of finding the circumference and
squaring the circle when the diameter is given.
There can be but little doubt that a work of this kind is needed by architects and builders, and especially by
carpenters and workmen who are inexperienced in the different kinds of labor which they are called upon to
perform. Many a journeyman carpenter has found himself suddenly thrown out of employment simply because he
was ignorant of the rules by which he could perform some required task. It is rather for the benefit of such than for
the experienced workmen, that this volume is designed, and should it be the means of promoting their interest or
inciting them to a study of the noble science and art of construction, the author will feel well compensated for his
labor.
It is but due to acknowledge that we have consulted the valuable works of Thomas Tredgold, for the articles on the
strength and weight of materials, also to Mr. Honetus M. Albee, a skillful and experienced stair-builder for the
method of finding the distances to kerf the back string for circular stairs.
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