BATTENING, the :Let or fixing battens to walls, in order to secure the laths over which the plaster is laid; or, the battens in the state of fixed for that purpose. The battens employed are generally about two inches broad, and three-fburths of an inch thick ; they may, however, be of various thicknesses, according to the distances the several fixed points in their length are from each other. Their distance in the clear is from eleven inches to one foot. Previous to the fixing of battens, either equidistant bond timbers should be built in the wall, or the wall should lie plugged equidistantly, and the plugs cut off flush with its surface. in London, plugs are generally placed at the dis muce of one foot or fourteen inches from centre to centre in the length of the batten. Battens upon exterior walls, quarters in partition walls, the ceiling and bridging, joists of a naked floor, also the common joists for supporting the boarding of a floor, are fixed at the same distance, viz. from eleven to twelve inches in the clear. When battens are fixed against flues, iron holdfitsts are necessarily employed instead of bond-timbers or plugs. When battens are attached to a wall, they are generally fixed in vertical lines; and when fixed to the surface of a brick or stone vault, the intrados of which may be generated by a plane revolving about an axis, they ought to be placed in planes tending to the axis; as, in this position. they have only to be fixed in straight
lines, in cases where the intrados is straight towards the axis: such cases occur when the vault is a portion of a cone or cylinder. When the intrados is curved towards the axis, the battens will bend very readily. Great care should be taken to regulate the faces of the battens, so as to be as nearly equidistant as possible from the intended surface of the plaster. Though battens are employed in floors, neither the act of laying them, nor the floor formed of them after. wards, is cztlied'battening; they arc more commonly called boarding. Every piece of masonry or brick-work, which is not sufficiently dry. should be battened for lath and plaster ; particularly that which is executed in a wet season. When the windows are boarded, and the walls of a room not suffi ciently thick to contain the shutters, the surface of the plastering is brought out so as to give the architrave a proper !injection, and quarterings are used 11.)r supporting the lath and plaster, instead of battens. The like -practice is observed, when the breast of a chimney projects into the room, in order to cover the recesses, and make the whole side flush, or in the same surface with the breast.