CARPENTRY is the art of framing timber generally, and especially the chief timbers in house-building. The neater wood-work of doors, window-frames, the planking of floors, skirtings, and stairs, more properly belong to JOINERY.
Carpentry requires a knowledge of the pro perties of timber, and of its strength when exposed to various strains. [INIATEREATs, STRENGTII OF.] This will teach the peculiar fitness of each kind of timber for its own pe culiar purpose. It will show, for example, that while oak greatly exceeds fir in hardness and durability, it may be inferior to it under certain circumstances ; because, while the fibres of a sawn beam of fir are so straight as to run in unbroken lines from end to end, those of a sawn beam of oak are often so tor tuous as to be repeatedly divided by the saw. Seasoning, by long exposure to a current of air, is necessary to prepare timber for use in carpentry; but as the best seasoning will not entirely prevent subsequent warping, shrink ing, and splitting or flying, timbers should be so fitted together as to counteract as far as may be the effect of such changes. When it
is required to bend timbers, they may be sof tened by boiling or steaming, and then brought to and secured at the desired curvature, which, when, cold and dry, they will retain with very little variation.
Illustrations of a few details of carpentry will be found under Iloon, ROOF, SCARFING, TRUSSING, &c. The most gigantic examples of timber-work in modern times, are to be found, perhaps, in the scaffolding for the Bri tannia tubular bridge. In respect to one con tinuous flooring, the Palace of Industry in Hyde Park furnishes, perhaps, the largest known example.