Untitled record

Application filed June 13, 188^ (No model.)

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, Martin Van Buren Howe, of Erving, in the county of Franklin . and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a citi5 zen of the United States, have invented a new and useful Improvement in Doweling ChairSeats and other Articles of Furniture, of which the following is a full and true specification.

My invention relates to that class of chairio seats made from wood, varying in width from fourteen to twenty-two inches, and commonly made of two or more pieces of plank, jointed and put together with glue, and afterward shaped into the desired form of a seat. These 15 are very often split apart, sometimes at the glued joints, owing to imperfect gluing or from the glue being softened by dampness or wet,, and sometimes at other points, often caused by carelessness in packing, handling, 20 and transportation. To prevent this a common way is to insert in each of the front and rear edges of the seat a thin slip of wood, called a “spline,” let into the whole width of the seat by a slot sawed in, and gluedin place.

Strips are also glued and fastened otherwise across the edges and around the seats, as in Heywood’s and in Winchester’s patents.

In my drawings, Figure 1 is a bottom view of the seat, showing the dowels, &c. Fig. 2 is 30 a section on line x x of Fig. 1.

Similar reference-letters indicate like parts in both figures.

My invention accomplishes the same result in a cheaper way and much more effectively, 35 by “ doweling” the seat through from side to side.

The dowels a consist of hard-wood pins; but to put them in it would be impracticable, if not impossible, to bore a hole truly through a 40 plank seat from fourteen to twenty inches in width,it would take too much time, and no bit of proper size could be safely run through that length of wood.

To enable one to put the dowel through from I one edge of the seat to the other, I remove 45 the wood on the under side of the seat to within a space of from one or two inches in width from the outside edges by cutting a slot, &, across the seat—one of said dowels just back of the front legs and another of said dowels 50 just forward of the back legs—for about twothirds the thickness of the seat. From each outside edge a hole is bored through into the slot, and the dowel then driven in from one side through the slot and the other edge. 55 Each end of the dowel has driven into it a thin wedge, and the chair-seat is entirely and thoroughly protected from being split or coming apart at the glued joints.

For the smaller and cheaper chairs one slot 60 through the middle may be sufficient.

I also propose in some cases to cut away all the undersideof theseat, leaving arim around the whole circumference of from one to two inches in width. In this latter way of pro- 65 ceeding, the seat may be left quite thin and much lightened by small perforations through it, if desired.

This same device will be applicable and very useful in fastening together table and desk 70 tops and other articles of furniture where a long dowel is desired.