The first task is to develop a template for one quadrant of the ellipse. Schwamb ellipses (and circles) are constructed of regular quadrants of kiln-dried lumber, bandsawn and finger-joined. One template serves for the whole job, and is gotten from the quietest corner of the main floor, where a trammel board rests on an old barrel. The surrounding walls are an orderly fish-scale jam of the cardboard quadrants that the Schwambs cut over the years.

The finger joint is made on a gang saw, a set of blades with teeth protruding through a wooden plate and between two fixed parallel wooden fences. Each quadrant is gripped like a pistol and pushed through the blades. Frame blanks are taken upstairs to the glue room as soon as the joints are cut. Here, amid the iron heat pipes and old hide-glue pots, quadrants are ganged up face to face, Titebond is brushed on the joints, and the frame is loosely pieced together on a steel-topped assembly table. A steel band clamp at one of several stations is placed around the frame blank and drawn up quickly with a handwheel, which winds in the slack. The quadrants align, the shoulders draw up, and beads of glue bloom at the joints as the strap comes to full tension.

After overnight curing, glue-squeeze is chiseled away from the back of the blank, which is then jointed flat so it can be mounted on the lathe faceplate. Frame blanks are fixed to the lathe with four screws positioned so they will neither come through a finger joint nor be exposed during turning. The lathe differential, which governs the proportions of the oval, is set by moving the headstock ring plate to the proper calibration. After a liberal oiling of the mechanism bearing surfaces, the blank is rotated, testmarked and the setting checked for accuracy.

The lathes all run considerably under 1000 RPM. Low speeds are easy on the equipment, but dictate several turning challenges. The action of worn ellipse mechanisms can become exaggerated, tools grab more easily, and scraping smooth surfaces is more difficult than at higher speeds. Nevertheless, turning circles or moderate ovals is usually a pleasant, direct joy, free of the racy hum and tense power delivery of the typical light modern lathe.

Tools for any order are chosen from the Mill's collection. All of these are shopmade from tempered bar stock, with plain handles, iron ferrules, and usually with nails banged in around the tang to take up slack caused by generations of turning. Scraping burrs are turned over without fuss at the nearby grinder, and must be touched up constantly.

To dimension the blank accurately, the face is trued flat and to final frame thickness. A slightly dome-shaped scraper is the first tool used. It bangs the glue off the joint shoulders and takes away "fat" areas of the face, caused by the lathe's deflection from vertical as the old mechanism spins. The worn devices often yield frames with pleasing, subtle inconsistencies such as varying thickness or imprecise elliptical orbits.

A spear-point tool is then used to make planing cuts across the face until final thickness is reached. None of these cuts can be heavy, else the drive belt will slip (leather and wood have no easy time driving the lathes) Watching the tool at work has often reminded me a of a phonograph needle moving across a record.

After the face is cut, the inside or "sight" edge is made square to it and sized to the ordered dimensions, again with the spear-point tool. Tool position and angle are critical. There is only one small zone in the entire path of the turning blank when the stock is moving straight down in relation to the toolrest. Within this zone, which is as wide as the toolrest and perhaps an inch in height, the work can be cut as if it were a circular turning. Outside the zone the work also moves sideways, which makes cutting impossible. The turner must choose a particular angle to use from the toolrest to the work in penciling layout lines and making cuts. This angle, once chosen, must be maintained throughout the job. If the tool angle is changed, different cuts will have changing relationships to each other, making the molding elements appear to be in slightly different orbits.

Now, with the sight edge having been cut, the final frame width is marked on the stock and the outside edge is cut the same way, with the same attention being paid to squareness and to the tool angle.

Next, the rabbet is cut with a special right-angle scraping tool. The developing rabbet quickly fills with centrifugally held scrapings, giving the illusion that making the final depth will take but a moment. In reality, the cutter will lose some length to the grinder before the job is done.

With the rabbet cut, the dimensioned oval blank awaits a profile. Full-size section drawings either come to the machine room with each order, or are specified by catalog number from the Schwamb collection. Most profiles are begun as step cuts, which are made square and parallel to the faceplate with tthe spear-point tool. The final coves, ogees, beads and other shapes are cut into the steps using the full kit of Schwamb tools. (It is a pleasure to turn an obscure molding for the first time and in the process finally discover the true purpose of a particular odd, neglected tool.)

The tools encounter endgrain and glue four times per revolution on an average cut. Some tearout is inevitable, but can be minimized by touching up the burr frequently. A dulling tool will soon begin to bounce around in the cut, and will remove material unevenly, causing the same off-kilter appearance as a change in the tool angle. The goal is to do all shaping with the cut, not with subsequent abrasives. Sanding the work on the lathe is a rocky necessity that one strives to keep to a minimum - in the best of worlds, sanding would not be necessary to make beads round or to fair coves, but some frames require it.

When the frame is done, it is unscrewed from the faceplate and brought upstairs for finishing. The floor is swept, the tools put in their places, then the cycle begins again.

William Tandy Young, Fine Woodworking Magazine May/June 1986