Designers and architects should, more than most, understand the built environment that surrounds us. And how you can learn from it, particularly if you look at older buildings. When a layperson stares at a building detail, they see a simple corner. But if you look at it closely, you can see a design lesson, a problem solved.

This is the previous warehouse complex Tools for Working Wood was located at, the enormous Bush Terminal Market, built in 1907:

Enter a caption (optional)

It's a transitional design, made of poured concrete with wood and cast iron details before the "Bauhausing" of architecture streamlined and simplified everything in the 1930's. My building was larger than a football field.

Over the years most of the warehouse doors leading out to the loading docks have been covered in ugly painted tin sheets, but a few are original. Their construction represents an example of sturdy, industrial construction that was never meant to be fancy but is. The doors are frame-and-panel construction. (They have to be, the doors are BIG). Each frame has edges that, if they had sharp edges, would quickly get dinged and splintered in normal use. So here's how the designer or builder solved that.

A fancy molding profile would be out of place in a plain building like this, so they used a standard industrial detail. All the frames have stop chamfers on the interior edge.

Enter a caption (optional)

What's a "stop chamfer?" A chamfer is a bevel, usually at 45 degrees on the side of a board. Its main purpose is to soften the edge, both visually and more importantly to strengthen the wood corner against dings and donks. When building something with square edges that people will interact with, you want to break the edges with sandpaper so that they aren't sharp and don't cut the user. The "stopped" part of "stopped chamfers" means, you guessed it, that it doesn't extend the entire length of the panel. 

Enter a caption (optional)

With a frame-and-panel, you have a few choices. You can chamfer the entire length of the board. This extends the chamfer along the rails so that the join between rail and stile is accentuated. You see that detail in some modern cabinets. I find it hideous. Another approach is to assemble the frame and panel and run a router with a chamfering bit all round the frame and panel after it's glued up. This gives you a rounded corner which tells everyone you used a router, but this approach is pretty common today in factory made furniture.

You would not want to run the chamfer around the frame and panel until after it's glued up; if you do it on the pieces prior to assembly, it's easy to end up with slightly misaligned parts, which look horrible. And if you want square, not rounded, corners from a router you need to do some chiseling, and by hand it's nearly impossible to do the detail after glue-up.

The simple solution is to "stop" chamfering before you get to the corner. This is easily done with hand tools - a chamfer plane and a chisel, or with a router. And most important you can do it before glue-up because you are avoiding touching the joint part of the frame and panel. It's easy, quick and I think it looks very elegant in a sturdy sort of way. And this is why they did it on the doors. It's an easy way to get rid of the sharp edges. If you look closely I think the chamfering was done by machine on a shaper (the portable router was a later invention).

But that's not all. The stop chamfer was also used in wooden warehouses on columns. It was a standard way to break the corners so that if bumped into over time they would not splinter and get damaged. I don't have a picture of this but you will see it all the old wooden warehouses. Bush Terminal Market was one of the first concrete warehouses and was built when concrete warehouse design was mimicking the old wooden warehouse. Look at the top of the concrete column - there is a stop chamfer an all the corners. Later warehouses used round columns.

Enter a caption (optional)

So, look around you: What details do you see, and why are they that way?

________________________________________________________