Panelling

Also called: panelled work, wainscot, dado panelling, linenfold

Panelling is timber cladding built up as thin panels held inside a surrounding frame of stouter timber, rather than as one solid board fixed straight to a wall or door.

Frame and panel

The framing that carries a panel nearly always has its inner edges grooved, and because a groove eats into the width of a tenon, an allowance has to be made for it wherever the framing is grooved this way. The panel itself sits loose in that groove, and it is fitted while the frame is still being put together, unlike a ledged door, where the frame is assembled, wedged and finished off complete before the ledges are ever nailed on. In framed and ledged doors the framing is assembled, wedged and finished before the battens go on, whereas in panelled work the panels go in as the frame is put together. Panelled doors are themselves classed by technical names describing their thickness, their number of panels and the kind of panelling used, and the same jointing methods used for doors apply equally to panelling of every kind. Where the framing is left square and its panels are plain, at a third of the framing's own thickness, the result is a finish known as square and flat. When panelling runs floor to ceiling in two tiers, the lower section is set out from the same boundary lines as the upper, with the lower muntins, the short upright members that divide one panel from the next, drawn in as they occur.

Mouldings and fixing to the wall

Mouldings are kept off the panel and worked onto the frame instead, because a panel shrinks and would pull a panel-fixed moulding away from the frame with it. In ordinary-grade work this normally means the moulding is run as a separate strip, bradded (fixed with small headless nails) or planted (laid on rather than let in) onto the frame's inner edges, not onto the panel: Rivington (1875) gives this as the rule for such work. To fix panelling to a wall, separate grounds, timber battens plugged to the masonry, or counter-battens crossing them, have to be positioned correctly to give the panelling proper fixing points; where the grounds are instead framed up, they are built alongside the panelling at the joinery shop so the two are planned to fit each other. On the panelling face itself, keyhole slotted plates work on the same principle as slot screwing, a screw head slid sideways into a keyhole-shaped slot to lock the piece in place, and are recessed into the back of the work. For ornamental panelling, the shape is first blocked in, its outline roughed out to establish the shoulder lines, and a thin false framing is then cut and screwed to the panelling face, with the screw heads sunk below the surface and hidden under a glued-in plug of matching wood.

Wainscot timber

'Wainscot' names a way of converting a log into boards chosen specifically to bring out plenty of silver grain, the figure shown by the medullary rays, the rays that run outward from a tree's centre. Hasluck (1907) writes that timber cut this way 'is used for partitions, dados, and wall panelling generally; also for doors and windows in high-class joinery.' Quartersawing gives such timber a pleasing mottled appearance, which is why quarter-cut boards typically end up finished as wainscot, and Ellis (1908) describes good wainscot-grade stock as mild and close-textured, with its silver grain spread evenly through it. Norway supplied wainscot oak that is notably straight-grained and splits easily; Holtzapffel (1846) records the traditional practice there of boring a hole in a standing tree's top at the start of winter and filling it with water, so that the ice formed as it freezes splits the tree from top to bottom. Karri, by contrast, is sliced into decorative veneers for cabinets and panelling and rotary-cut to make plywood.

Grades, other forms and later fixing

Panelling is not always framed and infilled in the traditional way. In an inferior class of work it can be built from sheet lining, flat sheet material used in place of true framed panels, and strip panelling, made up from narrow tongue-and-groove, V-jointed boards, is used as an alternative alongside framed or sheet panelling. Once a building has been plastered, panelling is generally among the work carried out under what is called second fixing, joinery completed after the wet trades, covering wall trims, hanging doors, panelling and pipe boxing.