Using a Preacher

[Tom King]

There's not really a carpentry forum here, but since this was done with hand tools, I'm putting it here.

 

Probably not many people know what a carpentry preacher is.  It's made to go over a board tightly to transfer a position from the back of a board, where it will adjoin something else, to the front of the board.

 

This picture is of Cypress siding on a house I built in 1991.  It has always been unfinished, and pressure washed with bleach a couple of times.  No caulking is used because it would just look bad over time.  Nails are stainless steel. This house has a copper roof, and all these joints are backed up by copper.  Every joint was marked with a preacher and sharp no.4 pencil, and cut with a handsaw that I sharpened for the Cypress.  There was no adjusting with a plane anywhere on the house.

 

This house is 22 years old.  You can still press each board in and out a little by hand, so each board fits tight, but not too tight, so they are all really floating on nails not nailed too tightly.  If any board was cut too long, it would open up the joint under it.

[Dave H]

Do you have a picture of the preacher.

[Tony Wilkins]

I'm a preacher and I can't get anything that tight. 

[Tpt life]

We used two blocks of 3/4" stock fastened together then jointed up both edges. One board hung low and one projected high. The lower board registered on the corner stick and the top board captured and lay over the siding lap as it lay in front of the corner stick. The jointed edge allowed for scribing. Are you describing a similar fixture made of metal that slips over the lap and then can be slid to register against the corner stick?

[Tom King]

I'm sure I tossed the preacher I used for that job years ago. 

 

I do have some for another job, that I can get my hands on next week.  I made a pair each of slide fit, and tight preachers.  The tight preacher will stay in place on the board and allow you to push it in position if you have to hold onto something with one hand other than the siding board.  I made those out of some 2" White Oak.

 

Tony might be able to tell us about another version of a "tight preacher".

 

They work good for fitting things like outside mitered corners on baseboard too.

 

Working on old houses, where little is square or plumb, they come in very handy.

[Tom King]

Here are a couple of other pictures that I took today at that house.  These are the handrail junctions on the porch that goes all the way around the house.  That siding joint is not exactly subjected to full weather.  The posts are treated 8x8s.  I smoothed them by walking them with a flooring drum sander.  The railing is mortised into the posts, because I knew the posts would shrink a lot.  This is 22 years later.  Sorry, wrong forum since these were made with router templates, but they did require some hand tool work.  All of the railing system is salt treated pine, but it was some that I had drying for at least a year before running the parts.