Search results

bm101 - I'm afraid the cvid19 news is not good for John Prine

I tend to use classic british saws of various sizes (bought cheaply but need some work) and happy with this. not doing any fine work at present but have also used (American?) Zona saws - some with replaceable blades - anyone else here use them?

"let me ponder" (as my 3 yr old grandson picked up from someone) I use a square socket tap key all summer for my allotment water tap - the socket's OK for this (or a bed key, or gas key etc) and I even have a (1940s?) Wards workbench with taper square head bolts this might well fit, but why the...

The classic anvils were made of forge-welded wrought iron with crucible steel faces, this same technique was used by the same forges to make blacksmith leg vice used by smiths and other workers for centuries until cast iron bench-mounted vices were introduced (mid-19thC?). Anvil/leg vice...

When I acquired a Syers (pat Wilson Riley) for next to nowt I incorporated it in my v slowly built workbench (it's mine on the excellent smallworkshop site) - very pleased with it, especially as it's about 140 yrs old - this one is rack and cam, with no small part to lose. I have since acquired...

I've used an angle grinder (with cheapo diamond offset face grinding wheel, 100mm), to make a whetstone from a nice, hard, fine -grained piece of rock found on a beach - looks just like a Charnley stone, but won't be. Works very well as a waterstone - shapeless on all other faces, but flat on...

Hope you didn't burn those sausages. Wadkin/Emmert as precursor to Record - we-e-ell - discuss. But of course the direct precursor to Woden and Record was Parkinsons - both for woodworking and the engineering type vice - both the basic shapes and the quick release mechanism. Your Canadian...

The high, slim jaws of the Wadkin are of a type that often indicated a coach-builder (fancy pre-motor car or early Rolls etc or train carriages) where access for shaping curves was needed. Likewise gun-stocks and in engineering for filing. These days wood sculptors often chase after them.

without checking - a DOCM by Wilson of London, made in several sizes I don't know who the main customers were for these - tool-shops?

Oh, and Patrick Edwards is absolutely an expert, craftsman of the highest order and historian of furniture making (it's not mainly about the tools, but the work done with them)

Keep this going - I might feel slightly better about my chisels and vices/vises (far fewer, but still)

who could toss out that lovely slice of ???hawthorn

fine

Mike and D_W maybe cool it? Certainly not shut down any threads like this. Yes, some 'observations' seem a bit didactic, but, especially when someone has put a lot of careful work and effort into it, they have validity as such. I also have a scientific background, with degrees, stats etc, but...

Show us your Marples Ultimatum brace, silver and ivory measuring/layout tools, ebony handled carvers, Norris planes from the C19th, early C20th. All expensive users. But probably used by established craftsmen with the years behind them to have accumulated some (minor) wealth. Not amateurs like...

New thread on scabrous vices ED? I've had my 74 for many years - fettled and painted (just one thin coat) light green years back - serves me well. There is some play, but it takes a bashing quite well. Do any swivelling vices rotate easily and fix firmly - oh yes, my Parkinson's ball vice does...

Thanks - the second film, from about 7mins 30 shows the buttons well, but this is a factory operation - the small buttons were also made manually by families of out-workers - I think the waste I see is from that source - random angles of cuts to make small 'billets' then an arrangement of holes...

pps just realised before I get corrected - buttons have two or four off-centre holes - so they were cut with a different drill (I'm guessing some sort of breast drill?) before making the holes. (all shirt button sized - small)

I have an allotment in Sheffield (where mother-of-pearl button making was a cottage industry) - I'm always turning up pieces of mother of pearl with circular holes - sometimes not finished, in which case it leaves a cut circle quite like those in your piece of scrap wood. Ps .. I think they...

ps -- not the only wood/hide hammer I have, but I find I use them a lot