unusual mortise gauge. identity ?

[kwigly]

This mortise gauge turned up at a local auction this weekend. Does anyone know who produced it ??
It has an unusual gear rack adjusting system that I haven't seen before; one side of the head has a screw which turns an internal cog which travels along the toothed track in the stem to adjust the head position (a locking screw is on the other side of the head, the mortise pin slide is on the other side of the stem). Stem length is 6-1/2".

I cleaned it a bit, so it looks pretty but it doesn't function very well (like some people I know)
[I'm contemplating taking it apart to loosen the seized mortise pin track and add the missing mortise pin, and to check the adjusting gear which seems to have a tooth missing or something. However the screws in the brass look to be custom filed to the surface profile after assembly, so it might be difficult to get back together neatly, and my history of disassembly disasters might be a warning.]

 

[Orraloon]

Never seen one with rack and pinion adjustment before. Cant help with ID but you have a pretty rare find there. Good luck with the repairs. Hope someone out there has some info to help you.
Regards
John

 

[AndyT]

I've never seen anything like it either.
One thing I did try was to go to the ever useful Datamp site and have a quick browse through the patents for marking gauges - http://www.datamp.org/patents/search/xr ... class=2100 - just paging through the 343 listed, with pictures toggled on. I didn't spot anything like yours. That doesn't prove it's not there of course. Or the maker may not have patented it.
If it was a one-off, there's an impressive amount of nicely finished work in it.

I think you are right not to remove those screws. I expect you already have another mortice gauge for everyday use?

 

[richarnold]

I have a friend who has 3 or 4 of these, but I can't recall the maker, but pretty sure they were commercially made. It may have been Fenton and Marsden. I would imagine they are extremely rare

 

[kwigly]

Andy, Thanks for looking.
I'm thinking its likely a British made gauge with its traditional set screws instead of wing nuts (It's a pity the old UK patents and registered designs from the 1800s aren't as easily searched as US patents)
And yes, I have a hat load of other marking gauges I can use without attacking this one in an attempted fixit

Richard, If you ever confirm the maker with your friend sometime, and report back to this thread, that would be much appreciated

 

[DonMc]

Based on entries in the Illustrated Sheffield Lists, it appears that mortice gauges with a some kind of rack and pinion feature were being offered at least as early as 1855. Specifically, the 1855, 1871 and 1885 editions have these listings:

768 Mortice Gauge, Patent, with Rack
769 Improved Mortice Gauge, with Improved Stem
770 Improved Mortice Gauge, Patent, with Rack

That this feature is apparently associated with a patent (Nos. 768 & 770) might suggest these gauges were only offered by one firm, at least for a while. But, the holder of the patent could well have licensed the use of the rack and pinion feature by other firms as well. I'm including an image of the Mortice Gauge listings so folks can see them for themselves. Clearly, the improved mortice gauges and those with the patented rack and pinion arrangement were significantly more expensive than any of the others. Not surprising that they're relatively scarce.

Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR

 

[AndyT]

Good spot, Don. There's a lot of information in those lists for those who remember not to just look at the pictures - but it's a pity the gauges weren't worth illustrating.

I reckon the price differential accounts for the rarity though.

 

[bugbear]

>> That this feature is apparently associated with a patent (Nos. 768 & 770) might

Those patent numbers put us at 1838

http://www.ebay.co.uk/gds/Dating-an-Ite ... 309/g.html

The patents are only available (as far as I can find) by going to the British Library.

BugBear

 

[DonMc]

Sorry ... my wording was very misleading. The numbers 768 & 770 refer to the Illustrated List catalogue numbers for the mortice gauges in question. However, my placement of the numbers in the original sentence surely looks as if I was referring to patent numbers. My fault, sorry.

I had wondered if there might be a patent associated with these rack & pinion gauges, and these listings indicate that's likely. If we could find that patent, we could be closer to identifying a manufacturer, &c.

Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR

 

[AndyT]

I've read somewhere that the work of digitising UK patents and uploading them to the shared European database, Espacenet, got off to a good start but the funding ran out before it was completed. Consequently, although some historical patents are there, many are not.

I've searched for "marking gauge" "marking gage" "mortise gauge" "mortice gauge" and then just plain "gauge" and "gage" for the period 1800-1900. The earliest marking gauge for wood that I could find was in 1893. Obviously, that's too recent to be the patent for this rack and pinion design if it's traceable back to 1855, so my assumption is that the relevant patent has not been digitised and is not likely to be in the foreseeable future.

I also remembered that I found a scanned digest of abridged patents for tools for the period 1855 to 1866 (not sure where) but sadly it's not in there either, though all sorts of other ingenious ideas are.

I just mention this to save anyone else searching down the same rabbit holes. Of course, it's possible that the gauge was described as 'patent' without any formal registration.

 

[Bm101]

Not sure this is any help but quick Google found a similar one sold by David Stanley in 2012 on The saleroom.
https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auct ... t-13609582

 

[AndyT]

That link to the David Stanley sale IS helpful. The gauge there was listed as "illustrated Russell fig 216". That means it was in David Russell's collection and illustrated in the magnificent book about the collection which came out in 2010. I have a copy, but it's so big it lives in a cupboard and I often forget to look in it for questions like this one.
However, this time it doesn't offer much information. The gauge there is just listed as "English, mid-19th century". Other fine gauges alongside are marked as being by Fenton & Marsden so they were clearly capable of such quality work and may have been the makers even though they didn't mark it.
The Russell one has an oval head and what looks like a locking screw set into the underside of the head.

 

[kwigly]

Thanks for all the research help, turning up enticing clues.
Copying the most expensive style of mortise gauge might have been tempting. I wonder if my gauge doesn't have a maker's mark because they didn't want to be easily traced and charged with copyright infringement. .
Very interesting.

 

[DonMc]

In light of what Andy has reported concerning the digitizing of British patents, I now understand why I've had so little success searching the Espacenet data base. So, I decided to turn my attention to registered designs of utility for the period leading up to 1855 and found three items related to mortice/mortise gauges:

#960 Lockwood Brothers of Sheffield, for an Improved Mortice Gauge. February 13, 1847.
#970 Fenton & Marsden of Sheffield, Improved Mortise Gauge for cabinet-makers, joiners, &c. February 19, 1847.
#1398 William Marples of Sheffield, Mortice Gauge. March 23, 1848.

I was able to find information on the latter two of these registered designs. Neither is for a rack & pinion feature, but both include a feature for mechanically adjusting the head of the gauge relative to the points. In each case, the movement is actuated by an internal threaded rod with a flush slotted screw head requiring the use of a screwdriver. Both manufacturers tout this arrangement as avoiding altering the setting while handling the gauge. I've included an illustration and text for each of these so people can easily see them for themselves. If nothing else, it seems the idea of mechanically adjusting the head of the gauge relative to the points was of some prominence in the middle part of the 19th century.

Unfortunately, I've been unable to find anything regarding the utility design registered to the Lockwood Brothers. It's tempting to think it, too, may have been concerned with mechanically adjusting the head, possibly including the idea of the rack & pinion, but that would be purely conjectural. Possibly, in time, we may be able to find something regarding this item? Hope this has been of some interest.

Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR

 

[AndyT]

Thanks very much Don. Was that information all online?
Some searching suggests that Designview ( https://www.tmdn.org/tmdsview-web/welcome ) might be the place to look, but it's a bit fiddly on a mobile phone...

 

[DonMc]

Hi Andy,

Yes, that information was all available online. Specifically, it appeared in period British publications and can be tracked down using advanced search on Google Books. I limited the searches to between 1800 and 1860, full view only, and used various search values such as "mortice gauge," "mortise gauge," "mortice," &c. Google's OCR isn't entirely accurate, so it pays to use a variety of search values in order to snag as many relevant hits as you can. Sometimes, such searches can be very frustrating, but the occasional nugget keeps me going. Think that's called intermittent reenforcement, or something like that?

Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR

 

[kwigly]

Re online searches,
A National Archives search can give some clues to old UK registered designs,
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.u ... 00&_st=adv
(as Don notes; you have to search for both mortice and mortise spellings)
But only the brief title description is available online at NA, and you need to go visit the Archives, or pay for copies, to get details.
Thanks Don, for doing the google books search and digging out some pictures/descriptions
[pictures of the Fenton & Marsden and the Marples gauges are at http://www.oldhandtools.co.uk/blog/fent ... ice-gauges ]

 

[workshopted]

This gauge is on page 74 of the David. R. Russell book as being made by Fenton & Marsdens.

 

[workshopted]

By coincidence, I've only just got the gauge in the bottom left of the pic... They all seem to be rather rare birds.

 

[Bm101]

Hi Ted. For interest I have two.

Both bought with complete beginners luck. The one on the right for loose change in Devon. The better one was found as part of a one of a lifetime sort of bargain find. Not quite those rare infill in a bucket at a carbootsale finds but probably more useful overall and with hindsight for an eventual user. Saws, planes, measuring tools. Walked away rather quickly even then with my knowledge. Ran out of cash and I hope someone nefarious didn't visit later and scam the fella. He had this huge collection of vintage oil cans (not his but not stolen either unless he was a better liar and I a bigger fool than I like to think), that I didn't have the spare cash for but loved. Only much later I realised they were very collectable and worth quite big money. Anyway. We all win some and lose some I suppose. Anyway hope the photos are of interest.
Regards
Chris