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20th February 2014, 08:51 AM #16
In praise of the humble scratch-stock...
The bill is mainly for the story, I presume, Rob?
It's interesting that scratch-stocks don't seem to get anywhere near the attention & use they deserve. I have to confess that I knew about the principal for quite a long time, but thought they were just a mediaeval form of finger-torture dreamed up by people who didn't yet know what electrons were for! Then one day I wanted to make a quirked bead on a contoured edge, which no router or shaper could manage. Of course, that's a situation where a scratch-stock excels, so after some lengthy head-scratching & other avoidance tactics, I eventually decided to give one of these scratch-stock thingies a go. IIRC, it took me a lot longer than 15 minutes to make it & another while to get it working well, but you're not exaggerating when you say it takes virtually no time to do the actual job once you've got it sorted (& I can make one in a few minutes these days, too ). Of course, it depends on the wood to some extent, very soft or highly figured woods can give you a bad time, but by luck my first attempt was on a very co-operative piece, and I was very pleased with the result.
There was an article in AWR which featured a scratch-stock a year or two back. The author's version was a Rolls-Royce model & very well made, but a perfectly functional tool can be cobbled up from scrap wood, a couple of bolts or screws, and some old saw-plate, in a few minutes. I keep a selection of chainsaw files of various diameters for making the cutters. I usually don't bother stoning or refining the edges, just use them straight off the file. If you have many metres of profile to make, you may need to re-sharpen, but it always surprises me how far you can get before that's necessary.
Cheers,IW
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20th February 2014, 11:22 AM #17
Good Morning All
OK, I confess, I did not know what a scratch-stock was, but google is my friend ... (sometimes). Thaks Rob, Al & Ian.
Also Fine Woodworking has had a couple of articles on them recently and Lee Valley will tell you how to make one.
http://www.leevalley.com/newsletters...1/article1.htm
All good stuff. Lots of hits.
Fair Winds
Graeme
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20th February 2014, 11:26 AM #18GOLD MEMBER
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Thanks Graeme, I didn't have a clue what he was talking about either - thanks for the links
regards,
Dengy
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20th February 2014, 12:00 PM #19
When I was told what a scratch stock is , and what it can do I was amazed that I had done an apprenticeship ten years before and no one had told us of the tool at school . Working in an antique business I was coming across types of mouldings and seeing fine inlays pressed into perfect channels and I could not work out how this could have been achieved with no electricity . plenty of mouldings can be seen to have been done with the moulding planes of the day , I kept seeing the ones on 18th century chairs which I couldn't figure out. Then one day I walked into a cabinet maker friend who had been specializing in very good chair reproductions . He showed me how that mould was done with the scratch stock . Amazed was I . The back leg of those chairs has a mould that tapers as it goes up the leg and it twists like a propeller at the same time . A moulding that has been carved with chisels can be felt to be done with chisels by closing your eye's and running your hand along it . scratch mouldings are more true to feel. Funnily enough I bought a book on 18C chair making and the author did not know of the tool and did a bad job of carving that part of the chair , plainly visible in it's photos .
The grooving of channels for inlays came from being passed along and the veneering books as well.
Here is a picture of one of those chair backs. The moulding and the bead done with the scratch stock.
Rob
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