Thread: Fixtures and Jigs for Hand-Cut Joinery

Originally Posted by woodPixel

This hand-vice jig that fits onto the table is a clever design.

vice jig bench.JPG

and this 45° jig for skimming mitres JJUUSSTT right is nice too

45deg shooting board.JPG

Both very nice . Same with the jig Derek posted


Its sent me on a bit of searching the last day or two .

After using My Mitre / Miter Jack like a Chair makers vice is used I am knocked over by how accurate cutting a tenon came out .
Its solved a question Ive had for years as to why tenons on English Victorian and Georgian chairs are so neat and accurate . Ive always thought just cutting with a saw on a bench hook and chiseling or shoulder planeing was not good enough as what Ive seen in antique furniture.

I think the reason for such accurate tenons is not just a cutting jig . Cutting with saw only. Its being able to do a cutting and planing or paring with a chisel in the jig . Like I tried for the first on the mitre jack . Like that Italian or French jig could do .

And there's some of these jigs being made on the Benchcrafted Blog with some good pictures. And on Youtube .

benchcrafted-small

This French print came from the Benchcrafted blog

Translated they read
Plates for Carpentrers . Triangles for Cabinetmakers . Squares foe Cabinetmakers
Plates for carpenters. Triangles for cabinetmakers. Squares for Cabinetmakers..png

Triangles and squares for Cabinetmakers I get but what would Plates for Carpenters mean ?

If the Triangles for cabinetmakers tool / Mitre jack can cut and trim a tenon held upright and also do its main job as a mitre triming tool . Then the squares for cabinet makers tool will do long rail laying down or long rail held upright tenons . Cutting and planing / paring .
Then there is the Chair makers vise a bit like the first picture above .
Untitledrfv.jpg Untitledtgb.jpg

You could saw cut and Plane / Pare on that as well .

Forgotten Woodworking Tool (The Chair Maker's Vise) - YouTube

What a chair maker's vise can do where other vises can't - YouTube

Specialised jigs must have existed in every hand tool workshop for all sorts of things . They are very interesting problems to try to solve.

Rob

Originally Posted by woodPixel

It was very nice to listen to clearly spoken Italian again.

I love it as a language.

This hand-vice jig that fits onto the table is a clever design.

I can listen to him all day and I can't understand a word he says, he has such a melodic speech style almost like good music.

Originally Posted by derekcohen

Hi Chris, coming from a background where research, documentation and acknowledgement is considered not only polite and ethical, but the only way to avoid plagiarism, that video is disturbing for me. The content dealing with the vise and the tenon shoulder saw was lifted from the work by 18th Century French chairmakers, which was brought to our attention by Jeff Miller over the course of the past 10 years. I do not speak French and I wonder whether acknowledgement was made by the author or the video?
Derek

I come from the premise that nothing is original in woodwork in this and the last century, it's just not been documented and or forgotten. I.e. The unicorn sharpening method and slow speed grinding are two off the top of my head. Considered revolutionary today but in fact have been employed many decades or even hundreds of years ago, possibly even thousands.

Originally Posted by The Spin Doctor

I come from the premise that nothing is original in woodwork in this and the last century......

While that may be true in some respects, I don't think you can deny that clever fellas have come up with novel ways of combining existing technologies, or adding "improvements" that nobody else has thought of up 'til that point. Both screw threads & planes pre-dated Mr. Bailey by a couple of thousand years, but he was the first (that we know of) to combine both to create the very practical tool we all know & love. He didn't get there in a single jump, we know that, but who else he "borrowed" from along the way we don't..

Many "inventions" have been dreamed up simultaneously by two or more people working in complete ignorance of each other's activities. This is often due to the prior or parallel development of technologies that complement or enable them plus a perceived "need". Their time has come & sooner or later they are going to appear. Practical aircraft depended on simultaneous development of airframe & engine technology, as just one of many examples.

It's also true that many good ideas didn't get patented because the inventors didn't realise the full significance of what they had (and patenting can be a costly & protracted process!), so some enterprising type with the cash & foresight can legally & perhaps even morally take the idea forward. The people who invented the enabling technology that is used to make monoclonal antibodies, didn't realise the potential of what they had, it was left to others do that & they have since made a hugely important contribution to research & medicine. A lot of people played a part...

Figuring out who thunked up what first, and who else may have knowingly or unknowingly contributed to the idea can lead us into some very complex mazes!

Cheers,

Originally Posted by auscab

... Translated they read
Plates for Carpentrers . Triangles for Cabinetmakers . Squares foe Cabinetmakers
Plates for carpenters. Triangles for cabinetmakers. Squares for Cabinetmakers..png

Triangles and squares for Cabinetmakers I get but what would Plates for Carpenters mean ? ...

I spoke to a French friend who spent her first 30+ years in Fontainebleu outside of Paris. She added a little to Rob’s translation. “Ebénistes” are the absolute top end of wood workers who make ‘modern antiques’ and routinely include inlay and marquetry in their work. “Plates” apparently means flat, not quite the same as plate in English.
I googled and apparently the full name is “Boite à recaler plate de menuisiers” which translates as registration plate for carpenters. I hypothesise that they may have been used for cutting or planning bevels and flats – like a mitre box and/or shooting board?

Menuisier/ebeniste – Outils Anciens

Plate de menuisiers.jpg