Age of machine made dovetails

Re: Age of machine made dovetails

wilbur

I know I can't help you with your question, but I can pass on an anecdote I heard at the SAPFM New England chapter meeting a couple of weekends ago. One of the presentations was by Nick Kotula, a noted conservator and period furniture expert. One of the things he does is to appraise furniture and other old things. He says that if he could stitch together all the fragments of Old Glory that flew over Fort McHenry in the ware of 1812, it would be twice the size of the original flag, and that a significant part would be made of nylon.

So if you're told that the piece has been in her family for forty years, and she thinks it's a lot older, you know that it's at least forty years old.

By the way, Nick Kotula says the way that he gets around the "how was nylon used in a flag from the early 1800's" issue is that he always concludes his written assessment with the phrase, "according to family tradition".

Re: Age of machine made dovetails

Bob Lang

I don't have an exact date off the top of my head, but by the 1890s most machinery we know today, with the exception of CNC existed. By the 1920s most factory made furniture likely had machine cut dovetails.

Bob Lang

Machine-made dovetails date from c. 1900

Steve Elliott

The first successful method of making machine-made drawers was the Knapp joint, which used a series of circular shapes with a peg in the middle. These joints were used beginning in about 1870 and were very common until about 1900, when mechanized methods of making dovetailed joints were developed.

If you have seen pictures of Steven Thomas's Loopy infill plane, you'll remember the distinctive Knapp-type joints that connect the sides to the sole.

Enter stage right

Dean Lapinel

Read the cue...here is one of Stephen's loopy planes.

Do I detect a driveby gloat?

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

Or three?

They are, indeed, stunningly pretty planes.

Caught me

Dean Lapinel

Caught in the act. I won't deny it...the opening was there and I took it.

The photo was actually a pic for the violinmakers thread. I had a photo showing the wide mouth of the brass curved sole plane compared to the tight mouth of the LN. I use the brass one as a scrub plane. The backdrop of the loopy was undoubtedly a shameless gloat

Definitely by 1960

Ian Neuhaus (in Sydney, Australia)

Jack

I live in Australia, I'm 55 this year.

When I was about 4, my dad bought a Miller Falls tailed router and around the same time a Stanley dovetail jig -- which cuts the standard no layout, evenly spaced, half blind DTs.

Given the distance between Australia and the US and our different voltage (240, not 110) my guess is the same tools were almost certainly available to US home WW in the early 1950s.

"40 years ago" is 1970, much older is say 1960

If she was in Australia, and if my dad had built and sold stuff out of his home shop, he could have built it any time after about 1959.

Re: Age of machine made dovetails

gregforster

40 years ago, I was in high school. 100 years ago, my grandfather was a teen-ager. I think what most of us envision as old in terms of woodworking/furniture is pre-industrial handwork; pre- 1820s and 200+ years ago. My how time does fly...

R2D2

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

Powered routers go back about a century if I recall correctly.

I have a couple of Stanleys routers from the 50's (these became Bosch when they bought out Stanley Tools - you can see the resemblance even now). My nickname for them is "R2D2".

There is an advert in an on 1950's UK woodworking magazine in my library that must be for one of the first home workshop jigs for power-cut dovetails. It uses a corded drill and a jig very similar to those now used with powered routers. I'll try and dig it out and scan the image for here.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Time flies?--OT

Jack Guzman from Maine

I had the concept driven home to me recently. My sister bought a house in a neighborhood where I grew up.Haven't been there since back then. I was walking around the neighborhood while visiting her recently. The place hasn't changed much.I walked up to the spot that I remember as my playmate Stanley's house. I wasn't sure which of two houses it was so I asked a woman standing on the porch of one if she knew which house used to be the .....s I gave her the name of the family. She said she'd only been here six years and never heard the name. When was this? Then it hit me...oh...that was 195-- oh that was 50 years ago! Never mind,sorry to have bothered you. That woman was only about 30. Yes time indeed flies.---Jack--feeling alot older after this thread.

Drawer Example - Knapp Joint

charlie belden

Inventor Charles B. Knapp of Waterloo, Wisconsin patented the first joint making machine in 1867. In 1871 Knapp Dovetailing Company of Northhampton, Mass, put more refined machines in commercial application in furniture factories on both the east cost and midwest region. Could do 200 drawers a day.

Euro vs American Sense of Time

charlie belden

From a historical perspective, the United States is a very young nation. We think a building that's a hundred years old as REALLY OLD. Two hundred years ago seems like Ancient History. In Europe, they've got cathedrals that were started 1200 years ago - and they may someday actually finish them. Now India has an even longer sense of time. They have a myth that describes - THE BIG BANG.

And America has a short retention span. Europe celebrates great victories - or noble defeats - that occurred a thousand years ago. The Middle East does the same thing - but go back thousandS of years. It may be a blessing for Americans - we don't carry grudges much - and never going back a half a millenium - though I suspect some Native Americans might -- for good reason.

Differences even within the U.S.

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

There's a ranch near us that was settled about 1850, and some of the descendants still live there. This is impressive stuff to me, but my Philadelphia-born wife has taken me to the mill that one of her ancestors operated over 250 years ago - and the neighborhood was settled by then.

We sure wish we'd had the money to buy the mill - or a working time travel machine that would have allowed us to tell our younger selves to move to that rural county northwest of Philadelphia. Lovely country, and the barn would make SUCH a shop.

English miles

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

Jim said, "...in England 100 miles is a long way..."

Perhaps it can be explained by pointing out that English murder mysteries are just about the only ones in which a suspect explains why he didn't get to dinner at the country house because the car broke down and it took an hour to get it started again; and the investigating officer says, "Oh, okay."

Ah, Lucas - The Lord of Darkness

Hank Knight

Well... *LINK*

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

I especially like the offer of "Lucas Replacement Wiring Harness Smoke."

this is not to mention their instrumentation. I had a friend with a TR4 when I was in college. We were either estimating road speed from the tachometer or estimating engine speed from the speedometer - at no time did both work simultaneously.

Great cars, when they run well.


Best assembly of Lucas information I've ever seen

Thanks Bill, I needed a good laugh     

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

Thanks for the Link and the Laughs !

Hank Knight

Re: English miles

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

Otherwise known as Lucas Lord of Darkness. Must have escaped from Hella.

Sorry about that - my fingers refused to stop typing

Regards from Perth

Derek