round toothpicks
grouchy2
>Is there a simple method (or machine) for making round toothpicks?
round toothpicks
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Re: round toothpicks
#2Are you related to grouchy1?_______
Rod Peterson -- Ormond Beach
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Re: round toothpicks
#3Yes, it's called a lathe
John Lucas
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Re: round toothpicks
#4Re: round toothpicks
Ronnie
>Try this site ; http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_176a.html
Ronnie
Re: round toothpicks
#5
Re: round toothpicks
JL
>This is not tongue in cheek - if you have a really good set of pliers, and some reasonable wood - you can use a draw plate. It'll take a while to get the knack of it. It helps if you start with green lumber. Just drill a series of holes in decreasing diameter in a steel plate. Mount the plate in a very secure vise. Round off a piece of wood (drawknife and spokeshave) near the diameter of your starting hole. Bevel the wood a little and stick the end through the drawplate. Pull like heck.
You can work a piece of 3/8" down to maybe 3/32 or 1/16" before you get real frustrated. If you want to start smaller, you can. Stretch the green wood out and dry slowly in the oven for an hour or so at 200. If you leave it in the air, try for overnight.
White oak, hickory and ash are reasonable.
No - I really wasn't making toothpicks - I was making pins to pin stuff with. I wanted round ones that were the same wood as some stuff I was making.
Re: round toothpicks
#6Alas! The best toothpick in the world *LINK*
Bruce, a MN Galoot
>is no longer being made. Forster sold out to Diamond and closed up shop in 2003. Diamond doesn't make them anywhere as good as Forster. For a nice article on the how-to, click the link:
Forster toothpicks
Re: round toothpicks
#7Toothpicks
Robert R Clough - Thorncraft
>The link is essentially correct. Forster allegedly became enamored of toothpicks when he was working in Brazil and ran across some Portugese made (hand made) toothpicks. Forster did not design the making nachine but he did start a factory at Strong, Me. Diamond Match, maker of over 90% of US toothpicks now, I believe, bought the factory sometime in either the late '40s of early '50s.
Toothpicks go back a long way, we don't know how far back man began to use a "toothpick" of some sort. However, in the 15th and 16th cenuries books, such as Castiglione's "The Courtier" published approximately iin 1525, on how to behave like a gentleman/lady all had admonitions against using a knife to clean one's teeth at a meal, but to use a stick of some kind. Picks made from Gold and Silver were common among the wealthy, and those who aped them, from then until roughly WWI.