[TheForge] Feather & wedge (Re: Free the Stake!)

[Peter Fels And Phoebe Palmer]

I talked to an old Swede who said that his first job as a little 
kid in his father's stone yard was splitting huge blocks of 
stone. They'd lift him up onto the drilled block with a box of 
feathers and wedges and a kid sized hammer and he'd set up the 
wedges and feathers in their respective holes. Then he'd go down 
the line striking the wedges and listening to the sound. The 
object was to match the pitch on each hole. When he'd gone the 
length, he'd go back to the beginning and raise the pitch another 
note. Eventually there was a loud cracking sound and someone 
would come and lift him back down....pf

Andrew Vida wrote:
> 
> 
> Mike Spencer wrote:
>> ...I figured out that the reverse taper
>> in the feathers is as important as the taper in the wedge and that the
>> tapers should more or less match.
> 
>     IMO there is nothing more or less about it.  The tapers should match 
> with good precision.  You want as much sliding contact as possible to 
> avoid jamming the wedge or otherwise ruining the surfaces.  Also, the 
> better the contact, the better the distribution of the force will be. 
> Point stresses may cause the stone to fail unpredictably and in 
> undesired ways.  You want the force nicely distributed along the lengths 
> of the feathers.
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