[TheForge] [OT] Re: Cats, boots (Was: chickens)

[peter fels]

Looks like Mike may have Quoined a phase!


On Mar 24, 2011, at 3:45 PM, Saint Phlip wrote:

> Found a quoin...
> 
> http://www.metallicelephant.co.uk/HOT-FOIL-ACCESSORIES(711151).htm
> 
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Mike Spencer <mspencer at tallships.ca> wrote:
>> 
>> Bruce wrote:
>> 
>>> For "wedge" read "screw" and all your objections disappear.
>> 
>> I know this isn't what you're referring to but it's related:
>> 
>> I was fortunate to be able to take "print shop" in 9th grade.  I
>> printed up forms for a bogus laboratory that allowed me to order a lot
>> of dangerous and otherwise unobtainable chemicals.  But that's another
>> story.
>> 
>> The print shop had really cool devices called quoins, pairs of iron
>> wedges which, when put together on a flat surface, formed a unit with
>> parallel sides and a toothed groove down the center.  The teeth formed
>> a kind of diagonal rack gear.  A corresponding tip on a T-handled tool
>> made a pinion.  When the hand-set type was ready to go, it was placed
>> on a stone surface inside a steel frame -- a "chase" -- and the extra
>> space mostly filled with blocks of polished hardwood.  But space was
>> left for the quoins, which were inserted loosely and in pairs on at
>> least one side and one end.
>> 
>> Then you inserted a wrench -- the pinion-like tool -- into a quoin
>> pair and twisted.  That forced the wedge-shaped halves to bypass each
>> other and exert enormous force on the block of type.  When this was
>> done on both sides or all around, the type was "locked in chase" and
>> ready to go to the press.
>> 
>> Alas, I've never come across any of those quoins to put in my tool box
>> but I have come across some places where they'd have been handy,
>> places where I wanted to exert considerable force from the inside of
>> something outward but had severe space limitations.
>> 
>> In earlier centuries, printers used wooden wedges tapped into place
>> with a hammer.  The iron ones, though, always impressed me as a
>> landmark of technological and blacksmitherly cleverness.
>> 
>> I don't *think* that's way off topic.  Opinions may vary. :-)
>> 
>> - Mike
>> 
>> --
>> Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~.
>>                                                           /V\
>> mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
>> http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Saint Phlip
> 
> So, you think your data is safe?
> http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html?hpt=T2
> 
> Heat it up
> Hit it hard
> Repent as necessary.
> 
> Priorities:
> 
> It's the smith who makes the tools, not the tools which make the smith.
> 
> .I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary
> notices I have read with pleasure. -Clarence Darrow
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