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

[wmullett at bright.net]

Learn something new everyday....

Quions - As an architect, that term conjures up completely different imagery.  



---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:37:26 -0300
>From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net (on behalf of mspencer at tallships.ca (Mike Spencer))
>Subject: [TheForge]  [OT] Re: Cats, boots (Was: chickens)  
>To: theforge at mailman.qth.net
>
>
>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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