Last weekend at Handworks we were able to pick up another miter jack from the La Forge Royale firm. Like the jack we posted about last year, this one was also made during the Lemainque period at Forge Royale in Paris. The medallion on this version is quite different than the more typical lion-encrusted one from our other items from the company. This jack is nearly identical in every other way. A customer of ours picked this up in a Michigan antique store. Amazing.
Incidentally, we still have a few miter jack kits left, which you can order directly from our store page. We likely won't produce these again, so you might want to get one while you can, even if you don't have plans to make one in the near future.
I am still wandering why the chops are made in two parts assembled with multiple tongs and grooves.
ReplyDeleteDoes anybody who has made the chops in one piece have experienced an accidental split of the chop at the tip of the triangle? The two pieces chops allow a change in grain direction near the tip and might be done to avoid splitting. Just an hypothesis.
Sylvain
More glue surface. Alternating grain direction would all but guarantee failure over one seasons movement, even with a finger joint.
DeleteIt is difficult to see the grain orientation from the pictures. Even if there is no direction change, why is it systematically in two pieces while the part used as the nut for the screw is in one piece? Are the two pieces of the same wood specie?
ReplyDeleteThe two pieces feature is visible in the catalog. There must be a good reason.
Sylvain
If you download the Sketchup file you'll see all the grain directions illustrated by red arrows. The grain in the nut block is perpendicular to the jaws because the nut block gets tenoned into the base. They are a two piece lamination to get the necessary thickness. Finger jointed I would say because its less fussy to produce with a better glue joint in a production setting than a butt joint, but that's just a theory. I would imaging they had a dedicated shaper set up for finger jointing in the factory, and used the joint on many things, not just the miter jack. They would probably run long blanks (several feet) through the shaper, glue that up, then slice off jaws for miter jacks from that one blank. That would be the way to do it in a factory setting. These things weren't made by hand all that much, since it takes machinery to cut the finger joint, and a particularly heavy machine to do ones of this size.
DeleteThank you for your answer.
ReplyDeleteSylvain