A New Stitching Clam

[Not Awl Together]

I hope I'm posting this in the correct forum thread, sincere apologies to the mods if not.

I had some bits of maple and walnut lying about and collecting dust in the shop for quite a few years and thought I might repurpose them. I put this together pretty quickly in my spare time over the last 3 weeks after looking at quite a few clam patterns on the Internet. I especially liked Fred Moreau's clams and borrowed heavily from his designs since it was briefly mentioned on here that he was no longer making them and it would be unlikely to obtain one. Unfortunately, I don't have access to steam bending equipment so I opted for laminating maple arms and cross pinned the short grain glue joint near the clams mouth with oak through dowels providing a mechanical joint. I also used through and blind dowels to reinforce the other parts. The walnut tension knob is recessed into the block so that thread won't get in behind it and hang up and after a quick test drive, I didn't have any troubles with thread hanging up anywhere on the clam. It opens and closes a dream with little effort turning the knob to tighten and the compression spring pushing the mouth open upon loosening

Thanks for looking,

Best Regards,

N.A.T

[JAM]

Very nice! And lovely workmanship! Mount it on the end of a bench and you've got a great saddler's stitching horse.

Julia

[DavidL]

very nice. You could probably sell a few since fred stopped making them.

[Hi Im Joe]

That's awesome. Great job!

[Not Awl Together]

Thanks everyone!

I'm considering a few options to attach a ball/ swivel mount so that it can swivel and be adjusted for height if necessary without risk of catching the thread as well.

For the moment it's actually not that bad being sandwiched between my legs until I sort out the other details.

Thanks again,

N.A.T.