Tools Of A Swiss Sattler

[Thor]

Walter, Tom und ich sind nicht die gleichen. Er sitzt in Calgary und ich bei Stuttgart.

Aspen ist zwar eine Pappelart wird aber bei richtiger Trocknung extrem hart. Kein Vergleich zu unserem Pappelsperrholz, das dafür tatsächlich ungeeignet wäre. Mein erster Beruf war Schreiner ;-)

[Northmount]

Are you talking about the Fir plywood you get at Home Depot? That wouldn't work. None of the needle trees, except for larch and northern Fir would work. With Douglas Fir I'm not sure. It has to do with the length of the fibers. Any hardwood will work. In your area it would even be possible to use well aged Aspen. Comes cheap and once dried it has excellent features. Beech or Horn beam is only used here as it comes cheap and has excellent features for tools. The better tools have Ash handles. It's also a lot more expensive.

Aspen here in the NW North America is pretty soft/weak. I'd trust Douglas Fir a lot farther than aspen.

Tom

[walter roth]

Hallo zusammen......

Hiermit die Fotos. Sie erklären sich selber......

Hey are the photos................thay explaines themselves.

Edited March 18, 2015 by walter roth

[Sona]

As Simon didn´t do it yet, I´ll just give it a shot to keep this thread going.
I´ll maybe add some explanations in "[" and "]", just for you to know

So well... thos metal parts of the clamp made by Louis are exactly the same [reffering to the one Walter owns, made by the company Bernhard], they just look a little bit different. Everyone just makes them in a slightly other ways [though the function stays the same]
You can simply exchange the bent piece on the bottom of the clamp with a rod or a bar and it still works fine. (http://shop.leder-lo...zer-Modell./587)
The rest just stays the same.

The material "Multiples Birke" [the LVL birch, mentioned by Thor above] works just fine for this. I use it a lot myself.
Also "gedämpfte Buche" [beech, my translater calls it "subdued", but maybe i.e. Thor know as better describtion/word for it] is really nice for this as they are glued 3 times.

As said before, nearly every kind of construction wood would work. Ash would make a quite good choice, too.
Just in case of the jaws you have to look for the grain of the wood... exspecially how the tree rings looks like as this might cause the piece to break if you make a wrong choice. With "Multiplex" you won´t have those problems due to its construction.
If you use "Multiplex" it has to be birch, because "Aspen" is asome sort of poplar and way to soft/weak.
Over here we say it´s a "soft-playwood".
Of course you can take a precious hardwood, walnut or something similar, as you like (to pay for) it ... ))
You can sand those bent pieces of wood really good on a belt sander to achieve a perfect form and to clean up those glue joints.
I just made a picture of a piece of "Multiplex".

I made a picture of the clamp with my neighbours son, too. The thing is, he is like 182 cm (~6 feet) tall and the clamp is too small for him. It should be about 88 cm (~35 inch) in heigh rather than 80cm (~31,5 inch) that it is...
But I had nobody else at hand, just this big one

I also made pictures of the templates, just for you to know how they look like.
They are scaled 1:1 on brown paper.
I would send them to one of you guys and I´d be happy if he/se could spread them

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Here he just explains that he´d like to send those templates to Tom, so other people can order them from him, and that it might be a little complicated to scan and print those in a scale of 1:1. For those people in europe he´d send them piece by piece.

Plus (the red part), he´ll upload the pictures later (like right above this post ^^) because he´s just busy.

And after that:

Greetings
Walter

[i´ll just post it like this and comment on it later as I think, Thor and I might have some opinions and guesses about the choice of wood and stuff [Thor.... you´ll get one of those messages from me ^^]


if anything is not totally clear, just yell at me and I´ll fix that ]

Edited March 19, 2015 by Sona

[walter roth]

Hallo Simon...

Vielen Dank an dich, und wie gesagt, Du hast eine Gutschrift bei mir.

I owe you something

Greeting

Walter

[Sona]

Servus Walter,
ich bin nicht Simon, ist aber kein Problem. Mach ich gerne
Abgesehen davon... ich schick dir nachher nochmal Bilder von meinem Ahlenheft von Kappey, da warst du a noch interressiert dran ^^.

[Thor]

Also "gedämpfte Buche" [beech, my translater calls it "subdued", but maybe i.e. Thor know as better describtion/word for it]

I'm not exactly sure what he referred to, but subdued seems to be wrong. The word describes a mood or situation more than the physics of wood. Never mind German is a horrible language. I guess he's referring to steamed wood, which wood make more sense in regards to the shape of the clamp.

However, if one wants to take up on that stress, go for it. Build a steam box, cook the wood, bend it in shape, clamp it tight till dry and you're good to go. Instructions on how to can be found online. Engineered wood and especially LVL is the better choice in my opinion. Steaming and bending of the wood weakens it due to stretching and partial braking of fibers.

On Walter's pictures you can see that the core is reinforced with plywood. I'm not sure what kind is used there, but it looks like beech plywood.

LVL comes in various dimensions. Ask your local supplier what he can get you and make a decision then. The thicker the more expensive. It may be cheaper to buy just 3/4" sheets and make them the thickness you want.

Another option to me would be to shape a 4 x 6 or whatever the actual dimension is and reinforce with a 1/4" or 1/2" LVL on either side. Saves money and time. For the US and Canadian fellows, I'd check LeeValley for the hardware. You just may be lucky or again make it yourself.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Thor

[Sona]

Haha, I guess you hit the "post"-button some times too often ^^.
And no, it´s not that sort steaming what I mean.
It is some sort of steaming, but it is used while preparing wood (drying, etc) for the normal use by a cabinet maker or similar. So it is used to reduce the tension in the wood and to differ it in some ways, shortly said: to improve certain properties of it....

Of course you could steam and bend your jaws, but as we are in a Leatherworkers forum I would expect that from anybody, nor would I suggest it, just because it´s a process you might wanna go into the woodworking topic a little bit more for....
And there for it might be just a little task to cut this clamp down to a simple, easy-to-make thing, rather than to be sure, everything is made like the "rules of woodworking" would dictate it

Besides that: I got a little different opinion on bend wood, but even if the fibres might (!) be weakend a bit.... that would not at all influence this piece at all as wood is far more solid than a lot of people think....^^

For the hardware: Good luck Thor

[Trox]

Thank you Walter and thanks for the translation Sona and Thor.

Walter, just to make sure. That metal hardware locks the jaws of it? I always thought it did. But when I see your neighbors son resting his foot on the pedal, I'm not sure anymore.

[Macca]

The jaws lock with the hardware Trox, I can confirm that, I have one.

The jaws lock but adapt to the thickness of the piece you are working on, thats what the lever arrangement is for

Very clever design.