Re: make - forge? - wedge for feathers-and-wedge rock-split

On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 20:07:00 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
<muratlanne@gmail.com> wrote:

"Joe Gwinn"  wrote in message
news:rd5h0jhkgaok22e5ptujf4es6qtlo2dog1@4ax.com...
>
Probably in Roman times, they were made of wrought iron.
>
Joe Gwinn
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Or bronze, the Romans were masters of it.
<https://www.valvemagazine.com/articles/ancient-roman-valves>

Simple and reliable.

And the modern names of many plumbing items are based on the Latin
terms, and are more descriptive than politically correct.

Like copper today none was left lying around.
<https://www.atouchofrome.com/pantheon-explained-page-2.html#melting-of-the-pantheon-bronze-roof-trusses>

Yes, and also true of the Egyptians who preceded the Romans.  Very few
bronze tools were found around the pyramids and the like.

Iron was too expensive to use for anything but knives and swords for
centuries, so bronze endured.  I don't know the exact historical
sequence, but steel (versus cast iron) kept getting cheaper.

Bronze knives cannot be made sharp enough for many things, so the
Egyptians used obsidian knives, and had a guild devoted to production
and use of obsidian knives, in particular for preparing the dead for
mummification.

The little remaining evidence of ancient tools suggests that they didn't
change much from antiquity until the Industrial Revolution, look in an
antique shop for examples. One difference is that screws were very rare
until clock makers needed them.
>
Holtzapffel Book II, Chapter XXVI describes the history of laying out and
forming threads by simple methods before the modern screw-cutting lathe was
introduced. I have an old die stock with grooves for gradually pressing
threads into a rod by tightening the two halves together that appear to have
been cut with a chisel.

I think I read that as well.

I've read many books on how screw threads were cut in the old days
when there was a screwcutters guild.  Think olive and wine presses,
and later the printing press.

Most threads were hand cut into wooden rods and nuts, usually with a
specially shaped chisel, often following a string carefully spiral
wrapped around the rod to be threaded.

The nut would usually be cut by making a metal tap, by the process for
threading a rod.  There were many ways.

A great advance was a lathe with a sliding spindle with several thread
pitches cut on it, so it would advance the work past a stationary cutter at
the pitch selected by lowering a follower into one of the spindle threads.

Yes.  What followed was the classical change-gear thread cutting lathe
of Henry Maudslay, circa 1800, which is the prototype for all
subsequent toolroom manual lathes to the present day, more than two
centuries later.  While digital control is now replacing many of the
gear trains in modern lathes, most of Maudslay's approach endures.

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudslay>

Joe Gwinn