Jigs and tool rests back in the day

H

Hesparus

Joined
Oct 31, 2004
Messages
1,442
Hi Everyone,

Many of us use jigs and tool rests and such to make our lives easier, and I've seen lots of threads lately about them. It makes me whether or to what extent knifemakers back in the day (early industrial, preindustrial, prehistoric) used these sorts of things to make their lives easier. Anybody know about it?

Thanks,
Chris
 
Well, I'll tell you this much, I seriously doubt (can't say I know since I wasn't alive) anybody would have begrudged the use of *any* tool that made a process easier, faster, or give better results. Craftsmen rarely had the luxury of idealism, when it came to efficiency.

I like knowing how to do things the "hard" way, and often prefer that method, and many traditional manual processes are high efficient when exercised skilfully, but if you think about it, arent jigs and such, merely evolutions of tool efficiency?

Isn't a vise simply a workpiece holder? Like a basic clamp, or even, your hand? You could hold a workpiece in your hand to file, but that would automatically and casually be regarded as inefficient or foolish, what's the difference between a vise and a work rest really? What's the line between a machine attached work rest, and a hand gripped push stick with a notch?

Anyway, an interesting question, my guess is that in any and all cases where it was feasible, especially in industry, jigs, guides, templates, holders, cheats, tricks, and magic spells, were used, encouraged, loved, and rarely frowned upon.!
 
I didn't mean this post to be disparaging of jigs and things — I use and appreciate them just as much as everyone else. I was just curious about their use in the past.
 
I have tried jigs but they just dont work for me, I think if someone can do better or faster work with a jig that is fine. Otherwise we would all be using files and sandstone. I saw a video of a jig on utube and the guy made hollow bevel grinding just as simple as pie, but I could not get that to work, btw, he did say at the end of the video he preferred free hand now that he had more experience.
 
Hesparus said:
I didn't mean this post to be disparaging of jigs and things — I use and appreciate them just as much as everyone else. I was just curious about their use in the past.
Click to expand...

Sorry man, didn't mean to imply that you were. Some people love em, some people hate em. I only use a work rest myself for grinding, and a carbide file jig.


On a post here recently about the Japanese Sen tools, there was a very cool bench setup to "hold" the work piece at an angle, locked down, without a vise. I'm sure there were thousands of such tricks and fixtures used all over before a lot of things we take for granted, like vises, were available.
 
Until recent times, almost all knife grinding was done with the knife held on a jig-board. It had nails in it that held the blade flat against the board, and the ends stuck out about 8-10" beyond the blade. The grinder held the ends and ground the blade on the wheel. It also greatly aids hollow grinding by making the blade more stable, and the angle more consistent. In some cases, the board was placed on a hinged support to make the hollow grind semi-automatic.
This style grinding is still in use in Japan on the kaiten toshi.
I know a few grinders who use the same technique today to keep fingers and 36 grit belts far apart.
 
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