OT: How were parts fixtured before magnets, chucks and vises?

The topic says it all. This question infests my mind when I'm at work.

How would one fixture a part before the days of vises, magnets, and chucks?

I understand that t-slots and face plates are OLD, but when did some of this technology come about? And how did they make due before hand?
Things like lathe dogs, turning between centers, the concept of the surface grinder, etc.
How did they make precision grinding work before better materials like aluminum oxide and wheels with a vitrified bond?
When did twist drills replace the spoon drills?
Who invented the cross slide rotary table? How did they make due before hand?
How did the old school tool makers fit complex shapes after heat treat when carbide, EDM, and hard milling didn't exist?


Feel free to throw in your ideas and speculations. If you have similar questions, throw them in. Lets see where this thread goes.

The bigger question is how was the first lathe made? By hand?

The first metal lathes probably followed bow driven wood lathes, they have literally been around for Milena. Spinning work between centers with a bow!

I'm not sure what your actual question is. You've just asked a whole bunch of unrelated questions that boil down to the whole history of modern machining, and that's not really a question at all.

If you want to know how things were done a hundred years ago, download any of the freely available books now out of copyright and available on the web, I have dozens of them and they make excellent reading. Don't dismiss many if the ways things were done as they are still there to save the day when something doesn't fit in your modern 6 jaw, or it breaks, or something else is setup in it, or .. Or ...or! I only have crappy little lathes and still use many of the same techniques some would snub their noses at as they punch in their G code, yet is till get things done. Who would have thought

ClearanceFit said:

The topic says it all. This question infests my mind when I'm at work.

How would one fixture a part before the days of vises, magnets, and chucks?

I understand that t-slots and face plates are OLD, but when did some of this technology come about? And how did they make due before hand?
Things like lathe dogs, turning between centers, the concept of the surface grinder, etc.
How did they make precision grinding work before better materials like aluminum oxide and wheels with a vitrified bond?
When did twist drills replace the spoon drills?
Who invented the cross slide rotary table? How did they make due before hand?
How did the old school tool makers fit complex shapes after heat treat when carbide, EDM, and hard milling didn't exist?


Feel free to throw in your ideas and speculations. If you have similar questions, throw them in. Lets see where this thread goes.

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plenty of books on the subject. many items were trade secrets. many machinist items are based of wood working methods.
..... answer to first question. how to fixture part without vise, magnet, chuck ? how would a carpenter do it? wedges are common when screws were not easy to make. glue like hot melt wax types could stick items and be warmed up to remove.
...... spoon drill . a blacksmith can make a spade drill fairly easy. twisting parts is a common blacksmith technique.
...... look to other trades. carpenter, blacksmith, clockmaker, gun maker. trade secrets til patent laws went into effect were common. a patent protected for 14 years let a inventor get paid while sharing technology. the whole point of the patent system is to share technology. 14 years is nothing. many trade secrets were secrets for centuries.

In the times before lathe collets and chucks were available, lathe work that did not use a tailstock was done by using melted hard wax or shellac to cement the work onto a face plate or into a recess in the end of the lathe spindle. That method still works, of course, and can be more accurate than a collet or chuck.

Before artificial abrasives were available, natural stones were used. Blocks and wheels could be carved from various kinds of stone. Sand was used for rough lapping, but any stone, even diamond, could be crushed to make lapping compounds of various fineness. You can use a rotating wood wheel charged with various powdered abrasives to put a mirror finish on steel parts. I have done it. It is another old way that still works.

Spoon drills were for wood working. The evolution of wood working tools is interesting, but I am more interested in metal work. Early metal drills were the spade type, easily made by a black smith. A tapered square shank was used because it could be made with hammer and anvil. See the picture. Spade drills are still used in watch repair (the little boxes), but they have round shanks. Twist drills became popular once there were means of making them cheap and in vast quantities. Morse popularized the twist drill in the 1860's and invented the taper shank. Brown & Sharpe introduced the universal mill that could mill flutes in the drills.

Larry

Low temp melting alloys, industrial plasters/cements.

Wax, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that unheated shops in colder climates would fixture in ice.

as mentioned above there are books on the history of machine tools, hand tools, and so on.

what is perhaps not so clear from this thread is that some basic devices are very very old - in particular the vise has been used in woodworking for centuries. various sorts of clamps, dogs, and holdfasts longer than that.

also recall that by modern standards early machine tools were slow and feeble (until pretty late in the 19th century at least) - and so the demands on workholding where much less.

as for what did they do before EDM? a. files b. different tool designs c. different part and product designs.

even today, features in things like new car body styles, sometimes appear when new steels/presses/tooling make them practical - the "creased" look in BMWs is said to be one example.

Take a trip to Colonial Williamsburg. I worked in costume there for 16 years,before getting begged into becoming a behind the scenes tool maker. Go to the Geddy Foundry. They have wooden treadle lathes there,with PITCH chucks,a face plate with hold downs I made them,and other accessories,taken from authentic 18th. C. sources. They can mount an oddball shaped casting in the pitch chuck while the pitch is warm,rotate the lathe,nudging the casting till the casting runs true,and the pitch cools and holds the part for drilling and threading. The gunsmiths are also there. Look into how they bore,ream,and rifle their barrels.

The Blacksmith's shop is interesting. I made their anvil patterns,and their treadle lathe. Look how they do things. Ask questions.

Get reprint 19th. C. Books and read them. Holtzafpple(sp?) comes in 2 volumes,and is a wealth of information. His shop was the premier maker of fine lathes and other equipment in the 19th. C.. for gentlemen hobbiests,who did some pretty outstanding work.

Is this another school term paper,by chance?

Leonardo Da Vinci actually contributed much to the development of the lathe and screwcutting technologies back around the year 1500, but the basic ideas are centuries if not millennia older. Nearly all early metalworking tech was based on woodworking tools and techniques, and the simple vice goes back to pre iron age woodworking or earlier. A simple bench with a foot actuated lever poking up from the side is more than enough to hold a block for planing or carving. If you really want to know where early metalworking ideas originated, watch this guy for some hints. Home | Woodwrights Shop | PBS

Mastodon tusks and pitch?

Probably bolted hold-downs, stop blocks, and wedges.

Between quotes below:

ClearanceFit said:

The topic says it all. This question infests my mind when I'm at work.

How would one fixture a part before the days of vises, magnets, and chucks?

Click to expand...

Vises and magnets have been around for a long time. Chucks are probably a bit more modern. Early magnets were relatively weak and probably not used much or only for limited situations. Anyway, a fixture can be made with a base plate, some screws and some fixed and movable pieces fastened to it. Some screws can be used to lock a part in if you don't have a real vise.

I understand that t-slots and face plates are OLD, but when did some of this technology come about? And how did they make due before hand?

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As above, screws and fixed and movable blocks of metal. Add screws to lock it in place.

Things like lathe dogs, turning between centers, the concept of the surface grinder, etc.

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A lathe dog and dead center is just about as basic as you can get. I mean, a piece of metal with a hole for the workpiece and a bent end or a pin to drive it with. Both you and I could probably make one in a few minutes with just hand tools. Or turn a cone: it does not have to be a perfect cone, just centered.

As for surface grinding, think scraping or lapping or sandpaper; all manual processes. Not exactly fast, but they work.

How did they make precision grinding work before better materials like aluminum oxide and wheels with a vitrified bond?

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With a lot of effort and care. Seriously.

When did twist drills replace the spoon drills?

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I don't know, but probably over a period of years, if not decades.

Who invented the cross slide rotary table? How did they make due before hand?

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I don't know who invented the rotary table, probably a group effort over many years. I suggest you look it up.

Before that they could have used a compass/divider to layout a circle and divide it into parts. Punch the hole centers and then drill. Again, more work, but it does do the job.

How did the old school tool makers fit complex shapes after heat treat when carbide, EDM, and hard milling didn't exist?

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Blueing and scraping or abrasive methods. BTW, this is still done.

Feel free to throw in your ideas and speculations. If you have similar questions, throw them in. Lets see where this thread goes.

Click to expand...

Many of the above techniques grow within their own and in conjunction with others. For instance, you can layout a gear by manual means and make one. Then do it again, from the beginning to make a second one with the same number of teeth. Now, the two can be mounted together, against each other and the spacing between the combined teeth can be used to make a third. This third one can have less error than the first two. Then turn or flip one of the original two and make a fourth. Repeat with the third and fourth gears. With the proper selection of combinations of gears and orientations you can further reduce the errors of all successive generations down to the level of the accuracy of the milling device you use for the process. That gives you a "perfect gear" of that tooth count. With that you can make a dividing head. Another process of successive error reduction can be used to make the dividing plates of any count: it only takes three generations of plates with a 60:1 or 90:1 gear reduction to reach the level of accuracy achievable in most shops today. Hence, anyone here could make a precision rotary table or dividing head starting with ruler and dividers, a bit of math, and a lot of time.

egpace said:

The bigger question is how was the first lathe made? By hand?

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An inmate with a file.

.......there was a thread about that some time ago.....

I think if you can make a milling machine or surface grinder you know how to make a vise.

The challenge is doing it with tools that are more primitive than the one(s) you are trying to make. Greater precision and function from less.

Spyderedge said:

I think if you can make a milling machine or surface grinder you know how to make a vise.

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I can remember seeing lathes with belt drive from shaft running along the ceiling that were fitted with "bell chucks".

Hollow tubes with bolts through the sides, four at 90 degrees, then another four at 90 degrees but offset by 45 degrees from first four.

That workshop was set up in late 40's after WWII, they were still using those machines in the 60's

Im pretty sure the chuck was invented the day after the lathe was invented.

In 1718 this dude "invented what might have been the first lathe with a mechanical cutting tool- supporting carriage and a set of gears
(also known as a compound rest or slide rest).Andrey Nartov - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ClearanceFit said:

This question infests my mind when I'm at work . . .

. . . Lets see where this thread goes.

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It all goes back to Adam and Eve . . . First, there were vices. Later came chick magnets aiming to capitalize on them. In modern times, we even have Chick vices ( Chick Workholding Solutions )

With a name like ClearanceFit you should be able to figure out where dogs, spoon drills, cross sliding, hard milling, and the rest fit in the larger scheme of things.

Speaking of thoughts infesting the average guy's mind, apparently up to 388 times a day . . . How Often Do Men and Women Think . . . | Psychology Today

So, as in the case of many threads . . . pretty sure this one wanders downhill.

More seriously, way to broad (um . . .) a question. If you're truly interested, maybe start with Joshua Rose's two volume set on "modern" machine-shop practice for a look at what was possible more than a century ago. Machinists have been an ingenious lot for a very long time.

If anyone is really interested in this topic go to google books.

In advanced search enter - lathe

then enter the date range I entered 1800 to 1850

I randomly selected an 1813 book and snagged these images...