Comments on: Spacing Dovetails with Dividers – a Little History

By: Eoghan

Eoghan — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:38:17 +0000

Hi Wesley,

That webpage has moved, but Douglas’ portrait can be seen in Fig 4 on:
http://www.clarksonconservation.com/profile/

Eoghan.

By: mkvernon

mkvernon — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:53:56 +0000

Chris, where did you purchase your dividers? Any particular thing I should be looking for?

By: skiroy56

skiroy56 — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:26:48 +0000

Chris
Pardon my ignorance, what is the issue with Ten Speed Press’s version of The Practical Woodworker? Are they missing important informtion or…? I am new to the hand tool woodworking scene and just want to get the best and most accurate information that I can.
Thanks for your consideration
Laurence

By: Bernard Naish

Bernard Naish — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:57:43 +0000

Hi Chris, I have always wanted to know how to mark out dovetail spacings using dividers but have never been able to work out how it was done. Do I measure the distance between the end tails, divide that by the number of tails plus one, set my dividers to that figure and step away? This seems to be quite complex. Please tell.

Regards, Bernard Naish

By: David Randall

David Randall — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:31:34 +0000

Chris,
“The Practical Woodworker”, in its original four volume form, is a great reference work and I’m glad you’re finding it useful. The photographs and illustrations are first rate, the text is pretty straightforward, and it covers a broad range of subjects. Editing it down to a third of its original content was rather a shame on the part of Tenspeed Press.

By: LuleaSweden

LuleaSweden — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:51:30 +0000

I seem to remember hearing Alan say that he learned it as a boy, playing around with dividers. I think it was on the DVD “The Alan Peters Approach”, where Rob Cosman interviews Peters.

By: Clay Dowling

Clay Dowling — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:16:13 +0000

Video is nice, but quite honestly a little playing around will help you do this for yourself without any problem. I tried using the text descriptions and couldn’t get it. I finally just decided to play around with my dividers and had it done in a couple of minutes. You might have to play with your spacing a bit to get usable sizes, but honestly, a couple of minutes and I was good.

By: Driftwood

Driftwood — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:23:44 +0000

I would be very surprised if it didn’t go much farther back, to the Renaissance or even classical era. Geometry has been pretty sophisticated since at least Euclid, and the dividers were old enough and fundamental enough to make it onto the Masonic emblem (King Solomon’s dovetails?).

Documenting that would be another matter. If only there were a fiendishly curious, deeply read woodworking writer somewhere with an itch to search out old ways of working and their historic roots…

By: wbtanner

wbtanner — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:59:32 +0000

For a portrait of Douglas Cockerell with his dividers see http://www.clarksonconservation.com/zoom/profile_4.html

Wesley

By: wbtanner

wbtanner — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:42:56 +0000

Chris,
Hand bookbinders use this method to step off the sewing stations on the spines of books before sewing in exactly the same way as this. In the early days of the Arts and Crafts movement most of this small community knew each other. The bookbinder and printer T.J. Cobden-Sanderson (who coined the phrase “arts and crafts”) would have known this method from his teacher Roger de Coverly and passed it on to binders Sarah Prideaux and Katherine Adams. Adams lived in the Cotswold village of Broadway not far from Sapperton where Gimson and the Barnsley’s lived. Another connection would have been Emery Walker, a partner of Cobden-Sanderson and a friend of Gimson’s, who also lived in Sapperton and had Adams bind many of his books. Or it may have come from David Powell, who was at Edward Bansley’s shop at the same period as Alan Peters. Powell’s father was the bookbinder Roger Powell, for whom Sidney Barnsley made a bedroom set. The elder Powell studied with Douglas Cockerell, who had been in Cobden-Sanderson’s workshop as well.
Wesley