A Ripple-y Day
Last month my long time acquaintance RichardB organized another field trip to JerryR’s shop and examine again the ripple molding cutter his dad Irv made a jillion years ago. Both Irv and Jerry made/make exquisite clocks and incorporate(d) the moldings into their designs.
A selection of the moldings Kurt made on his machine.
Jerry’s sample board.
The catalyst for this gathering was the visit of KurtN who has built his own version of such a machine and was, like me, continuing research on the topic. We were also joined by tool historian and collector extrordinaire BobR for a grand day of fellowship and exploring the elegance of craft technology.
I found it useful to once again spend time with the machine, as it was extremely helpful in formulating and refining the strategy for the upcoming gathering to manufacture a ripple molding machine at The Barn late next month. In fact we have enough folks coming that we might try to divide into two working groups to make two machines.
Here’s a gallery of the day.
Jerry’s machine features a traveling cutter head carriage with free weights on it to to provide the downward cutting/scraping force.
I could not tell if the up-and-down patterns were made from Delrin, HDPE, nylon or whatever.
The machine is set up to cut up-and-down patterns and side-to-side patterns. I hope we can incorporate the same features when we make ours next month.
The underside of the carriage with the cutting iron, fashioned in this case from an old file.
The electric worm drive motive power was a feature I definitely expect to incorporate into ours, although for demonstration purposes we may make it hand-powered as well.
We took a few minutes to tour another shop building Jerry has set up to document his family’s woodworking over the past several generations. Yes, that is a ten-foot Moravian style workbench.
A collection of mantle clocks Irv and Jerry made, with copious ripple moldings.
Some of Jerry’s recent and current work.
Stay tuned.
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