Chain Whittler (Aug, 1950)
Filed under: DIY — @ 2:05 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1950
Buy on Ebay
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1950
Buy on Ebay
Chain Whittler is A.E. Powell, over 60 years old and a retired Colonel of the British Royal Engineers. Each link is whittled from a single piece of oak, birch, apple wood or mahogany with a small non-folding knife. “Never cut myself,” he says.
This is pretty amazing. Take a board and carve it into links, think about it.
I especially like the Escher-like four link piece in the foreground.
Comment by Stannous — January 17, 2008 @ 5:58 pm
I suspect it’s a mistake to refer to each ‘link’ being made of a single piece of wood. They should have said that each *chain* was made from a single piece.
My dad made a much smaller wooden chain for me when I was a child. It takes careful whittling to make a chain - one false move and you have to start all over. Or you bleed a lot.
Interestingly, the resulting chain can be much longer than the piece of wood it was carved from.
Comment by Chakolate — January 17, 2008 @ 8:59 pm
A store near me, owned by an old craftsman, had a large wooden chain and other carvings along one wall. The chain must have been 30 feet long. I asked the man about it, and he said he carved the links seperately, and then cracked every other link in two by hand. This broke the link along the grain, without losing any material, so it could be glued back together perfectly. Before he said that I thought it must have been carved with the links linked…
So, this guy in the article may have worked harder or smarter … either way, the end product is like a brain teaser when you see it in person.
Comment by Justin — January 19, 2008 @ 4:15 pm
Neato.
To the last comment, I’m not sure that saying “this guy in the article may have worked harder or smarter”.
If the “smarter” is referring to the use of glue, then it’s not smarter, it just takes less skill, still a lot of skill,
just less than it does to make a wooden chain without glue.
Comment by Henry — October 11, 2008 @ 4:23 am