Machine, Woodworking

Description

(a) Peg threading machine consisting of a between-centers turned peg holder with locking screw and crank handle supported by two vertical brackets secured to a board. At the other end of this board are two vertical boards screwed to the edges, the upper inside edges of which are v-grooved accepting the v-shaped edges of the screw box slide (b). All parts are cherry. (b) Cherry board with edges molded to a "V" which slide in corresponding v-shaped grooves in slide box on threading machine. A screw-box is attached to the top at each end of this board; one cutting 1/2" diameter threads, the other 3/8" diameter ones. The 1/2" thread box base body of maple, an inset maple [?] thread guide, a steel v-cutter and throat plate, a brass locking plate and steel wood screws holding the pieces together. The 3/8" screw box has a body of hickory with an integral thread guide, a steel v-cutter secured by a steel wood screw and wedged with iron or steel shim stick.

Notes

No interior architectural feature in Shaker buildings is more common than the pin board found in nearly every Shaker room, hall, and closet. The lathe turned, wooden clothespins spaced evenly along narrow boards were used to hang everything from clothing to chairs. At Mount Lebanon and sometimes in other Shaker communities, the round tenons of the clothespins were threaded and screwed into matching threads cut in the pin boards to prevent the pins from being pulled out. Turning and threading the pins was time consuming and tedious. Isaac Newton Youngs (1793-1865), a member of the Church Family at Mount Lebanon, wrote in his diary on November 12, 1840, that he had "been making a machine for cutting screws for clothes pins," and commented that his new machine "works well." The machine is composed of two different sized, iron, v-shaped cutters. The clothespin, clamped in a recess in a wooden shaft was rotated into the cutter by turning a crank. As the threads advanced, the cutter, free to slide in its wooden mount, was pulled up the length of the tenon until the threading was finished. The second cutter, having a smaller diameter, was probably used to cut threads on wooden drawer pulls.