Anyone ever seen trammel points like these?

[Clayton Lambert]

Hey folks,

Picked up this cool handmade trammel point the other day-- appears to be out of Mahogany... Really appreciating the tapered wedge joinery.

One of the trammels/ both of the points are missing so Ill have to make replace those. I'm curious as to whether or not to use a metal pin or pencil lead for the points. Suggestions?

[Jim Koepke]

Haven't seen one like that.

Is there only one point?

Usually one point can be set up to take a point, pencil lead, an inking nib or other implement.

jtk

[Clayton Lambert]

Jim,
You are correct. As of now its technically a trammel point but I intend to replicate the missing one. The one that is present doesnt have the actual point so I was trying to decide whether to use metal or lead when replacing it. Im thinking nail off cuts would do quite nicely... Thoughts?

[Jim Koepke]

Jim,
You are correct. As of now its technically a trammel point but I intend to replicate the missing one. The one that is present doesnt have the actual point so I was trying to decide whether to use metal or lead when replacing it. Im thinking nail off cuts would do quite nicely... Thoughts?

Nail off cuts would be fine. One of my dividers uses one. Find those the same size as a pencil lead, 6d iirc.

It shouldn't be difficult to put a point on the nail. If you know of any pubs where darts are played, you can often purchase a dart stone. They are a small stone with open ends that are used to refresh the points on darts that have become dull.

If you have a drafting set you may want to make your second trammel point to be able to use any of the attachments your set uses.

Different trammel sets have different ways of doing this. Mine doesn't have any permanent points or attachments. It has spring clamps with notches to hold points, inking nibs, pencil points and even some mechanical device that has the ability to draw different dashed lines.

One thing that is interesting is one end has a roller to adjust its position on the beam. It doesn't clamp to the beam. There is enough spring tension holding the roller that it doesn't move on its own.

Most of the time when my work needs a big circle or arc a string and pencil do fine.

jtk

[william watts]

You can use a piece of a drill bit shank, it is harder than a nail. File a grove around the shank and break it at that point, it's to hard to cut with a hack saw, then file/grind, and hone a point. I used a 3/32 bit and made a marking gauge point that has lasted well.

[Warren Mickley]

Roubo (1769) shows a compas a verge, beam compass, that is similar to yours. Note one point is fixed. Yours looks like 18th century to me.
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[Mark Wyatt]

Very nice find!

[Clayton Lambert]

William-- Ill likely take your advice on using drill bit stock.

Warren-- Fascinating! Thank you for posting that. Definitely the most similar thing I've seen. I did a little looking into the name "Pakes" as I hadn't really heard it before-- it being an uncommon and old British name I think would lend credence to your suggestion that this is an older piece.

Im curious though about the fixed point. This one has no obvious signs of having one of the trammels fixed. Unless Im missing something obvious, there shouldn't be any issue using this tool if I make the replacement have the sliding feature as well, yes?

[Eric Erb]

Clayton, very cool trammel! I don't know why you would want both points to move, it seems like it's one more thing to come loose. If it were me i'd make one permanent, though it would work fine enough with two movable, as long as they wedged tight and didn't move when you don't want them to.

as to pins or leads, are you going to be using it on cardboard or other similar material to make templates and so forth? the lead might be a better choice then. If you are going to use it mainly directly on wood, then i'd prefer the pins. The pins make a small dent or groove in the wood, which turns out to be incredibly useful, you can put the trammel back in the same center point exactly, if you need two radii from the same center, you can set your chisel or gouge directly in the groove, and if you are sawing along that line, that groove can help reduce spelch or tearout.

[Jack Curtis]

Here are similar trammels that I saw on ebay a couple or three years ago:

277853

One point is fixed, probably because the rod is ruled; but in practice it most likely doesn't matter one way or the other since one end is always fixed when actually marking.

[Warren Mickley]

I think many old trammels had two movable heads; I just noted the fixed head in case there was evidence of such on your beam. I have a Stanley trammel that can take either a pencil or a steel point and an Alteneder beam compass that has a steel point that can be replaced with a pencil lead. However, I rarely use the pencil options, even when making cardboard patterns. I would make an identical head with steel point for yours.