Good morning, I'm Brandon Oswald. Welcome back to the homestead. Today we are going to make a
tool that has been used for thousands of years it's still used today and it makes it easy to
have consistent measurements and markings on whatever you're building. Today we are
making dividers they were used by all sorts of different Craftsmen and Tradesmen from
clock makers and wheel rights, gunsmiths, all the way to carpenters, and joiners,
and even painters. And they range from all sorts of different little shiny polished
very ornate to the very crude. And that's the context that we're working at here today. We
need a set of dividers here on the homestead but we don't need anything fancy so we are
going to make our own crude wilderness set of dividers right here on the homestead.
So the dividers we're going to make today are going to be roughly this size we're not going
to do the locking mechanism a lot of frontier dividers just had a simple rivet and what held
them in place was just the tightness of the rivet if it got too loose you just a little whack with a
hammer it'll tighten them right back up. We're going to start with some half inch steel here
and that's all the bigger that we need and then a rod that will make the rivet out of.
All we have to do is hammer it down to a point on either side drift a hole for the rivet,
rivet them together. And then we'll have a new set
of dividers for the homestead so got the fire going let's go heat up some metal.
We're
just drawing this out to a taper making it nice and pointy.
When I hit I'm also dragging it out.
There we go. Making it making it pointy but only on the one side
we want to keep the one side straight and the other side will come in at an angle.
I have my taper to the point that I want we'll still file the tip you know when it's all finished
just to make it sharp. But we have our taper now we're going to do a taper on the other end and
then we can cut them off at the same length that way we get get even dividers they both have to
be the same length but we have the rough forging done on that side. Now rough forge the other side.
We have our tapers here the next step is to cut it. Now we don't want them
super long so I'm going to cut one off right about there then I'll use
that and lay it on the other side for my measurement that way they're both the same.
Then we'll uh put a hole in it drift a hole with the punch make our rivet and put it in there and
tighten it up just a little bit then when they're all completely done then we'll use a file and get
the tip really sharp so it's nice and usable especially on wood we're going to use this one
for a lot of carpentry so we want the tips to be nice and sharp to give a nice good scratch.
We have the rough forged legs of our dividers all made up here and we got the holes drifted out now
the round stock that we're going to use for the rivet we want to make sure that it'll go through
and it'll rotate smoothly on each side.
Now the trick here is the the kind of hard part we don't have a rivet header it's no problem we
do have a vise with a little bit of patience with a hammer we can get the one end to form
around and work really nicely. We got to use what we can here on the homestead, we'll make it work.
Our frontier dividers are fully assembled all we have to do is sharpen the tips and it'll be ready
to go. The rivet when we put it in we did it hot so it would kind of come together and it kind of
formed to the hole that we drifted but we didn't finish hammering it. We quenched it first so it
would cooled down that way when we did hammer it it wouldn't get it too tight as you use these they
will loosen up a little bit but just a few wacks with a hammer will tighten them right back up.
We have our dividers all done and sharpened up and now we're ready to use them but how
would you go about using them? What are they for? You're keeping a consistent measurement so once I
set these two they're going to stay there and I can make different measurements that are all
the same I can really keep things parallel and consistent which is really important if you're
doing joinery and carpentry and stuff like that. They're really simple to make anybody can make
them and you'll see some footage of us using them and all the different things that you can use for
them it's not just for using it as a compass and making circles and radiuses can also be using for
making parallel lines so we'll show you how to do that but I'm really happy. First time
I've ever made one of these really wanted to it's a really rough period correct very
you know wilderness homestead dividers. In a previous video with our good friend Joe Pera
we used a set of dividers to find the legs on a stool that we made and the reason why we wanted
to do that we wanted all our legs to be the same distance from the edge. And to do that
we started with the hole and we wanted the others to be exactly the same. So we took this and we set
it to where that hole was then we made a mark now you could come over here to the other side haven't
moved it that mark is the same distance from the edge you can flip it over and do the other side
once again the same measurement and that's how you're able to make things look symmetrical
because you have consistent measurements and even if you don't have a tape measure or a rule or
anything like that this will work too because you're just setting it to the measurement and
then using that same setting for everything else. Another great way to use these instead of using it
for marking parallel lines is use it as a compass to mark a radius or a circle. So let's say we have
our line there that we marked and we want to come the same distance from the other side so
we'll go there and mark that. Now we want to make a hole so we set this for half the hole
put it right on that mark and just like the compass that you use in school you can scribe
a line all the way around make our circle our circumference and then we have the exact center
as well. So we can use this also for the lathe to find the exact center of a radius. Another really
fun trick you can use with these a lot of wood carvers at the time period were carving fans in
the front of just a decorative carved into the front of chest of drawers and blanket chests
and to do that we start with a parallel line and we'll go roughly right in the center
where we want our fan to be and we'll adjust these out to the larger radius.
We'll bring these across
now we have our outside radius exactly half and we can bring these back down.
For the button on the center of the fan like that. Now we have our two radiuses
the nice thing about these is the consistent measuring so we can come from the top here
and with that we can make a mark then move it over make a mark, make a mark. Now we have consistent
marks all the way around the outside radius of that fan and we can take a straight edge
from each mark to the center point and scribe a line. Then you have your layout for your fan now
just take some dimensional carving and you have something that's pretty cool and pretty period
correct. This was a great project I enjoyed making this so much because it's so simple
and even on the frontier something so simple could make symmetry so you could have symmetry
and consistency out of what you're making right here in the wilderness. Teally enjoyed
making it really hope that you make some yourself thank you for watching we'll see you next time.