How To Make An 18th Century Iron Leg Vise
The Making Of An Iron Leg Vise
From the Encyclopédie by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Ever wonder how long the classic Blacksmith's iron leg vise has been around and how it was made by hand? Here is Plate No. 6 from the Encyclopédie volume on the making of tools. Think about that. You have to make tools in order to make tools. Without modern machinery. By hand. In a forge. With Plate 6 of Taillanderie, Suite de la fabrique des Etaux, now you can make your own iron leg vise.
Let me know when you're finished with this project.
A bit of history on Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert:
Back in 1765 Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert published the Encyclopédie.
"André le Breton, a bookseller and printer, approached Diderot with a project for the publication of a translation of Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences into French, first undertaken by the Englishman John Mills, and followed by the German Gottfried Sellius.[4] Diderot accepted the proposal, and transformed it. He persuaded Le Breton to publish a new work, which would consolidate ideas and knowledge from the Republic of Letters. The publishers found capital for a larger enterprise than they had first planned. Jean le Rond d'Alembert was persuaded to become Diderot's colleague, and permission was procured from the government. ...
In 1764, when his immense work was drawing to an end, he encountered a crowning mortification: he discovered that the bookseller, Le Breton, fearing the government's displeasure, had struck out from the proof sheets, after they had left Diderot's hands, all passages that he considered too dangerous. "He and his printing-house overseer", writes Furbank, "had worked in complete secrecy, and had moreover deliberately destroyed the author's original manuscript so that the damage could not be repaired."[31] The monument to which Diderot had given the labor of twenty long and oppressive years was irreparably mutilated and defaced.[4] It was 12 years, in 1772, before the subscribers received the final 28 folio volumes of the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers since the first volume had been published."
Comments