"Laurencekirk hinge" invented by James Sandy

About James Sandy's Laurencekirk/Scottish/Secret Hinge details

  • Everything about it is at the website in my reply.

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  • Everything about it is in my reply.

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  • Why do you want to know?

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  • Everybody knows, except you apparently.

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  • For a mere $39.99 I'll e-mail you the plans.

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Does anyone have details on how to make the "Laurencekirk hinge" invented by James Sandy. It is also known as the Secret Hinge or "Scottish Hinge" and is supposed to be airtight.

(To be forgiving please, Soft Ones, author is having weird, alien sense of humor.)
Inquiring minds want to know.

[Removes fright wig and red rubber nose] But seriously, my friends, I really want to know.
 
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it's just knuckles...

Snuff-box making was already well established in Ayrshire, having started in Cumnock around 1807, when a man called William Crawford, by all accounts, “A clever and ingenious man” successfully reproduced the “Scoth Hinge”. This mechanism, a series of knuckles cut alternatively in the side and lid of the box, has never been radically altered, or indeed bettered for snuff-boxes or tea-caddies, until William Crawford applied himself to it, the hinge had been the monopoly of a man called Charles Steven, of Laurence Kirk, Kincardineshire.

http://www.mauchlinevillage.co.uk/ware.html

The great difficulty of the manufacture lies in the formation
of the hinge, which in a genuine box is so delicately made as hardly
to be visible. Peculiar, or, as they are called, secret tools are
required in its formation; and though they must have been improved
by time and experience, the mystery attached to their preparation is
still so studiously kept up, that the workmen employed in one shop are
rigorously debarred from having any communication with those employed
in another.

http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Mirror-of-Literature-Amusement-andx1526.html



Mauchline Ware developed partly by accident and partly through necessity. Towards the end of the 18th century in the town of Alyth, Perthshire(now Tayside), a man named John Sandy invented the "hidden hinge" snuff box. He made the knuckles of the snuff box’s hinge form alternately from those of the lid and the back of the box, with a metal rod passing very precisely through the enter. This rod was a little shorter than the box so as not to protrude through the ends, which he then plugged, rendering the mechanism invisible.

Since Sandy was bedridden for most of his life, Charles Stiven, from Laurencekirk, took over the job of manufacturing and marketing this invention, thus it became known as the Laurencekirk snuff box. Eventually, the secret of the hidden hinge found its way to Cumnock, only a few miles from Mauchline.

William Crawford began manufacturing the hidden hinge snuffbox in Cumnock around 1810. It’s believed that he copied the hidden hinge mechanism from a box brought to him for repair. Unable to keep the secret to himself, it spread to at least 50 other Scottish snuff box manufacturers in the early 1820s, most of them in Ayrshire. These included William and Andrew Smith of Mauchline, whose family had formerly made razor hones.

http://www.bobbrooke.com/mauchlinware.htm

James Sandy, The Alyth Genius

When James Sandy was twelve he fell from a tree near to his home in Alyth. As a result of the injuries he suffered he lost a leg.

More bad luck was to befall him when he was sixteen. After very heavy rains the Alyth burn flooded and the water poured into the ground floor of his house which was built beside the burn. His mother tried to drag him upstairs to safety and in the struggle the other leg was broken. James was unable to walk and spent the rest of his life lying on a couch.

He had already shown great abilities as a craftsman and his couch was specially designed with raised sides to which could be fixed lathes and vices and cases to hold his tools. Here he worked producing a large range of objects.

He was prepared to try his hand at almost anything including false teeth and artificial limbs. He was well known for his work on fine optical instruments, clocks and musical instruments. However, he achieved a wider fame with the production of a new type of snuff box which was airtight when closed but contained a special hinge which did not become clogged with grains of snuff.

When he was fifty-three he decided to get married. Perhaps it was an unwise decision. He died nineteen days later on April 3rd 1819.

http://www.perthshirediary.com/html/day0403.html

Best pictures are here:
http://www.hygra.com/uk/tc/tc106/

Looks a bit like the kind of hinge Incra demonstrates...
 
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Interesting stuff, Bill. I agree that it looks like a finely handcrafted Incra hinge. Don't see much of that quality of work these days, but I'll bet there are folks here who could make one.
 
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