Plumbing tool?

[owen01]

Hello,

Open question to all plumbers please:

Any idea what might have made these feathered marks, was this a joinery technique for sealing lead in the byegone past perhaps?

It's a parish church font - lead lining.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/74752096@N00/9355454023/in/photostream/

Thanks,

Owen

 

[cozzmic]

Probably the nib of a fountain pen pressed hard to the lead as in the dot then press and the fingers of the nib spread open. Or totally wrong.

 

[owen01]

Probably the nib of a fountain pen pressed hard to the lead as in the dot then press and the fingers of the nib spread open. Or totally wrong.

Thanks, that sounds like a good idea but those type of pens might be a little late for the font? A lot of those marks probably appeared 1600-1700

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dip_pen#History

 

[cozzmic]

I'm getting old but not that old. Prob some small chisel or point of knife. Is it still use? as it would pribably be frowned upon as the lead would pollute the water these days.

 

[owen01]

I'm getting old but not that old. Prob some small chisel or point of knife. Is it still use? as it would pribably be frowned upon as the lead would pollute the water these days.

Thanks, Gussage St Michael, the church is still in use but Gussage is and was always a small hamlet, so not a great deal of activity. I would imagine holy water would be put in a small container inside the font because of the lead lining.

But those funny 'v' shapes - making those snaky lines - they only ever seem to turn up on old lead, and it would be much easier to score a basic line into the soft lead, so why go to all the trouble of that intricate work - it must have something to do with the old trade of plumbing, bit like a plumber's trade mark? But we're talking centuries ago, the secret may have died with the last practitioners?

 

[owen01]

Might those 'v' marks have been made with the (sharp) tip of this plumber's pipe reamer?

 

[Slugbabydotcom]

There's a 'flower type design on some of those pics that was probably done with a scribing tool something like THIS
Basically a compass but with a pin instead of a pencil to scratch marks on lead.
It wouldnt surprise me in some way if they had used the pin on one of these to make those other marks

 

[owen01]

That's a 'daisy wheel' but no-one knows where the name came from, just 'daisy' + 'wheel'. That's a very odd daisy wheel as well, it's been scribed with something like you say, but it's not at all accurate. It's quite easy to draw a daisy wheel with a geometry compass so why this person got it wrong - and in lead forever more - is not easy to decide!

The daisy line is just a line though, those feathery 'v's are by a very different hand?

 

[Onetap]

Open question to all plumbers please:

Any idea what might have made these feathered marks, was this a joinery technique for sealing lead in the byegone past perhaps?

A coin? You can see the 'joins' where the tool has been rolled forward from one V mark to the next. Otherwise something with a circular tip.

There's a building I know that used to be Sunday school. The red bricks have many hemi-spherical holes in them, most the size of old pennies or half-pennies; bored kids.

 

[owen01]

Thanks

That square in the lead is only a couple of centimetres wide so the lines are tiny, very fine; a coin would make an impression much wider. The top frame is a rounded metal tip pressed into linoleum, rocking it while 'walking' it forward from side to side. The track isn't exactly like the lead lines but it is similar, so I am wondering if the plumbing pipe reamer or something very similar was responsible for these marks?