French tools-of-the-trade stamps

I was struck by the elegant stamp on a Christmas card from France:

There are some other trades covered in this way - worth a look online.

Equivalent to £1.27 - expensive chrimbo card postage...

pgk

Not as expensive as going the other way! The ones that I sent to France on Monday day cost £1.70 each.

John

It is well up to date, thats an electric soldering iron although the other tools are timeless.

Yes, I noticed that and wondered what the old timers used to cut the glass before carbide wheels were available.

.

Diamond splinters

MichaelG.

Posted a card to my cousin in Canada and the cost was also £1.70 so probably a standard charge for letters going overseas from UK. Dave W

MichaelG:

Thank you for your succinct and speedy answer which prompted me to get a fuller story from Salaman:

Glass Cutter ...
Until the latter part of the nineteenth century sheet glass was cut with a diamond. With the advent of special steels, the glass-cutting wheel was introduced; such wheels were listed as early as 1885 and are now used by most tradesmen. The diamonds were set in a metal head mounted on a slim wooden handle on which it is free to swivel a few degrees to left and right. The cutting wheels were originally mounted in the same way, but today are mostly set on a metal handle and are usually provided with 'racks' or 'gates', i.e. grooves of different widths cut in the side of the head and used for breaking off narrow strips (or rough edges) which cannot be grasped in the fingers.

Here you go, the one on the left is hollow, so it can be filled with oil. I can't find a diamond one at the minute, got one somewhere tho'. You could still buy diamond ones a few years ago, not sure now. The Shaw glass cutters used to be available with a 6 wheel rotating head, so you could turn it to a new cutter, as the one in use got blunt.They also used to sell replacement wheels, a fiddly job!

Mark

I recall that the recommended way of holding these cutters is non-intuitive ie you don't grip them as you would a pen (as on the stamp above) but one finger along.

Was I wrong to suggest that some wheels are carbide as opposed to alloy steel?

ega They may carbide now they, didn't used to be. Had carbide been invented 60 or70 years ago ?

Roy

Roy

The wheels I have are magnetic; however, to my surprise, so are the indexable inserts I also tested with a magnet.

I'm fairly sure "carbide" has been around for half a century or more.

Almost a century ago! HSS in 1898, Cemented Carbide in 1925.

Titanium Carbide is more recent - 1960, but I guess we mostly use the older Tungsten Carbide / Cobalt mix.

Dave

seem to remember a firm in France that make rasps etc by hand....still working.....

no idea of the name now....

ment to have bought a couple before I left but just plain forgot....getting old and excited by the move....

When I was a boy during WW11, we went to visit a family in Sheffield and the lady hand made files. The blanks were restrained by a leather loop in which she put her foot, all mounted on a large wooden block or part of a tree. The ladies, several of them, used hammers and chisels to make the cuts, little mesters. It was a long room, three white washed walls and the other window was a series of windows. I was amazed how uniform and accurate the file teeth were. John

Ega

You hold them as shown on the back of the packet, fairly upright, with fore finger on ridged part, on the Shaw one. You need a bit of pressure for a consistent cut. No idea how old this is, even 'tho it is unused, or when carbide replaced Alloy Steel.

When freehand cutting shaped pieces for stained glass windows etc, it can be easier to push the cutter, rather than pull it, and turn the piece of glass as well.

Clogs,

Do you mean, Auriou They are available in the UK from Classic Hand Tools

Mark.

Auriou. Available in the UK.

I think carbide was invented by accident, when hardening steel - quite likely by a combination of accident and inherited mystery, in the iron age. It was then discovered - much later - as the scientists got to grips with what was going on in the hardening processes. Late 1700s is my guess.

Cheers, Tim

For a minute there, I thought that I had stumbled into the wrong forum, as stamp collecting is one of my interests, I do sometimes frequent one or two stamp related forums.

Trades and artisans often appear on stamps.

Glass blowing seems to be one of the more popular subjects, I particularly like this 1972 stamp from Sweden, part of a set of five.
The design was engraved by Czesław Słania, one of the world's finest engravers.

Another example of trades on stamps is this 1977 block of four from the US

Personally, I don't find these particularly attractive and in comparison to the Słania engraving, they seem a little amateurish.

Clive