Making a quoin?

Has anyone ever made their own quoins? With how pricey quoins and keys are, I am wondering if anyone has come up with a crafty DIY alternative to quoins. If so I’d love to hear how you did it.

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The oldest Form of Quoins are 2 wedges set up to form a
rectangle and the use of a shooting stick to drive the fat end of the wedge against the over, they expand that way and work as a Quoin.

see. Moxon. Mechanic Excercises

As Typenut says, two wedges. You can easily make wood ones on a table saw. I would use hardwood like maple. Make the angle on the wedges quite shallow, because the shallower the angle, the less likely they are to work loose. If you don’t have a shooting stick to drive them tight, you could improvise and hold a hardwood stick, a small metal bar or whatever, against the wedge. Then hit the other end of the stick or bar with a hammer (even a homemade wood hammer), to expand the pair of wedges and lock the form in the chase.

Remember, since you are driving the wedges lengthwise along the form to tighten them, you could move the form in the process, so be sure the opposite sides of the form are backed up against furniture so the form doesn’t move.

Just some thoughts, for what they are worth…….

There should be a ton of old Hemple-style Quoins in printers closets. I have a large box of them, but only a few keys - anyone have a suggestion for a source of 4-lug keys of the correct size?

There are three sizes of Hemple keys. No. 2 (The middle size) is the most common. Not incredibly common, but they are out there and show up fairly often on Ebay.

I have a very large box full of top quality ‘Cornerstone’ standard quoins, But they all lack their wedges and bolts.
Sigh! . . Bolts to suit are pretty easy to find, but the wedges-
thats quite another matter. They have a secret dimension for one thing, and thats that the sloping surfaces are very, very slightly domed, which prevents jamming, and one can find engineers who could drill and tap the thread, but you need the special duralumin extrusions to cut lengths off, and that
seems not to be available. So all these outers are soon to be disposed of unless anyone has a use for them. (UK)

We sell quoins and keys of several varieties. The wedge quoins and a key are cheap. Ask Terri for details

www.tandtpressrestoration.com

651-295-5318

One thing I’m not short of is quoins. I have loads in stock and sold cheaply here in U.K.

speed quoins are usually a dollar an inch. i don’t much cheaper it gets. if you want some email me i have a bunch. shipping is extra.