Improvements in Printers' Furniture and Sidesticks.
Year: 1891

page_text: -
"Date-of-Application, 7th Sept., 1891
Complete Specification.Left; 21st May, 1892-Accepted, 16th July, 1892
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION.
Improvements in Printers' Furniture and Sidesticks.
WILLIAM GRIFFITH 58, Arvon Terrace Carnarvon North Wales Printer.do
hereby declare the nature of this invention to be as follows :-
It is an invention to improve the common articles that are at present in use by
printers in dressing and securing pages of type, &c., inside iron frames (or chases),
and which are called furnitures and side-sticks, and are made and used in various
sizes, from to finch in diameter; inch to. It inches breadth; and lengths,
from about 1inch upwards-the furnitures being oblong in shape, but the side-
stick a side furniture bevelled in order to take wedges between it and the bar of
the chase to secure soundly, the pages or jobs of type within the chase. They are
made in single pieces either of wood or type metal Dressing means placing oblong
furnitures around pages or jobs to secure the movable type which constitutes the
pages, &c., from falling off their places.
As lengths and breadths of. pages or jobs vary, and as every single piece of
furniture has only its own length, different or additional pieces of furniture for
different lengths of jobs, &c., are required. But my invention is to have an
extending principle applied to furnitures and side-sticks, so that different lengths
in furnitures and side-sticks may be reached. by extending the articles. Thus, an
inch and a half furniture can be extended to 24 inches, doing away with different
furnitures for every other size intermediate between these two sizes; and so on can
24 inch furniture be extended over 4 inches, &c.; and the same with the side-sticks.
The extension to be drawn from the length of the articles, laid flat on a table, the
extender being slit out from side to side of the solid furniture or side, stick,
leaving a groove therein for-the-extending piece to run to and fro as the need
may be..
"WILLIAM GRIFFITH,
58, Arvon Terrace, Carnarvon, N. Wales.
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION.
'Improvements in Printers' Furniture and Sidesticks.
WILLIAM GRIFFITH 58, Arvon Terrace Carnarvon, North Wales Printer, do
hereby declare the nature of this invention and in what manner the same is
to be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the
following statement :—
"
Printers furnitures are oblong or parallelopiped pieces of wood or metal, varying
in their sizes, by what printers call "emms," in lengths and breadths-(an "emm
is th of an inch),-while their diameter remains the same- -(about of an inch)-
in all the sizes. For instance, we will give the size of one of them to be 3 "emms,'
or inch, broad, and 12 ", emms, or "2 inches long. The other sizes may be
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 10 "emms" broad; and 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, &c., up to 30, 40,
These
or 50 "emms" long, while their depths is the same through all the sizes.
furnitures are used by printers to dress up forms of printers' type. This means the
placing of these lengths of furniture between and about pages of moveable type to
support the type from falling off its places. As there are different sizes of book
pages or jobs, these furniture must also be of various sizes. When pieces 3 inches
long is not enough to reach the whole length or breadth of a 6 or 7 inches long, by
4 inches wide, page or job, additional or longer pieces are required to be fixed,

page_text: thus causing the workman trouble to find the exact pieces. A form of loose type
after being simply "dressed up" with furniture thus becomes enclosed by a frame
of these loose wooden or metal furniture. This form, after being enclosed with
furniture like this, is again enclosed in a convenient irop frame, called "chase," and
the "dressed up" form of printers' type is now to be tightly wedged in this iron
frame by means of quoins, or wedges, driven along bevelled pieces of wood,-which
are the side sticks, placed at the side and at the foot of the page or form within
the iron chase..
The side-stick is also called foot-stick, because it, must, be used both at foot.
as well as sides of pages. The difference between a side-stick and a furniture is:
while the furniture is oblong, the side-stick is bevelled in order to take a wedge
between it and the bar of the iron chase, which, after being wedged tightly in this
manner, holds the form of loose type secure, and is ready to be removed about
with safety. By my invention these solid oblong (Fig. 1) and bevelled (Fig. 2)
pieces of wood or metal are, from side to side, grooved through (A), thus leaving,
in the heart of these grooved pieces of furniture and side sticks, an "open" mortise,
or a chase; the segment, or the tenon piece (B), grooved therefrom to be
extensible-or they may be used across, through the groove, as the printer may.
desire. The cavity of the chase (A) thus grooved is of an inch, or so, wide, and
are grooved nearly all along. As lengths and breadths of pages or jobs vary, and
as every single piece of furniture has only its own length, different or additional
pieces of furniture, and side sticks, for different lengths of jobs, &c., are required.
But by my improvement the different lengths may be acquired by extending the
articles. Thus, a 12 ", emms "furniture could be extended to over 20 "emms,"
(Fig. 1) doing away with different furnitures for every other size intermediate
between these two sizes. To prevent the extending part to shift from its length
after being drawn out and fixed properly, a row of holes of any shape other than
round or square, are made through both pieces of the article all along the article,
the holes to take a stud suitable for the purpose.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of my said inven-
tion, and in what manner the same is to be performed, I declare that what I
claim is :-
1. A chase about one-third of an inch deep grooved from side to side in printers'
furniture and side sticks (A).
2. The tenon, or grooved off piece from the same, which can be extended in and
out, or slided across in the groove of the chase, so as to meet another chase (B).
Dated this 20th day of May 1892.
WILLIAM GRIFFITH.