Colonial "matches"

[BillinOregon]

Someone here posted a photo a while back of a small plane he had made to carve long, gracefully curled shavings that were used in times past to light fires, candles, pipes, etc. What is the name for these shavings? It's driving me nuts. Was that you Wick Ellerbe, or Mike Ameling, that posted that plane?

 

[ameling]

Someone here posted a photo a while back of a small plane he had made to carve long, gracefully curled shavings that were used in times past to light fires, candles, pipes, etc. What is the name for these shavings? It's driving me nuts. Was that you Wick Ellerbe, or Mike Ameling, that posted that plane?

It is called a SPILL PLANE. It is basically a skew or rabbet plane with the blade at an even steeper angle to the wood - almost 45 degrees. And then the "throat" of the plane right by the blade is coned out above the blade so that the shavings can curl/twist out in a long strip. And the plane usually had some sort of fence along the outside - so the bottom looked like a V groove and rested/worked on the board as such. You could use most any straight grained wood scrap to make the wood shavings called "spills".

You would take one of those wooden shavings, light the end in your fire, and then trasfer that fire to a candle or your pipe - or even use it to light your way into another room. It is surprising just how well and long that end will burn with actual flame.

The Spills were often kept right on the fireplace mantel in a wood box or a glass/ceramic jar. Antique collectors really chase after spill jars these days. But most end up being used as a vase.

If you do a web search for "spill plane" you can find more info on them - including one site that talks you through making/carving your own (with plans/drawings).

The other version of a Spill Plane was designed to make long thin straight slivers of wood. It worked a lot like a leather splitter for thinning down thick leather. Just another variation.

In some cities/settlements, there were people who made and sold spills to people who did not want to make their own. Could be a nice little ... occupation ... for somebody's child at events.

Spills and spill planes are just another of those little ... details ... of everyday life back then.

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands


p.s. If you already have a wood skew plane, you could rig up wood guides on the sides to have the blade scrape the wood at closer to a 45 degree angle, and get pretty much the same result. Or carefully hold your plane those few degrees to the side.

 

[BillinOregon]

Mikey: That's it! I doff my chapeau, and bow deeply sir.

 

[LRB]

Hey Mike. Were these not sometimes tipped with a sulfur/salt peter compound?

 

[ameling]

Yes, sulpher "matches" have been around since Roman times. The ends of a long sliver of wood was dipped in melted sulpher. When you touched that end to a glowing/burning coal, it would burn with a flame. And then you could use that flame to light a candle, oil lamp, or grease lamp.

The key point was getting that open "flame" from your fire and up to wherever you needed it.

Both ends were often dipped in sulpher - so that you could use one end, put it out once the sulpher was burned up, and then use the other end next time.

But they were NEVER anything like our modern friction matches. Those use two different chemicals on the ends, and then use the heat of friction to get those two chemicals burning. For those style matches you have to get into the early/mid 1800's - just before the Civil War. But even those had ... problems. Their use only really became common after the Civil War. Some two-part chemical versions of stick matches did exist back into the late 1700's, but they were so dangerous to store/use that they never really got much distribution. Most involved dipping a stick with one chemical on the end of it into another chemical. The reaction of those two chemicals then gave you your "flame".

So even the ancient Romans had Sulpher Sticks to transfer flame from an open fire.

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

 

[ameling]

The tricky part has always been how to get an actual flame transferred from your fire to what you need to light - generally a candle, oil lamp, or grease lamp. You can always just use a coal from the fire to light a pipe, but sometimes you need that FLAME.

That's why the Spill came about. It worked better than just having and using a collection of small twigs.

In the Southwest Spanish/Mexican colonial areas, they would often use corn husks. They would save and dry the husks from their corn. WHen they needed Flame, then would take one, roll/twist it tight, and "light" it in the fire from the coals. It would generally burn well enough and long enough to light a candle, or to walk into the next room or to the next building if you held it carefully. The old phrase "light a shuck out of here" to leave a place came from this practice.

Some of the history of Lighting can be pretty interesting - from back when the World was lit only by Fire (prior to the early 1900's).

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands