Garrett Wollman wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:50:01 +0000:

In woodworking, a spline is a long (and perforce rigid) bar of material
used to join two grooved work pieces (essentially acting as a two-sided
"tongue"), running cross-grain and providing greater strength than a
simple butt joint by greatly increasing glue surface area. I suspect
the same sense exists in metalworking as well.

With that as a starting point, I find the woodworking use of "spline" here.
http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/re...tsWithSplines/

I wonder if the woodworkers know that a "spline" means a curved line?
http://autocadtips.files.wordpress.c...ader.jpg?w=640
http://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2...886CB2A345.png

David Howard wrote:
Garrett Wollman wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:50:01 +0000:

In woodworking, a spline is a long (and perforce rigid) bar of material
used to join two grooved work pieces (essentially acting as a two-sided
"tongue"), running cross-grain and providing greater strength than a
simple butt joint by greatly increasing glue surface area. I suspect
the same sense exists in metalworking as well.
With that as a starting point, I find the woodworking use of "spline" here.
http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/re...tsWithSplines/

I wonder if the woodworkers know that a "spline" means a curved line?
http://autocadtips.files.wordpress.c...ader.jpg?w=640
http://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2...886CB2A345.png


I didn't read everything above.. but maybe the use of spline by
woodworkers is more closely related to the "splint"--like you would use
on a broken finger.

Bill wrote:
David Howard wrote:
Garrett Wollman wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:50:01 +0000:

In woodworking, a spline is a long (and perforce rigid) bar of material
used to join two grooved work pieces (essentially acting as a two-sided
"tongue"), running cross-grain and providing greater strength than a
simple butt joint by greatly increasing glue surface area. I suspect
the same sense exists in metalworking as well.
With that as a starting point, I find the woodworking use of "spline"
here.
http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/re...tsWithSplines/


I wonder if the woodworkers know that a "spline" means a curved line?
http://autocadtips.files.wordpress.c...ader.jpg?w=640
http://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2...886CB2A345.png



I didn't read everything above.. but maybe the use of spline by
woodworkers is more closely related to the "splint"--like you would
use on a broken finger.



How about this--to "spline", to smooth or set straight. Everybody
happy? ; )

Bill

Bill wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 02:08:32 -0400:

I didn't read everything above.. but maybe the use of spline by
woodworkers is more closely related to the "splint"--like you would use
on a broken finger.

That might explain why the woodworker's "spline" is straight, while the
draftsman's spline is decidedly curved!

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppor...63F68-htm.html
http://autocadtips.wordpress.com/201...ders-mleaders/

I wonder how a woodworking draftsman handles the confusion when he has
to draw a draftsman's splined leader to a woodworking spline?

David Howard wrote:
Bill wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 02:08:32 -0400:

I didn't read everything above.. but maybe the use of spline by
woodworkers is more closely related to the "splint"--like you would use
on a broken finger.
That might explain why the woodworker's "spline" is straight, while the
draftsman's spline is decidedly curved!

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppor...63F68-htm.html
http://autocadtips.wordpress.com/201...ders-mleaders/

I wonder how a woodworking draftsman handles the confusion when he has
to draw a draftsman's splined leader to a woodworking spline?

If this a problem for him, then he should sort nails: The nails to use
on the east side of the house in one pile, and those for the west side
of his house in another pile.
The latter was the sort of the punch line to a joke that went around
last week or so.

On Monday, October 6, 2014 12:13:00 AM UTC-5, David Howard wrote:

In woodworking, a spline is a long (and perforce rigid) bar of material
used to join two grooved work pieces (essentially acting as a two-sided
"tongue"), running cross-grain and providing greater strength than a
simple butt joint by greatly increasing glue surface area. I suspect
the same sense exists in metalworking as well.

With that as a starting point, I find the woodworking use of "spline" here.
http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/re...tsWithSplines/
I wonder if the woodworkers know that a "spline" means a curved line?
http://autocadtips.files.wordpress.c...ader.jpg?w=640
http://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2...886CB2A345.png

A spline, in caning chairs, etal., is a "reed" used to hold cane in place, as with pressed in cane. It's flexible, so it can be installed in/on straight and curved grooves/runs. A caning spline is usually seen, once installed, so it is part of the "decor" of the caned application.

Sonny

"David Howard" wrote in message ...

Garrett Wollman wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:50:01 +0000:

In woodworking, a spline is a long (and perforce rigid) bar of material
used to join two grooved work pieces (essentially acting as a two-sided
"tongue"), running cross-grain and providing greater strength than a
simple butt joint by greatly increasing glue surface area. I suspect
the same sense exists in metalworking as well.

In the boat-building craft, a spline is a long thin strip of wood with very
uniform bending characteristics. It's used in a process called lofting.

In the days before computers did all this, the designer produced a table
called a table of offsets, and the builder laid out the lines of the boat
full-size on a large flat surface (often in the loft of the boat shop, hence
the term lofting). The boat builder laid out the coordinates of points on
the surface from the table of offsets, and then used the spline to fair the
lines of the boat into fair curves. The builder would try to locate the
spline so that it ran through all the points, holding it down in place with
weights called ducks (hence the phrase "get your ducks in a row"). Because
the table of offsets contained coordinates to no better than a sixteenth of
an inch, and also because there were sometimes errors in the table, the
builder would nudge the spline a bit here and there to end up with a fair
curve that went through the points as closely as possible. Only from a fair
curve could you bend a plank to match the lines of the boat.

Tom

"tdacon" wrote in
:



"David Howard" wrote in message
...

Garrett Wollman wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:50:01 +0000:

In woodworking, a spline is a long (and perforce rigid) bar of
material used to join two grooved work pieces (essentially acting as
a two-sided "tongue"), running cross-grain and providing greater
strength than a simple butt joint by greatly increasing glue surface
area. I suspect the same sense exists in metalworking as well.

In the boat-building craft, a spline is a long thin strip of wood with
very uniform bending characteristics. It's used in a process called
lofting.

The original definition of spline (according to the OED) was
simply a long thin strip of wood - used to keep two boards
aligned and flat (the cross-grain application Garrett
describes is more modern - and depends on modern glues,
I think).

A later definition is a spline was a rigid bar used to lock
two pieces together - typically a wheel on an axle or something
similar. Today we'd usually call that a key.

Because spline stock tended to be long and relatively thin, the
name transferred to the lath used in lofting for shipbuilding,
as David says. By extension the same name came to be used for
small lead strips which would hold a curved shape - today we
call these flexible curves (and they're usually plastic-covered).

Curves laid out with a spline (i.e. a flexible curve) were
logically called "spline curves", and in the early days of
computers mathematicians trying to analyse such curves by computers
came up with math functions to represent the curve as a series of
short segments; those functions in turn came to be called splines.
By a further extension, the particular curve created by a spline
function is also called a spline.

Probably more than anyone cares to know :-)

John

On 6/10/2014 1:13 pm, David Howard wrote:
Garrett Wollman wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:50:01 +0000:

In woodworking, a spline is a long (and perforce rigid) bar of material
used to join two grooved work pieces (essentially acting as a two-sided
"tongue"), running cross-grain and providing greater strength than a
simple butt joint by greatly increasing glue surface area. I suspect
the same sense exists in metalworking as well.

With that as a starting point, I find the woodworking use of "spline" here.
http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/re...tsWithSplines/

I wonder if the woodworkers know that a "spline" means a curved line?
http://autocadtips.files.wordpress.c...ader.jpg?w=640
http://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2...886CB2A345.png

Word Origin and History for spline
n.

On Mon, 06 Oct 2014 09:20:25 -0700, tdacon wrote:

The builder would try to locate the
spline so that it ran through all the points, holding it down in place with
weights called ducks (hence the phrase "get your ducks in a row").

I had always thought that lining up your ducks came from shooting them with
a gun. Who knew?

snidely.too wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 12:22:31 -0700:

A draftsman's spline is a flexible ruler, originally formed
(AIUI) by shaving down a standard wooden spline until it was
thin enough to be flexible.

That explains why a woodworking spline, which is straight, would
be applied to a draftsman's spline (which is decidedly curved).

On Monday, October 6, 2014 5:33:06 PM UTC-5, John McCoy wrote:

Curves laid out with a spline (i.e. a flexible curve) were

logically called "spline curves", .....

Getting off subject, a little, but similar....

Long ago, I saw a carpenter use a metal Venetian blind slat to draw a straight line, 90 degrees to the front edge, across and up a counter top, with continuous (curved corner) back splash. I thought that was a neat trick to get that accurate curved layout/alignment line. Since then, I'd gotten a Venetian blind slat for when I need to sketch a similar curved line.

Sonny

On 10/6/14 11:52 PM, Jim Pierson wrote:
On Mon, 06 Oct 2014 09:20:25 -0700, tdacon wrote:

The builder would try to locate the
spline so that it ran through all the points, holding it down in place with
weights called ducks (hence the phrase "get your ducks in a row").

I had always thought that lining up your ducks came from shooting them with
a gun. Who knew?

Maybe it does, or maybe it comes from ducklings following their mother,
as Snidely said. It seems unlikely to come from the name of weights
used with splines, though. According to Michael Quinion at World Wide
Words, the oldest known example of "getting your ducks in a row" is from
1889, in a newspaper.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-duc5.htm

But at Google Books I can't find any uses of "ducks" for spline weights
before 1939. Instead they were called "weights" in print. No doubt
drafters called them ducks earlier than 1939, but I can hardly imagine
that the term was sufficiently widely known in 1889 to be used
metaphorically in a newspaper.

(Of course, "I can hardly imagine" isn't proof.)

--
Jerry Friedman

"Lewis" wrote in message ...

Don't believe that for a second. Got a reliable source on that?

What part don't you believe, and upon what basis?

Tom

On 10/6/2014 2:10 AM, Bill wrote:
Bill wrote:
David Howard wrote:
Garrett Wollman wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:50:01 +0000:

In woodworking, a spline is a long (and perforce rigid) bar of material
used to join two grooved work pieces (essentially acting as a two-sided
"tongue"), running cross-grain and providing greater strength than a
simple butt joint by greatly increasing glue surface area. I suspect
the same sense exists in metalworking as well.
With that as a starting point, I find the woodworking use of "spline"
here.
http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/re...tsWithSplines/


I wonder if the woodworkers know that a "spline" means a curved line?
http://autocadtips.files.wordpress.c...ader.jpg?w=640
http://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2...886CB2A345.png



I didn't read everything above.. but maybe the use of spline by
woodworkers is more closely related to the "splint"--like you would
use on a broken finger.



How about this--to "spline", to smooth or set straight. Everybody
happy? ; )

Bill



No need. All they have to do is look at
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spline?s=t to find that spline
(like many words) has multiple meanings depending on context.

On 10/6/2014 1:32 AM, David Howard wrote:
Bill wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 02:08:32 -0400:

I didn't read everything above.. but maybe the use of spline by
woodworkers is more closely related to the "splint"--like you would use
on a broken finger.

That might explain why the woodworker's "spline" is straight, while the
draftsman's spline is decidedly curved!

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppor...63F68-htm.html
http://autocadtips.wordpress.com/201...ders-mleaders/

I wonder how a woodworking draftsman handles the confusion when he has
to draw a draftsman's splined leader to a woodworking spline?



Probably the same way he distinguishes, multiples of "two" intersecting
lines running "to" infinity, "too".

On 10/6/2014 12:13 AM, David Howard wrote:
Garrett Wollman wrote, on Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:50:01 +0000:

In woodworking, a spline is a long (and perforce rigid) bar of material
used to join two grooved work pieces (essentially acting as a two-sided
"tongue"), running cross-grain and providing greater strength than a
simple butt joint by greatly increasing glue surface area. I suspect
the same sense exists in metalworking as well.

With that as a starting point, I find the woodworking use of "spline" here.
http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/re...tsWithSplines/

I wonder if the woodworkers know that a "spline" means a curved line?
http://autocadtips.files.wordpress.c...ader.jpg?w=640
http://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2...886CB2A345.png


A spline is ALSO a curved line.

You do realize that many words have many different meanings....

Consider, leaves, race, etc.