Classic Boat — March 2018

RATCHET BRACE

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS
ROBIN GATES

This is the brace that launched a
thousand ships, and more – the
perfected form of a tool that has
been a mainstay of the shipwright’s
kit for more than half a millennium. In
essence the brace has changed very
little. The carpenter aboard Henry
VIII’s flagship, Mary Rose, who lost his
brace, and much else besides, in 1545,
would find the cranked shape, drill bit
and rotating pad of his wooden-
bodied tool exactly mirrored in a
brace manufactured today.
In the 1890s the wooden body gave
way to iron, and then the socket fitting
for square-shanked bits was replaced
by a more adaptable chuck with
expanding jaws. The most successful
chuck was patented in 1864 by William
Barber of Greenfield, Massachusetts,
and is a feature of this brace made by
Millers Falls, also of that USA state, in
the 1930s. Its spring-loaded alligator
jaws, housed in a slotted shaft, are
closed by turning a knurled shell.
But the real game changer was
integration of a reversible ratchet
between chuck and crank, allowing
the crank to be pumped back and

forth without disengaging the bit from

the work – an absolute boon in the

cramped working spaces of a ship.

Here, for example, a 1in (25mm)

hole is bored just 1^1 / 2 in (37mm)

above a surface.

The first ratcheting brace, made by

Quimby Backus, infringed the patent

for a ratcheting wrench invented by

DM Moore of Vermont in 1859, but the

ratchet in this brace derives from the

more popular invention of William

Dolin of Virginia, patented in 1871.

The 12 teeth on the ratchet wheel

engage with two spring-loaded pawls.

A selector ring behind the pawls is

turned left or right to engage one

pawl while disengaging the other,

enabling forward or reverse ratcheting,

or it can be centralised to lock both

pawls when ratcheting is not required.

This variant with pawls and part of

the ratchet wheel exposed is called

half-boxed.

When Millers Falls launched this

No 422 brace, just before World War I,

the company was making scores of

models, each adapted in some way to

a particular trade or application. This

one, with a 10-inch swing, is the bog

standard, but those for boring large

holes in the toughest timbers swung

through a massive 16 inches,

generating huge torque.

NEXT MONTH: the bollow plane

Clockwise from

above: boring a

hole in a tight

corner; ratchet

wheel, pawl and

selector ring;

alligator jaws

grip the bit’s

square shank

Traditional Tool