The Framers Forum

Hi,

I see that Mainline sell V nails (or Uni wedges as they refer to them) without any form of case or cartridge link: https://www.mainlinemouldings.com/index ... D=WDG-0002

Can these be used to recharge empty Cassesse underpinner V nail cartridges? If so, will they fit any colour cartridge? I do appreciate the cartridge colour coding is a scheme for quick ID of V nail size and the risks in loading a wedge size that differs from the colour scheme etc. Has anyone used these without any problems?

Cheers,

Mike.

Interesting point.

I think the cartridge nails may be different to the Uni ones. But I may be wrong.
The Unis are bound together with gummy stuff which may interfere with Casesse machines. And I have it in mind
that the shape is slightly different.

I'll have a look in a minute.....

Just tried pushing a Uni nail backwards into a CS88 and it appears to fit nicely.

As for reloading the cartridges, that seems to be slightly more tricky.

Thanks for trying that. I'll email them and ask. I'm always wary of asking the vendor if the item is suitable for a particular set of circumstances when they have a vested interest in selling it.

Mike.

If you take a close look at the cartridges, you will see that they will only take one size of pin , I have a set of refilleble metal cartridges somewhere under the bench, which came with my underpinner from a retired framer, never tried them.

I've been refilling them for years, I just don't like paying the extra for Cassesse wedges. There's a bit of a nack to getting the white, or yellow bits of plastic out of a empty cartridge, I do it with a small pair of narrow nosed pliers.

There are a few things you need to be aware of, the Cassesse cartridge wedges are lubricated to help them slide freely inside the cartridges. This does not make much difference on the shorter wedges, but the wedge loading spring which pushes the wedges forward in the cartridge is only barely strong enough to push the larger wedges forward with the lubricated genuine Cassesse wedges.

I spray the 12mm and 15mm stacks of wedges with a silicon lubricant spray before putting them into the cartridge, which works (sort of), but I don't find the 15mm wedges work all that well I my machine, so I prefer not to use them. My favourite make of wedges is the Alfamacchine PTU universal wedges, which work very well in the Cassesse and pull the corners together particularly well.

Don't bother with the Inmes wedges, they will work in the machine, but I found that they don't pull the corners together as well as the Cassesse, or the Alfamacchine. The Cassesse machine probably just don't like this particular brand of wedges and they may well be much better in other brands of underpinners.

BTW, my machine is a CS-88.