The Framers Forum

Hi, can anyone help me with the following Cassese wedge queries?

ID'ing
I have some Cassese wedges that are not labelled with their size etc which came with my second hand CS88 underpinner
Are any of you able to help me with ID'ing them/or how easy is it measure them and work out what size they are for or if they are for hard wood or softwood?
I have the following packet colours with these codes on the box:
pink 07 30307NCOI
turquoise 10 HW (I assume this means hardwood) 31310BDCO
turquoise 10 3031ONCOI - one has a "hardwood" sticker on the wedge so I assume that these are hardwood ones!!!
I can post some photos of them if it helps (and I can work out how to!)

Recommended wedge stock
What size wedges would you recommend keeping a stock of? I realise this is hard to say as it depends on what mouldings you end up using.
On top of the ones listed above I have:
5mm, 12mm and 15mm hardwood and 3mm normal
Who distributes them now? I read that Lion have stopped doing so, is that true?

Shelf life?
Do they have any kind of shelf life? i.e. are they something that can rust etc? Is there any way of working out how old they are/if they are OK to use?

Thanks in advance
fraggle

Here you go!

3mm Wedges Green Cartridges
4mm Wedges Orange Cartridges
5mm Wedges Orange Cartridges
7mm Wedges Pink Cartridges
10mm Wedges Light Blue Cartridges
12mm Wedges Dark Blue Cartridges
15mm Wedges White Cartridges

You might also care to read this on the Wessex Pictures website regarding differentiation of hard wood and standard cartidges:

http://www.wessexpictures.com/product832.html

I keep 7,10 & 15mm standard and 7 & 10mm hard wood wedges. Make sure you have a black hard wood pad and you might also like one of the yellow soft round ones plus the magnetic one Lion do.

Some 'Cassese' wedges - i.e. those made by third parties - don't always use the same colour coding.

The Inmes cartridges I bought from Lion for my Cassese are as follows :

15mm - BLack
12mm - Red
10mm - Green
7mm - Yellow
5mm - Blue

Additionally, the insert at the back upon which the spring pushes are red for hardwood, and black for normal.

Hope this helps

Tim

Thanks for all the help
They are genuine Cassese ones but not sure how old they are

Tim wrote:The Inmes cartridges I bought from Lion for my Cassese are as follows :

Tim,
Why would you not use the vee nails made by the company that made the vee nailer?
Cassese vee nails are made with features that help pull the joint together.

I use the Cassese Masters bulk pack in 7 and 10 . Contains 8000 wedges per box ( no cartridges - just the wedge strips), costs less and merely loads into the plastic cartridge. Lasts me about 4 to 6 weeks so shelf life is no issue ( not that it is in any case I think). I don't often buy the longer wedges because I make liberal use of stacking when the profile requires something longer

Nigel Nobody wrote:Tim,
Why would you not use the vee nails made by the company that made the vee nailer?
Cassese vee nails are made with features that help pull the joint together.

I don't remember really - the last lot of wedges I had were Cassese, but I expect it was because Lion didn't have the Cassese wedges in stock when I wanted them, so I tried a sample of the Inmes variants and they worked just fine, so I bought more of those. I probably could have looked around a bit for the real thing, but once you've spent the timegoing through the catalogue and making up an order, I find it a pain to have to start again with someone else, so I made the compromise.

I will admit though, that I didn't know there was a material difference in the way the wedges worked - but I've never had a problem. I'll bear it in mind if I get a moulding that refuses to close properly! Thanks for the warning!

Genuine Cassese wedges have some unique features that are beneficial. Quite a few years ago I had a Minigraph 44 and found Cassese wedges performed better than anything else in it too!
You could check out some of the info here: http://www.cassese.com/eng/cassese_wedges.html

Some people like to shop on price with vee nails/wedges, but when the cost is calculated per frame it's a piffling amount anyway so I prefer to buy what does the best job regardless of price.

tim - recently bought a new cassese 59 from tabmaster along with cassese wedges - prices are a bit higher than lion version (personally with a new machine i'll stick with genuine cassese) info from cassese is their wedges have some kind of lubrication built in!

fraggle - i would think they don't have a 'use by date' you could send a mail to cassese - im sure they will advise - maybe if you do you could make another post. I bought 5mm 10mm and 12mm

here is info about cassese

Genuine Cassese wedges
From
http://www.framersequipment.co.uk/cassese_wedges.htm

Happy to Help
Mitreman

thanks for the link, i have noticed since using inmes that my joints aren't as strong and some woods don't pull together at all. dunno if its my bad or the inmes? anyone else have any problems?

mmmmm lubrication and better penetration. Sounds good.

thought i'd logged into a dodgy site for a minute