# Tool Talk > Machines >  Reel splitter GIF

## Jon

Reel splitter GIF. These are used for recycling.



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Seedtick (Aug 3, 2017),

Toolmaker51 (Aug 9, 2017),

Trojan Horse (Aug 4, 2017)

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## mklotz

A slow motion guillotine. Just what Robespierre ordered.

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Christophe Mineau (Aug 4, 2017)

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## Jon

Like the device above, the guillotine often failed to deliver its punishment in a single blow, most famously when it needed multiple drops to execute King Louis XVI.

Interestingly, Louis XVI had popularized the guillotine as a more humane improvement on the previous standard, the torturous breaking wheel. People would be secured to a large wagon wheel, their bones would be smashed, and they would then be left to die in agony over days. If the condemned justified a merciful execution, the executioner would deliver a more fatal "blow of mercy", which has entered into popular culture as the term _coup de grâce_.

While the guillotine is now considered barbaric, the drastically worse breaking wheel makes a subtle appearance in various modern coats of arms and organizational symbols, all over the world.

Coat of arms of St. Catherine's College, of the University of Oxford:



Coat of arms of Goa, India (until 1961):



The symbol of the breaking wheel is often mistaken for a simple "wagon wheel". Such confusion is avoided in the coat of arms of the town of Molsheim, France:

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Trojan Horse (Aug 4, 2017)

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## Trojan Horse

> A slow motion guillotine. Just what Robespierre ordered.



LOL! Excellent observation Mr. Klotz!
https://www.britannica.com/biography...en-Robespierre

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## Christophe Mineau

He he, I like your remark Marv, and do you think he also intended to stop in the middle ? 
Maybe yes... Robespierre was definitively mad...
Thanks Jon for the article. However the breaking wheel was not for ordinary people, I think the "supplice de la roue" (can you translate) was reserved (thought not only) to people who attempted to the king or his family's life ,what was called the "crime de regicide". You can read in particular what happened to Robert Francois Damiens, who tried to murder King Louis XV

By the way, Im currently in vacation far away from the shop, and took the oportunity to visit the Guedelon Castle,you know this middle age castle that crazy people (not so crazy...) have been building ftom scratch for 20 years. When I will return, I will show you some photos of the progress, and a couple of interresting tools I could see in Burgundy
Cheers

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## mklotz

> He he, I like your remark Marv, and do you think he also intended to stop in the middle ? 
> Maybe yes... Robespierre was definitively mad...



It's good he couldn't make it pause since he wouldn't have liked it a bit when they used _Le Rasoir National_ on him. 

I had never read that they botched the decapitation of Louis XVI. After the invention of the lune, it seemed almost impossible for the victim to withdraw his head enough that the blade to hit the skull and not the neck.

England has its own botch jobs. While Henry VIII had an expert French swordsman imported to shorten Anne Boleyn's stature his daughter didn't get an expert axe man to do Mary, Queen of Scots and several strokes were required to achieve the desired disconnection.

Still, the guillotine remains the quickest and surest, if not the most decorous, method of execution. Gravity has never been known to fail and, if the slides are properly lubricated and the victim immobilized, it works much more faithfully than hanging, electrocution, gas, or even the lethal injection.

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## Christophe Mineau

Yes, this is well known that the good King Louis XVI (a crafstman) required several attempts, but I dont have the technical details, maybe simply the blade became dull after so many uses...

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## Jon

> I had never read that they botched the decapitation of Louis XVI. After the invention of the lune, it seemed almost impossible for the victim to withdraw his head enough that the blade to hit the skull and not the neck.



I should note that "botched execution" is a popular trope, both historically and today, so maybe it went perfectly.




> However the breaking wheel was not for ordinary people, I think the "supplice de la roue" (can you translate) was reserved (thought not only) to people who attempted to the king or his family's life ,what was called the "crime de regicide". You can read in particular what happened to Robert Francois Damiens, who tried to murder King Louis XV
> 
> By the way, Im currently in vacation far away from the shop, and took the oportunity to visit the Guedelon Castle,you know this middle age castle that crazy people (not so crazy...) have been building ftom scratch for 20 years. When I will return, I will show you some photos of the progress, and a couple of interresting tools I could see in Burgundy
> Cheers



Just read about Damiens. Not a good way to go.  :Frown: 

Looking forward to the Guedelon photos.

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## mklotz

> I should note that "botched execution" is a popular trope, both historically and today, so maybe it went perfectly.



Intrigued by your remark, I spent some time searching the internet on the subject's of Louis' execution and botched executions in general but could find no reference to things gone awry even from the accounts written by eyewitnesses. It may be that the execution of a European monarch was such an epic event in those times that the details of the task were lost in the larger picture.

The botched executions sites confirm the fact that hanging, firing squads and electrocution can go wrong in an astounding number of ways. This bolsters my conviction that a properly designed, well-maintained guillotine has far fewer things to go wrong and remains the best way to get the job done quickly and reliably. Not to mention that, if the threat of capital punishment is meant to deter criminals, the gut-wrenching fear created by the machine can only enhance the threat.

Perhaps a morbid forum topic but remember...the guillotines of the Revolution were French homemade tools.

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## Toolmaker51

I repaired one of these in April 2017. Their design uses motor driven ACME lead screws to drive the knife, needing no shear edge. The blade travels parallel to the bed, perpendicular to the twin drive screws. The synchronization is maintained by heavy roller chain, and backlash adjusters on the screws. The cut proceeds exactly as depicted, the separated layers popping away from tension initiated by the blade compressing the roll, instead of restrained by a radius. Using company has their guillotine on a raised foundation so fall-out lands directly into wire recycling baskets to continue processing.

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## Jon

I could only find a single botched execution reference myself, from a single eyewitness account. I saw it first in the Wikipedia article, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execut...#Louis_Mercier . The text is:




> is this really the same man that I see being jostled by four assistant executioners, forcibly undressed, his voice drowned out by the drums, trussed to a plank, still struggling, and receiving the heavy blade so badly that the cut does not go through his neck, but through the back of his head and his jaw, horribly?



From there you can do the trick where you enclose a phrase or a part of a phrase in double-quotes when searching, to find the exact phrase, so the search query would look like this, of course including the double-quotes:

_"receiving the heavy blade so badly that the cut does not go through his neck, but through the back of his head and his jaw"_

Those results mostly look like rehashes of the Wikipedia page, so I don't know if we'll find anything beyond that single quote.

This gruesome task reminds me of one of my favorite jokes, that plays on how obsessive tech-minded people can be about problem-solving. You can substitute "engineer" in the joke below with "computer programmer" or various other tech-oriented professions. Goes like this:

==========
A priest, a lawyer, and an engineer were set to be executed by hanging.

The priest went first. He walks up the steps on the gallows, puts his head in the noose, the executioner pulls the lever, and nothing happens. He seizes on the opportunity and says: "This was an act of God - divine intervention. You must let me go." So they let him go free.

Next up is the lawyer. He walks up the steps on the gallows, puts his head in the noose, the executioner pulls the lever, and again nothing happens. He says: "You can't try to hang me again, that would be double jeopardy. You must let me go." So they let him go free.

Last up is the engineer, who has been watching this all very closely. He walks up the steps on the gallows - then all of a sudden, he stops.

He bends over, looks carefully at the lever mechanism under the gallows, and says:

"Well, here's the problem!"
==========

 :Rimshot:

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## darkoford

A few years ago I was working hydraulic guillotines for the recycling of lead batteries, but could also serve other types of cutting.

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Jon (Aug 10, 2017)

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## Frank S

""==========
A priest, a lawyer, and an engineer were set to be executed by hanging.

The priest went first. He walks up the steps on the gallows, puts his head in the noose, the executioner pulls the lever, and nothing happens. He seizes on the opportunity and says: "This was an act of God - divine intervention. You must let me go." So they let him go free.

Next up is the lawyer. He walks up the steps on the gallows, puts his head in the noose, the executioner pulls the lever, and again nothing happens. He says: "You can't try to hang me again, that would be double jeopardy. You must let me go." So they let him go free.

Last up is the engineer, who has been watching this all very closely. He walks up the steps on the gallows - then all of a sudden, he stops.

He bends over, looks carefully at the lever mechanism under the gallows, and says:

"Well, here's the problem!"
==========""
You should let me go because if I hadn't found and repaired the problem you might never have gotten the thing to function properly

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## DIYer

Thanks darkoford! We've added your Hydraulic Guillotine to our Miscellaneous category,
as well as to your builder page: darkoford's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:















Hydraulic Guillotine
 by darkoford

tags:
hydraulic, cutting

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