Thanks much Will for that blast from the past...

I lost all my old issues of the Journal in a break alas and will have to wait to get back to a Library copy to refresh my memory in more detail.

From the passage above, I can more than see why your impression of the method would overlap in your mind. I can not say I agree with it fully in my view, yet acknowledge (to no small degree) we are delving deeply into perhaps academic understandings where there is not a correct or incorrect perspective (perhaps?) of intricacies within comparatives of these layout systems.

Indeed...if...just considering the Japanese method of Line Layout by itself (which is much older than a few hundred years of Perry's time frame, and much more like 2000 plus (perhaps more or just around that time) which does indeed almost exclusively use a Sashigane framing square (much lighter and more flexible from modern Western Squares) that is employed to switch from side to side of the layout line to wrap a perpendicular mark around the timber...then indeed I could understand perhaps having an understanding why one would think or determine that Line Rule and Square Rule are one and the same...

As I am deep into a project and traveling, and this is a fascinating topic that deserves more than a small blurb entry, I will make a much better effort to offer more than I have in this entry.

I will end with, other than the history of Line Rule predating the modalities within Edge Rule (the more germane term I feel...yet perhaps not...??...I want to examine some old text at Dartmouth that Ed Levine shared with me years ago to confirm that..) by several millenia...there is much, much more to this historical story. Line Rule's lineage seems to suggest coming a long way (perhaps as far as Egypt...more to examine there) by way of India, China and then through Korean peninsula. Where it has more similarities to how it evolved in Japan once arriving with travelers from the mainland...than it does to taking a timber and using a reference edge (or plane) to create a point of demarcation referral to unify and standardize joinery, which was a step toward mass production and away from Scribe Rule. This historical time periods was bent on Industrial Revolutionary homogenization of craft and bespoke work found with Scribe Rule methods.

In the long history of Line Rule, which might well have been (and still might be..??) done more often in the round and/or live edge than in canted timber they often employ a layout tool more akin to a T Square than a square as we know it. In some regions other methods are used that don't resemble a T or any form of Square type layout tool at all. I for one don't and do not teach that method, yet instead employ a "Wrapping Template" of sorts. One I have seen similar to in the hands of more folk based Timberwrights that have been created from paper and even (it would seem??) a type of velum. One could argue that this then still makes it a...Square Rule...method, yet the context would be inaccurate (in my view) from the intent of method overall within its depths compared to historical Edge Rule. Again, making this conversation more academic than correct or incorrect in perspective.

Much thanks again for sharing that passage.