TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES BARNARD 
 
 EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTOR TO "THE CENTURY DICTIONARY ' 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 SILYEK, BUKDETT AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 

 
 
 
 COPTKIGHT, 1903, BT 
 
 SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 INTRODUCTION . . . . .... 11 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. TOOLS, UTENSILS, IMPLEMENTS, INSTRUMENTS, AP- 
 PARATUS AND MACHINES . . . . .17 
 II. THE HAMMER . . . . . . . .24 
 
 III. THE POWER-HAMMERS . . . . . f . 37 
 
 IV. THE KNIFE . . . . . . .48 
 
 V. THE CHISEL 59 
 
 VI. EDGE-TOOLS . 74 
 
 VII. THE GREAT CUTTERS 94 
 
 VIII. THE SAW AND THE SAWMILL . . . . . 114 
 
 IX. THE BORERS 125 
 
 X. THE ABRADERS AND GRINDERS . ... 136 
 
 XI. WOMAN'S ANCIENT TOOLS 143 
 
 XII. SOME CLOSING SUGGESTIONS . , . . .151 
 
 INDEX . 159 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE WORKERS IN METAL . . . . Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 STONE HAMMER WITH WOODEN HANDLES BOUND TO- 
 GETHER WITH CANE . 25 
 
 PREHISTORIC WAR CLUB . * . '... . . .25 
 
 TYPES OF HAMMERS . . . . . * .30 
 
 MALLETS . . . ... - . . . . . 31 
 
 A HAMMER FOR PLAY. . , .. . .32 
 A PILE-DRIVER . . . \ v . . . .38 
 
 DROP-FORGING HAMMER ....'. .40 
 HORIZONTAL STEAM POWER-HAMMER ... . . 42 
 
 VERTICAL STEAM-HAMMER ..,.>. . . .44 
 
 PNEUMATIC HAMMER . . . . . . . .46 
 
 PREHISTORIC KNIVES . . v , 49 
 
 TYPICAL KNIVES 53 
 
 HAY-KNIFE 55 
 
 DRAW-KNIFE (COLONIAL TOOL) . . ' . . . .55 
 
 PREHISTORIC DRAW-KNIFE 56 
 
 PRIMITIVE AFRICANS FORGING A KNIFE . . . .58 
 PREHISTORIC STONE CHISEL . . . . . .60 
 
 HAND-VISE CLAMPED TO BENCH 62 
 
 CHISELS: TANG-GOUGE, TANG-CHISEL, FRAMING-SOCKET 
 
 CHISEL, BOX-CHISEL 65 
 
 COLD-CHISELS . . , , -, 67 
 
 PNEUMATIC CHISEL . 72 
 
 SIDE PLANE 77 
 
 PLANES: CIRCULAR, CORE-BOX ... 77 
 
10 ILLUSTRATIONS, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 UNIVERSAL, HAND-BEADER 78 
 
 UNIVERSAL PLANE 79 
 
 A PREHISTORIC Ax 81 
 
 LATHER'S HATCHET 82 
 
 TYPE OF ADZ 86 
 
 PICK MATTOCK 88 
 
 MANICURE SCISSORS 90 
 
 PRUNING-SHEARS 90 
 
 TINSMITH'S SHEARS 91 
 
 SHEEP-SHEARING SHEARS .91 
 
 WOOD-CUTTING TOOL .92 
 
 HYDRAULIC SHEAR FOR CUTTING METAL . . . .93 
 FOOT-POWER WOOD-WORKING LATHE . . . .96 
 
 LARGE POWER-LATHE 99 
 
 IRON-PLANER 108 
 
 SHAPER 109 
 
 RIP-SAW 117 
 
 CROSS-CUT SAW 117 
 
 KEYHOLE-SAW 119 
 
 HACK-SAW 120 
 
 ICE-SAW 120 
 
 CIRCULAR SAW 122 
 
 PREHISTORIC BONE AWL OR BORER 125 
 
 CARPENTER'S AWL 126 
 
 BORERS : AUGER, GIMLET, ELECTRIC- WIRING AUGER . 127 
 
 BRACE AND BITS . 129 
 
 RACHET-DRILL . . . 130 
 
 PNEUMATIC DRILL . ^ . .... 131 
 PNEUMATIC ROCK-DRILL . . . - ' . . . . 133 
 ESKIMO BOW-DRILL . . 'V .. . .- . .135 
 FILES : HALF-ROUND, FOUR-SQUARE, ROUND DOUBLE-CUT. 137 
 SURFACE-GRINDING MACHINE . . ... . 140 
 
 INDIAN WOMAN WEAVING 144 
 
 SPINNING-WHEEL . . 145 
 
ONE of the greatest pleasures in the world is to use 
 a fine tool in doing good work. A tool extends the 
 power of the hand. It enables us to do things we 
 could not do without such aid. A needle is a tool that 
 every girl should be able to use with skill. A sewing- 
 machine is a needle in a machine, and it extends the 
 power of the hand by enabling a girl or a woman to do 
 more needle- work in less time and in a different man- 
 ner than she could do with the needle alone. An oar 
 is a tool every boy should be able to handle with pre- 
 cision and power. It is a tool of transportation. To 
 steer a naphtha launch and attend to its little engine is 
 to use a machine for transportation. With an oar a 
 boy can row a boat with one passenger a mile. With 
 a launch he can carry twenty passengers ten miles with 
 less labor. He can learn to row in one lesson. To 
 manage a launch may take a month's instruction and 
 practice. To row a boat is to use the boy's own un- 
 aided strength. To manage the launch implies a 
 knowledge of the control of an engine that develops 
 power, and this implies a knowledge of navigation, 
 that the launch may be steered from port to port in 
 safety. 
 
 The hammer, the saw, the knife and the needle are 
 
12, r ff <c . C c , .INTRODUCTION 
 
 tools that have come down to us from men who lived 
 long centuries ago in unknown lands. Somewhere in 
 the dim past, when men lived in trees or in caves, some 
 poor savage tried to defend his children from wild 
 beasts, some mother tried to shelter her babies from 
 storms and cold. With their hands alone they were 
 almost helpless against storms and wolves. Out of 
 their dangers they developed arms. In their starva- 
 tion, cold and misery they invented tools. Ages 
 passed, and little, by little the first rude tools were im- 
 proved. Other men saw new and better methods of 
 using the old tools, and very slowly men learned to use 
 tools in still other and more useful ways, and machines 
 were invented. 
 
 Once all men and women were obliged to work hard 
 through long days and nights to get a little food, a few 
 poor clothes, and a miserable home. To-day they can 
 have more and better food and clothing and more com- 
 fortable homes. There are more things in the world, 
 and yet there is less labor. We can hardly compre- 
 hend the suffering, hunger, cold, danger and misery 
 of those poor half forgotten people who had no tools. 
 They were hardly men at all. There were no children, 
 only little old men and women toddling about in the 
 woods, eagerly searching for a fallen nut or wading in 
 the water in search of an oyster or a clam. And when 
 they found an oyster they had no knife with which 
 to open the shell. They could only smash the shell 
 with a stone and tear out the fish and eat it raw, 
 for there was no fire by which it might be cooked, 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 not even a tool wherewith to make a fire. When 
 danger and starvation compelled men to invent tools, 
 they laid the foundations on which rest all the 
 safety, comfort, convenience and pleasure that we 
 enjoy to-day. We can, therefore, find no more inter- 
 esting and attractive study than the names, history and 
 use of the grand things we call tools and machines. 
 
 To use a good tool is a pleasure because it enables us 
 to make something that shall be useful and beautiful, 
 for any article that is rightly made and that will do good 
 work has a real beauty of its own. A good tool, 
 rightly used, enables us to express ideas in things so 
 that when others see these things they will compre- 
 hend the ideas we have put into our work. To express 
 ideas is one of the greatest of pleasures, and a tool is 
 a mode of expression ; thus its very use is a pleasure 
 in itself. 
 
 A young boy or girl may wish to make a picture 
 frame, a box, a net, or a rolling-pin that will be useful 
 in the kitchen. The young designer may have a cor- 
 rect idea as to the future appearance of the thing to be 
 made and yet b ) unable to make others understand ex- 
 actly how the thing is to appear when finished. The 
 first step thus implies the use of a tool, and this is a 
 pencil. The pencil is a tool with which a sketch, plan 
 or drawing can be made. The pencil is a tool that 
 enables the designer to express his ideas so that others, 
 on seeing the design, may with the right tools make 
 the thing illustrated by the drawing. 
 
 A boy may have a design for a picture-frame or a 
 
TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TOOLS, UTENSILS, INSTRUMENTS, IMPLEMENTS, APPARATUS 
 AND MACHINES 
 
 A MAN sees a ripe apple on a tree and he pulls it from 
 the tree with one hand. He may see another apple 
 that is higher up and beyond his reach. He picks up 
 a broken branch fallen from some tree and with it pulls 
 the bough of the apple tree down until he can reach 
 the apple. In the first instance he used his unaided 
 hands; in the second he used a tool. 
 
 A man sees a stone partly buried in the ground. It 
 seems to be a good stone to put in the wall of a house. 
 He tries to lift the stone, but cannot, and he looks about 
 for a stout stick with which to pry it up. The stick is 
 a tool. He sees a bunch of ripe grapes on a vine and 
 he finds a flat stone with a sharp edge that he can use 
 as a knife to cut the stem of the bunch of grapes. The 
 sharp stone is a cutting tool. A girl sewing is using a 
 tool. A man spading up a garden or uprooting weeds 
 uses a tool. An artist using a brush, or a sculptor a 
 chisel is doing work with a tool. Such work, whether 
 
18 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 'done by a laborer, a gardener, a painter, or a sculptor, 
 is mechanical work. Tools are things used in mechan- 
 ical work. A tool, in one sense, may be anything with 
 which work may be done. A writer may call his 
 books, his pen and his paper the tools of his trade. 
 The captain of a coast-survey steamer may call his ship 
 a great tool. These wider meanings of the word need 
 not now concern us; we will confine our attention to 
 those special things used in mechanical work and com- 
 monly called tools. 
 
 A girl breaks an egg into a bowl, and, holding a fork 
 in one hand, beats the yolk and white of the egg until 
 she has a mixture of the two. She has used a tool in 
 doing mechanical work, and has made a mechanical 
 mixture. She then pours this mixture into a pan that 
 has been prepared for it and places the pan on the 
 stove. The egg is now submitted to a high tempera- 
 ture and, in a few minutes, is entirely changed in ap- 
 pearance and character. This change, imparted to the 
 egg by the heat, we call a chemical change. We say the 
 egg is cooked, or has been submitted to the chemical 
 action of heat. We see at once that this is entirety 
 different from the mechanical action of beating the egg 
 with the fork. 
 
 The girl beats another egg and pours the mechanical 
 mixture into another pan and places it upon the stove. 
 She then stirs the mixture with a spoon, which is a 
 tool, while the pan remains on the fire. Chemical 
 action proceeds as with the first egg, but to this action 
 is now added the mechanical action of the stirring. 
 
TOOLS, UTENSILS, INSTRUMENTS, ETC. 19 
 
 The result of this combined chemical and mechanical 
 action is quite different from that obtained by the 
 chemical action alone. In the first instance the egg: 
 
 OO 
 
 became an omelet, in the second a scrambled egg. 
 
 In cooking the egg the girl used another tool. The 
 pan in which the egg was placed was a tool, because 
 it did the mechanical work of holding the egg while 
 on the stove. We do not, however, call a pan a tool, 
 because tools are used in mechanical work, and the mere 
 holding of the egg is not regarded as work with a tool. 
 We, therefore, call the pan a utensil. Pots, kettles, 
 skillets, frying-pans, griddle-irons, and boilers are 
 kitchen utensils. Knives, forks and spoons are some- 
 times called utensils, but they are really kitchen tools. 
 
 When a man uses a hoe to mix sand and cement he 
 uses a tool to make a mechanical mixture. If he then 
 adds water to the mixture, chemical action will begin, 
 and in a few moments the sand and cement will have 
 turned into a hard, stone-like material that is unlike sand 
 or cement. If, before the water was added and before 
 the chemical action began, the man had wished to sepa- 
 rate the sand from the cement he might have done so 
 by sifting them through a fine sieve. He would then 
 have had sand and cement. After the water was added 
 and chemical action began, and after the mechanical 
 mixture of sand and cement had turned into the new 
 chemical compound called concrete, the man could not 
 separate the sand from the cement. He might grind 
 up the material into powder, but it would be only pow- 
 dered concrete. These two experiments show us the 
 
20 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 difference between chemical and mechanical action, and 
 enable us to understand that tools are things used in 
 doing mechanical work. 
 
 Now, while things used in mechanical work are tools, 
 they are not all called by that name. The surgeon 
 uses a saw, which is a mechanical tool, yet he prefers 
 to call it a surgical instrument. An instrument may 
 be anything used to accomplish a certain end. A pair 
 of forceps or a drill or a file used by a dentist may be 
 called dental instruments. Yet both surgeon and den- 
 tist are really using tools, though, for convenience, 
 they will call all their tools instruments. The word 
 instrument may have even another and a wider mean- 
 ing, as when a sheet of paper, on which is written a 
 deed, a will or other legal statement of facts, is called 
 an instrument. However, for our purposes, we will 
 recognize that tools are, in some cases, called instru- 
 ments, and that all instruments used in doing work are 
 also tools. 
 
 A farmer may use a hoe, a spade or a rake in doing 
 mechanical work, and may even tell us that he keeps 
 them in his tool-house. If we go to the maker of such 
 tools we shall learn that he calls them, not agricultural 
 tools, but agricultural implements. The surgeon car- 
 ries his tools in an instrument case ; the farmer never 
 mentions his implement-house. Instruments and im- 
 plements may be tools of a trade, as a flute or violin, 
 yet the musician would call them his instruments. An 
 organ is really a great mechanical machine. It is called 
 a musical instrument. 
 
TOOLS, UTENSILS, INSTRUMENTS, ETC. 21 
 
 A girl in beating an egg may prefer to use, in place 
 of a fork, a little machine called an egg-beater. She 
 might tell us that it was an egg-beating apparatus. A 
 chemist may have some sea-water and may wish to 
 separate the salt in it from the water. He can do this 
 by using two bottles, a small lamp, and some glass 
 tubes, and such a collection of things he calls a distill- 
 ing apparatus. The engineer of an ocean steamship 
 wishes fresh water for his boilers and he, too, uses a 
 very large apparatus to distill fresh water from the salt 
 sea- water. The fireman calls his steamers, hose-carts, 
 chemical tanks, ladders, trucks, hooks and nets his fire- 
 apparatus. An apparatus may be any assemblage of 
 parts, tools, machines, or appliances designed to do 
 work or accomplish a certain result. The electrician 
 may also call his telephone or telegraph electrical 
 apparatus. 
 
 A machine is an assemblage of things, some one or 
 more of which are tools, and used to do mechanical 
 work. The girl would be correct in calling her egg- 
 beater a machine, and the chemist is right when he 
 calls his bottles and tubes a distilling apparatus. A 
 girl in cooking may strain her soup or jelly through 
 a cloth tied over the month of a jar, and tell us she is 
 using a straining apparatus. The girl may put the 
 strained jelly away to cool under a block of ice. The 
 ice is placed in a tight box, and in melting it chills the 
 air in the box, and the girl calls her refrigerator a 
 cold-storage apparatus. A man making ice or prepar- 
 ing brine for use in a cold-storage warehouse does not 
 
22 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 call his great plant an apparatus. He says he uses an 
 ice-machine; yet his warehouse itself, with its cold 
 rooms and glittering, frost-covered pipes, is nothing 
 more than a very large refrigerating apparatus. To 
 distinguish, however, his ice-making plant from his 
 cold-storage house he calls it his ice-making machine. 
 
 A fisherman uses hooks, floats, sinkers, rods and lines 
 as tools in his trade, and calls them his fishing tackle. 
 Ropes and blocks used in hoisting sails on a ship or in 
 raising weights are often called hoisting tackle. 
 
 Tools, utensils, instruments, implements, apparatus, 
 tackle and machines are terms used to designate tools, 
 machines and things used in work. It may not all be 
 mechanical work, as we have seen in the case of the 
 refrigerator and the omelet pan and in the making of 
 concrete. For our purposes we will select the two 
 terms, tools and machines, for utensils, instruments and 
 implements may also be tools or may be parts of 
 machines, while in many instances some apparatus 
 may be also machines. 
 
 Tools are simple ; machines are complex. Tools were 
 invented first and were used for thousands of years 
 before the first machine was made. Machines grow 
 out of tools, and do on a large scale and in a large way 
 the work that can be done with hand tools in a small 
 way. Tools may be used slowly; machines may be 
 used at a very high speed. 
 
 A hammer is a hand- tool; a steam hammer is a 
 machine. A needle is a tool; a sewing-machine is 
 a thousand times larger than a needle, and yet does the 
 
TOOLS, UTENSILS, INSTRUMENTS, ETC. 23 
 
 same work. A chisel is a tool; a lathe is a machine, 
 and both are cutting tools. A gimlet is a tool used in 
 boring a hole ; a gang-drill is a great boring-machine 
 that bores many holes at once. A saw is a tool; a 
 sawmill is a great sa wing-machine. A rolling-pin can 
 be used to spread a sheet of dough; a rolling-mill may 
 spread out tons of steel into great sheets fit for the sides 
 of a ship. A rubber stamp may be used to print fifty 
 letters at once; a printing-press may print fifty thou- 
 sand letters at one time. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE HAMMER 
 
 To understand the very beginning of tool-making we 
 sbould endeavor to imagine how it happened that men 
 first used a tool. This was centuries ago, long, long 
 before men had any means of making a record of the 
 things they saw or did, and we can only make a picture, 
 as it were, of the unknown man who first used a tool. 
 He was a poor, helpless savage, living in trees. He had 
 never even dreamed of a bow and arrow. He could 
 not imagine such a thing as a spear or a knife, and yet 
 the woods were full of terrible wild beasts. He knew 
 only that if a wolf appeared he must scramble into the 
 nearest tree to save his life. Perhaps this man was 
 one day in an open space 'in the forest when a wolf 
 attacked him. There was no time to reach a tree. 
 He must fight or be torn to pieces by the wolf. A 
 limb of a tree, broken off by the wind, lay near him, 
 and in his desperate need he picked it up to defend 
 himself. It was a club a tool, and with it he struck 
 the wolf on the head. To his amazement, the blow 
 killed the beast. The broken limb was a hammer, and 
 with it He had cracked the wolf's skull. With what 
 wonder he must have looked upon the stick. It was 
 
THE .HAMMER 
 
 25 
 
 a precious thing a weapon and defense against wolves. 
 
 He would keep so valuable a thing, keep it for his sons 
 
 and his sons' sons as something to 
 
 be preserved and treasured with the 
 
 greatest care. It must have been 
 
 some such desperate necessity that 
 
 led to the invention of the first tool, 
 
 and it is quite probable that this 
 
 first tool was a club or a hammer. 
 The use of clubs would, in time, 
 spread from man 
 to man until ev- 
 eryone would own 
 and use a war club. 
 Perhaps, long af- 
 
 some 
 
 other 
 
 Prehistoric War Club 
 
 ter, 
 
 man carrying a 
 club would find a 
 plant whose roots 
 were good to eat. 
 The club, he might 
 
 discover, would be useful in prying 
 the plants out of the ground to get 
 the roots. Another man or woman, 
 perhaps long after, and in some other 
 country, might find the club very use- 
 ful in cracking the bones of animals 
 to extract the sweet marrow, or to 
 smash an oyster shell to obtain the fish inside the 
 shell. We may never know where or when these first 
 
 Stone Hammer with 
 wooden handles bound 
 together with cane 
 
26 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 experiments were made. We can guess only that in 
 some such way men first learned to use tools. The 
 search for food and defense against wild beasts was 
 the inspiration; common things, like the limb of a tree 
 or a round stone, were the things that suggested the 
 means to an end. What was wanted was something 
 that would strike a smashing blow. A man's fist could 
 deliver a blow, but in giving the blow the hand might 
 be injured. A stick or a hard stone held in the hand 
 would do the work without injury to the hand. It is 
 quite possible that a club or a stone used as a ham- 
 mer was the first tool, and we may well begin our 
 studies with the ancient tool that we now call the 
 hammer. 
 
 To study a tool we must see it; we must make ex- 
 periments with it, because in an experiment we try 
 things to see how they behave under certain condi- 
 tions, and from their behavior we learn the laws gov- 
 erning their use. Get a nail, a small piece of soft pine, 
 a brick or flat-iron and a carpenter's hammer. The 
 hammer consists of two distinct parts, the head and 
 the handle. The handle is of hard wood, beautifully 
 moulded to fit the hand, just large enough to be grasped 
 firmly, slightly tapering, to prevent the hand from 
 slipping, and of just the right length. The steel head 
 has a face or striking surface with which to strike the 
 blow. It has also a claw, the use of which we shall 
 observe presently. 
 
 Now place the wood on a bench or some firm sup- 
 port about three feet from the floor, and with the 
 
THE HAMMER 27 
 
 left hand hold the nail upright on the wood. Grasp 
 the hammer firmly in the right hand about one-third 
 of the length from the end and rest the hammer 
 head on the nail. Nothing happens. The weight of 
 the hammer produces no visible effect on the nail. 
 We may even press upon the hammer with all our 
 strength, but beyond a slight dent in the wood 
 just under the point of the nail there is no effect, 
 certainly no useful effect. Next, resting the face 
 of the hammer squarely on the head of the nail, 
 raise the hammer a few inches and then put it 
 gently back again. This trains the eye and hand to 
 guide the hammer in striking a quick, hard blow on 
 the head of the nail. Strike one blow and observe 
 that the nail sinks into the wood and stands upright. 
 Strike another blow and it sinks deeper. We observe 
 that the hammer is a tool for giving a sudden impact 
 or driving blow, therefore we call it a tool of percus- 
 sion. 
 
 The experiment teaches us that there is a difference 
 between placing the hammer slowly and gently on the 
 nail and the quick blow. Under the mere weight of 
 the hammer resting on the nail the particles of wood 
 immediately under the point of the nail resist the pres- 
 sure and hold up nail and hammer. Under the quick 
 blow they give way and the nail sinks into the wood. 
 The experiment shows that there is another matter to 
 be considered, and this is time. Under the slow pres- 
 sure the particles of wood had time to adjust themselves 
 .to the pressure; under the quick blow they broke and 
 
28 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 gave way. We can lay the hammer on an inverted 
 teacup and the frail china ware will support it un- 
 harmed. Drop the hammer suddenly on the cup and 
 it breaks. Place two inverted glass tumblers upon the 
 floor and you can, if careful, step upon them and they 
 will sustain your weight. Drop one glass on the floor 
 and it will break with its own weight. We may press 
 with all our strength on the glass and not break it, yet 
 we can easily smash it with one blow of the fist. 
 Clearly, there is a difference between a pressure and a 
 quick blow a useful bit. of information in carrying 
 eggs. 
 
 These experiments teach another matter. Should 
 we attempt to break the teacup or glass with the hand 
 it is quite possible we might cut or injure the hand. 
 The hard steel face of the hammer head saves us from 
 this injury. Now hold a nail upright on a brick and 
 strike it with the hammer. Be careful in this experi- 
 ment that the nail does not fly off and do some harm 
 under a bad blow, or that it does not bend or give way 
 and injure the hand. Next, strike the hammer on the 
 bare brick. Observe that in both cases the hammer 
 accomplishes nothing, or recoils as if it had received 
 a return blow. It meets with resistance, and no useful 
 effect is accomplished. 
 
 Hold a nail upright on a piece of wood and try to 
 drive it in by using another piece of wood as a ham- 
 mer. We see that such a wooden hammer is dented 
 or split, and the nail is hardly driven in at all. 
 Clearly, the resistance affects the wooden hammer, and 
 
THE HAMMER 29 
 
 the force spent in the blow is wasted in part on the 
 hammer. 
 
 Go on striking the nail until it sinks into the 
 wood up to the head. The last blow " drives it home " 
 or sinks it until the top of the nail is level with the 
 surface of the wood. It requires great skill and long 
 practice to do this, and we shall probably find that the 
 last blow has left an ugly scar on the wood. This is 
 bad work. The nail must be ' ' sent home ' ' and the 
 wood left uninjured. 
 
 We observe that the carpenter driving nails in 
 handsome wood or in wood exposed to the weather 
 never mars the wood with hammer marks. He omits 
 the last blow and then places a small, slender piece of 
 steel, called a "nail-set," upright on the head of the 
 nail and strikes the blow on the end of the nail-set. 
 This drives the nail home without injuring the wood, 
 beyond the small hole made by the nail itself. These 
 experiments show us that even such a simple thing as 
 driving a nail is an accomplishment well worth learning. 
 
 The carpenter's hammer is sometimes called a claw- 
 hammer. Opposite the face is a double toe, or claw, 
 curved back towards the handle. The inner edge of 
 the slot between the claws is beveled, and the slot is 
 narrow at the bottom and wide at the top. Suppose 
 we wish to draw out a nail that is half driven in the 
 wood. We put the claws over it and observe that the 
 head of the nail is wedged in between the claws. By 
 bending the hammer backward as it rests on the wood 
 we use it as a lever to pull or draw out the nail. The 
 
30 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 claw-hammer is thus a compound or double tool ham- 
 mer and nail-puller. 
 
 Of all the many kinds of hammers, only a few are 
 single tools for striking blows only, and such hammers 
 have usually two faces one at each side of the head. 
 A blacksmith's hammer and the mason's stone-breaking 
 hammer are examples of these simple hammers with 
 double faces. Compound hammers have a face at one 
 
 Types of Hammers 
 
 side of the head for striking a blow, and the other side, 
 called the " peen," is quite another kind of tool. The 
 peen may be a claw, a pick, a wedge, a shovel, a chisel 
 or an awl. The peen may thus become a second tool 
 used with a hammer and having the same handle. 
 
 There are about fifty different styles of hammers, 
 each one having a trade name. They are of every size, 
 from a tack-hammer, weighing a few ounces, up to 
 the blacksmith's great straight-handled sledge-hammer, 
 
THE HAMMER 
 
 31 
 
 weighing twenty pounds or more. Many are named 
 after the trade in which they are used, as bricklayer's 
 hammer, miner's hammer, gold-beater's hammer, etc. 
 Some are named after the work in which they are used, 
 as creasing-hammer, chasing-hammer. A man laying 
 paving blocks uses a short-handled hammer called a 
 paver's hammer, with a heavy head and a peen shaped 
 like a curved, sharp-edged 
 hoe. A bricklayer ' s ham- 
 mer has a peen shaped 
 like a small ax that can 
 be used to " dress" bricks 
 into shape. 
 
 A ramrod is a long- 
 handled hammer with the 
 face in line with the han- 
 dle. It is used to load a 
 muzzle-loading gun. A 
 paver's rammer is a heavy 
 
 iron hammer with two handles near the top. It is lifted 
 in both hands and let fall on its end, or face, to drive 
 home a paving block. A long-handled wooden hammer 
 used in tamping soil round a post set in the ground is also 
 called a post or trench-rammer. A mallet is a wooden 
 hammer with a short, straight handle and large, round 
 wooden head. It is used in fine stonework and sculp- 
 ture. A long-handled hammer with a small wooden 
 head, and used in the game of croquet is also called a 
 mallet. A billiard cue, a baseball bat, a tennis racket, 
 all the instruments used in golf, are hammers. A 
 
 Mallets 
 
32 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 maul or beetle is a large hammer with a wooden head, 
 used in driving a wedge, in splitting logs or driving 
 down a stake, or in driving sheet-piling to protect an 
 embankment. A woodchopper's maul has a wedge- 
 shaped peen and the railroad spike maul has one large 
 face and one small face. A gavel is a small hammer 
 
 used by the presiding of- 
 ficer of a meeting as a sig- 
 nal to attract attention. A 
 drumstick is a hammer, 
 and the strings of a piano 
 are struck by felt-covered 
 hammers just as the ham- 
 mers of a pianola strike 
 the keys of the piano itself. 
 The tongue of a bell is a 
 hammer. The rolling ball 
 that sounds a fog -bell is 
 also a hammer. A girl 
 Q. beating a carpet is using 
 
 A Hammer for Play , , 
 
 a hammer, though it may 
 
 look like a wicker fan on a long handle. The men at 
 Bunker Hill used flint-lock guns that were fired by a 
 spark struck from a flint by a hammer, and in their 
 canvas haversacks they carried bread made from wheat 
 threshed out by a flail a curious hammer with a long 
 wooden head, called a souple, affixed by a swivel joint 
 to a handle. 
 
 The stone-mason, millstone dresser and marble- 
 worker use hammers with compound faces. A bun- 
 
THE HAMMER 33 
 
 die of rods with sharp points or a bunch of flat, 
 sharp-edged steel plates may be clamped together or 
 wedged together in a box to form a hammer-head. 
 Such multiple-faced hammers strike many blows at 
 once and are excellent for finishing or dressing stone 
 surfaces. Blacksmiths, machinists, coopers, jewellers 
 and plumbers use many different hammers of varied 
 shapes and sizes and bearing special names. For 
 instance, a goldbeater uses a commencing-hammer, a 
 spreading-hammer, and a finishing-hammer, according 
 to the progress of his work. 
 
 A carpenter, having only one arm, finding it diffi- 
 cult to drive small nails with one hand, thought of the 
 idea of magnetizing his steel hammer-head. With such 
 a magnet hammer he could pick up a tack by its head 
 and with one blow drive it into the wood hard enough 
 to make it stand alone. Then he could drive it home. 
 Such magnetized hammers for driving brads and tacks 
 are now used in many trades. 
 
 A blacksmith heats a bar of iron in his fire until it 
 is soft. He then lays it upon some firm support, and 
 with his hammer beats or forges it into the shape he 
 requires. This support he calls an anvil. The black- 
 smith's anvil is a square block of iron or steel, having 
 a smooth top or face. At one side there are holes of 
 different sizes and shapes, and on the opposite side is 
 a projecting beak or horn. By means of these holes, 
 the beak and the flat face, he works his hot iron into 
 a great variety of useful forms, and will forge almost 
 anything from a horseshoe to a pot-hook. So we 
 3 
 
84 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 always speak of the hammer and anvil as the two tools 
 that go together. All work done with the hammer, 
 all shaping, bending, twisting, spreading or welding 
 metals by blows must be done on some form of anvil. 
 The hammer blows fall, not on the anvil, but upon the 
 work that rests thereon, and the shape of the anvil de- 
 termines the form of the finished work. The anvil is 
 hard, and resists the impact of the hammer, but red- 
 hot iron is relatively soft, and between hammer and 
 anvil takes any shape the skillful workman wishes. So 
 we shall see, with nearly every hammer, be it great or 
 small, some form of anvil. 
 
 All the great family of tools used as hammers have 
 come from the club or the stone tied to a stick, used by 
 primitive men. All have assumed their present varied 
 forms through the efforts of thousands of unknown and 
 earnest men, who sought, through trial and experi- 
 ment, to learn what is the best shape for a hammer in 
 doing any work. The more complex and varied the 
 work the more varied the hammers, so that to-day the 
 hammer is a specialized tool of the very highest value 
 and efficiency. 
 
 We have only to look about and we shall see in every 
 art, trade, and manufacture many varied forms of this 
 ancient tool. Even a bird may know the use of a ham- 
 mer, as when a crow steals an egg and, wishing to 
 break it, lifts it in its claws, and flying up in the air, 
 lets it fall, and then with a proud and thankful " caw " 
 flies down to the dinner so cleverly obtained. How- 
 ever, there was once a tame crow who stole a porcelain 
 
THE HAMMER 35 
 
 nest-egg and tried this hammer method of cracking 
 the egg, only to be puzzled and disappointed at the 
 result. 
 
 To-day the American hammer, whatever its name or 
 use, is a splendid tool, admirably designed for its spe- 
 cial work. It is the finest tool of percussion ever made 
 a tool that it is a pleasure to see and to use. To the 
 eye trained to see the true, the useful, and effective, a 
 good hammer is a handsome tool. Never before were 
 such fine tools made, never before were they used in so 
 many different ways, and never before was it so impor- 
 tant as now to know and understand the use of good 
 tools. 
 
 In using this grand tool, we train the eye, the hand, 
 and the mind. The eye must guide the hand and the 
 mind guide the work, or we may break the nail, 
 dent the wood, injure ourselves, or, what is far 
 worse, spoil the work. We can mend broken skin with 
 courtplaster, but a beautiful piece of maple injured by 
 hammer marks can never be repaired. 
 
 To drive a nail seems a simple thing, yet no one can 
 do it well the first time. Just how to hold the nail 
 that it shall not split the wood, to drive it home, 
 straight and true and just far enough without injuring 
 the wood, is a little accomplishment which no one need 
 be ashamed to acquire. Skill comes with practice, and 
 it is the practiced hand, using a fine tool, that produces 
 the finest results, be it at a bench or a piano. It 
 is not the driving of the nail, but the skill, the knowl- 
 edge, the training in good work it brings that is valuable. 
 
36 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 No one can afford to say that he need not learn to use 
 this ancient tool. 
 
 On other pages will be seen drawings of some of the 
 many forms in which hammers are now made, and it 
 will be well to examine them all with care, that we may 
 be able to recognize their names and use them with skill. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE POWER-HAMMERS 
 
 A MAN may wish to drive a long, pointed log, called 
 a pile, on which to rest a bridge or wharf, into the mud 
 or sand of the seashore or into the bed of a river. The 
 pile may be twenty feet long, and while with the 
 proper tools he might manage to set it upright in 
 the mud, he could not drive it into the mud with the 
 largest maul that he could handle. He therefore 
 uses a machine-hammer or power-hammer called a pile- 
 driver. 
 
 A pile-driver consists of two tall uprights of wood, 
 properly braced and held in position upon a scow or 
 upon a platform erected over the place where the pile is 
 to be driven. These wooden uprights serve as guides 
 for a very large and heavy hammer called a " monkey. " 
 The monkey is fitted with iron lugs or wings at the 
 sides that just fit the two guides, so that, while it is 
 free to slide up and down between the guides, it cannot 
 escape on either side. At the top of the hammer is a 
 ring, and in this may be caught a double hook or tongs 
 to which is fastened a long rope. This rope leads up 
 between the guides to the top, where it turns over a 
 small wheel resting on the top of the guides and then 
 
38 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 runs down to the ground where it passes through a 
 block securely fastened to the ground. The end of the 
 rope is fastened to a wooden bar secured to the traces 
 of the harness of a horse. Just under the wheel, at 
 the top of the machine, there are two triangular pieces 
 
 of wood placed between the 
 guides, the rope passing 
 between them. Suppose, 
 now, a tall pile has been 
 placed between the guides, 
 ready to be driven into the 
 mud, the monkey hanging 
 suspended above the pile. 
 When all is ready the horse 
 steps forward, pulling on 
 the rope and lifting the 
 hammer to the very top of 
 the guides. Here the trian- 
 gular pieces pinch the tongs 
 and the claws open, letting 
 the weight fall on the head 
 of the pile and driving it home by a series of falls 
 on its head. 
 
 Here is plainly a machine-hammer, operated by the 
 power of the horse. When the weight has fallen the 
 horse backs, the rope slips down till the tongs again 
 bite the ring in the weight, and then the horse moves 
 forward, lifting the hammer until it is again released 
 and delivers another blow. A pile-driver operated in 
 this way is said to be operated by horse-power. The 
 
 A Pile-driver 
 
THE POWER-HAMMERS 39 
 
 hammer might also be raised by men turning a windlass, 
 but the work would be slow and expensive. A steam 
 hoisting-engine is usually used with, such pile-drivers, 
 and such machines are said to be operated by steam- 
 power. We can also properly say that such a machine 
 is a power-hammer, to distinguish it from a hand- 
 hammer. 
 
 A man may wish to forge some small piece of iron, 
 a bolt, a hook, or a part of some machine. He can 
 heat the metal in a fire and then forge it into the re- 
 quired shape with a hammer on an anvil. This might 
 be all right for one piece, but if he wanted a thousand 
 pieces, all exactly alike, this method would take too 
 much time and labor. The thousand pieces would be 
 so costly that people could not afford to buy them. 
 That would not be good business; he must use a power- 
 hammer that will do the work quickly and cheaply, 
 and that will turn out each piece exactly like every 
 other piece. We say he must manufacture the pieces 
 with a power-tool, and the tool he will select for this 
 work will be a drop-press. 
 
 A drop-press is a machine having two upright guides 
 placed over a fixed anvil, with a weight or hammer 
 suspended between them over the anvil. By the use 
 of simple machinery the weight can be raised above 
 the anvil and made to fall upon it. The face (bottom) 
 of the hammer is cut into the exact shape of the object 
 to be made by the drop-press. The anvil may also 
 have a face of the shape of the object. The man oper- 
 ating the drop-press has a supply of pieces of metal 
 
TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 called " blanks," and as the hammer rises he has time 
 to lift a blank in his tongs and place it on the anvil. 
 The hammer falls, and at one blow the metal is struck 
 
 or forged into the exact 
 shape cut in the faces of the 
 hammer and anvil. The 
 blank, when the hammer 
 again rises, may be removed 
 from the anvil and another 
 blank put in its place. All 
 such pieces will be exactly 
 alike, and as they are forged 
 in a drop-press they are 
 called drop-forgings. Such 
 a power - hammer works 
 faster than any man with a 
 hand-hammer, and it does 
 better work at a great sav- 
 ing of time and labor, and 
 as these cost money, at a 
 less cost of manufacture. 
 There are many different 
 styles and sizes of these drop- 
 forges. We need not stop 
 to examine them all in de- 
 tail, as our aim is to understand what is meant by a 
 power-hammer. The monkey of a pile-driver may 
 weigh a thousand pounds and the hammer of a drop- 
 press used in a factory may weigh only ten pounds, 
 and while the two machines only slightly resemble 
 
 Drop-forging Hammer 
 
THE POWER-HAMMERS 41 
 
 each other, yet were we to see them we would recog- 
 nize that each is a power-hammer. 
 
 In mining it is often necessary to extract the gold or 
 other metals embedded in the ore-stone by pounding 
 the stone into powder. This can best be done by a 
 smashing blow from a hammer. As such work could 
 not be done by hand, except at very great expense, we 
 find at such mines great machines called stamp-mills. 
 A stamp-mill consists of a row of heavy wooden beams 
 shod with iron, standing between guides upon massive 
 anvils. By the use of simple machinery these beams, 
 called stamps, are lifted above the anvils and let fall 
 upon them, while a stream of the rock slides down upon 
 the anvils. The ore is said to be " fed " to the stamps, 
 and under the terrific, crashing blows of the huge 
 stamps it is rapidly crushed to powder. It is after- 
 wards a comparatively easy matter to extract the gold 
 from the powdered stone. A row of stamps is called 
 a battery, and such a battery of stamps represents the 
 largest and most powerful power-hammering machine 
 except one, in the world. 
 
 As long as all hammers were used by hand, men had 
 to confine their work to small things. A blacksmith 
 could make a nail, a horseshoe, or a crane for a fire- 
 place, or the links of a small chain. When the loco- 
 motive was invented it was found that we must use 
 larger and more powerful hammers to forge the axle 
 of the new engine. This, and the demand for other 
 work like it, led to the general use of the oldest and 
 the most simple of the power-hammers the trip-ham- 
 
42 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 mer. This useful machine was invented before the 
 locomotive, but it was the invention of the engine, and 
 more particularly the invention of the steamboat, that 
 led to the general use of the trip-hammer. Before that 
 time it had been used in a small way for heavy f org- 
 ings. Now it became exceedingly useful, and it was 
 at once greatly increased in size and power. A trip- 
 
 Horizontal Steam Power-hammer 
 
 hammer resembles a hand-hammer held in a horizontal 
 position. The hammer is placed at the end of a heavy 
 beam pivoted near the opposite end. By means of 
 simple machinery the handle was raised and then 
 " tripped " or let fall, when the hammer-head delivered 
 its blow upon the anvil. All these tripping or tilting 
 hammers were, at first, operated by water-power, and 
 in the first half of the last century, in New England, 
 did much to make the forging of shovels and other 
 large tools cheap and rapid. Later they were operated 
 
THE POWER-HAMMERS 43 
 
 by steam power. They are still used in forging many 
 comparatively small pieces of metal work, but have in 
 many shops been superseded by the drop-press and by 
 their great rival, the steam-hammer. 
 
 The first step in the evolution of the steam-hammer 
 came from an attempt to improve the common trip- 
 hammer. The plan was to place a steam cylinder under 
 the handle and to use the expansion of steam to lift the 
 hammer. The idea was good, but it did not prove to be 
 very practical, and is only interesting as showing the first 
 attempt to use the direct expansion of steam to move 
 a hammer. In 1838, Nasmyth, of England, planned his 
 really great invention the steam-hammer. His idea 
 was to use the piston-rod of an upright steam-engine 
 as the handle of a hammer that could move up and 
 down between vertical guides. The valves of the en- 
 gine were to be operated by hand to admit steam above 
 or below the piston. When steam was admitted below, 
 the piston would rise and lift the hammer. Then, on 
 letting the steam escape, the hammer would fall upon 
 the anvil below. By admitting steam above the piston 
 as it fell, the force of the blow would be enormously 
 increased. By admitting steam both above and below 
 the piston at the same time, the hammer could be hung 
 suspended over the anvil or be made to deliver light or 
 heavy blows, quick or slow blows, at the will of the 
 operator Nasmyth's idea was one of the greatest of 
 modern conceptions, and when carried out in actual 
 practice it gave us the most powerful and most costly 
 machine-hammer in the Avorld. Steam-hammers are 
 
TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 now made in many sizes, from small machines for forg- 
 ing the ironwork of a carriage or other light work, to 
 the giant labor of forging the shaft of an ocean steam- 
 ship. So perfect is the operation of one of these Titan 
 hammers that the engineer can crack an egg with it, 
 
 or deliver terrific, smashing 
 blows that will mold a ton 
 of iron into any shape he 
 wishes. 
 
 The steam-hammer and 
 the drop-press are types of 
 all the most common and 
 useful power-hammers. The 
 smaller machines are called 
 dead-stroke hammers, drop- 
 hammers, pig-iron breakers, 
 etc. , and all use a hammer 
 moving between vertical 
 guides and operated by 
 means of lifting machinery 
 or by the direct expansion of 
 steam. Some deliver blows at a regular speed, others 
 at variable speeds, or at the will of the operator. 
 
 In addition to these machine-hammers there are other 
 machines that, while given other names, are really 
 power-hammers. In the carpet-beating machine wooden 
 rods arranged in a battery beat or strike the carpet as it 
 passes under them. It is thus a form of machine-ham- 
 mer. A batting-machine or scutching-machine, em- 
 ploys beaters that slap or thrash raw flax or cotton 
 
 Vertical Steam-Hammer 
 
THE POWER-HAMMERS 45 
 
 to beat out the dirt and dust, and it is thus a form 
 of machine-hammer. In the manufacture of shoes, 
 pegs, brads or small nails are driven into the shoe 
 sole, and a pegging-machine is properly a variety of 
 machine-hammer. A box-nailing machine that will 
 drive eight nails at once into the corners of a box is 
 clearly a gang-hammer, or small battery of hammers 
 operated by machinery. Such a machine is called a 
 nailer, and its principal work is nailing shoe or other 
 packing boxes. 
 
 After the invention of the steam-hammer it was 
 thought that compressed air could be used in such 
 machines in place of steam. Such pneumatic hammers 
 did not at that time come into general use. We did 
 not then understand the use of compressed air, and 
 these atmospheric hammers, as they were called, were 
 soon forgotten. 
 
 With the invention of larger and more powerful 
 compressors, compressed air came to be better under- 
 stood, and many new tools were invented for employing 
 this very convenient method of distributing power. 
 Among these new tools was the rock-drill, and from 
 the rock-drill came the latest and finest of all the power- 
 hammers, the pneumatic hammer. This new and re- 
 markable machine sprang from the demand for a small, 
 self-acting hammer, which would deliver blows of mod- 
 erate power at a very high speed. A pneumatic ham- 
 mer consists of an iron cylinder designed to be held in 
 the hands, and containing a piston with its rod and the 
 proper valves to operate the piston as a little engine or 
 
46 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 motor, using compressed air in place of steam. This 
 little reciprocating engine, when supplied with air 
 under pressure, delivered through a hose, will run at 
 a very high speed, and we can easily see that if the 
 piston-rod has a hammer-head at the end, we shall 
 have a power-hammer. Such a hammer, held in any 
 position before any anvil or any work placed upon an 
 anvil, will deliver a blow at every stroke of the piston- 
 
 rod, and with suf- 
 ficient air-pressure 
 will give from 200 
 to 1,000 blows a 
 minute. Such a 
 swiftly moving 
 hammer would be 
 useless in driving 
 nails, but for long 
 and heavy work 
 in iron, such as 
 
 ,, -,-1 . , , , 
 
 " caulking, ' beat- 
 ing down the seams between the plates of an iron ship, 
 or in forging rivets into place or in dressing stone or 
 marble it is an exceedingly useful tool. 
 
 The pneumatic hammer is so new that we do not yet 
 know all that it can do. It is one of the finest of mod- 
 ern machine tools, and every month new uses are found 
 for its swiftly flying hammer. In the foundry the 
 f oundryman in making his molds rams the soft, loamy 
 sand into his flasks with a mallet. The pneumatic 
 hammer will do the work far better and twenty times 
 
 Pneumatic Hammer 
 
THE POWER HAMMERS 47 
 
 as fast. A large pneumatic hammer resembling a 
 paver's rammer will ram down paving-blocks or level 
 the sand in great molds in a foundry. The stone- 
 mason and the sculptor have found it to be a new and 
 wonderful kind of mallet in their beautiful work of 
 dressing building stone or carving statues or in making 
 the many useful forms of marble used in our homes, 
 churches and office buildings. We shall examine this 
 splendid new power-hammer again when we come to 
 examine that ancient tool, the chisel. 
 
 We have seen that to use a hand-hammer requires 
 skill, and that its proper use is a real training for hand 
 and eye. To use these grander tools, the great power- 
 hammers, and this new and wonderful machine, the 
 pneumatic hammer, teaches even more, for to use them 
 requires a higher skill and a greater training. A man 
 may earn two dollars a day driving shingle nails on a 
 roof. A man may earn five dollars a day controlling 
 some gigantic steam-hammer. A sculptor with his 
 chisels and a mallet and aided now by a pneumatic 
 hammer, may earn ten thousand dollars in one grand 
 piece of work by making a beautiful marble statue. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 THE KNIFE 
 
 LONG centuries ago some savage hunters may have 
 killed a bear. The bear's tough, hairy hide would be, 
 in their eyes, very valuable as clothing and as a cover 
 for a shield. The difficult thing to do would be to get 
 the bear's hide off. Without some kind of cutting tool 
 it would be impossible. If it were near the seashore 
 the hunters might readily see that the sharp edge of 
 a clam shell would make a very fair kind of cutting 
 tool. Perhaps the hunters had seen among the moun- 
 tains thin flakes of a glassy mineral that we now call 
 natural glass or obsidian. They perhaps found flakes 
 of a very hard stone, to-day called flint, and such flakes 
 of flint or obsidian would make rude cutting-tools with 
 which they might cut and strip off the hide of the bear. 
 We can easily imagine that it was perhaps in this way 
 men first learned to make and use a knife. Then, per- 
 haps, long after, some bright man thought of the 
 idea of tying or fastening in some way such a stone 
 blade to a wooden handle, and then he would have 
 a tool composed of two parts, a cutting-blade and 
 a handle, and this would be a real knife. Such ob- 
 sidian knife-blades, bored with holes for the cord to 
 
THE KNIFE 
 
 pass through, can be seen at the New York Museum 
 of Natural History. 
 
 The history of the knife is a long story. It began 
 with shells and sharp stones, or with bits of hard wood, 
 centuries before men learned to write, so we may be 
 sure it was a tool in universal use long before history 
 began to be recorded. When men learned to use cop- 
 per and iron the shell 
 and flint knives disap- 
 peared, for a metal 
 knife could be made 
 much sharper than any 
 of the old stone ones. 
 To-day all knife-blades 
 are made of steel, ex- 
 cepting a few where a 
 sharp edge is not so 
 important, as the ivory 
 blade of a paper-knife. 
 
 Get your pocket- 
 knife, and let us examine it. This pocket-knife is the 
 boy's handy tool. Every boy and every girl should 
 have one, and should know how to use it with skill 
 and in safety. It consists of a steel handle covered 
 with bone. This bone is rough, so that the fingers 
 have a firm, strong hold upon the handle. There 
 is a blade hinged at the end by means of a little pin 
 passing through a hole in the thick end of the blade 
 and securing it to the handle. On examining the blade 
 we see there is a little channel or nick near the back of 
 4 
 
 Prehistoric Knives 
 
50 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 the blade, and by putting the thumb-nail into this nick 
 we can easily pry the blade up out of the place where 
 it rests in the handle. Then we can bend it back until 
 it is in line with the handle. "We say we have opened 
 the knife. Just as the blade comes in line with the 
 handle we hear a slight click, and then we find that the 
 blade is held quite firmly in its place. We examine 
 the knife and find that there is a spring in the back 
 of the handle, and it was this spring that caused the 
 little click and that holds the blade firmly in position. 
 When we wish to close the knife we press on the back 
 of the blade and again we hear the click of the spring 
 as the blade slips back into its place. "We see that the 
 spring serves a double purpose, in holding the blade 
 steady when the knife is open, and in keeping it safe 
 and snug in the handle when not in use, and thus pre- 
 venting the knife from doing any harm when carried 
 in the hand or the pocket. If there are other blades 
 in the knife we find they all work in the same way. 
 Three blades is the usual number a large blade, a 
 small one and a little finger-nail file with a very small 
 blade at the end. With such a pocket-knife we can 
 do a great variety of work and make various useful 
 things. Many pocket-knives have more blades or have 
 other attachments, such as a screw-driver, a hook, 
 a corkscrew and other more or less useful things. 
 Such knives, however, are heavy and troublesome 
 to carry, and are chiefly useful in camping, or in 
 the country where it may be important sometimes 
 to have a hook to pull a stone out of the horse's 
 
THE KNIFE 51 
 
 shoe o* to cut a hole in a strap to fit the tongue of 
 a buckle. 
 
 Let us get a stick of soft pine and see what we can 
 do with our pocket-knife. Open the large blade and 
 hold the knife in the right hand and the stick in the 
 left. Now be careful. We are to use an edge-tool 
 and there is a wise old saying 'about the danger of 
 " playing with edge-tools. " Should we hold the wood 
 in the left hand and with the right hand draw the knife- 
 blade towards us we might very soon find out just what 
 the old saying means. Hold the blade against the 
 wood and push it away from you. Then there is no 
 danger that the knife will slip and cut the hand or 
 strike the body. This seems a simple rule, and yet we 
 shall see that is the one almost universal rule in using 
 all kinds of cutting-tools, the exception being the spoke- 
 shave, or draw- knife. Always keep the back of the 
 blade facing in the opposite direction to the cutting 
 stroke. Hold the knife firmly, with the blade resting 
 nearly, but not quite, flat on the wood. See exactly 
 what you mean to do and then make one swift, sharp 
 stroke outward along the wood. A long, thin shaving 
 flies off, and we see that the stick has a new shape. 
 This is the work of the knife to give a new shape to 
 the stick. The stick may be square, and by taking off 
 a piece from each corner you give the four-sided stick 
 eight sides. By repeating the strokes you can easily 
 change the square stick into a smooth round one. Thus 
 we see that the knife is a shaper or shaping tool. The 
 stick may be round, and we can cut or whittle it into a 
 
52 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 triangular or a square shape, or give it this shape for 
 part of the length and another shape for the remaining 
 length. We can whittle out of a round stick a boom 
 for a miniature sailboat or make a ruler or a paper- 
 cutter or a salad spoon. We can even whittle the stick 
 up into toothpicks. One thing we will not do, and 
 that is idly and aimlessly to whittle it to pieces and 
 make nothing at all. That would be very unwise, for 
 thereby we should learn nothing new and waste a good 
 piece of wood. Whatever you do, decide beforehand 
 just what you intend to make and make it. 
 
 Once there was a young man who wished to marry 
 a farmer's daughter, so he called on the father to get 
 his consent to the marriage. The farmer was at work 
 in the barn, and the young man sat down and began 
 to whittle. After he had said all he wished, he threw 
 away the stick he had been whittling. "Now," said 
 the farmer, " I noticed that while you were asking for 
 my daughter's hand you were using your ppcket-knife. 
 I thought you meant to make something. Instead of 
 that you spoiled a good piece of wood and made noth- 
 ing at all. I guess, young man, you are not the right 
 husband for my daughter." 
 
 A pocket-knife is a grand tool for any boy or girl 
 who wishes to make things. It is wonderful how many 
 things can be made out of a piece of fine wood; not 
 merely pretty or curious things, like a ring in a bottle 
 and other odd objects that cost time and work and that 
 when finished are not worth the labor spent upon them. 
 Make something useful or beautiful, for a really beauti- 
 
THE KNIFE 
 
 53 
 
 ful thing is always valuable. Always decide, in ad- 
 vance just what you intend to do. Have a clear idea 
 of the shape and dimensions of the object. The best 
 plan is always to make a drawing of the thing to be made 
 and then to reproduce the drawing in wood with your 
 knife. 
 
 A good plan is to begin with some simple thing like 
 a ruler or paper-cut- 
 ter. Learn to cut true 
 and square, making 
 everything exactly 
 according to pattern. 
 Learn to use the large 
 blade for rough shap- 
 ing out, and the small 
 blade to give a fine, 
 smooth, accurate fin- 
 ish. Endeavor to 
 make things that you 
 will care to keep and 
 use, or things that you will be proud to give to friends 
 as samples of good work and that your friends will be 
 glad to receive, because it is your work and because 
 it proves you know how to do good work. This is 
 the lesson of the knife to be true, square, exact, 
 accurate. 
 
 The moment we look about we find that there are 
 a great many different kinds of knives. On the table 
 there is the butter-knife, the carving-knife, the bread- 
 knife, the fruit-knife, the fish-knife and the table-knives. 
 
 Typical Knives 
 
54: TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 In the kitchen we shall also find the chopping-knife. 
 Each has a blade and a handle, and they differ only in 
 size or in the shape of the blade, and we see that each 
 is adapted to its particular use, and that it would be 
 very unwise to try to carve the turkey with the butter- 
 knife or to pare an apple with the carving-knife. 
 
 A young man was once eating his lunch in a railroad 
 car when the train ran off the track. He had just put 
 his knife into his mouth when the shock of the accident 
 caused the knife to cut his mouth. He sued the rail- 
 road company for damages, but the judge said he had 
 no case. 
 
 When we go out among the men who use tools we 
 see that knives are used in every art and trade. The 
 surgeon has a great variety of beautiful knives for his 
 delicate and important work. The carpenter, the shoe- 
 maker, the butcher, the dairyman, the gardener, the 
 glazier, the harnessmaker each uses a number of dif- 
 ferent knives adapted to his special work and all hav- 
 ing specific names. The gardener has his pruning- 
 knife, his grafting-knife, and his budding-knife; the 
 grocer, his cheese-knife ; the butcher, his butcher-knife ; 
 the fishman, his oyster-knife, and so on through every 
 craft and art. Some knives are very small, like the 
 lancet, others are very large, like the planter's cane- 
 knife. Some have sharp points, some have rounded 
 points. 
 
 Some knives have the handle placed at a right angle 
 with the blade. The farmer in cutting hay from the 
 haymow in his barn uses a large knife with such a 
 
THE KNIFE 55 
 
 right angle handle. He calls it a hay-knife. The 
 gardener in trimming the edges of his lawn may use 
 a large knife with a curved blade. He calls it a grass- 
 knife. In old times all grains like wheat or oats wero 
 cut down with such a 
 curved, crescent - shaped 
 knife, called a sickle. 
 
 This is one of the oldest H ay -Knif< 
 
 knives of which we have 
 any record. The ancient Egyptians used sickles in 
 their rice and wheat-fields ; sometimes such sickles had 
 a straight handle at the end of the blade, and some- 
 times a bent handle or a handle placed at an angle 
 with the blade. The new moon is sometimes called a 
 sickle, because it resembles the blade of a sickle or 
 grass-knife, and there is a cluster of stars in one of the 
 constellations also called by that name. 
 
 One very useful knife has a long blade with a cut- 
 ting-edge on one side, and a handle at each end, placed 
 at a right angle with the blade. Sometimes the han- 
 dles are hinged, so that they can be held in any posi- 
 tion desired, and can be 
 kept in such position by 
 means of a set-screw. 
 (Colonial Tool) || g uc } 1 a two-handled knife 
 is called a draw-knife, 
 because it is used with both hands and is pulled or 
 drawn forward in making a cut with the blade. An- 
 other two-handled knife is the shave, and the wheel- 
 wright uses a two-handled knife which he calls a 
 
56 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 spokeshave, in shaping the spokes of a wheel, and 
 that suggests a plane, as we shall see in studying that 
 tool. 
 
 This form of two-handled or drawing knife is very 
 old, for, in the Museum of Natural History, we can 
 see bones split open to give two cutting edges. Such 
 bone knives were used by prehistoric people. 
 
 A half-moon knife has a crescent-shaped blade with 
 two handles. It is used by the currier in dressing 
 hides, and is sometimes called the currier's knife. A 
 double or parallel knife has two blades placed side by 
 
 Prehistoric Draw-Knife 
 
 side. It is used to slice off very thin sections or 
 slivers of any soft substance. In some knives the blade 
 is pivoted at one end and has a handle at the other 
 end. These are used in cutting paper or tobacco. The 
 cutting-edge is on the side of the blade, and makes 
 what is called a shearing cut. A razor is a very sharp 
 knife having a hinged handle. This is one of the old- 
 est of tools. A race-knife has a bent cutting-blade for 
 marking or scribing. It is more of a marking-tool 
 than a knife, though it has a little cutting or scratch- 
 ing blade. 
 
 The largest of all the knives is the scythe. It is a 
 very old tool, and yet the finest scythes in the world 
 are to-day made and used in this country. We have 
 
TEE KNIFE 57 
 
 tine grassland, and the scythe is the hand grass-cutter 
 or mower. The blade is long and slender, sharply 
 curved and ending with a sharp point. It has a long, 
 curved handle called the helve, placed at a right angle 
 with the blade. It is used in both hands by grasping 
 small handles on the helve. The mower swings his 
 scythe in a great sweep through the grass, mowing a 
 wide swath or path through it. It is a grand sight to 
 see a good mower cutting grass, and it is a fine thing 
 to be able to swing a scythe in the hayfield on a 
 July afternoon. Scythe-blades are made of different 
 sizes and shapes for different work. A grass-scythe 
 has the longest blade. The clover-scythe has a shorter 
 and wider blade. A scythe for cutting weeds or bram- 
 bles has a still shorter blade, and the kind used for 
 mowing down small bushes has a very short, stout 
 blade. A grain-scythe has a long but thick blade, 
 and is the heaviest of all. 
 
 The knife has given its name to a number of other 
 things, as a knife-file, or a file resembling a knife 
 blade ; a knife-rest, which is a glass or metal holder for a 
 table-knife. Anything with a sharp edge may be said to 
 have a knife-edge, like the sharp-edged support of the 
 balance beam of a weighing scale. A wooden slicer 
 for cutting ice-cream is called a cream-knife, and is, 
 like the paper-folder or paper-cutter, a dull-edged knife. 
 Some ancient war arms having a blade and a handle 
 were called battle-knives, such as the sword, the hal- 
 berd and the dagger. However, these are arms, and 
 are not tools at all. 
 
58 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 The surgeon uses a number of small and very beauti- 
 ful knives that have curious shapes and more curious 
 names. His knives are made of the finest steel and 
 are the sharpest knives in the world. He keeps them 
 in beautiful order in his instrument case, for when he 
 uses them it may mean life or death, accordingly as 
 they are or are not in perfect order. 
 
 <: 
 
 Primitive Africans Forging a Knife 
 
CHAPTEK Y 
 
 THE CHISEL 
 
 IN studying the hammer we observed that a great 
 number of tools grew out of the simple hand-hammer. 
 In the same way, from the original shell knives have 
 come many useful and interesting tools that are not 
 called knives, and yet are cutting- tools. At the de- 
 partment store, we shall find that the table-knives and 
 many small knives, like the pocket-knife, are called 
 cutlery. Other and larger cutting-tools are called 
 edge-tools. The gardener uses a pruning-knife to trim 
 his pear trees, and buys it of the cutler at the cutlery 
 department. The lumberman cuts down a great tree 
 with an ax, a carpenter uses a chisel, and the ship- 
 wright an adz, and all three are using edge-tools that 
 they buy at the hardware store. 
 
 At such a store we may ask to see edge-tools, and 
 the store-keeper will show us a large collection of 
 beautiful and interesting tools, each one having some 
 form of cutting-edge. One, the dealer tells us, is a 
 chisel. We find it has a long, narrow blade, fastened 
 to a wooden handle, blade and handle being in one 
 line. The end of the blade is cut off at an angle. We 
 say it is beveled, or has a beveled edge, the lower side 
 
60 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 being very sharp. This beveled edge is formed by 
 grinding the blade, and it is called the bezel. The 
 head of the handle is flat and suggests an anvil, and 
 shows that the tool is to be used with a hammer. 
 As it is of wood, the best plan is to use it with a 
 wooden mallet, because a steel hammer might mar tho 
 handle. 
 
 The chisel is one of the oldest tools in the world. 
 Chisels have been found buried in mounds that were 
 made by men who lived in our country 
 before history began to be recorded. 
 Pictures on old monuments show plainly 
 that the ancient Egyptian carpenter had 
 a chisel in his tool-bag, and used it with 
 a mallet. 
 
 We decide to take the chisel, and we 
 purchase at the same time a foot rule 
 and a pencil, and, unless we already 
 have one, we buy also a wooden mallet. 
 On reaching home we place a small 
 piece of pine board on our work-bench 
 and lay our purchases beside it. A good, folding foot 
 rule, that will fit an inside pocket, is one of the first 
 things a boy or girl should own. It is the universal 
 standard of simple measurements, and our best plan is 
 to keep one in the pocket, for we shall soon discover 
 that we need it every day, and often a dozen times a 
 day. It is a guide in mental arithmetic, for it enables 
 us to learn to add and subtract in inches and fractions 
 of inches. It gives us accurate ideas of the sizes and 
 
THE CHISEL 61 
 
 dimensions of things, and in using it we train ourselves 
 to be exact and accurate in our work and our state- 
 ments concerning work and things. 
 
 Lay the piece of board on the bench, and with the 
 rule and pencil mark off upon it at one corner a square 
 of one inch each way. Turn the board over and repeat 
 the inch marks on the opposite side and then join the 
 marks together across the side and end. Now hold the 
 chisel upright on one mark, with the bezel facing out- 
 ward, and with the mallet in the right hand strike one 
 sharp blow on the handle of the chisel. The chisel 
 sinks in the wood, making a mark that is sharp on one 
 edge and bent or beveled on the other. Move the 
 chisel along on the mark and repeat the blow. Do 
 this along all the marks, except those on the end. 
 The angular cuts form with the corner of the board a 
 square, one inch each way. Lastly, hold the board 
 on edge, sidewise, and make one cut across at the 
 ends of the pencil marks. 
 
 ISText we set the board upright on end (the grain of 
 the wood being vertical), and prepare to make the next 
 cut. Just here we discover that it would be very help- 
 ful to have some means of holding the board upright. 
 Some one might hold it for us, but this is not a good 
 plan, as the person holding the board would be in the 
 way, and might be hurt should the board slip. We 
 are using an edge-tool, and the first thing to consider 
 with edge-tools is safety, both for ourselves and for 
 others. The board should be placed in a vise. A vise 
 is an apparatus for holding any material on which 
 
62 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 work is to be done. A carpenter's vise, such as would 
 be used with his work-bench, consists of two parts just 
 alike, and called the jaws. One jaw is fixed to the 
 bench and the other is movable, and the two are joined 
 together by means of a wooden or a metal screw. 
 When the screw is loose the piece of board we are 
 using can be slipped between the jaws in any position 
 we wish. Then, on turning the screw, the jaws come 
 together and bite or hold the board firmly. 
 
 Whatever work we do we should 
 use the best tools. We can get 
 along without a vise for holding 
 our work, yet in doing the best 
 work we shall find it most valuable. 
 In metal work we can hardly do 
 without one, and we will stop just 
 a moment to examine a good vise. 
 The accompanying picture repre- 
 sents a small and convenient vise 
 u clamped to a bench. The clamp 
 
 Hand.Vise Clamped to Bench 
 
 has two horizontal arms at the 
 side, the lower arm carrying a screw that, by means 
 of the handle, can be screwed up tight against the 
 under side of the bench. The vise itself rests in the 
 hollow clamp and is kept firmly in place by a set- 
 screw below, as shown by the two wings of the handle. 
 The vise is of steel and has two jaws having roughened 
 faces to give a good bite or hold on the work when 
 placed between the jaws. A screw, with winged 
 handle, draws the jaws together or pulls them apart 
 
THE CHISEL 63 
 
 at will. The vise can also be used in the hand to hold 
 metals, wire or small woodwork. The clamp itself, 
 even without the vise, is a handy thing to have on our 
 work-bench. It will come into use in a dozen dif- 
 ferent ways in using our tools. 
 
 Place the board upright in the vise, with the end 
 about waist-high or in convenient reach. Place the 
 chisel upright, close to the edge of the board, the bezel 
 facing out, on the upper end. Give it a light tap with 
 the mallet, and a thin chip splits off down to the chisel 
 cuts on the sides of the board. Repeat this till a 
 square piece or shoulder is cut out of the board. Now 
 we see the value of the chisel. It is a cutter or 
 shaper. It cuts to shape, and does far more than 
 could be done with a knife. We can use it to cut 
 wood into many useful forms or shapes; for this rea- 
 son we call it a shaping-tool. We also see "now the 
 value of the pencil marks on both sides of the board, as 
 they guide us to a correct cut. 
 
 Mark, with the rule and pencil, a square near the 
 middle of the board, one inch each way. Cut with 
 the chisel all round this mark, holding the chisel 
 upright, with the bezel facing the inside of the square. 
 Now, hold the chisel at an angle in the upper or lower 
 cut, not side-cut, and strike a sharp blow. A chip flies 
 out of the square. By repeating these two kinds of 
 cuts, straight and at an angle, alternately we can cut a 
 square hole quite through the board. Such a chisel 
 hole is called a mortise. The chisel is thus a mortising 
 tool. We observe, also, in making these splitting-off 
 
64 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 cuts, that we cut across the grain and split the wood 
 with the grain. 
 
 Next, get a smaller piece of board, three inches wide 
 and six inches long. Place it upright in the vise and 
 mark off one inch on each side of the end. Then cut 
 off each corner, leaving a square point in the middle. 
 This center projection is the tongue or tenon, and the 
 two side-cuts are the shoulders. If the work has been 
 truly done and every measurement is exact, the tenon 
 will fit into the mortise. You have now made a mortise 
 and tenon joint. You have done a piece of joinery. This 
 mortise and tenon joint may be used in almost every kind 
 of work where one piece of wood is joined to another. 
 The carpenter uses this joint in many ways, and for 
 this reason he is sometimes called a joiner. The carpen- 
 ter, cabinet-maker, ship-builder, sash -maker, carriage- 
 maker, box-maker, cooper and trunk-maker all make 
 such joints as this. You see what an immense variety 
 of work can be done with a simple hammer and chisel. 
 A series of tenons and cuts on the edge of a board 
 makes what is called a dovetail, and by fitting two 
 dovetailed boards together we make a dovetail- joint. 
 
 Noi only is the chisel used in all kinds of wood- 
 working, but it is useful in working stone, marble and 
 metals. It has many other uses besides making joints 
 in wood, and, in the hands of the wood-carver and the 
 sculptor, it becomes one of the finest of all the tools. 
 Through its use men and women have made the most 
 beautiful things we see in our homes and churches, our 
 museums and art galleries. To understand this splen- 
 
THE CHISEL 
 
 65 
 
 did tool, let us examine the different kinds of chisels 
 and then see how they are used by stone and metal- 
 workers. 
 
 The chisels used in woodwork range from the large, 
 heavy house-builder's chisel, two feet long, used in 
 framing timbers together, down to the delicate little 
 chisels, six inches 
 long, used by the 
 wood -carver in cut- 
 ting flowers and 
 foliage upon a 
 newel- post or man- 
 tel-piece. They 
 are divided into 
 two classes: socket 
 chisels, in which 
 the handle is fas- 
 tened into an open- 
 ing or socket at the 
 end of the blade, as 
 in a joiner's fram- 
 ing-chisel; and 
 tang-chisels, in which the tang, or pointed end of the 
 blade, is fitted inside the handle. All the smaller chisels 
 are tang-chisels. A carpenter may use a dozen chisels all 
 exactly alike, except in size. He may also use chisels 
 with blades of different widths for doing large or small 
 work. He gives names to these according to their 
 use, such as sash-chisel, mortise-lock chisel, paring- 
 chisel, etc. For certain work he may use a chisel 
 
 5 
 
 1. Tang- 
 Gouge 
 
 2. Tang- 
 Chisel 
 
 3. Framing- 
 Socket Chisel 
 
 4. Box 
 
 Chisel 
 
66 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 having two narrow blades with a blank space between 
 them. He may use a chisel with an oblique cutting- 
 edge, or one with two blades placed at right angles, 
 and called a corner-chisel. His diamond-pointed 
 chisel has two bezels, meeting at a point in the 
 middle. 
 
 One class of wood-cutting chisels has been given a 
 special name. Where a chisel has a hollow or round 
 blade, it is called a gouge. A flat chisel gives a straight 
 cut, and the chips are flat. A gouge gives a hollow 
 cut, and the chips are curved or crescent-shaped. With 
 the first the material is chiseled out, with the second 
 the work is called gouging. Gouges have different 
 curves ; some are a true half -circle, some are crescent- 
 shaped, and all are made in many different sizes. Some 
 gouges have a pointed cutting-edge, like the diamond- 
 pointed chisel. 
 
 Some chisels for cutting wood have two bezels, one 
 on each side of the blade, as in the gardener's grafting- 
 chisel. Such a double-faced chisel is used for splitting 
 open the limb of a tree, and we shall find in other work 
 that there are many of these splitting-chisels. Any- 
 thing having two faces to its cutting-edge, and used 
 with a hammer, is said to have a chisel-edge, as the 
 gardener's grafting-knife, which is a chisel having a 
 bent blade and two bezels. 
 
 The blacksmith, machinist, shipwright, plumber, and 
 jeweler all use chisels. These metal-cutting chisels are 
 of very hard steel, and usually have no handles, the top 
 of the blade acting as the anvil on which the hammer 
 
THE CHISEL 67 
 
 strikes. Good examples of the metal- working chisels 
 are shown in the accompanying picture. 
 
 The cold-chisel has a round or hexagonal handle with 
 a round head and long, tapering blade and double bezel. 
 It is given the name of cold-chisel because it is used to 
 cut or chip metals when cold. Iron-castings, when they 
 come out of the iron-founder's molds, are usually rough 
 and uneven, and often are not exactly the right shape 
 or size. The cold-chisel is used to smooth such cast- 
 ings, and also brass and 
 other metal castings, or to 
 trim them to exactly the 
 right shape. This work is 
 called chipping. The chisel 
 is held at a slight angle, and 
 at every blow a small metal 
 chip is cut off. Should you 
 go to a technical school, one 
 of the first lessons you would be taught would be the 
 use of a hammer and a chipping-chisel in cutting metal 
 to pattern, or in reducing a rough surface to a true 
 and even one. A large clipping-chisel is sometimes 
 called a flogging-chisel. 
 
 Among the chisels used by workers upon hot or cold 
 metals we shall find a great variety of tools of all 
 shapes and sizes, according to the work to be done. 
 One of these is the bolt-chisel, which is a cold-chisel 
 having a long blade and narrow edge, and used for 
 cutting off bolts or any round piece of metal. A cold- 
 chisel with a sharp-pointed edge, used for denting 
 
68 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 or marking metals, is called a center-chisel. It is used 
 to mark the exact center of any round pattern marked 
 upon metal, such as the mark where a hole is to be cut 
 through the metal. A cross-cut chisel has a very nar- 
 row edge, and is used as a cold- chisel in making a 
 narrow groove or cross-cut in metal where a part is to 
 be broken off. 
 
 This leads us to a very curious thing about cutting 
 cast iron. If the gas-man or plumber wishes to cut an 
 iron pipe, he chisels out a shallow groove all round the 
 iron. It is just as if he cut the skin of the iron. The 
 iron pipe, after this groove is cut, is so much weakened 
 that it can be easily broken with a hammer, the break 
 coming just where the cut is made. Without the cut, 
 the pipe would break with a ragged fracture, and there 
 eould be no certainty where the break would come. 
 By means of the groove cut with the cross-cut chisel, 
 the pipe can be broken at any place we wish, or accord- 
 ing to measure. Sometimes a blacksmith wishes to cut 
 off a rod of iron while red hot, and he uses a thick, 
 short chisel on the end of a rod, or fastened to a long 
 wooden handle, and he calls it his rod-chisel. 
 
 The chisel is useful in many trades. The plumber, 
 jeweler, and machinist, the brass founder and railroad 
 man all use chisels suited to their special work. Each 
 gives his tool names according to its work, and often to 
 his fancy and for no particular reason, such as the 
 silversmith's chasing-chisel, or the shipwright's mark- 
 ing-iron and calking-chisel, or the blacksmith's hardy 
 and splitting-chisel. 
 
THE CHISEL 69 
 
 The dentist uses a number of very small chisels, 
 and often in his tiny little forge hammers out a chisel 
 to suit this work, and gives it a name to suit his fancy, 
 as burr-chisel, triangular chisel or dental chisel. The 
 ice-man, harvesting ice in the winter, uses a number of 
 giant chisels as tall as a man, to split off the cakes of 
 ice floating on the surface of the water. A boy may 
 use an ice-chisel to clean off the sidewalk after the 
 snow is hard, or the cook may use a chisel to chop off 
 a piece of ice for the water-pitcher. 
 
 The wood-carver uses some of the carpenter's chisels, 
 but nearly all of his work is done with small chisels, 
 made in a great variety of shapes to fit the work he has 
 to do. 
 
 In decorative work, like wood-carving or stone-carv- 
 ing, or in sculpture, we discover that the mason, 
 sculptor and wood-carver use the chisel a*f their 
 best and finest tool. So true is this, that the word 
 chisel is used to express quite another matter, as 
 when we say a beautiful girl has a finely chiseled face. 
 We do not mean that a chisel has been used upon it, 
 but that her face is as finely molded as the chiseled 
 face of a beautiful statue. A sculptor's work is known 
 by the marks of his chisel, so we sometimes say a good 
 workman is known by his chisel-marks. 
 
 The stone-mason or stone-carver uses about a dozen 
 chisels in his beautiful work of dressing and decorating 
 stone. All stonework used on the exterior walls of 
 buildings is " dressed" or given a fine finish, to shed 
 rain and dust, and stone-dressing is largely done with 
 
70 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 chisels. Sometimes the dressing is only along the edge 
 of each stone, the center of the block being left un- 
 dressed, or roughly chiseled over to trim it into shape. 
 Carved stonework is a more highly finished or deco- 
 rated work, done with chisels on the stone. Many 
 buildings have dressed stone walls with carved stone 
 ornaments, and if it is the work of a master workman, 
 we can find his fine chisel-marks over it all. Look at 
 any stone building near your home, and you will soon 
 see with what skill and care the stone-carver and stone- 
 dresser use their fine chisels. Every cut tells, every 
 mark is true, exact, and beautiful, and we cannot fail 
 to see what a grand tool is this plain little thing we 
 call a chisel. 
 
 When the mason, the stone-dresser or the sculptor 
 begins work upon a block of stone or marble, he uses a 
 wide-bladed chisel called his boasting-chisel. With this 
 he can chip off the first large flakes and chips of stone, 
 to bring it into something like the shape he wants. 
 He then uses a variety of chisels, some with very sharp 
 points, or narrow chisels, and chisels with two cutting- 
 points, or a flat chisel having a number of sharp points 
 or teeth, and called a marteline-chisel. He uses chisels 
 with rounded edges notched with fine teeth, and many 
 others of curious shapes and strange names. He uses 
 with all his chisels wooden mallets of various shapes, 
 but chiefly a round-headed mallet with a short, straight 
 handle. 
 
 The sculptor uses all the finer chisels of the stone- 
 mason, and special forms of chisels suited to the fine 
 
THE CHISEL Yl 
 
 material in which he works, like the entering-chisel or 
 spoon chisel. The most beautiful things that have 
 come down to us from the past are the marble statues 
 carved by the great sculptors of ancient Greece and 
 Kome, and all of these grand pieces of work were cut 
 out of the solid marble and given their splendid forms 
 with a simple mallet and chisel. But then, simple as 
 were these tools, they were in the hands of master 
 workmen. Men will always respect their memory and 
 admire the work of their hands. If these men could 
 use a chisel to such noble purpose, we, too, need not 
 be ashamed to use their tools. We may never do as 
 grand work, but it is something that we can learn to 
 use the tools they used, something that we can do good 
 work, so that, perhaps long after we have passed away, 
 men may see our. chisel-marks and say, "Here is the 
 work of a skillful user of tools." 
 
 With the invention of the new pneumatic hammers 
 every one asked if they could be used with a chisel. It 
 was soon shown that the swiftly moving power-ham- 
 mers could be easily adapted to the use of the stone- 
 cutter and sculptor. It was necessary only to affix a 
 chisel-point to the piston-rod of the little motor, and 
 the tool was changed from a power-hammer to a power- 
 chisel, and the sculptor had a new and wonderful tool 
 that gave him an entirely new method of carving 
 marble. With a chisel and mallet he could strike thirty 
 blows a minute ; with the new tool he could strike a 
 thousand a minute. 
 
 All the labor of striking the blow was performed by 
 
72 
 
 TOOLS 
 
 MACHINES 
 
 the flying piston-rod. The sculptor's hand and mind 
 were released from all the labor and thought given to 
 the work of striking the chisel. He could now give 
 his entire attention to the business of guiding his chisel 
 to the work. With a mallet he slowly chipped off one 
 
 flake of the stone 
 at a time. With 
 the pneumatic tool 
 his chisel cut aAvay 
 a very small piece 
 at each blow, the 
 little grains falling 
 in a dusty shower 
 from the chisel- 
 point. The gain 
 in time and labor 
 is so great that to- 
 day we find pneu- 
 matic tools, hav- 
 ing many different 
 styles of chisels, 
 used in marble and 
 stone-yards, and 
 in sculptors' studios. The different chisel-points are 
 easily affixed to the piston-rod, and the workman can 
 use the same motor for many kinds of work. These 
 pneumatic tools are used also in all kinds of metal cut- 
 ting, chipping and shaping, or dressing. They range 
 in size from small motors for the use of marble- workers 
 to large and powerful motors used in shipyards and 
 
 Pneumatic Chisel 
 
THE CHISEL 73 
 
 bridge and boiler-shops. The pneumatic chiseling-tools 
 are justly regarded as the most important power-tools 
 recently invented, and as they have a wide field of use- 
 fulness before them, we shall find it well worth our 
 while to endeavor to understand their construction and 
 their use in the arts. One of these grand new tools 
 used in chiseling iron is shown in the accompanying 
 picture. 
 
CHAPTEK YI 
 
 EDGE-TOOLS 
 
 SOMETIMES the carpenter or wood-carver may use the 
 gouge without a hammer. Holding it in his hands, he 
 may push or slide the point of the blade over the wood 
 and plow out a long, shallow groove. With hammer 
 and gouge he strikes out chips. With the gouge used 
 in this way he plows up a long, slender shaving. When 
 we examined the drawing-knife we saw that it is used 
 with a swift, sliding motion over the wood in cutting 
 a long, slender, curling shaving. The spoke-shave is a 
 drawing-knife in which the cutting blade is fixed in 
 a frame or carrier. This carrier holds the blade in a 
 fixed position, and as it slides over the wood it causes 
 the blade to make an even, uniform cut. This idea of 
 placing the cutting-tool in a sliding carriage brings us 
 to another and most interesting class of tools. The 
 ancient Roman carpenters understood this idea of plac- 
 ing a knife in a carrier, and had a tool they called a 
 runcina. Could we see a picture of a Roman runcina 
 we should recognize it as a plane. 
 
 A plane is a tool having a sliding carriage and carry- 
 ing a broad-bladed chisel. The carriage part is called 
 the stock, and it has a smooth bottom that is called the 
 
EDGE-TOOLS ft) 
 
 sole. On the upper side of the stock is sometimes 
 placed a handle whereby it may be pushed or slid along 
 over the material to be planed. This handle is sometimes 
 called the toat. The word handle is, however, better, 
 because some planes have two handles, and in some 
 planes they resemble the handle of a saw. In the stock 
 is an opening, wide at the top and extending through 
 the stock to the sole, where it is reduced to a narrow 
 slot. In this opening is fixed the cutting-tool, carried 
 by the stock, the cutting-edge projecting slightly below 
 the sole. The cutting-tool is called the bit, or iron, 
 or, sometimes, the plane-iron. 
 
 Place a piece of board upon the workbench, pushing 
 one end against the little piece of iron set in the top of the 
 bench, and called the stop. This will prevent the board 
 from sliding on the bench when we use a plane upon it. 
 Place a plane upon the board and strike the end with a 
 hammer. Next, holding it by the right hand (by the han- 
 dle), push it slowly along the board. Nothing happens. 
 It is clear that the plane is not a tool to be used with 
 a sudden blow or by sustained pressure. Now, standing 
 by the bench and facing the stop, press upon the plane 
 and give it a smart, quick push. It at once slides easily 
 along the board, and out of the opening of the stock 
 curls a long, thin shaving. We see that the plane is 
 a tool in which speed or time is an important element 
 of the work. There must be pressure, with a rapid, 
 forward motion. We examine the wood and find that 
 the plane has left a smooth path on the surface. The 
 plane makes smooth. It is a surfacing-tool. 
 
76 TOOLS A^*J MACHINES 
 
 With a chisel and hammer we can make a mortise 
 and tenon- joint, a dovetail- joint, or we can shape wood 
 into many useful and beautiful forms. With the plane 
 we can make rough wood true, smooth and beautiful. 
 The name plane, perhaps, comes from the work it does, 
 for it is used to smooth or reduce wood to a true plane. 
 Chisel and plane are useful each in its own way, and 
 our best plan is to use both tools with care and skill, 
 knowing well that even a smooth, true surface is both 
 useful and beautiful. 
 
 The carpenter, cabinet-maker and cooper use many 
 different kinds of planes in their work, each one with 
 its special trade name. Some of these names describe 
 the work designed to be done by the plane, as smooth- 
 ing-plane, sash-plane, edge-plane, hand-rail plane, and 
 panel-plane. The other names are often local, or 
 known only in one country or one part of one country. 
 All are, however, known in a general way as wood- 
 working planes. The house carpenter uses a number 
 of planes of different sizes, and employs each in special 
 work. Among these are the jack-plane, long-plane, 
 fore-plane, try-plane, etc. In bringing a rough board to 
 a fine surface he uses first the jack, then the try, panel 
 and smoothing-plane, in this order. His planes cut a 
 path varying from three-fourths of an inch to three 
 and a half inches wide. 
 
 The carpenter sometimes wishes to make a tight 
 joint between two boards. To do this he makes a 
 groove in the edge of one board and a continuous 
 tongue upon the edge of the next board. The two 
 
EDGE-TOOLS 
 
 Side-plane 
 
 boards can then be joined together to make what is 
 called a matched, or tongue and groove joint, and when 
 put together in this way such boards are called matched 
 boards. To do this work 
 he uses a tonguing-plane 
 and a grooving-plane. 
 The first has two bits, 
 side by side, with a blank 
 space in the stock be- 
 tween them. Such a 
 plane used on the edge 
 of a board cuts two shoulders on the edge of the 
 board, leaving the raised tongue between them. The 
 grooving-plane is the reverse of this, and plows out of 
 
 the edge of the board 
 a central groove that 
 will just fit over one 
 of these tongues. 
 
 The cabinet-maker, 
 stair-builder and deco- 
 rative woodworker use 
 still other planes called 
 fluting, fillet, ogee, as- 
 tregal, hand-rail and 
 ovolo or quarter-round 
 planes. These names 
 describe the sole of 
 
 Circular and Core-box Planes 
 
 the plane and the 
 
 edge of the bit, and the tool cuts the wood into these 
 various shapes. A double rounded sole gives a double 
 
78 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 curved, or ogee shape, and a curved-sole-plane will 
 cut a strip of wood into the rounded form of the 
 hand-railing of a stairway. In some planes the bit and 
 the opening are placed at the side of the stock, the sole 
 being blank. Such planes are called side-planes, and 
 are useful in planing in corners where it would be 
 difficult to use an ordinary plane. Some planes have 
 narrow soles and bits for making deep grooves. They 
 are often called plows. In sash-making, when a shoul- 
 der or rabbet is to be formed on a sash-bar, a rabbet- 
 plane is used. Others have wide soles, and are used to 
 cut thin, wide splints or veneers from wood. In one 
 form of plane the bit is placed upright in the stock, and 
 its edge is notched or serrated or cut into sharp joints. 
 Such planes are called scratching, marking or scraping- 
 planes. In addition to 
 the ordinary ivooden 
 stock planes there are 
 
 many iron planes, some Universa | Ha nd-Beader 
 
 having thin, flexible steel 
 
 soles for working in curved corners. They are called 
 circular planes. 
 
 The many intricate decorations designed by the 
 ancient Greek and Roman architects, and cut in stone 
 by their builders and stone decorators, naturally sug- 
 gested to our own house-builders many beautiful de- 
 signs to be reproduced in wood. We can see examples 
 of this work in old colonial houses. The desire to re- 
 produce in wood these old stone ornaments led to the 
 invention of a great number of plane-bits, and the 
 
EDGE-TOOLS 79 
 
 use of these bits naturally inspired our tool-makers to 
 devise a plane in which many different bits could be 
 employed. Such universal planes are exceedingly in- 
 genious, and well 
 worth careful study. 
 One, figured in the ac- 
 companying illustra- 
 tion, will plane wood 
 into fifty-two differ- 
 ent forms by simply 
 
 f , Universal Plane 
 
 changing the bits. 
 
 All the beautiful decorative work we see in colonial 
 houses was done with chisels and planes, and while we 
 must admire its beauty, we can see that such fine hand- 
 work must have taken a great deal of time and labor. 
 There is much fine hand- work done now, but the cost 
 of labor is to-day so high, and hand- work demands such 
 high pay, that we now use other methods and other 
 tools. At the planing and molding-mill we shall find 
 many fine machine-tools that reproduce in wood all the 
 beautiful planed work once done by hand. These 
 wood- working machines have made it possible to deco- 
 rate even the smallest and cheapest houses with perfect 
 copies of the planed moldings, railings, window-cas- 
 ings and panels of the old colonial mansions. These 
 machines are described in the next chapter. 
 
 Every trade using wood employs planes of some 
 form, so we find the cooper using a plane, called a 
 jointer, having a very long stock. The sole is on the 
 upper side, the plane being held in a fixed position and 
 
~80 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 the wood drawn over the edge of the bit. He uses also 
 other planes that he calls his whisk, his ho well and his 
 over- shave. In city skating parks and on frozen rivers 
 where ice is being harvested, large planes, drawn by 
 horses, are used to plane natural ice down to a clean 
 smooth surface fit for skating or harvesting. They 
 are called snow-ice planes. The confectioner also uses 
 a small hand-tool, called an ice-plane, in shaving ice 
 for cooling a glass of soda water. 
 
 In all ordinary work we may wish to do upon our 
 home bench three or four simple planes will answer all 
 practical purposes, and our best plan is to leave their 
 selection to the dealer at the hardware store. Using 
 a plane is a capital exercise, and we may all be glad to 
 learn this simple accomplishment of planing. To use 
 a plane means that we wish to give to whatever work we 
 do a smooth, true, and handsome finish. A plane 
 teaches us the value of fine, accurate work, teaches us 
 neatness, and sho\vs us that even so simple a thing as 
 a wooden box may have a real beauty of its own. 
 
 We have seen that the knife may have suggested the 
 chisel, and the chisel may have led to the invention of 
 the plane. In the same way we can easily imagine 
 that a knife with a long handle may have led to the 
 invention of that fine old tool, the ax, and its little 
 brother, the hatchet. 
 
 The hatchet must be a very old tool, for stone 
 hatchets have been found in the graves of the oldest 
 men of whom we have any trace. These ancient men, 
 whose very names are lost, had not learned the use of 
 
EDGE-TOOLS 81 
 
 metals, and they laboriously cut their heavy and clumsy 
 hatchets out of hard stone. It was this use of stone- 
 bladed tools that led the students of these old peoples 
 to call them the Stone Age men, or the men who used 
 stone tools. The Stone Age men evidently tied the 
 blade to the helve with cords, for we can still see the 
 groove cut in the stone for the cords. Even after men 
 learned to make iron hatchets, they still tied the blade 
 to the helve, and it seems to have been a very long 
 time before any one thought of mak- 
 ing a hole or socket in the blade and 
 fitting the helve in the socket. 
 
 The North American Indians had 
 a rude kind of stone hatchet, and 
 when white men came in their ships 
 the Indians were glad to buy iron 
 hatchets of the traders. They did 
 not wish the hatchets as tools, but as 
 weapons in their wars, and as the 
 
 A Prehistoric Ax 
 
 metal hatchets were far better than 
 their own stone hatchets, they eagerly exchanged furs 
 and tobacco for the white man's tools. They called 
 their stone hatchet a tomahawk, and it was really 
 only a war hatchet. At the top of the blade of the 
 tomahawk was (in place of our hammer) a hollow pipe- 
 bowl, the handle being holloAV, and serving as a pipe- 
 stem so that they could use the tomahawk to smoke 
 tobacco or kill their enemies. They had a curious cus- 
 tom of burying one of these tomahawks in the ground 
 at the end of one of their little wars, and cheerfully 
 
82 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 digging it up again the next time they started out on 
 the warpath. It was from this our expression " to 
 bury the hatchet " or to have peace, came. 
 
 The best tool for a study of the ax and hatchet is the 
 carpenter's shingling-hatchet. It has a large flat blade 
 with a straight edge. At the back is a peen or ham- 
 mer-head, and in the 
 middle is a socket for 
 the handle or helve, 
 the blade and helve be- 
 ing in one line. We 
 see that it is a com- 
 bined knife and ham- 
 mer with the same 
 helve. We s.ee also 
 that on the side of the 
 blade there is a small 
 notch, and this enables 
 us to use the tool as 
 a claw in pulling a 
 nail. This idea of 
 making a tool that can 
 be used to do three dif- 
 ferent pieces of work in the same trade has been carried 
 to great perfection by our American tool-makers. Time 
 and labor are so costly that we cannot expect a man to 
 carry to the roof three tools, one to split or shave a shin- 
 gle to the right width, another to drive a nail, and still 
 another to pull out a nail when put in the wrong place, 
 and this shingling-hatchet combines all three in one. 
 
 Lather's Hatchet 
 
EDGE-TOOLS 83 
 
 The hatchet, like a knife, is a handy tool for the 
 workroom. It is useful in sharpening a stake for a 
 tennis net, or in making a pin for a tent. The city boy 
 uses a hatchet for roughly shaping wood ready for the 
 knife, and for various pieces of work at the bench. 
 For the country boy the hatchet is, next to the knife, 
 the most useful thing any young man can own. With 
 a hatchet he can cut down small trees for a camp in 
 the woods, make stakes and pins of all kinds, chop 
 wood for the camp-fire and for his mother's cook- 
 stove. With his hatchet he is ready for fun in the 
 woods or for good solid work in the barn or at the 
 sugar-camp. It is his all-around tool, useful every day 
 in the year. There have been boys who did not like 
 .chopping kindlings in the woodshed on baking day. 
 They would prefer to go fishing. Such boys never 
 really understand the connection between pies and a 
 hatchet. They are ready to eat mother's pies, but un- 
 willing to swing a hatchet at mother's woodpile. This 
 shows what curious ideas a boy may have concerning 
 this fine tool we call a hatchet. 
 
 Hatchets are used for many purposes. The man 
 putting on laths in a new house uses a hatchet with 
 a narrow blade and a straight hammer-head having a 
 rough face. The carpenter may have a hatchet having 
 claws at the side of the hammer, or a broad hatchet 
 with a wide blade and a short head or poll. A hunter's 
 hatchet is a little hand-ax. A cooper uses a hatchet 
 having a curved cutting edge. An iceman's hatchet 
 has a narrow blade with rounded edge and a sharp 
 
84: TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 pick or point for moving blocks of ice. A bricklayer's 
 hatchet has a heavy head Avith a square hammer-face, 
 and a blade with curved sides and a straight, but dull 
 edge. It is used to cut bricks and to tap them into 
 place in the wall. Another style is more like a paver's 
 hammer; the handle is long and the top is like a chisel. 
 Of all the edge-tools, the American ax is perhaps the 
 finest hand-tool in the world. Next to the hammer, it 
 is the most common tool to be found in this country. 
 This is a land of forests. The very first thing the 
 colonist was obliged to do was to build a log house. 
 The Pilgrims in Massachusetts Bay, the Dutch in New 
 York, the Spanish and French in Florida and Canada 
 could all use an ax. Each began his settlement by fell- 
 ing trees. So, from the very start, the American has 
 been a woodman, and the American lumberman is the 
 finest ax-man in the world. Naturally he wants the 
 finest tool. The American ax has a large blade gently 
 tapering to the cutting edge. The edge is slightly 
 rounded, the front being a trifle longer than the back. 
 The head, or poll, is short, with a slightly rounded 
 face. The helve is fitted to the eye with a wedge, and 
 is beautifully curved, and has a slight projection at the 
 end to prevent the hand from slipping. Altogether, it 
 is a graceful and handsome tool, worthy of the master- 
 hand that uses it. Every lumberman seems to prefer 
 a special kind of blade for his particular work. The 
 Maine woodman wants one style, the Ohio man an- 
 other, the Michigan man still another, the Kentucky 
 man wants his own ax, and the Georgia man in the 
 
EDGE-TOOLS 85 
 
 piney woods, and the turpentine gatherer, each wants 
 a particular ax suited to his work. The swamp lum- 
 berman wants a double -bladed ax, and many others 
 prefer a double ax for their work, wherever it may be. 
 In peeling bark for the tanner the woodman calls for 
 a double ax with a broad, gently rounded blade. There 
 is even a special ax for young lumbermen, called the 
 boy's ax. 
 
 The finest piece of woodcraft to be seen in the world 
 is the felling of a great tree by two expert lumbermen. 
 The two men stand on opposite sides of the giant stem 
 and strike alternate blows, swinging their gleaming 
 axes in their arms with a freedom of motion that puts 
 the trained athlete to shame. The blows ring quick 
 and fast, the chips skim through the air as if shot out 
 of the tree. At last, the towering giant quivers and 
 bends, and then with a terrific crash falls to thaground 
 just where the ax-men decided it should fall. Old 
 woodmen used often to chop a dozen trees till they 
 were just ready to fall. Then, skillfully chopping one 
 tree, they caused it to fall against the others, and all 
 went down in one prolonged and thundering uproar 
 that startled every wild beast for miles through the 
 woods and sent the eagles screaming and wheeling 
 through the air. 
 
 The trees once felled, the woodman takes another ax 
 to trim the great logs into convenient length and shape. 
 For such work he uses a broad-ax. The New England 
 woodman and ship-builder use a broad-ax with a wide 
 blade that is gently rounded on the edge. The Cana- 
 
86 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 dian, the western and the southern man use broad-axes 
 having very wide blades with a straight edge. In all 
 these axes, whatever their names, experience seems to 
 show that each is exactly adapted to its work and the 
 kind of tree on which it is used. 
 
 In the railroad cars you will often see, enclosed in a 
 glass case, a number of tools. These are wrecking-tools, 
 to be used in case of an accident on the road. Among 
 these tools is a fine ax with a narrow blade. In place 
 of a poll, it has a sharp pick. This is the fireman's ax, 
 one of the most useful tools ever 
 made. The iceman uses an ax to 
 divide his ice blocks, and in han- 
 dling the blocks that are too large 
 to lift in his tongs. It has a long, 
 narrow, wedge-shaped blade re- 
 sembling a chisel, and a pick at 
 the head of the blade. 
 
 Type of Adz 
 
 Before the days of sawmills the 
 
 lumberman, the house-builder and the carpenter made 
 the posts and beams of a house by cutting them out of 
 logs. The log-house can be built with an ax. In 
 building a frame-house the old builders had a tool 
 resembling an ax and called an adz. This is a wood- 
 cutting tool with a curved blade and a straight cut- 
 ting-edge, with a bezel like a chisel. The helve is 
 fitted to the eye at a right angle with the blade, and 
 there is a poll or head at the top of the blade. It is 
 used in squaring a log by standing on the log and 
 swinging the adz in both hands between the feet. 
 
EDGE-TOOLS 87 
 
 With a good adz the adz-man can cut from a round log 
 a square beam with smooth, straight sides. 
 
 Old Henry Hudson, in exploring the Hudson Eiver 
 in 1609, sent his ship-carpenter ashore near the Catskills 
 to get a new boom for the good ship "Half Moon," 
 and, no doubt, the carpenter used an adz in shaping 
 the boom. The builders of old colonial houses were 
 famous adz-men, and we can still see the marks of the 
 adz on the floors and beams of old New England houses. 
 The adz is a very old tool, for we know it was used by 
 the ancient Egyptians, though at that time it was 
 smaller than our tools. The colonists also had a short- 
 handled adz. 
 
 The ship-carpenter uses an adz in shaping the ship's 
 ribs and knees. His adz has a long, narrow poll and 
 a straight blade, though for some work he uses an adz 
 with a hollow blade resembling a gouge. 
 
 The stone-ax is a small ax with double blades and a 
 straight handle. Another style of stone-ax is called 
 the cavil or jedding ax. The slate-roofer uses a small 
 ax with a narrow blade and having a sharp spike at 
 the head with which to make the nail holes in the 
 slates. The butcher uses an ax with a very long sharp 
 blade, called a cleaver. The gardener uses an ax hav- 
 ing a curved blade with a long cutting-edge and a sharp 
 point. It has one, and sometimes two, sockets at the 
 back for a long handle, and is called a bush-hook. 
 Sometimes the long blade has a slightly hooked cutting- 
 edge and a socket for the long handle at the end of the 
 blade. Such cutting-tools are called bill-hooks and, 
 
88 TuuLo AND MACHINES 
 
 like the bush-hooks, are used in trimming trees, shrubs 
 and hedges. The farmer also uses long-bladed, short- 
 handled cutters called corn-knives and hedge-knives, or 
 hedge-trimmers. The farmer uses another ax in grub- 
 bing up and cutting off the roots of trees, called a mat- 
 tock. It has a narrow blade like an adz, but in place 
 of the poll it has a narrow ax-blade and sometimes a 
 point like a fireman's ax. A railroad man uses a nar- 
 row adz with a long, sharp pick. A pick is not an ax, 
 but a double-pointed tool with a straight handle, used 
 
 to pick up or loosen the 
 ground. It is like a double- 
 pointed mattock. 
 
 In old wars, before the 
 
 Pick Mattock 
 
 invention of firearms, the 
 
 fighting men used an ax as a weapon. Even the Stone 
 Age man had his rude battle-ax. A long-handled war- 
 ax was called a pole-ax or halberd. Another, having 
 two blades and a spear point at the end of the handle, 
 was used by soldiers, but all these war-axes quickly 
 disappeared the moment men learned to use a gun. 
 
 We now come to another very large class of edge- 
 tools, in which the cutting-blade is fixed to a pivot. 
 We do not know where or when men first learned that, 
 if a knife-blade is fastened at one end to a pin on which 
 it can freely turn as on pivot, we have a cutting-tool 
 that will act as a lever. The household meat and 
 potato-slicer and the cigar-dealer's tobacco-cutter are 
 examples of such pivoted knives. On the farm we may 
 see this idea of a pivoted knife-blade applied to the cut- 
 
EDGE-TOOLS 89 
 
 ting of hay and cornstalks in the lever feed-cutter. 
 From the invention of the pivoted knife it was only a 
 short step to the invention of the double-bladed pivoted 
 knives. 
 
 Lay a visiting-card on the bench and with your knife 
 try to cut it into two pieces by pressing the knife-blade 
 down upon it. It is not easy to cut it in this way, 
 because the whole of the cutting-edge of the blade is 
 used at once. There is another and better tool for 
 such work, called a pair of scissors. Hold the card in 
 the left hand and the scissors in the right. We see that 
 we now have a double acting pivoted cutting-tool, and 
 we observe, in using it, that the blades do not press 
 upon the card through their whole length. The card 
 is separated with a moving or progressive cut. We 
 say the pivoted blades give a shearing cut. This pro- 
 gressive or shearing cut enables us to do work that 
 would not be possible with a single-bladed cutting-tool, 
 and we shall find the principle of the shearing cut ap- 
 plied to a great number of cutting-machines. 
 
 The ancient men who first used a clam shell or a 
 flake of obsidian as a knife had no idea of a double- 
 bladed knife. They could not imagine how a pair of 
 scissors would work. Double cutting-tools or shears 
 were not invented until long after the men who used 
 stone knives had disappeared. The earliest shears of 
 which we have any trace were simply two iron knives 
 joined together at one end by a spring formed of a 
 strip of elastic metal. Such a tool was held in the 
 hand and the blades pinched together. They were 
 
90 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 Manicure Scissors 
 
 first used in clipping the wool from the backs of sheep, 
 and were called sheep-shearing tools, or simply shears. 
 Before their invention all the wool was cut off with rude 
 stone or flint knives. As the knife would cut only one 
 
 little flock of wool at one 
 stroke, the shears must have 
 seemed to be a truly won- 
 derful improvement. Ko 
 doubt, even the sheep 
 thought the shears were 
 better than the terrible dull 
 stone knives. 
 
 The invention of scissors 
 came long after the invention of shears, and they were 
 no doubt welcomed as a very great improvement over 
 the older tools. At first scissors seem to have been 
 small, awkward things, with straight blades and han- 
 dles. Now they are made in many different styles, 
 shapes and sizes, and are 
 adapted to a great variety 
 of uses. Some have bent 
 blades, others curved or 
 bent handles, some are 
 long, some very thick and 
 short, some have rings 
 for the fingers or thumb. 
 The newspaper man may use a pair twelve inches long, 
 and the dressmaker or the salesman at the ribbon 
 counters may use a pair that will slip into the pocket. 
 The surgeon has a number of very fine scissors for his 
 
 Pruning-shears 
 
EDGE-TOOLS 91 
 
 delicate work. The button-hole maker uses a pair of 
 scissors with a blank in the blade to prevent cutting 
 through the edge of the cloth. The florist and gar- 
 dener use scissors with a curved blade for pruning, 
 and a delicate pair for gathering flowers, and large 
 shears, called pruning- 
 shears, for trimming 
 hedge plants. 
 
 Before the introduc- 
 
 Tinsmith s Shears 
 
 tion of gas careful house- 
 keepers used a curious pair of scissors, called snuffers, 
 to trim the wicks of candles. These snuffing-scissors 
 had a tiny box on one blade and a cover on the other, 
 so that when the blades cut off the burned wick, the 
 black bit of charred wicking was pushed into the box 
 and prevented from falling on the clean table-cloth. 
 Such snuffers were often made of silver, and were kept 
 on a silver tray on the parlor mantel. Snuffers are 
 sometimes used in country houses to trim the wicks of 
 lamps. 
 
 Large scissors, such as we see the tailor use, are called 
 
 shears, though ordinary 
 clipping sheep-shears 
 are not in any sense a 
 pair of scissors. These 
 
 Sheep-shearing Shears A 
 
 simple shears have no 
 
 pivot on which the blades turn, though all the large 
 shears used in cutting heavy cloth, paper and metals 
 are really scissors. For convenience we call the tin- 
 man's great cutters shears and his smaller hand-tools 
 
TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 snips. A bench-shears is a tool with two short, stout 
 blades and very long handles, one of them being fitted 
 with a point to hold the shears firm on the bench. 
 
 A little observation will show us that the principle 
 of the shearing cut has been applied to a great variety 
 
 of cutting- tools. In 
 the kitchen we can 
 see that the slaw- 
 cutter and potato- 
 slicer is like an in- 
 verted plane with 
 the sole uppermost. 
 The cutting-blades 
 are set in the wood 
 at an angle, or skew, 
 and on drawing a 
 cabbage over the 
 blades it is cut into 
 thin strips with a 
 shearing cut. The 
 old meat-choppers, 
 using a blade resem- 
 bling the common hand meat-chopper and operated 
 by machine, have been recently supplanted by the 
 new meat-choppers having revolving knives with a 
 shearing cut. Some of the new cutters are very handy 
 tools in every kitchen where the cook wishes to make 
 cracker crumbs, or to dice carrots for soups, or prepare 
 meats for Hamburg steak or for hash. All the many 
 forms of apple and potato-parers and slicers employed 
 
 Wood-cutting Tool 
 
EDGE-TOOLS 
 
 93 
 
 in kitchens and canneries use knives, either fixed or 
 revolving, with a shearing cut. 
 
 At the shops of the printers and book-binders we 
 may see powerful machines for cutting paper. An- 
 
 Hydraulic Shear for Cutting Metal 
 
 other powerful cutting-tool is the jeweler's lever 
 bench-shears. In wood-working there are a number of 
 fine tools used in cutting wood, in which a single or 
 double shearing blade is used. In cutting ship and 
 boiler plates pOAverful hydraulic shearing-machines are 
 used that will easily cut through an iron plate three- 
 eighths of an inch thick. 
 
CHAPTER YII 
 
 THE GREAT CUTTERS 
 
 THEEE was once found among the ruins of an ancient 
 temple in Egypt, a curious picture. The Egyptians 
 had an idea that the first man was made by one of 
 their imaginary gods out of a lump of clay, and what 
 was more natural than to think the god must have 
 made use of a machine used by potters in making a vase 
 or bowl. This picture represents the god seated before 
 a small round table, on which was placed a lump of soft, 
 wet clay. The aim of the picture was to show that the 
 god used a potter's tool in making his clay man. How 
 the clay man was turned into a live man the Egyptians 
 could not explain. 
 
 The picture is of interest to us because it proves that 
 the machine now called a thrower, whirling-table or 
 potter's wheel was known in Egypt long centuries ago. 
 It is so old we do not know who invented it or where 
 it began its long career of usefulness. The potter's 
 wheel consists of a small round table, supported by 
 an upright shaft that rests on a pivot below. By the 
 use of suitable machinery, a belt being preferred, the 
 table may be made to turn or whirl round swiftly. 
 In old tables the workman sat before the table and 
 
THE GREAT CUTTERS 95 
 
 caused it to turn by pushing it round with his feet. 
 Modern machines are made to turn, either lay a man or 
 boy turning a crank, or, better still, are connected with 
 some steam-engine or other motor. 
 
 In making a plate, bowl, cup, pot, vase, saucer or 
 other stone or chinaware vessel, the potter, sitting be- 
 fore the whirling- table, places or "throws" upon it a 
 lump of soft, wet, plastic clay. The clay sticks to the 
 table and whirls round with it. While it is thus in 
 rapid motion, it is easy to mold it into any form the 
 potter desires. Pressing his hand down upon it, the 
 clay spreads quickly out into a dish-like, circular form. 
 
 Pressing with both hands upon the plastic clay, he 
 causes the sides of the dish to rise, and it becomes a 
 bowl. Every touch of the hand or fingers causes it to 
 assume new shapes, and all the shapes will be circular 
 in form. To see a well-trained potter mold his plastic 
 clay on his whirling-table is most interesting. The 
 soft clay seems to spring up into new and beautiful 
 forms as by magic, and we watch the interesting work 
 with a feeling of admiration for the unknown master 
 workman who first invented such an exceedingly useful 
 machine. When the potter has given his vessel the 
 shape he wishes, and particularly when the clay begins 
 to dry and become hard, he sometimes uses a chisel to 
 smooth and finish the vessel and give it a better sur- 
 face. The potter's wheel thus enables him to use our 
 old friend, the chisel, in an entirely new way. With 
 the hammer we used the chisel to shape a block of 
 wood, the wood itself being at rest. Here the chisel 
 
96 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 is used to shape a mass of clay, the chisel being at rest, 
 and the clay in rapid motion exactly the reverse of 
 the usual way of using a chisel. 
 
 If we look about the house we observe that the legs 
 of tables and wooden bedsteads are often round and 
 ornamented by circular grooves or circular moldings. 
 
 We see the same thi ng 
 on the banisters of 
 the stairway and on 
 the newel-post on the 
 last step, and even 
 on the posts of the 
 piazza. On examin- 
 ing these things, we 
 see at once that it 
 would be very diffi- 
 cult to make such 
 things with any of 
 our ordinary wood- 
 working tools. They 
 must be formed by a 
 machine in some way 
 related to the potter's wheel. This machine is one 
 of the oldest of all machines, and is now one of the 
 most useful as well as one of the largest machine-tools 
 in the world. We call it to-day thejathef 
 
 There are two great classes of lathes, the wood-turn- 
 ing lathes and the metal-turning lathes. A simple 
 wood-turning lathe, such as any young boy or girl 
 should be glad to own and use, consists of a long and 
 
 Foot-power Wood-working Lathe 
 
THE ORE AT CUTTERS 97 
 
 narrow table, supported on four stout legs, the whole 
 being usually formed of iron and made very stiff and 
 strong. On the table or bed are two supports called the 
 heads, one being fixed to the bed near one end, the left 
 end, and the other on the right being free to slide along 
 the top of the bed. The fixed head, called the " live 
 head," carries a horizontal shaft, or spindle, and by 
 means of a chuck or other device, a block of wood 
 may be securely fastened to this spindle. The free, or 
 " dead head," carries a sharp point, projecting towards 
 the center of the spindle, and as it is free to slide on 
 the bed, or table, this dead head can be pushed to the 
 left until the sharp point touches the wood secured to 
 the spindle. 
 
 The wooden block is now suspended between the 
 two heads and free to turn with the spindle. By means 
 of suitable connections the spindle can be controlled 
 by a belt extending^) a large " fly-wheel, " or balance- 
 wheel so called because of its weight that, when the 
 wheel is set in motion by means of a foot-treadle, serves 
 through its momentum to keep the wheel balanced or 
 flying evenly through the varying motion of the foot- 
 treadle. At one side of the bed, between the two 
 heads, is an iron support called the tool-rest. This is 
 free to move on the bed, and may be clamped directly 
 in front of the. block of wood. 
 
 When all is ready we may take a sharp chisel in the 
 
 right hand and stand before the lathe with one foot on 
 
 the treadle. A little pressure on the treadle sets the 
 
 lathe in motion, and the block of wood revolves rap- 
 
 7 
 
98 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 idly between the. two heads. We rest the blade of the 
 ohisel on the tool-rest with the sharp edge towards the 
 revolving block. Push it close to the wood and a 
 Stream of chips flies off, and, to our surprise, the block 
 of wood seems by magic to take on a new shape. We 
 stop the lathe and find that a part of the wood has 
 been cut to a true circle. We say the wood has been 
 u turned " into a new form. This is the fine art of turn- 
 ing one of the most fascinating accomplishments any 
 young man or woman can acquire. We discover that 
 under the slightest turn or twist of the wrist the chisel 
 can give the rapidly moving wood a new form. 
 
 We can turn a square block into a perfect sphere, or 
 into an egg shape, or turn a square rod into any of the 
 hundreds of beautiful shapes we see in banisters, chair 
 and table legs, newel-posts, gate-posts and round col- 
 umns for piazzas and balconies. Moreover, a skilled 
 wood-turner will put stick after stick into his lathe, 
 and with his different chisels turn them into many dif- 
 ferent shapes, or put in a hundred stair-rods and turn 
 them all out exactly alike. Moreover, so perfect have 
 these wood- working lathes become that we find them 
 automatically making strange and intricate forms, like 
 the stock of a gun, a piano-leg, or a shoe-last, each 
 lathe making continuously the exact form decided by 
 a pattern put in the machine. Such machines seem to 
 do everything but think. 
 
 While the lathe has been used for hundreds of years, 
 it was brought to perfection only in our own times. It 
 is now one of the great tools of the world, is made in 
 
THE GREAT CUTTERS 
 
 99 
 
 many forms and sizes, from the tiny lathe on the jewel- 
 er's work-bench to the giant machines for turning the 
 shaft of a steamship or turning a marble column for 
 some grand cathedral. At first lathes were only used 
 in turning wood. Now we have wood, brass, iron 
 and marble-turning lathes. We shall find lathes in 
 every machine-shop in the world, and so valuable have 
 these tools become that countless improvements and 
 additions have been made to them to fit them to 
 
 Large Power- lathe 
 
 every possible variety of work. Lathes are used in 
 every industry, and through them we are enabled to 
 make a thousand beautiful things that, if made with 
 hand-tools, would be so expensive that very few of us 
 could afford to own them. 
 
 It would require too much time to examine in detail 
 the many forms of lathes used in our shops and manu- 
 factories. All we can now do is to try to understand 
 the general principles upon which all are made, so that 
 when we see a lathe we shall be able to recognize it 
 
100 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 and to understand how and why a trained lathe-man 
 is enabled to do such wonderful work in wood and 
 metals. 
 
 In the wood-turning lathe a shower of fine chips and 
 dust flies off under the turner's skillful chisel. In the 
 metal-cutting lathe the sharp, strong cutting-tool plows 
 off a thin, curling shaving as the metal slowly revolves 
 before it. In making tools and machines, and parts of 
 machines, in making parts of a ship, a locomotive or a 
 building, the piece, whatever its name, is first cast or 
 forged into shape. It is of the right shape, but is not 
 accurately finished, and, if it is of a circular form it 
 must go to a lathe to be finished to a true or perfect 
 circle. A fine lathe will enable a skillful lathe-man 
 to turn or finish a hundred such cast or wrought pieces 
 to exactly the same form, so that, when all are finished, 
 there will not be the difference of one hundredth of an 
 inch between any two of them. All lathes employing 
 steam or water-power are called power-tools, the larger 
 and more complicated metal-working lathes being often 
 called machine-lathes. 
 
 When, about a hundred years ago, we began to use 
 water and steam-power in operating these large cutting- 
 tools, people naturally asked if it were not possible to 
 use power in planing a board. This was a land of for- 
 ests, and there was a great demand for fine woodwork. 
 The skillful wood- workers of those early days could 
 make many beautiful things with hand-planes, but such 
 work was always expensive. If the lathe could make 
 a smooth, round stair-rail, why could not some machine 
 
THE GREAT : 'GUTTERS 101 
 
 be used to smooth and finish flat surfaces?' ' A first 
 large sliding-planes were tried, but they did not prove 
 to be very useful. Then came a modification of the 
 lathe idea. In the lathe the material revolves and the 
 cutting-tool is at rest. Why not make a knife revolve 
 rapidly while the material (wood) passes under it? 
 Upon this idea was based a multitude of remarkable 
 wood- working machines. The number of these tools 
 is so great that all we can do is to examine the few 
 general principles upon which all are built, so that 
 when we go about among the great wood-working 
 shops we shall recognize them and understand and 
 admire the wonderful work they do for us. 
 
 The first of these machines is the wood-planer. It 
 is used to plane down the rough boards that come from 
 the sawmill, and make them ready for the carpenter, 
 cabinet-maker and builder. Two types of these planers 
 were invented. In one a number of knives were fast- 
 ened to a spindle suspended over a table. When the 
 spindle was set in motion the knives revolved in a 
 horizontal position, and a board pushed under them, on 
 the table, would be shaved or chipped by the whirling 
 knives. The table was adjusted to just the right height 
 to enable the knives to shave off thin shavings, and by 
 suitable machinery the board was pushed along under 
 the knives as fast as planed down by the knives. 
 In modern planing-machines cylindrical knives re- 
 volve in a horizontal position over the board as it passes 
 under them, and skim or shave off the surface, leaving 
 it beautifully true and smooth. These great wood- 
 
102 TOOLS* AND MACHINES 
 
 planers, when a work, send up a cloud of dusty shav- 
 ings and, in the best shops, an air (suction) current 
 sucks them up as fast as they are made, and sweeps 
 them away to a distance where they may be safely 
 burned to make steam. A large planer, when at work, 
 gives out a loud, purring sound that once heard will 
 never be forgotten. It is between a moan and a sigh, 
 and makes us feel that the poor dead tree passing 
 through the machine sighs for its lost life in its home 
 in the calm and happy forest. 
 
 With our vast wealth of lumber, now, through our 
 own greedy folly, passing rapidly away, our tool- 
 makers early saw that the idea of the swiftly revolving 
 knife could be applied to many other styles of wood- 
 working beside planing. With abundant material and 
 a lively demand for cheap and beautiful woodwork, 
 there was a demand for power-tools of many varied 
 forms. These machines are called shapers and mold- 
 ing-machines. In one type of these machines a spindle 
 called the " cutter-head " is placed upright at the cen- 
 ter of a smooth table, being supported below the table. 
 To this cutter-head may be fastened sharp cutting-tools, 
 or knives of various , forms. When by means of the 
 proper machinery the cutter-head is made to revolve, 
 the knives whirl round so swiftly that they appear 
 like a single shadowy knife. If now we lay a piece of 
 board, having square edges, on the table and push it 
 against the cutter-head, we see that the edge is shaped 
 or molded into the exact form of the knives. By 
 sliding the board about on the table we can in a 
 
THE GREAT CUTTERS 103 
 
 moment or two transform the square -edged board into 
 one having a finely molded edge on every side. By 
 changing the knife we can change the shape of the mold- 
 ed edge cut on the wood. For this reason, such a ma- 
 chine is called a shaper. By changing the position of the 
 cutter-head, and presenting the knives at different angles 
 or by inverting the cutter-head, and by using knives 
 of different shapes, we can shape or mold wood into 
 scores of beautiful and useful forms. We can also 
 use the shaper to cut or rout out sunken panels, 
 make the large wooden letters sometimes used in 
 printing-presses, and carve bas-relief decorations in 
 wood. The cutter-head and its knives are sometimes 
 supported on brackets or movable arms over the table, 
 and then the work is kept at rest, by clamping it to 
 the table, and the workman guides the cutter-head to. 
 its work. Such a machine is called a router oi-routing- 
 machine. The large machines for making the long 
 moldings or "trim" used in decorating houses are 
 called molding-machines. They form a class by them- 
 selves, and will repay careful study, for they are the 
 expression of the highest art of the maker of wood- 
 working tools. 
 
 Many people look back with regret to the old colo- 
 nial days,' when there were no molding-machines. 
 They wish we could have nothing in our homes, schools, 
 and public buildings, but the good, honest work of the 
 long dead master workmen, who used the hand-tools 
 of the colonists. Now, in point of fact, the tools made 
 to-day are infinitely superior to the old hand-tools used 
 
104 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 before the Revolution, and just as fine workmen live 
 to-day as then. We can have just as honest and artis- 
 tic work as our fathers if we are ready to pay for it. 
 We all like to see the beautiful work of a real artist. 
 The very term " hand-made," implies an added value 
 in any work. Hand- work has a beauty and value of 
 its own, and many are glad to purchase such work, 
 whatever its price. At the same time, there is a real 
 and honest beauty in this overfloAving abundance of 
 cheap machine- work. It may be that much of it is 
 exactly like much more, and to see a great mass of it 
 together may seem to many of us tiresome and monot- 
 onous, yet this rarely happens, for it is soon widely 
 scattered, a little here and a little elsewhere. 
 
 One chair may be exactly like a thousand others in 
 the same factory, yet it is better that good, handsome, 
 well-made chairs should be in a thousand homes than 
 that one fine chair should be in one house, and nine hun- 
 dred and ninety -nine families have only a three-legged 
 stool or no chairs at all. The machines make beautiful 
 things cheap. Hand- work alone without machines 
 would make every beautiful thing exceedingly costly. 
 Hand- work and machine- work combined give us two 
 kinds of beauty, and make it possible for all of us to 
 have beautiful things in our homes. 
 
 Tip to the time of the invention of the steam-engine 
 and the introduction of steamboats and railroads, all 
 ironwork was cast or forged and finished by the aid 
 of hand-tools. With the demand for larger pieces of 
 metal, it became necessary, as we saw in our study of 
 
THE ORE AT CUTTERS 105 
 
 the great hammers, to invent machines for handling 
 iron in larger masses. Blast-furnaces and forges made it 
 possible to make large things, like the parts of engines, 
 but none of these things could be used in their original 
 condition, as they came from the molding-sand or the 
 anvil. They were of the right shape and size, but not 
 accurately finished, and every piece required more or 
 less hand- work to fit it exactly to its place and purpose. 
 This involved a great deal of hard labor, and our master 
 machinists saw that we must have machine-tools to do 
 this work. To-day we have in use a vast number of 
 the most remarkable metal- working tools, and when 
 we examine them we wonder how it is possible that 
 men could have invented and brought to perfection 
 such giants of steel and iron, such complicated and 
 delicate mechanisms, all designed to save labor in metal- 
 working. We have only to imagine what it would be 
 to go without the telegraph, the steamship, the loco- 
 motive, the telephone, the electric car and the electric 
 lights and gaslights, and ten thousand things that so 
 add to the value of human life, to see what the world 
 would be without these multitudes of iron-working 
 machine-tools. 
 
 We sometimes meet singular people who say that they 
 never saw the inside of a machine-shop, and that they 
 do not care for machinery. Such persons miss a great 
 deal that, did they give a little thought to the subject, 
 would open their eyes and minds to new sights and 
 wider knowledge, and give them a new interest in life. 
 A visit to a machine-shop may seem, at first, to be dis- 
 
106 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 agreeable. The place is dark, black, often very dirty, 
 ill-smelling and noisy, and the multitude of machines 
 seems perplexing and confusing. Now this description 
 of a machine-shop is only partially true. The best 
 modern machine shops are clean, bright and pleasant ; 
 many are large, handsome halls, in which it is a 
 pleasure to work. As for the machines, they are 
 easily understood when we arrange them iu a few 
 simple classes according to their method of doing 
 work. 
 
 All the grand tools used in a machine-shop, both 
 great and small, can be divided into .three great groups : 
 the cutters, the borers and the grinders. The borers 
 and grinders we will examine later, and give our atten- 
 tion to the great cutting-machines. These metal-cut- 
 ting machine-tools are divided into two great classes 
 the lathes and the planers. 
 
 The metal- working lathe in general appearance re- 
 sembles the wood- working lathe. There is, however, 
 this difference: in the wood-lathe a comparatively soft 
 material is cut or turned at a high speed. In the metal- 
 lathe a very hard material is made to revolve at a slow 
 speed, but with great power, before very hard, sharp 
 steel tools. In the wood-lathe the shavings fly off in 
 a fine, dusty shower; in the metal-lathe a thin, curling 
 sliver or shaving is pared or shaved off by the strong, 
 firmly held cutting-tool. The wood-turner can hold his 
 chisel in his hand, using the tool-rest to steady the tool. 
 The man using the metal-lathe must clamp his tool 
 firmly to the machine, for no human strength could 
 
THE GREAT CUTTERS 107 
 
 resist the terrific strain on the point of his tool as it 
 plows its way over the smoking iron in the lathe. 
 
 When we examined the wood- molding machine or 
 shaper, we saw a rapidly revolving knife, used to carve 
 or mold wood. So we shall find in every machine- 
 shop a large number of most interesting machines em- 
 ploying the same idea in the same way, but at a slower 
 speed. These tools are called milling-machines, and 
 in all of them we shall observe the use of revolving 
 cutting-tools, supported in various positions, horizontal, 
 vertical or at some angle between these directions, and 
 used to cut or chip metals held firmly against their steel 
 teeth. Milling-machines are comparatively new, and 
 they sprang from the demand for tools that would 
 cut out of iron the novel and curious forms used 
 in making typewriters, bicycles, sewing-machines, and 
 the thousand useful things used in the arts and man- 
 ufactures. They are of wonderful interest, for they 
 are exceedingly ingenious in design, and do their 
 work with remarkable speed and precision. All are, 
 as far as possible, automatic, the machine itself per- 
 forming every operation in turn with the least possible 
 attention from the workman. 
 
 In the wood-planer we saw the use of rapidly mov- 
 ing knives upon wood that was caused to pass under 
 the knives. The metal-planer employs a fixed cutting- 
 tool, supported upon a strong frame, and cutting a thin 
 and narrow shaving from a block of metal that is 
 pushed with great force against it. The tool is held 
 rigid over a moving table, and the iron to be planed is 
 
108 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 firmly clamped to this table, and it is the forward 
 motion of the table that causes the steel tool to plow 
 its way over the iron. The advance of the table to- 
 wards the tool is slow and very powerful. The moment 
 the tool has passed over the iron and planed off a thin 
 sliver, the table quickly returns to a new position 
 
 Iron-planer 
 
 to be ready for the next slow- working stroke. This 
 slow advance and quick return, we shall find, is char- 
 acteristic of all the metal-planing machines, both great 
 and small. 
 
 Closely related to the planer are two other metal- 
 working machines, called the shaper and the slotting- 
 macbine. In these machines the metal to be cut or 
 shaped is firmly held in position, while the cutting-tool 
 
THE GREAT CUTTERS 109 
 
 moves over it. The shaper, which slides forward to 
 its work, is more like the original hand-plane than the 
 planer, yet it differs in this, that the forward stroke is 
 very slow and powerful, and the backward stroke, or 
 return, is swift. The cutting- tool in the shaper usually 
 moves horizontally. In the slotting-machine the move- 
 
 Shaper 
 
 ment of the cutting-tool is vertical, the effective stroke 
 being downward. All these machine-tools are essen- 
 tially planers. They can be found in every machine- 
 shop in the world, and are often given special names, 
 according to their work. All are provided with many 
 interesting appliances for increasing the speed of 
 the work and for enlarging the field of their use- 
 fulness. We can well afford to pause and examine 
 
110 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 them with the greatest care, for they are all worthy 
 of our highest respect and admiration. To pass 
 them by as uninteresting or unworthy our atten- 
 tion is to confess our own ignorance of the wonderful 
 scientific progress of our modern master builders of 
 tools. Better to know less of the weak and silly lives 
 of dead kings or imaginary gods and goddesses, and 
 know something of the men who make and use these 
 splendid machine-tools. Kings and generals have, per- 
 haps, done a little good in the world, but greater than 
 them all is the man who invents a new machine-tool 
 that by its giant labors makes all our lives safer, more 
 useful, more worth living. 
 
 Among the oldest of the knives is the sickle. For 
 thousands of years men gathered wheat by cutting 
 down a few stalks at a time with this crescent-shaped 
 harvesting-knife. So, also, in cutting grass, men used 
 the scythe, but long ago they saw that both scythe and 
 sickle were slow and inefficient. For years many at- 
 tempts were made to make some kind of machine that 
 would harvest grass, wheat and oats. All these ma- 
 chines failed, and it seemed, up to our own times, as if 
 all harvesting must be done with hand-tools. This 
 could not continue, because, as more and more people 
 learned to use machinery, more and more people lived 
 in cities and followed other trades than the growing of 
 food; necessarily there must come a time when the 
 cost of harvesting our crops would be so high that food 
 itself would be high, and all the people would suffer 
 because of the high cost of a loaf of bread. This criti- 
 
THE GREAT CUTTERS HI 
 
 cal time came early in the last century. Our cities 
 were growing rapidly, the railroads, factories, and mills 
 were calling so many people from the farms that, in 
 spite of the emigration of millions of people from 
 Europe, our farms were short of " hands." It became 
 useless to raise great crops, for there were not men 
 enough to gather them. Machinery had reduced the 
 cost of making flour, and the railroads and steam 
 vessels had reduced the cost of transporting it, and 
 machinery must be used on the farm or the price of 
 every loaf would be high. Out of this state of affairs 
 came one of the finest machine-tools in the world 
 the harvesting-machine. We cannot afford, as Ameri- 
 cans, to be ignorant concerning these great inventions. 
 
 The first of these harvesters is the mower, the most 
 simple machine being the common lawn-mower we see 
 in every front yard. The moment we examine it we 
 see that it is really a machine-knife. It has a roller 
 and a knife-blade bent into a spiral form. Both are 
 supported in a little carriage, and by means of simple 
 connections the spiral knife can be made to revolve, 
 the cutting- edge being at all times close to the roller. 
 
 As the machine is placed on the grass we see that 
 some of the blades of grass stand up between the roller 
 and its spiral knife. On pushing the machine forward 
 over the grass we observe that the blades of grass 
 caught between the knife and the roller are cut off 
 with a shearing cut, precisely as if the machine were 
 a pair of shears having a continuous cutting motion, 
 all in one direction. The surprising thing is the ex- 
 
112 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 treme simplicity of the machine, and yet we see that it 
 does its work with speed and precision. These grass- 
 cutters are all comparatively small, the largest used in 
 city parks being drawn by a horse, and their work is 
 merely to shave or trim the grass. To cut grass for 
 hay is quite a different piece of work, and demands a 
 larger and very different machine. It must be large 
 enough to cut a wide swath at a good speed. It must 
 have a carriage, with its pole and harness for the 
 horses, and carrying the machinery used to convey the 
 power generated by the forward movement of the 
 horses to the cutting-machine. At one side of the 
 carriage hangs an arm or bar, projecting at a right 
 angle with the advance of the carriage. This bar is 
 suspended a few inches above the earth, and along the 
 forward edge is arranged a series of hollow fingers 
 or steel teeth. Within these fingers is a series of 
 lancet-shaped or double-edged knives attached to a bar 
 that, by suitable connections with the carriage, can be 
 made to vibrate from side to side. The man seated on 
 the machine guides his horses up to the edge of the hay- 
 field, the bar supporting the fingers and knives project- 
 ing over the grass to be cut. On starting the horses 
 forward, the motion causes the knife-bar to vibrate 
 between the fingers, and at each vibration the stalks 
 of grass caught between the fixed fingers and the 
 moving knives are sheared off. The work is done 
 as fast as the horses can walk, and not a single blade 
 is missed, the grass falling in a continuous shower as 
 the machine passes over it. 
 
THE GREAT CUTTERS 113 
 
 This single idea of the vibrating lancet knives be- 
 tween fixed hollow fingers is one of the most important 
 and valuable of all modern inventions. It has been 
 employed in many ways, and is used every year in a 
 million machines. So important and valuable is the 
 mowing-machine that it has spread all over the world, 
 and has been so improved and developed that it is now 
 used to cut wheat, bind it into sheaves and tie each 
 bundle up and leave it lying upon the ground ready 
 for the harvest wagons. When a mowing-machine is 
 used to cut wheat, gather it into bundles and bind it 
 up, it is called a reaper or harvester, or sometimes a 
 reaper and binder. When used to cut grass for hay 
 it is usually called a mower or mowing-machine. 
 8 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 THE SAW AND THE SAWMILL 
 
 observed in our studies of the knife that the 
 blades of all good knives that are in proper condition 
 for cutting have a continuous, unbroken edge. Cen- 
 turies ago men noticed this and took pains to keep their 
 knife- blades free from nicks or notches. We do not 
 know who first observed the fact that if a knife-blade 
 have many nicks or notches along the edge it will be- 
 have in a very different manner from a straight-edge 
 knife, and can be used in a wholly different way and 
 for different purposes. We can only imagine that this 
 early observer tried his nicked knife as a cutting-tool 
 for tearing apart a cord, a grapevine or the small limb 
 of a tree, and found that it worked very well as a di- 
 viding or separating-tool. 
 
 A knife can be used to cut a piece of wood by push- 
 ing it along the wood, as in whittling a stick. A knife 
 *with a notched edge can be drawn across the wood and 
 it will soon separate the wood into two parts. With a 
 notched knife we make, not shavings, but sawdust. 
 We recognize that any notched or serrated cutting- 
 blade is a saw. The origin of the saw is lost in the 
 long-forgotten centuries, yet we may feel sure that the 
 
THE SAW AND THE SAWMILL H5 
 
 saw is quite as old as the knife. The ragged edge of an 
 oyster-shell or the curious weapon carried by the saw- 
 fish may have first suggested the saw. However it 
 may have been originated, we readily see that it is 
 one of the most ancient and most useful of all the 
 tools. 
 
 We take up a common carpenter's saw and examine 
 its edge, and see that it consists of a series of serra- 
 tions or notches, all of the same size and all having a 
 little cutting-edge on each side. Looking along the 
 edge we see that each tooth is bent slightly to the right 
 or left. It is said to be " set " in that position, every 
 alternate tooth being set to the right and the others set 
 to the left. Each tooth is a tool, and when the saw is 
 used each tooth acts as a tiny cutting-chisel that chips 
 out the small bits of wood we call sawdust. As the 
 saw may have a hundred of these little chisels, we can 
 easily see that a dozen or more may be at work at the 
 same instant, each cutting out tiny bits of the wood 
 and rapidly dividing the block of wood into two parts. 
 When we use a knife to cut wood, we separate it with 
 a clean cut. With a saw we destroy a portion of the 
 wood and turn it into sawdust. Each tooth cuts off a 
 bit of the wood, and soon the saw-cut or "kerf " is 
 filled with this waste sawdust. Were the teeth not set 
 alternately to the right and left, the sawdust would fill 
 and choke up the kerf, and the saw would jam or stick 
 fast in the kerf. The setting of the teeth cuts the kerf 
 a trifle wider than the saw-blade, and this leaves room 
 for the sawdust to escape. We see that at every stroke 
 
116 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 of the saw some of the sawdust is pushed out of the 
 kerf. This setting of the teeth seems to have been in- 
 vented thousands of years ago. In using the saw we 
 observe, also, that it does its work upon both the push 
 forward and the pull backward, or, as we say, at both 
 strokes. Some ancient saws were made to be used only 
 upon one stroke, and in some countries they are still 
 used in that way, but it is plain that two effective 
 strokes are better than one effective stroke and one idle 
 stroke alternately. That is too slow for our times. 
 
 Get a small piece of board and a hatchet. Hold the 
 board upright and strike it upon one edge. We at 
 once discover that striking either one of two edges pro- 
 duces no effect, except to dent the wood, while striking 
 either one of the two other edges splits the wood apart. 
 To understand this we examine the wood, and see that 
 it is built up of bundles of woody fibers placed side by 
 L side and fastened together. These are called the fibers 
 or granuyf the wood, and our experiment proves that 
 the wood is stronger across the grain than along the 
 grain. The fibers are tough and strong and resist the 
 blow of the hatchet, while they are but loosely held 
 together and readily split apart when struck in line or 
 with the grain. Every piece of wood shows the fibers 
 of the wood in one direction and the ends of the fibers 
 in the other. It is this that led, no doubt, to the ex- 
 pression "against the grain." A boy may be asked 
 by his mother to split some kindlings for the kitchen 
 stove and say that the request "goes against the 
 grain," or against his inclination, while he will split 
 
THE SAW AND THE SAWMILL H7 
 
 the wood itself ' ' with the grain, ' ' which, we see, is 
 a very pretty paradox. 
 
 Now, in preparing firewood, a boy can do very little 
 with the hatchet alone, for the wood, as it comes from 
 the tree, is too long for the stove. Then he learns the 
 value of the saw, for he uses it to saw the wood 
 apart, " across the grain," 
 into short pieces or M/1AW 
 " stove lengths." Saw- 
 ing is much harder work Rip i saw 
 
 than splitting with a 
 
 hatchet. "I'll chop and you saw," said the country 
 boy to his city -boy visitor as they went out to the 
 woodpile. "No, sir," said the city boy, "I've read 
 about sawing and splitting, and we will take turns at 
 the chopping-block, or I will not play." 
 
 The writers of story books sometimes tell us that 
 their heroes carried a " Damascus blade " or a " Toledo 
 blade," meaning a sword of such fine steel that it could 
 
 be bent into a circle 
 without breaking, and 
 carry an edge like a 
 
 razor. A good Amer- 
 
 r 
 ican saw is as fine a 
 
 Cross-cut Saw 
 
 piece of work as the 
 
 most famous sword ever made. Look at one in the 
 carpenter's kit. It is strong, elastic, sharp, and beau- 
 tifully polished a better thing than any sword. All 
 our carpenters carry two chief saws, one adapted to 
 sawing across the grain, called a cross-cut saw,, and 
 
118 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 one for sawing along or with the grain, and called a 
 rip-saw. Saws, whatever their size, shape or use, are 
 usually divided into these two styles -the cross-cut 
 and the rip-saw. The trained user of saws examines 
 every piece of wood he wishes to saw to ascertain the 
 grain of the wood, and selects the right tool to fit the 
 grain. Every user of tools sees also that his saw is 
 sharp and properly set. 
 
 When the Pilgrims landed from the Mayflower 
 they brought ashore an ax and an adz, and with these 
 it was possible to cut down trees and build log-houses. 
 They brought also a saw, because the Pilgrim house- 
 mother wanted shelves in her buttery and panels in the 
 wainscot and closets for her linen and china, and these 
 things could only be made by sawing up the big logs 
 into thin boards and sawing the boards into the proper 
 shapes and sizes. To make these sawn boards the colo- 
 nial carpenters first dug a pit in the ground and laid 
 rough planks over the open mouth. A log was then 
 laid on these and one man climbed down into the saw- 
 pit, while another stood over his head on the planks. 
 The man below was called the " pit-sawyer," the man 
 above the " top-sawyer. " To saw the log they 
 used a big, two-handled rip-saw, pulling and push- 
 ing it up and down between them. In this way the 
 two sawyers sawed fine boards out of big logs. The 
 top-sawyer used the most skill, and was thought to 
 be the best man. Hence, to call a man " a regular 
 top-sawyer" was to pay him a high compliment, 
 and the expression still lingers in New England, a 
 
THE SAW AND THE SAWMILL H9 
 
 hundred years after the last saw-pit was filled up and 
 abandoned. 
 
 From the great pit-saws and the carpenter's rip-saw 
 and cross-cut saw, have sprung the hundred different 
 kinds of saws now in use. The lumberman and builder 
 still use double-handled saws eight feet long, and large 
 cross-cut single-handled saws from four to six feet long. 
 Hand-saws range from fourteen to twenty-six inche,s 
 in length. Saws for fine 
 woodwork are often made .= 
 with stiff blades strength- 
 ened by a thicker piece of 
 
 Keyhole-saw 
 
 steel at the back of the 
 
 blade. Such saws are often used in fine joinery and 
 cabinet-making with a ' ( miter-box ' ' or guide-box for 
 cutting wood at an angle. Narrow, flexible saws, like 
 the compass-saw and keyhole-saw, are used for making 
 circular or curving cuts. 
 
 In the kitchen the cook uses a meat-saw, having a 
 narrow blade set in a frame. We see larger saws of 
 the same kind at the butcher's shop. There are many 
 kinds of these frame-saws used in sawing wood and 
 metal, the most common frame-saw being the wood- 
 saw that hangs in every woodshed in the land. It is 
 the farmer's handy saw, and every farmer's boy has 
 used one. Wood-sawing is good exercise, and many 
 a country boy now a city man owes his strong arms, 
 good lungs and fine health to the practice he had 
 with a wood-saw in the old home. The machinist, 
 plumber, and railroad man use frame-saws called hack- 
 
120 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 Hack-saw 
 
 saws, some of them having blades that can be adjusted 
 to any angle in the frame. The surgeon uses the finest 
 
 saws that are made, and 
 in every art, trade and 
 handicraft we shall find 
 saws of some kind. 
 Even the ice-harvester 
 
 uses a saw to cut his crystal blocks apart, and the 
 retail ice-dealer carries a saw to cut his ice into blocks 
 for the refrigerator. It would be difficult to find 
 any people the whole earth around who do not use 
 some form of this ancient 
 tool. 
 
 We do not know who 
 first thought of using a 
 water-wheel to drive a 
 saw. Some crude ma- 
 chines for sawing wood 
 by water-power were used 
 in Spain as early as 
 A.D. 1420, and a hundred 
 years later they were 
 quite common all over 
 Europe. They were 
 called sawmills, probably 
 because the first water- 
 wheels used to move 
 saws were also used in 
 
 grinding-mills. In 1596 a sawmill that would cut 
 two boards at once was built in Holland, and in 1663 
 
 Ice-saw 
 
THE SAW AND THE SAWMILL 121 
 
 a man from Holland tried to erect a sawmill in Eng- 
 land, but the English sawyers would not let him 
 use it, for they said it would ruin their business. 
 Another mill was built in 1767, but the sawyers 
 burned it down. In our own country a sawmill 
 was built at Natchez early in this same century, but 
 even our southern sawyers thought such a mill would 
 injure the sawing business, and promptly destroyed 
 it. However, the sawmill was too valuable to be 
 neglected, and they soon increased rapidly, in spite 
 of the pit-sawyers. People wanted lumber to build 
 homes, but the hand-sawn boards were too costly, 
 and it took too long to saw them. Sawmills made 
 better boards, in larger quantities, in less time and for 
 less money. The more boards made, the more carpen- 
 ters to be employed, and the cheaper the houses the 
 more families could find new and comfortable homes. 
 All the pit-sawyers were Americans, and in the Ameri- 
 can fashion quickly gave up a hard, laborious, ill-paid 
 business for cleaner and more profitable employment. 
 To-day there is not a man in the country who would 
 go back to this miserable trade, and yet the old sawyers 
 burned down the early sawmills which to us to-day 
 seems very curious and very foolish. 
 
 At first, all the sawmills used straight saws resem- 
 bling the pit-sawyer's rip-saw, simple machinery being 
 used to drag the saws up and down as the log was 
 pushed against them. At first, one saw only was used, 
 but it did not take long to discover that one water- 
 wheel would supply enough power to move two oj 
 
122 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 more saws. These saws were set in frames side by 
 side or, as the mill-men expressed it, " arranged in 
 gangs," the frame being moved up and down by the 
 water-wheel, and the saws working side by side through 
 the log, the space between the saws regulating the 
 thickness of the boards. 
 
 The first great improvement in the sawmill was the 
 invention of the circular saw about a hundred years 
 ago. A steel disc with teeth upon its edge could be 
 set up on edge and driven rapidly by a water-wheel or 
 steam-engine, and such a revolv- 
 ing saw would cut a log at much 
 greater speed than any form of 
 reciprocating saw. Since the in- 
 vention of the circular saw our 
 builders of sawmills have made 
 many improvements in their great 
 machines, and they may now be 
 
 Circular Saw J 
 
 regarded as among the very 
 largest and finest wood- working machine-tools in 
 the world. One common form of circular sawing- 
 machine has a saw suspended upon a swinging frame 
 hung from the ceiling of the mill. It is very useful 
 in sawing firewood and in cutting short lengths of 
 wood in box-making and cabinet-work. Another 
 useful machine consists of a table having a circular 
 saw hung just under the top of the table, a small 
 segment of the saw projecting above it. Such a 
 sawing-table is very useful in every shop, and we 
 shall find them in every plant using power to saw 
 
THE SAW AND THE SAWMILL 123 
 
 wood. At first all circular saws had teeth cut in the 
 edge of the disc. Now all large circular saws have 
 adjustable teeth, each tooth being fitted and locked 
 into its place on the edge of the disc. The advantage 
 of this is that, if a tooth is broken, a new tooth can be 
 easily fitted into its place and the saw can go on with 
 its work without delay. 
 
 The most novel and certainly the most interesting of 
 all the sa wing-machines is the band-saw. It consists 
 of two large wheels placed in an iron frame, one over 
 the other. Round the faces of the two wheels is 
 stretched a thin ribbon or band of flexible steel, having 
 one edge cut into saw-teeth. The ends of the band 
 are brazed together to form a continuous band from 
 wheel to wheel. A table is placed over the lower 
 wheel and under the upper wheel and having a slot 
 through which the band passes from wheel to wheel. 
 There are arrangements for keeping the saw-band 
 stretched tight at all times, and when power is applied 
 the wheels turn rapidly, and the saw-band moves 
 swiftly in one continuous direction through the slot in 
 the table. A block of wood placed upon the table and 
 pushed against the flying saw is quickly cut into any 
 shape desired. 
 
 For small work at home there are a number of very 
 useful little sa wing-machines called jig-saws and fret- 
 saws. They use a short saw-blade supported in a 
 frame, and have a rapid up and down motion over a 
 small table. They are usually operated by a foot- 
 treadle, and any boy or girl, wishing to use> a capital 
 
124 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 little sawing-machine, will find it well worth the time 
 and labor to learn to use one of these fret-saws. Such 
 machines are very useful in making picture-frames, 
 paper-pockets, bookracks and other pretty and handy 
 things. Such things, being the work of their own 
 hands, make the very best and most acceptable pres- 
 ents for their friends. 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 THE BORERS 
 
 SHOULD we ever be so fortunate as to see a real Indian 
 birch-bark canoe, we might, perhaps, be surprised to 
 find that the thin sheets of bark covering the canoe are 
 stitched together by strong cord sewn through small 
 holes in the edge of the bark. We can see 
 the same thing in every iron steamship, each 
 plate and beam of metal having small holes 
 in the edge through which are secured bits of 
 iron called rivets, the rivets binding plate to 
 beam in every direction. Clearly, these holes 
 in the birch bark and in the pieces of steel 
 must be made by some form of tool. In the 
 Museum of Natural History we shall find 
 among the most ancient of all tools curious , 
 
 Prehistoric 
 
 sharp-pointed bones or teeth. Evidently the Bone AWI or 
 old workmen made these things for the 
 work of boring holes, and we call to-day such a hole- 
 maker an awl. We shall find an awl on every shoe- 
 maker's bench and in every carpenter's kit. The 
 carpenter's awl is a slender rod of steel, having a fine, 
 sharp point, and fitted with a convenient wooden han- 
 dle. The shoemaker uses an awl to make the holes in 
 
126 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 his leather, the sailmaker uses a curved awl to make 
 the holes in the heavy canvas he sews together for sails, 
 and the carpenter uses his awl to make a hole for a 
 screw. The awl is thus a piercer or hole-making tool. 
 It is used Avith a sharp push or thrust, and it breaks or 
 tears its way through the material, whether it be bark, 
 a fabric, leather, wood+or thin sheet-metal. 
 
 In using an awl it is often necessary to move or twist 
 it about in order to make a larger hole. This 
 must have been observed long ago, for men 
 early discovered that if an awl had a cutting- 
 edge on the side or shank of the tool, it could 
 be twisted and turned about to make even 
 larger and deeper holes than could be made 
 with a simple awl. Such a tool would not be 
 a piercer, but a borer. So, from the awl, an 
 exceedingly ancient tool, came the first of the 
 simple boring-tools the gimlet, 
 ter-s AWI The gimlet is the smallest and oldest of a great 
 family of wood and metal-boring tools, and if we 
 understand it we can easily understand the larger tools 
 and machines that belong to the same family. The 
 gimlet has a round steel shank with a " cross-head" 
 or handle at the top. The lower part of the shank is 
 hollowed out, the cut-out part having a spiral or 
 twisted form, and called the pod (from its resemblance 
 to a pea-pod). At the end is a spiral point resembling 
 the tip of a wood-screw, and called a gimlet-point. 
 In using the gimlet the handle is firmly grasped in the 
 hand, and the sharp point is pressed into the wood at 
 
THE BORERS 
 
 127 
 
 the exact spot that marks the center of the hole we 
 wish to bore in the wood. It is now given a rotary 
 motion combined with a downward pressure. We see 
 that the point is thus screwed or pressed spirally into 
 the wood. When the lip of the pod reaches the wood 
 it cuts out a spiral shaving. As the gimlet sinks 
 deeper, the sharp edges of the pod cut into the wood 
 and shave off the sides 
 of the hole. The 
 waste wood is pushed 
 up as fast as it is cut 
 off, and falls out upon 
 the surface. When 
 the hole is as deep as 
 the tool will conven- 
 iently go, we have 
 only to reverse the 
 motion of the handle, 
 and the gimlet easily 
 rises out of the hole. It seems a simple 3. 
 
 Electric- 
 little tool, and yet we see how much wiring Auger 
 
 thought has been expended upon it to bring it to its 
 present perfection. 
 
 Awls and gimlets have been used for a long time to 
 prepare the holes for screws, and without them it was 
 very difficult to put a screw into wood. Then came, 
 in quite recent times, the invention of the gimlet- 
 pointed screw, and now every screw is its own gimlet 
 and bores its own hole as it is screwed into the wood. 
 No single small invention has proved of greater value 
 
 i. 
 
 1. Auger 
 
128 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 in wood-working than this simple Yankee notion of put- 
 ting a gimlet-point on every screw, for it saves all the 
 time and labor of boring the holes. One tap of a ham- 
 mer on the screw-head and it is started, with one of 
 the improved screw-drivers it is quickly and firmly 
 screwed " home." While the new screw saves all the 
 labor spent on boring screw -holes except in fine cab- 
 inet-work, etc. and puts the gimlet out of commis- 
 sion, we shall still find it a handy tool to have in our 
 tool-box. 
 
 Closely related to the gimlet is the larger tool called 
 the auger. It has the same cross-head handle and 
 straight shank, and a twisted spiral cuttting portion 
 ending in two sharp lips or chisels, and a gimlet-point. 
 The auger is one of the finest of all the boring-tools 
 used in wood- work. At the hardware store we shall 
 find them in every size, from the great tools used by 
 the car-builder, ship-builder and house-builder, down 
 to the slender spirals used by the piano-maker and 
 cabinet-maker, and the long augers used by the electric- 
 wiring man. The augers have a real beauty of their 
 own, for their graceful spirals are formed on true scien- 
 tific principles, and are the result of a correct applica- 
 tion of means to end. The spiral cutting-shank of 
 our wood-boring augers was invented in this country 
 and, like the gimlet-pointed screw, is an American 
 idea. As each auger bores a hole of a fixed diameter, 
 it is usual to purchase them in sets of a dozen sizes or 
 more. They come in neat boxes, and are used with 
 some form of bit-stock or brace, an appliance for hold- 
 
THE BORERS 
 
 129 
 
 ing the tool and turning it as the hole is bored. When 
 an auger has its own handle, it is a simple auger, when 
 several augers are used with one brace or bit-stock, 
 they are called auger-bits or simply bits. Auger-bits 
 are made in a very great variety of forms, and are used 
 in doing a great variety of work, there being over fifty 
 different bits or allied tools used in wood and metal 
 work. The auger idea has also been applied in making 
 holes in the earth and in 
 setting iron piles into 
 sand in making founda- 
 tions for docks and light- 
 houses. A faucet for 
 drawing liquids from a 
 cask may have an auger- 
 point so that it can be 
 bored into the head of 
 the cask, making the hole and setting the faucet in one 
 operation, the faucet plugging the hole as soon as it 
 is cut through. All styles of augers are now used in 
 groups or gangs, particularly in car-building, and we 
 shall no doubt soon see automatic augers driven by 
 compressed air. 
 
 Closely related to the augers is another large class of 
 boring-tools called drills, and used in boring holes in 
 metals, bone, stone, ivory and other hard materials. 
 They range from the little drills used by the watch- 
 maker and jeweler in making holes for his tiny screws, 
 to the great machine-tools used to bore out the hub of 
 a locomotive driving-wheel. Drills bore out holes by 
 
 9 
 
 Brace and Bits 
 
130 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 the slow-cutting action of sharp lips or cutting-edges 
 of the tool, and all must be used in some form of car- 
 rier, like a brace or similar appliance, for the drill 
 must cut under great pressure and very slowly. The 
 oldest form of drill-carrier was a simple bow of wood, 
 the bowstring being carried twice round the drill, the 
 simple backward and forward motion of the bow caus- 
 ing the drill to rotate rapidly in opposite directions 
 alternately. We have now far better tools for oper- 
 ating drills, the most common 
 being the ratchet-drill. It is 
 a form of brace having a 
 ratchet and pawl to operate 
 the drill. All metal-drills 
 employ some form of carrier 
 that can be used under great 
 pressure to force the drill 
 continually up to its work. 
 As all modern steel struc- 
 tures are put together with 
 bolts or rivets, there must be vast numbers of holes 
 drilled in every imaginable direction and in a 
 great many sizes. All holes in moving parts of 
 engines and machines have to be carefully and accu- 
 rately drilled, but in making the million holes re- 
 quired in a ship or railway bridge, it is found to be 
 cheaper to punch the holes for the rivets. This punch- 
 ing is not boring at all, but the forcing of a bit of 
 metal out of the plate by direct pressure, precisely as 
 we see the conductor on the railroad train punch holes 
 
 Ratchet-Drill 
 
THE BORERS 131 
 
 in our tickets. The conductor uses a hand-punch 
 weighing less than a pound, the shipbuilder uses a 
 monster hydraulic punch weighing many tons. Drills, 
 like augers, are often arranged in gangs, and many 
 new and powerful drills are now operated by com- 
 pressed air, and are called pneumatic drills. 
 
 It sometimes happens that a hole, when drilled, or 
 even when punched, may require enlarging, or it may be 
 necessary to give 
 it a tapering form 
 or to shave down 
 the edges of the 
 hole. This is 
 called reaming, 
 
 and is done with fl Pneumatic DHII 
 
 a reamer, a tool 
 having either a 
 straight or taper 
 
 shank and sharp corners or edges. It is used simply 
 to shave off the sides of a drilled or punched hole 
 without making it any deeper. In punched holes the 
 edges are sometimes left ragged or broken, and a 
 reamer is used to shave the edge of the hole down 
 smooth. Rivets and screws for metals are often sunk 
 in the metal so as to be " countersunk," or made flush 
 with the surface, and it becomes necessary to pare off 
 the lip of a drilled or punched hole. The work is 
 done with a counter-sink bit, a form of reamer. 
 
 The dentist uses small drills upon our defective teeth, 
 and employs fine tools driven at a high speed, for it 
 
132 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 is far less painful to have a tooth bored out in a few 
 seconds, by an electric drill, than to suffer half an 
 hour while the dentist chisels out a hole with his 
 unhappy old hand-tools. 
 
 With the introduction of railroads came a demand 
 for some kind of machine for boring holes in stone. 
 For centuries men had cut blocks of marble and granite 
 out of quarries by the use of a hand-tool called a drill. 
 It was a simple bar of iron, having a rounded, double- 
 faced chisel at the lower end, and it required three 
 men to use it at even very slow speed. One man held 
 the drill upright on the rock and the other men, or 
 " hammer men," struck the top of the drill with heavy 
 sledges. Between each blow the holder gave the drill 
 a quarter turn in the hole to present the cutting-edge 
 in a new place. This work was slow, laborious and 
 costly, but it was the only method that could be used 
 in quarrying stone. Before the invention of gun- 
 powder, quarrying was all done by making drill-holes 
 in rows close together and then driving wedges in the 
 holes till the stone split off along the line of holes. 
 With gunpowder less holes were required, because the 
 explosion of powder in a drill-hole is far more effective 
 than any form of wedge. When in our times the rail- 
 roads spread over the country, there sprang up a great 
 demand for some form of drill that would do more work 
 than the old hand-drill. The railroad must be level, 
 and this meant that rocky hills must be cut through 
 and mountains tunneled, and all this demanded an 
 enormous amount of drill-work for rock-blasting. 
 
THE BORERS 
 
 133 
 
 Naturally, inventors endeavored to use steam-power 
 in rock-drilling, and to-day in the steam or compressed 
 air rock drill we have one of the most important and 
 valuable of all modern tools. It consists of a steam 
 cylinder and piston and its rod, and to the rod is firmly 
 secured a steel rock- 
 drill. The cylinder 
 is supported upon a 
 strong and heavy tri- 
 pod that may stand 
 in any position and 
 present the point of 
 the drill in any direc- 
 tion. The steam or 
 compressed air is con- 
 veyed to the cylinder 
 through a hose, and 
 when ready for work, 
 it delivers its tremen- 
 dous, thundering 
 blows upon the rock in 
 
 s.s. 
 
 Pneumatic Rock-drill 
 
 rapid succession. The 
 man controlling the 
 machine regulates the speed and pressure of the blows, 
 the machine automatically turning the drill as it sinks 
 into the rock and continuing its terrific labor as long 
 as the supply of steam or compressed air is maintained. 
 This grand tool has done more to develop the mineral 
 wealth of our country than any other tool or machine. 
 It has enabled us to sink deep mines and to dig for 
 
134 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 miles through the mountains. It has discovered and 
 brought to the surface oil, gas, and water, has given 
 us a wonderful wealth of beautiful marbles and build- 
 ing stones, and has led the railroads over or through 
 the highest mountains. If we were to select any one 
 tool that should stand as distinctly the modern tool, 
 more universally useful than any other, it would be 
 the power rock-drill. 
 
 The drills used in sinking deep holes for oil, gas or 
 water are operated by steam-power in tall machines 
 resembling in appearance a pile-driver, and called a 
 derrick. For very deep wells, and \vherever it is neces- 
 sary to ascertain the character of the rock hundreds of 
 feet below the surface, another and most interesting 
 form of drill is employed. This is the diamond rock- 
 drill, a power- tool that is a true boring-tool, for it 
 cuts a circle in the stone, leaving the center, or core, 
 'untouched. The drilling-tool is a steel tube, open at 
 the lower end, the circular edge being armed with 
 cheap, yet very hard, diamonds. The drill is placed 
 upright upon the rock to be bored, and is operated by 
 turning it round precisely as if it were a diamond-shod 
 auger. The intensely hard diamonds cut a ring in the 
 rock, and as the tool cuts its way downward, the blank 
 center remains standing in the middle of the hole or 
 well. By removing the drill and using the right tools, 
 this stone core can be broken off and hauled up to the 
 surface. The core then shows exactly the kind and 
 character of the rock cut by the drill, even if the drill 
 has been at work a hundred feet under ground. The 
 
THE BORERS 
 
 135 
 
 removal of the core enlarges the well to its full size. 
 No tool ever used in working underground has given 
 us such useful information concerning the rocky in- 
 terior of the earth as this diamond drill, and the curi- 
 ous stone records of its work have been preserved as 
 stone books, telling us the secrets of the crust of the 
 world. Some of these 
 stone cores have led to 
 the discovery of valu- 
 able minerals hidden 
 deep in the earth, and 
 that might never have 
 been found without 
 the aid of the diamond 
 drill. 
 
 Within the past few 
 years a remarkable im- 
 provement has been 
 made in the drills used to bore metals. This is the 
 pneumatic drill, a small and powerful drill operated 
 by compressed air. It works at a high speed, and as 
 it can be used in any position within the limits of its 
 air hose, it is a most useful and valuable tool in shops 
 and shipyards and wherever metal-boring tools are 
 employed. Like the pneumatic hammer, it is destined 
 to be one of the most universal of all small power- 
 tools. 
 
 Eskimo Bow-drill 
 
OHAPTEK X 
 
 THE ABRADERS AND GRINDERS 
 
 ANY tool that has been well used, and has a wooden 
 handle, will show that it has been used, by the polish 
 that appears upon the handle. A new hammer has a 
 smooth, but dull handle; an old hammer may show 
 a fine polish. This was, no doubt, observed centuries 
 ago, for we find in museums ancient arms and tools 
 that are highly polished. At first this might have been 
 the result of handling and long use. Then, perhaps, 
 some more thoughtful huntsman decided that if the 
 mere rubbing of his hands upon the bow or spear would 
 polish the wood, he could rub it all over and give the 
 whole surface this attractive polish. Then he discov- 
 ered that such polishing could be hastened by using 
 rough material in place of his bare hand. The rough 
 skin of a fish, when dried, would be a good polisher, and 
 besides doing better work, would save his own hands 
 from wear. The next step would be to wrap the fish- 
 skin round a stick and use the stick as a handle for the 
 polisher. It was from some such experiment as this 
 with dried fish-skins that we obtained one of the most 
 common of all tools the file. 
 
 A file is an abrading tool or surface-finishing tool. 
 It is a steel tool, made in many forms, the surface of 
 
THE ABRADERS AND GRINDERS 137 
 
 the steel being cut or raised into small ridges or burrs 
 of uniform size, and arranged in rows or groups side 
 by side. It is the universal finishing-tool, and "to 
 file to shape ' ' means to use a file to bring a piece of 
 wood or metal to a true plane, or to the exact form of 
 the pattern. In technical schools the first lessons given 
 to the students are in the use of the file, as it is an ex- 
 tremely delicate tool, and to use a file with precision 
 and skill is an excellent training for the hand and eye. 
 
 There are in use ^^ 
 
 in the arts, at least 
 
 two thousand dif- 2 . 
 
 ferent kinds of 
 
 files, varying in 1 .^^^.^^ju^ .. t 
 
 their Shape and 1. Half-round Rasp File 2. Four-square File 
 
 3. Round Double Cut File 
 
 size, and the man- 
 ner in which the teeth are arranged. Three points 
 will be found in all files, these points being their 
 length, measuring from the end of the file to the tang 
 (that portion inserted in the handle), their shape, and 
 the manner in which the file is cut, or the arrange- 
 ment of the cutting teeth. For instance, a file may be 
 four, five, ten or more inches long; it may be of square 
 section, triangular, round or half round, or may re- 
 semble a knife-edge or be square with one side convex, 
 or may resemble a low pyramid; and it may have single 
 detached teeth, like a rasp, or it may have fine teeth 
 arranged in parallel lines or arranged in double lines 
 crossing each other. A file may be also cut on three 
 sides with the fourth side blank or i c safe. ' ' 
 
138 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 If we take up any file we shall find that it includes 
 these three points length, shape, and style of cut. 
 The large files, with single, detached teeth, are said to 
 be of " rasp cut." Smaller and finer files are single- 
 cut or doable-cut, and each of these rasp, single, and 
 double-cuts has various degrees of fineness. The 
 length and shape depend entirely upon the work to 
 be done with any particular file, and so universal is 
 the use of files and rasps in every trade, that we are 
 simply lost in wonder at their infinite variety. A 
 mere list of all the kinds would fill many pages, and 
 it would certainly be quite as dull reading as a trade- 
 catalogue. 
 
 It is clear that in the use of files we have only to 
 consider the character of the work to be done and the 
 nature of the material to be filed, to be able, with a 
 little practice, to select just the right kind of a file for 
 our purpose. A jeweler requires small, fine-cut files, 
 the dentist, very fine-cut files of a variety of shapes. 
 A locksmith fitting a key wants a rather coarse single 
 or double-cut file of the exact shape to fit the work, 
 whether it be to trim off a tiny shaving of brass or to 
 cut a blank key to fit a lock. A horseshber wants a 
 big, coarse rasp for his work, and the cabinet-maker 
 wants his special files to fit his work. In the kitchen 
 we see the nutmeg-grater and the horseradish-grater, 
 and recognize that they, too, are abraders and raspers. 
 
 A sheet of stiff paper, painted with hot glue and 
 then lightly sprinkled with fine, hard, beach sand, gives 
 us an admirable material for smoothing and polishing. 
 
THE ABRADERS AND GRINDERS 139 
 
 When the hot glue cools it hardens, and holds the tiny 
 grains of sand, and each bit of hard stone acts as a 
 file tooth. We call such prepared paper sandpaper, 
 and by using sand of different degrees of fineness, we 
 can make sandpaper with fine teeth or coarse teeth. 
 We can also use other materials upon paper as abra- 
 dants, such as powdered glass, corundrum, emery and 
 other hard, fine-grained powders. Wooden rods and 
 sticks are also covered with glue and sprinkled with 
 sand or emery to make polishing-sticks. Loose emery, 
 rouge and other materials are also used with a piece of 
 cloth in polishing glass and metals. 
 
 The most useful of all these abrading and polishing 
 appliances is the emery-wheel. A wheel covered with 
 emery-paper and placed in a lathe makes at once a cir- 
 cular abrading-tool of great value in polishing metals. 
 A still better plan is to make a wheel of some mate- 
 rial that will hold emery, corundrum or other abra- 
 dants all through its substance. Then, as fast as it is 
 worn out, new, fresh grinding-surfaces will be exposed. 
 Such emery-wheels are now in universal use in every 
 shop where metals are to be filed, smoothed or pol- 
 ished. They are used also to give shape to pieces of 
 metal, it being found as easy to grind a block of metal 
 to the right form as to plane it or to mill it in a milling 
 machine. Such machines are called grinding-machines, 
 because they grind down metals to shape by means 
 of swiftly moving abrading- wheels. 
 
 A great variety of rubbers, grinders, and polishers 
 are used to polish plate glass, buttons, and the count- 
 
140 
 
 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 less small things made of brass, copper and glass, and 
 that we use in every trade and in all our homes. Very 
 hard grinding-wheels are used to cut glass into the 
 beautiful forms we call " cut glass. " Yery soft wheels 
 coated with rouge are used to polish glassware and 
 silver. Yery delicate and beautiful decorations are 
 
 also applied to glassware by 
 lightly touching the glass to 
 swiftly moving grinding- 
 wheels. Window glass is often 
 depolished by grinding and 
 rubbing with sand. Such par- 
 tially opaque glass is called 
 ground glass. 
 
 The most interesting ma- 
 chine used in grinding and 
 decorating glass is the sand- 
 blast. This machine employs 
 a blast of air to drive a stream 
 of fine sand against a sheet 
 of glass. Every tiny speck of 
 
 sand thus violently driven acts as a file to crack and 
 roughen the surface, and as many thousand grains of 
 sand strike every minute the glass is quickly depol- 
 ished or made dull like common ground glass. The 
 sand-blast is also used to decorate silverware. A thin 
 sheet of cloth or paper spread over the glass under the 
 sand-blast, checks the operation, and the sand makes 
 no mark. Thus the shape of the paper maybe used as 
 a pattern in decorating glass or silver. The parts under 
 
 Surface-grinding Machine 
 
THE ABRADE RS AND GRINDERS 
 
 the paper will remain polished and the parts not covered 
 by the paper will be dulled or matted, and the contrast 
 between the two may be a very beautiful form of 
 decoration. 
 
 The abradants have still another use. A grindstone 
 is a grinding- wheel, and we use it to grind away a 
 part of the blade of a knife and give it a fine, sharp 
 cutting-edge. There are also many forms of fine sand- 
 stones or sharpening- stones that, with the aid of a little 
 oil or water, enable us to keep our tools sharp. Even 
 the scissors-grinder at the door may remind us that 
 abrading- wheels and sharpening-stones, and even razor 
 strops, all sprang from the old dried fish-skin that 
 some hunter once used to polish his spear handle. 
 
 One of the largest and most useful of the abrading- 
 machines is the stone or marble-saw. In the marblo 
 yard we shall see huge blocks of marble being sawn 
 up into thin slabs. We see a wooden frame holding a 
 number of long saws, swinging slowly backward and 
 forward over the marble. At first we might imagine 
 that this was a real sawing-machine. Then we ob- 
 serve that the man in charge of the machine keeps put- 
 ting sand on the marble, while tiny streams of water 
 flow over the white block. The sand-saw is not a saw 
 having cutting-teeth like a wood-saw. The cutting of 
 the marble is done by the sand that is continually 
 " fed " to the thin strips of iron called the saws. The 
 water sweeps the sand into the cut and keeps the saws 
 cool, otherwise the strips of iron would soon grow hot 
 under the friction. The machine we see is a giant 
 
14:2 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 sand-file, the iron bands merely serving to keep the 
 sand in motion and causing it to file away the hard 
 marble. From the stone- saw the thin slabs of marble 
 go to great tables, where swiftly moving arms pro- 
 vided with brushes or other appliances for holding 
 abradants glide over the marble to give it the beauti- 
 ful polish we see in every marble washstand, counter, 
 table, and mural tablet. 
 
OHAPTEB XI 
 
 WOMAN'S ANCIENT TOOLS 
 
 THREE things mankind must have: food to eat, a 
 roof for shelter, and clothing for protection against 
 the weather. It was the demand for food and shelter 
 that led to the invention of many tools. The demand 
 for clothing led to still other tools. The first clothing 
 was stolen from the backs of animals. The sheep wore 
 a thick, warm coat, and men did not hesitate to kill 
 the sheep and strip off the skin and use it as a garment. 
 Of course, a sheepskin on a man would be a pretty 
 poor fit, and some woman picked up a thorn or a sharp 
 stick and used it to pin pieces of sheepskin together 
 to make some rude kind of a garment that would be 
 comfortable and look more or less pretty. Then came 
 the awl, and with the awl came the invention of stitch- 
 ing or sewing. 
 
 Men and women for centuries thus used the skins of 
 animals as materials for garments. Invention and im- 
 provement move slowly, and centuries may have passed 
 before they recognized that it was a very poor plan to 
 kill a sheep for his skin, when the wool or fleece could 
 be cut off each spring and still keep the sheep alive. 
 A dead sheep would give one small skin, a live sheep 
 
TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 would give wool once a year for several years, besides 
 a new lamb or another sheep. Such a simple idea as 
 this must have completely changed the whole business 
 of making clothes, and we know that in time it led to 
 
 Indian Woman Weaving 
 
 the invention of one of the oldest of old tools the 
 distaff. 
 
 A flock of wool from a sheep's back, or a boll of 
 cotton gathered from a cotton plant, seem very un- 
 promising materials for a coat. Pull the soft wool or 
 fluffy cotton out in the fingers, giving it a twist as you 
 pull, and you make a discovery. It " threads" or 
 spins. With a little practice any material, like wool, 
 cotton, or flax, can be twisted and drawn out into a 
 
WOMAN'S ANCIENT TOOLS 
 
 145 
 
 thread called yarn. "Women discovered this centuries 
 ago, and some one invented a tool with which it was 
 possible to spin long, continuous yarns or threads. It 
 was a short, thick stick, split at one end and held 
 under the arm, 
 and was called a 
 distaff. The bunch 
 of loose wool was 
 caught in the cleft 
 stick and firmly 
 held, and the spin- 
 ner pulled it out, 
 twisting it be- 
 tween the fingers 
 with a twirling 
 mot ion, and 
 wound it on a 
 spindle or spool, 
 the weight of the 
 spool helping to 
 stretch out the 
 twisted wool. 
 This, the oldest 
 form of yarn spin- 
 ner, has been used 
 for uncounted 
 
 centuries, and was in general use up to our own colo- 
 nial times. 
 
 The only improvement made on the distaff was the 
 spinning-wheel, and to-day in many an old New Eng- 
 10 
 
14:6 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 land home you can still see the spinning-wheel once 
 used by our great-great-grandmothers, for the colo- 
 nial women were all famous spinners of yarn. The 
 Continental soldiers often wore " home-spun," mean- 
 ing garments made from cloth that was first spun into 
 yarn at home by wife and mother. 
 
 Fortunately, the spinning-wheel has been replaced 
 by spinning-machines, and now wool, flax and cotton 
 are all spun into yarns, ready for the loom, by the most 
 complex and wonderful machinery, and women are for- 
 ever free from all the toil of spinning. 
 
 We cannot even imagine how long ago women began 
 to use the distaff, because we can readily understand 
 that even before it was invented, women and men had 
 learned to weave grass, straw and slender rods of wil- 
 low into baskets, and the demand for clothing must 
 have suggested the weaving of yarn into cloth, or the 
 braiding and knitting of yarn into stockings and other 
 coverings for the head, the hands or the feet. These 
 things are all lost in the dim, far-away past, of which 
 we have no records or even faint memory or tradition. 
 Somehow, somewhere, plaiting, braiding, knitting, and 
 weaving grew up among the people, and the first 
 fabrics or cloths were made. The thorn suggested the 
 pin, and the awl suggested sewing, and so from these 
 and the fabrics came clothing. Then, at last, came 
 the greatest invention of all the needle. The awl 
 made holes in the fabrics, but the thread had to be put 
 through the hole afterwards. The needle was an im- 
 proved awl, with an eye. A thread could be passed 
 
WOMAN'S ANCIENT TOOLS 147 
 
 through the eye, and then the sewer had a portable 
 thread-carrying awl or needle, and the real art of sew- 
 ing began. 
 
 Knitting, plaiting and braiding, combined with sew- 
 ing, made it possible to make real cloth, but basket- 
 weaving, a hand labor, no doubt suggested the last 
 and best of all fabric-making machines the loom. In 
 museums where colonial relics are preserved we can 
 sometimes see a strange wooden machine with a great 
 frame, a roller and a curious spool, sharp at each end, 
 and called a shuttle. We see in the machine many 
 threads of yarn stretched side by side from the back to 
 the front of the machine. These threads may be, let 
 us say, all white. At the front of the machine is a 
 curious device looking like a huge double comb, the 
 threads all passing through it. The shuttle may be 
 lying loose in the loom and wound with a single black 
 thread. The operation of the machine is very simple. 
 By a movement of a foot-treadle, one-half of all the 
 parallel white threads extending from the back of the 
 loom, and called the warp, are raised or separated from 
 the others, every alternate thread being thus lifted 
 above the others. Then through this space between 
 the two sets of threads the weaver throws the shut- 
 tle with its black thread, called the weft or woof. The 
 woof unwinds and lies between the two sets, or cross- 
 wise of the warp-threads. The woof is pressed back 
 close to the last thread delivered by the shuttle. The 
 weaver then raises the other group of alternate threads 
 and the shuttle is thrown back again on its return 
 
148 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 journey. In this manner the fabric is slowly woven, 
 and as the warp is white and the weft black, the result 
 will be a mixed black and white, or gray fabric. The 
 fabric, as fast as woven, is wound upon the cloth roll 
 in front of the loom. 
 
 To show how old the loom is we have only to recall 
 how many words in our language are but names of the 
 parts of a loom or terms used in weaving. 
 
 With the application of power to the loom, in the 
 eighteenth century, there sprang up in our country 
 and Europe the great and prosperous business of 
 weaving, giving employment to hundreds of thou- 
 sands of people, and making it possible for all the 
 people to have beautiful cloths for garments at very 
 low cost. A very great number of improvements have 
 been made in the loom, so that now it bears very little 
 resemblance to the original hand-loom. One of the 
 greatest of these improvements was made by Jacquard 
 in France in 1801. Jacquard's improvement consists 
 of a most ingenious system of perforated cards, so 
 arranged that one card at a time was placed in the 
 loom just as the shuttle was thrown. The perforations 
 of the cards, through suitable machinery, controlled 
 the number of yarns to be raised or lowered as the 
 shuttle passed. As each card had a different set of 
 perforations, the arrangement of the warp-threads 
 was changed at every flight of the shuttle, and, as a 
 result, a figured pattern was woven in the fabric. 
 Thus, by this remarkable invention, the loom itself 
 automatically produced any pattern marked by the 
 
WOMAN'S ANCIENT TOOLS 149 
 
 perforations in the cards. It is not possible here to 
 examine all the countless additions and improvements 
 that have been made to the loom in this and other 
 countries within the past one hundred years. We 
 can only recognize that they have made the power- 
 loom one of the most important of all modern machines. 
 Knitting has been for centuries a handicraft for 
 women, and yet now very few women and girls can 
 knit, for we have another fabric-making machine the 
 knitter. 
 
 The old tool, the needle, is still used, and will, 
 no doubt, always be used. It is the one household 
 hand-tool that every girl and woman should be 
 able to use with skill, and yet this tool also has been 
 changed to a power-tool. For centuries the eye of the 
 needle has been at the top or blank end, tvhich is the 
 proper place for it in hand-sewing. The simple idea 
 of placing the eye near the point made the sewing- 
 machine practicable, and to-day the larger part of all 
 sewing is done at home or in factories on sewing- 
 machines. 
 
 These machines the spinning-machine, the power- 
 loom, the knitter, and the sewing-machine have taken 
 a grievous burden from the shoulders of women. To- 
 day beautiful cloths and garments are cheaper than 
 ever before, and millions of women have been re- 
 leased from dull and monotonous labor, and left at lib- 
 erty to do better and finer work in other directions. 
 No girl can afford to say that she cannot use a needle 
 or a darning-needle. It is a good and womanly thing 
 
150 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 to be able to sew and to make a garment. Even darn- 
 ing and patching are little arts of which every girl 
 should be mistress. A girl may well say she would 
 rather darn her old stockings than run in debt for a 
 new pair. 
 
CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 SOME CLOSING SUGGESTIONS . 
 
 WE have now examined some of the great tools used 
 in the work of the world. We have seen that they are 
 like milestones, marking the progress of the human 
 race. Up to our own times all tools were heavy, 
 clumsy, and inefficient. Now all tools made in our 
 own country are wonderfully light, strong, convenient 
 and effective. Many are even beautiful as well as use- 
 ful. They do the work for which they are designed in 
 the quickest, chea'pest and best w'ay, and any young 
 man or woman may be glad and proud to use them, 
 for they are the best tools in the world. They are 
 constructed upon scientific principles, and are effective 
 because scientifically adapted to their work. More- 
 over, they are marked by a wonderful ingenuity, a 
 more wonderful originality. The Englishman, the 
 German and the Frenchman also make fine tools and 
 splendid machines, yet all three are ever ready to see 
 the last new American tool, and, if it be good, to adapt 
 it at once to their own trades and manufactures. 
 
 We have also seen that all the hand -tools have been 
 slowly merged into machines and that all machines are 
 in reality greater tools. The needle has been trans- 
 
152 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 formed into the sewing-machine, the sickle has become 
 a harvesting-machine, and the plane has grown into 
 the planer. As for the knife, it is in a hundred ma- 
 chines, and the file, the saw, and the gimlet all live in 
 great power-saws, files and borers. Then, too, some 
 hand-tools have disappeared and have been replaced 
 by machines. Not a woman in all the land holds a 
 distaff or whirls a spinning-wheel, because all the work 
 of spinning yarn for weaving is noAV done in the spin- 
 ning-mills. Not a farmer in the land uses a sickle to 
 gather his wheat. Not a single laborer drags up and 
 down the heavy pit-saw used a hundred years ago. 
 Millions of men and women have been released from 
 hard and ill-paid labor, and to-day their labor is per- 
 formed by machines. Now, this might lead us to 
 think that, because so much of the work of the world 
 is performed by machines, therefore, you and I need 
 not use hand-tools at all. 
 
 That would be a strange mistake. The great and 
 wonderful multiplication of machines does not mean 
 that hand tools are not or need not be used. There 
 are more and better hand-tools in the stores to-day 
 than ever before, and no young man or woman can 
 afford to say that he or she has no tools and does not 
 know how to use them. We all use tools of some 
 kind every day in our lives, and the greater our skill 
 in their use the greater our ability to do good work. 
 
 There is that old tool the pen. Up to quite recent 
 times every pen was cut out of a quill plucked from 
 a dead goose. Every man had to have a pocket-knife 
 
SOME CLOSING SUGGESTIONS 153 
 
 or i f pen-knife ' ' to keep his quill pens properly cut. 
 Now the pen is a wonderfully fine piece of steel or 
 gold, and even the steel pen has been improved, and 
 we have the self -inking fountain pen. On the desk is 
 a rubber stamp to save pen labor. It is a printer or 
 printing-tool, and it stands for a grand machine the 
 printing-press. Within the past few years still an- 
 other printing-machine has been invented the type- 
 writer. 
 
 We go to walk and take a wonderful new tool with 
 us, and record the scenes we see with a camera. In 
 the store we see a cash-register counting and recording 
 money. In the bank we see strange machines that 
 will do endless sums in arithmetic and never make a 
 mistake. In the telegraph office we hear the chatter 
 of that marvelous tool the sounder or we listen to 
 the mystic voices that come to our ears through that 
 strange new machine, the telephone. Even as we walk 
 the streets we see the electric car and the automobile, 
 machines full of wonderful possibilities in the future. 
 Everywhere are tools and machines to save labor, to do 
 work and contribute to the comfort and pleasure of all 
 the people. What, then, is our duty ? It is to see, to 
 study, to understand and to use these grand things to 
 the end that the world shall be better for our knowl- 
 edge and our skill with tools. 
 
 We may not, just now, stop to examine every tool 
 and machine, yet with the knowledge already gained 
 we can go on and see and admire still other machines 
 not already mentioned. There are the great motors, 
 
154 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 the self movers, the turbine, the steam-boiler and 
 steam-engine, the traveling engines, the locomotive 
 and the marine engine. Then there are the trans- 
 formers and conveyers of power, the dynamo and the 
 electric motors. There is the great and notable com- 
 pany of the printing-presses and their relatives, the 
 composing-machines. There are the new strange 
 machines for handling materials, the car-loaders and 
 unloaders, the steam-shovels and the wire transport 
 machines and the elevators and conveyers of coal 
 and grain. Then, in shops and factories, we shall 
 see box-making machines* chain-making machines, 
 laundry-machines, stamping and pressing-machines, 
 traveling-cranes and hoisting-machines. Everywhere 
 machines in endless variety, of tremendous power and 
 wonderful ingenuity. Our studies of tools enable us 
 to comprehend, and certainly lead us to admire this 
 vast array of strange, new and wonderful things, that 
 so marvelously contribute to our comfort and safety, 
 that make life to-day so well worth living. 
 
 Within the past few years there has grown up 
 among the people of our country a desire to own and 
 preserve fine examples of the hand-made silverware, 
 furniture, rugs, embroidery, and pottery made by the 
 skillful craftsmen of colonial times. Every old house 
 in New England and Virginia has been searched, and 
 still the demand far exceeds the supply. This has 
 inspired hundreds of young men and women to en 
 deavor to supply this demand for hand-made things 
 by making new rugs, tables, chairs, embroidered table- 
 
SOME CLOSING SUGGESTIONS 155 
 
 linen, baskets, jewelry, silverware, and pottery made 
 from original designs and with hand-tools. Scores of 
 little shops are springing up all over our country, 
 where these young men and women make and sell the 
 products of their own skill in the handicrafts. 
 
 Here we see still another reason why every young 
 man and woman should know how to use hand-tools. 
 Skill in the use of such tools, combined with an artis- 
 tic education, opens the way to new and profitable 
 employments. This revival of the handicrafts teaches 
 even more ; for, while we may not use tools, the knowl- 
 edge of what tools are and how they are used will 
 add greatly to our appreciation and understanding of 
 the beauty and value of these new things made with 
 old tools. 
 
 Lastly, we should, every one of us, be able to own 
 and use a few good hand-tools. In every home there 
 should be some place for tools. A drawer or box will 
 answer, but the best plan is to have some kind of 
 closet or cabinet with doors and a lock. Inside there 
 should be hooks or nails on which the tools may be 
 hung up in a safe place and yet within easy reach. There 
 should also be a shelf or two for the heavy tools like 
 the plane. A few boxes for small things, like loose 
 nails or screws, should also be provided. Now, 
 whether such a tool-closet be large or small, whether 
 it hold few or many tools, it should always contain 
 certain convenient things that are used with all tools. 
 
 The first of these is the level. At the hardware store 
 we may see many levels of different sizes and styles. 
 
156 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 The common carpenter's level, which is a very useful 
 form, consists of a bar of wood containing a glass tube 
 imbedded in the wood, the tube being filled with a 
 liquid. In this liquid we see a shining bubble of air 
 imprisoned in the tube. Placing the level on a table, 
 we observe that the most minute and delicate vertical 
 movement of one end of the level causes the bubble to 
 glide from side to side along the tube. We soon dis- 
 cover that orily when the level is resting on a true 
 plane, with no part higher than any other, that the bub- 
 ble rests quietly at the exact middle of the tube. The 
 level appears to have been known to the ancients, and 
 we see that by its aid all buildings and structures ever 
 built were made true and level. We plane a board on 
 edge and rest the level upon it to prove if our work be 
 true and level. If the place on which the board rests 
 be level (and we can prove that) and the bubble in the 
 level remains in the center when the level rests upon 
 it, then our work is right. So with the making of 
 everything, so even with the hanging of a picture, let 
 us be true, exact and " on the level," and prove all our 
 work with our level. 
 
 Next we should have in our cabinet a small steel 
 square. This is a simple right angle of steel, usually 
 marked as a f ootrule, and we should never do any work 
 of construction, even if it be only a wooden box, with- 
 out testing our work that it be square, right angled 
 and true. There are many styles of squares, from the 
 simple steel " try " square to a combined straight-edge, 
 level, bevel and square. For making drawings and 
 
SOME CLOSING SUGGESTIONS 157 
 
 plans for work we shall also find a T-square very con- 
 venient. We should have also an adjustable try-square 
 for forming angles and bevels. 
 
 Next to the level and square is the plumb. This we 
 should make of wood for our use, buying only the iron 
 plumb-bob at the hardware store. Borrow a plumb of 
 some mason, and use it as a pattern. The level gives 
 us a true horizontal plane. The square proves our 
 work to be true and right angled, and the plumb proves 
 that any structure we may build stands erect, and that 
 its sides are vertical or "on line." The plumb proves 
 whether our work be " out of line" or not, and any- 
 thing "out of line" is false and disagreeable. 
 
 The next essential is a rule of some kind, the most 
 convenient being the common wooden folding rule, 
 marked in inches and fractions. A small rule that fits 
 into the vest pocket will soon prove to be of daily use 
 in all that we may do with tools. With these four 
 the rule, square, level and plumb we can use any tool, 
 and, testing our work as we proceed, know with cer- 
 tainty that it is correct in dimensions, is true, square 
 and level. 
 
 A large part of all modern work is now put together 
 with screws, or is bolted together with nut and bolt. 
 All pipes, steam, gas, and water-fittings are now put 
 together with joints that screw together with couplings 
 or other applications of screws. So we shall find a 
 common screwdriver indispensable, both in putting 
 woodwork together or taking it apart. For nuts and 
 screws in all pipe and metal work, we shall require a 
 
158 TOOLS AND MACHINES 
 
 good wrench, and the best style for our purposes is the 
 wrench having adjustable jaws and called a " monkey- 
 wrench. ' ' For tightening up a leaky gaspipe we need 
 a pipe- wrench, and for all ordinary purposes small 
 burner-pliers with roughened jaws will be sufficient. 
 
 So many things are sold by weight or are measured 
 by weight, that we shall find that some kind of weigh- 
 ing-machine or spring balance will be useful. We can 
 find them at the hardware store in every style and at 
 all prices. A cheap and convenient style is a spring 
 balance, as it is easily carried in the hand and can be 
 hung upon a hook in our cabinet. If we use our saws 
 and wish to do good work, we shall find that a miter- 
 box will be very useful in sawing wood at an angle. 
 It is a simple, narrow box of wood open at the top, 
 and having sawcuts at different angles in the sides of 
 the box. The best plan is to borrow one from the 
 nearest carpenter as a pattern, and with your own 
 tools, to make your own miter-box. 
 
 There should also be a quantity of cut nails, wire 
 nails, barbed nails, tacks and brads. An assortment of 
 screws of different sizes, a few double-pointed tacks, 
 staples, and screw eyes and screw hooks will always be 
 useful. The best plan is to get at first a few tools, 
 say a hammer, two saws, an awl, a gimlet, a chisel and 
 a knife, and then add to the stock as we learn to do 
 more and better work. Lastly, paint a neat sign on 
 the inside of the cabinet: "A Place for Everything 
 and Everything in Its Place" 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abraders, 136, 139, 141. 
 Adz, 86, 88. 
 
 Agricultural Implements, 20. 
 Anvil, 33, 34, 39. 
 
 beak, 33. 
 
 Apparatus, defined, 21. 
 Auger, 127, 128. 
 
 Wiring-, 127. 
 Awl, 30, 125, 126. 
 
 Bone-, 125. 
 Ax, 80, 84, 85. 
 
 Battle-, 88. 
 
 Broad-, 85. 
 
 Fireman's, 86. 
 
 Hand-, 83. 
 
 Iceman's, 86. 
 
 Jedding-, 87. 
 
 Pole-, 88. 
 
 Prehistoric, 81. 
 
 Roofer's, 87. 
 
 Stone-, 87. 
 
 Bat, 31. 
 
 Batting-machine, 44. 
 Beader, Hand-, 78. 
 Beetle, 32. 
 Bell, Fog-, 32. 
 Bezel, 60. 
 Bill-hook, 87. 
 Billiard Cue, 31. 
 Bit, 75. 
 
 Counter-sunk, 131. 
 
 Bit-stock, 128, 129. 
 Blanks, 40. 
 Boiler, 19. 
 Borers, 125. 
 Brace, 128, 129. 
 Braiding, 146. 
 Breakers, Pig-iron, 44. 
 Bush-hook, 87. 
 
 Camera, 153. 
 
 Cavil, 87. 
 
 Chemical action, 18, 19. 
 
 Chisel, 23, 30, 59, 60. 
 
 Boasting-, 70. 
 
 Bolt-, 67. 
 
 Box-, 65. 
 
 Burr-, 69. 
 
 Calking-, 68. 
 
 Center-, 68. 
 
 Diamond-pointed, 66. 
 
 Chasing-, 68. 
 
 Chipping-, 67. 
 
 Cold-, 67. 
 
 Corner-, 66. 
 
 Cross-cut, 68. 
 
 Framing-, 65. 
 
 Hardy, 68. 
 
 Ice-, 69. 
 -Flogging-, 67. 
 
 Marteline-, 70. 
 
 Mortise-lock, 65. 
 
 Paring-, 65. 
 
160 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chisel, Pneumatic, 71. 
 
 Rod-, 68. 
 
 Sash-, 65. 
 
 Splitting-, 67, 68. 
 
 Socket, 65. 
 
 Tang, 65. 
 
 Triangular, 69. 
 Chopper, Meat-, 92. 
 Claw, 30. 
 
 Clamp, 62. 
 Cleaver, 87. 
 Club, 25. 
 
 War-, 25. 
 
 Cold Storage Apparatus, 
 
 House, 22. 
 Concrete, 19. 
 Oosshead, 126. 
 Cutter, Feed-, 89. 
 
 Slaw, 92. 
 
 Tobacco, 88. 
 Cutlery, 59. 
 Cutter-head, 102. 
 
 Dental Instruments, 20. 
 Distaff, 144, 145. 
 Distilling Apparatus, 21. 
 Draw-knife, 55. 
 
 - Prehistoric, 56. 
 Drill, 129, 132. 
 
 Diamond, 134. 
 
 Gang-, 23. 
 -Pneumatic, 131, 135. 
 
 Ratchet, 130. 
 -Bow-, 130, 135. 
 
 - Rock-, 45, 133. 
 Drumstick, 32. 
 Drop-forgings, 40. 
 press, 39, 40. 
 
 Edge-tools, 59, 74. 
 
 21. 
 
 Egg-beater, 21. 
 Electrical Apparatus, 21. 
 Emery-wheel, 139. 
 Experiments, 26, 28, 51, 52, 53, 
 61, 62, 63, 75, 89, 97, 116. 
 
 Faucet, 129. 
 File, 136, 137. 
 -Double-cut, 137. 
 
 Four-square, 137. 
 
 - Knife-, 57. ' 
 -Rasp, 137. 
 
 Flail, 32. 
 Flint, 48. 
 Flintlock, 32. 
 Fire Apparatus, 21. 
 
 Gavel, 32. 
 
 Gimlet, 23, 126, 127. 
 Gimlet-point, 126. 
 Glass, Cut, 140. 
 Golf Instruments, 31. 
 Gouge, 66. 
 Griddle-iron, 19. 
 Grinders, 136. 
 Grinding-machine, 139, 140. 
 Grindstone, 141. 
 Grinding- wheels, 140. 
 Grater, 138. 
 
 Hammer, 11, 24, 26, 34, 35, 
 38. 
 
 Atmospheric, 45. 
 
 - Blacksmith's, 30. 
 
 Bricklayer's, 31. 
 
 Claw-, 26, 29. 
 
 Carpenter's, 26, 29. 
 
 Compound-face, 32. 
 
 Commencing-, 33. 
 
 Chasing-, 31. 
 
INDEX 
 
 161 
 
 Hammer, Creasing-, 31. 
 
 Deadstroke-, 44. 
 -Drop-, 44. 
 
 Finishing-, 33. 
 
 Goldbeater's, 31. 
 face, 26, 33. 
 
 -handle, 26. 
 
 - -head, 26, 33. 
 
 Machine-, 38. 
 
 Magnetized, 33. 
 
 Miner's, 31. 
 
 - Origin of the, 24, 25, 26. 
 
 - Paver's, 36. 
 -Pneumatic, 45, 46, 47. 
 -Power-, 37, 38. 
 -Sledge-, 30. 
 
 Spreading-, 33. 
 
 Steam-, 43, 44. 
 
 Stone, 25. 
 
 Stonemason's, 30. 
 
 Tack-, 30. 
 
 Trip- or Tilt-, 41, 42. 
 
 Types of, 30. 
 Halberd, 57, 88. 
 Hatchet, 82, 83. 
 
 Lather's, 82. 
 
 Shingling-, 82. 
 
 Stone, 80. 
 
 Harvesting-machine, 111. 
 Helve, 57. 
 
 Hoe, 19. 
 Howell, 80. 
 
 Iron, 75. 
 
 Joinery, 64. 
 
 Joint, Dovetail, 64. 
 
 Groove-, 77. 
 Matched, 77. 
 
 Mortise and tenon, 64. 
 
 Joint, Swivel-, 32. 
 Tongue-, 77. 
 Jointer, 79. 
 
 Kettle, 19. 
 Kerf, 115. 
 Knife, 11, 48, 49. 
 
 -Bread-, 53. 
 
 --blade, 48, 54. 
 
 Budding-, 54. 
 -Butcher-, 54. 
 -Butter-, 53. 
 
 Cane-, 54. 
 
 Carving-, 53. 
 
 Chopping-, 54. 
 
 Cheese-, 54. 
 
 - Corn-, 88. 
 
 Cream-, 57. 
 -Draw-, 55. 
 -Fish-, 53. 
 
 Forging a, 58. 
 -Fruit-, 53, 
 
 Grafting-, 54. 
 
 Grass-, 55. 
 
 Half-moon, 56. 
 
 Hay-, 55. 
 
 -handle, 4, 57. 
 
 Hedge-, 88. 
 
 History of the, 49. 
 
 Oyster-, 54. 
 -Pen-, 153. 
 -Pivoted, 88, 89. 
 
 - Pocket-, 49, 50. 
 
 Prehistoric, 49. 
 
 Pruning-, 54. 
 -Race-, 56. 
 
 rest, 57. 
 
 Stone, 48. 
 
 Table-, 53. 
 
162 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Knitter, 149. 
 Knitting, 146. 
 
 Lathe, described, 23, 96. 
 -Metal-, 96, 106. 
 
 Power-, 99. 
 
 Wood-, 96, 97. 
 Launch, 11. 
 Level, 155. 
 Loom, 147. 
 
 Jacquard, 148. 
 
 Machine, defined, 21, 22, 154. 
 
 Box-making, 154. 
 
 Box-nailing, 45. 
 
 Carpet-beating, 44. 
 
 Chain-making, 154. 
 
 Composing-, 154. 
 
 Hoisting-, 154. 
 
 Ice-, 22. 
 
 Laundry, 154. 
 
 Milling-, 107. 
 
 Mowing-, 107. 
 
 Pegging-, 45. 
 
 Pressing-, 154. 
 
 Scutching-, 44. 
 
 Sewing-, 11, 149. 
 
 Slotting-, 109. 
 
 Spinning-, 146. 
 
 shop, 106. 
 
 Mallet, 31. 
 
 Croquet-, 31. 
 Marking-iron, 68. 
 Matched boards, 77. 
 Maul, 32. 
 Mechanical action, 18. 
 
 mixture, 18. 
 Morikey, 37. 
 Mortise, 63. 
 Motors, 154. 
 
 Mower, Lawn-, 111. 
 Musical instruments, 20. 
 
 Nail, 26, 27.- 
 
 Driving " home "' 
 head, 27. 
 
 -set, 29. 
 
 -puller, 30. 
 Nailer, 45. 
 Needle, 11, 146. 
 
 Crochet-, 14. 
 
 Darning-, 149. 
 
 Oar, 11. 
 Obsidian, 48. 
 Organ, 20. 
 Over-shave, 80. 
 
 Pan, 19. 
 -Frying-, 19. 
 Parer, Apple, 92. 
 Peen, 30. 
 Pencil, 13. 
 Pianola, 32. 
 Pick, 30, 88. 
 
 Mattock, 88 
 Pile, 37. 
 
 Pile-driver, 37, 38, 
 Plane, 74, 75. 
 
 Astregal, 77. 
 - Edge-, 76. 
 
 Panel, 76. 
 
 Fluting-, 77. 
 
 Long, 76. 
 
 Fore-, 76. 
 
 Hand-rail, 77. 
 
 Fillet, 77. 
 
 Grooving-, 77. 
 handle, 75. 
 
 Iron-, 75. 
 
 a, 29, 
 
INDEX 
 
 163 
 
 Plane, Ice-, 80. 
 
 Jack-, 76. 
 
 Marking-, 78. 
 
 Quarter-round, 77. 
 - Ogee, 77, 78. 
 -Sash-, 76. 
 
 Scraping-, 78. 
 
 Scratching-, 78. 
 -Side-, 77, 78. 
 
 Smoothing-, 76. 
 
 Snow -ice, 80. 
 
 Ovolo, 77. 
 -Rabbet-, 78. 
 
 stock, 74. 
 
 Tonguing-, 77. 
 -Try-, 76. 
 -Universal, 78, 79. 
 
 Planer, Metal, 107. 
 
 Iron-, 108. 
 -Wood-, 101. ' 
 
 Pen, 153. 
 
 Plaiting, 146. 
 
 Pliers, 157. 
 
 Plow, 78. 
 
 Plumb, 156. 
 
 Polishers, 139, 142. 
 
 Pot, 19. 
 
 Potter's Wheel, 94, 95. 
 
 Power, Water-, 42. 
 
 Steam-, 43. 
 
 -tool, 39. 
 -Horse-, 38. 
 Punch, 130, 131. 
 
 Press, Printing-, 23, 153, 154. 
 -Drop-, 39, 40. 
 
 Rammer, 31. 
 -Post-, 31. 
 Ramrod, 31. 
 Rasp, 137, 138. 
 
 Razor, 56. 
 
 Reamer, 131. 
 
 Reaper, 113. 
 
 Refrigerator, 21. 
 
 Refrigerating Apparatus, 22. 
 
 Rivet, 125. 
 
 Rolling-mill, 23. 
 
 Rolling-pin, 23. 
 
 Router, 103. 
 
 Rule, Foot, 60, 156. 
 
 Runcina, 74. 
 
 Safe/ 137. 
 Sandblast, 140. 
 Sandpaper, 139. 
 Saw, 11, 23, 114, 115. 
 
 Band-, 123. 
 
 Circular, 122. 
 
 Cross-cut, 117. 
 
 Compass, 119. 
 -Fret-, 123. 
 
 Gang-, 122. 
 -Hack-, 119, 120. 
 
 Ice-, 120. 
 -Jig-, 123. 
 -Keyhole-, 119. 
 
 -pit, 119. 
 -Rip-, 117. 
 
 Stone-, 141. 
 
 Swinging-, 122. 
 -Wood-, 119. 
 - -frame, 119. 
 --mill, 23, 120, 121. 
 
 -set, 115. 
 Sawing-table, 122. 
 Screw, 127. 
 Scissors, 89, 90, 91. 
 
 Manicure, 90. 
 Scythe, 56, 57. 
 Shave, 55. 
 
164 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Shave, Spoke-, 56, 74. 
 Shaper, 102, 103. 
 
 Metal-, 109. 
 Shears, 89, 91. 
 
 Bench-, 92. 
 
 Hydraulic, 93. 
 
 Jeweler's, 93. 
 
 Pruning-, 91. 
 
 Sheep-shearing, 90, 91. 
 
 Tinsmith's, 91. 
 Shearing-cut, 89, 92. 
 Shovel, 30. 
 
 Sickle, 55, 110. 
 Skillet, 19. 
 Slicer, 92. 
 Snips, 92. 
 Snuffers, 91. 
 Sounder, 153. 
 Souple, 32. 
 Spinning, 145. 
 -wheel-, 145. 
 Spoon, 19. 
 Square, 156. 
 Stamp, Rubber, 153. 
 
 -mill, 41. 
 Stamps, 41. 
 
 -Battery of, 41. 
 Stone-dressing, 69. 
 Stones, Sharpening, 141. 
 Surgical Instruments, 20. 
 
 Sword, 57. 
 
 Tackle, Fishing, 22. 
 
 -Hoisting, 22. 
 Tang, 65. 
 Tenon, 64. 
 Threading, 144. 
 Toat, 75. 
 Tomahawk, 81. 
 Tongs, 37. 
 Tongue, 64. 
 
 - Bell-, 32. 
 Tools, 11, 17, 22, 151, 152. 
 
 Origin of, 12. 
 -Woodcutting, 92. 
 
 Wrecking-, 86. 
 Tool, of percussion, 27. 
 Tool-rest, 97. 
 Typewriter, 153. 
 
 Utensils, 19. 
 Vise, 61, 62. 
 
 Weaving, 144, 146. 
 Wedge, 30. 
 
 Whirling-table, 94, 95. 
 Whisk, 80. 
 Woodcraft, 85. 
 Wrench, Monkey, 157. 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 RENEWALS ONLY TEL. NO. 642-3405 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 -' BECDLD 
 
 an -DAM 
 
 _ APK 1 3 2002 
 
 -J 
 
 LD21A-60m-3,'70 
 
 (N5382slO)476-A-32 
 
 General Library 
 University of California 
 

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY