Eaton weekly Democrat. [volume] (Eaton, Ohio) 1866-1875, 1871-06-29
BITING OFF NAILS.

"
A correspondent of the Independent
Don't you think it must be a curious
pair of jaws that can bite off a chunk of
cold iron as easily as you can bite a stick
of candy.
You can hardly believe it? Wait till
l tell you.
One of the most interesting places l
ever visited was a room filled with these
monsters with the sharp steel jaws called
nail machines.
In the first place the noise made by
several of these machines in one room is
something absolutely fearful. 1 wanted
to stuff my ears with cotton but 1 thought
that would not be very civil to my guide,
and after a little 1 got used to it, and soon
found myself so much interested that l
really forgot the noise.
Some machines nip off the tacks so
fast that a stream of finished tacks runs
down a tin tube into a reservoir-thou.
sands in a minute.
Listen to the ticking of the clock, and
reflect that every time it ticks at least
twenty tacks are snapped off.
But l must tell o how they do it.
First, hei iron bar, as it comes from the
iron works, is put between immense roll
ers. which fiatten it out as nicely as a
cook can roll out pie crust with a rolling
pin. The bar of iron is thus made into a
sheet, just thick enough for the nails they
| want to make. 1t goes next to the slit
ting machine, which makes no more fuss
about Sitting it into the proper widths
for nails than your scissors make about
cutting paper.
1t is cut a little longer thar the nail
is to be, because the heads are to be
mad
When the strips of iron are all ready.
a man takes one, slips the &c gre into the
steel jaws 1 told you of.
| These jaws are worked by steam pow
er, Inc instantly they bite off a nail ;
| while q furious little hammer springs out
| suddenly, and with one blow on the end
of the bit of iron flattens it, and thus
makes a head.
If you want to know what a blow that
must be, take a piece of iron and try to
pound a head on it yourself.
The instant the head is made, the jaws
open, and the nail drops out finished.
Of course, it's done much quicker than l
make brads (Which 1 needn't tell the boys
are small nails without heads) at the rate
of three thousand a minute.
1t is said that "figures won't lie," and
1 hope they won't, but 1 must admit it is
hard to believe that story.
After the tacks come out of the ma
chine they are "blued," as it is called. II
i Ii uODO ny ACbUlIlS IllChl IL OH ONSh u Oi
an iron plate.
Then they go to the packing room,
where one girl can weigh and put into
papers two thousand papers of lacks in a
day.
That's another tough story; but my
guide assured me it was true.
How many kinds OF nails IA you
name? You will probably be surprised
to hear that two hundred kinds of nails
are made in one factory-beginning with
spikes which weigh nearly half a pound
each, and ending with the tiniest kinds
of tacks not a quarter of an inch long.
Men didn't always have machines to
make nails for them; n of course, they
had to make them by hand. That was nc
easy matter; and, in fact, they couldn't
make them of cold iron, but had to heat
every one.
In some parts of England they are very
slow to get machinery; and the ignorant
people, thinking their trade is to be
spoiled, will break up and destroy any
machinery that is brought there. So they
work at nail making, as their grandfa-
theirs did.
Every man has a little forge-such as
you have seen in a blacksmith's shop, i
you live in a village-and a small anvil
Every child is put to work to make nails
at eight or nine years of age because
they earn so little that every one of {
family must help to earn their bread. y
course, those children have no time tx
learn to read, and many grown people
can neither read nor write.
This is the way they make the nails
They buy iron rods just the right size fol
the nails they make; for one family al
ways make the same size of nail. They
take one of these rods, heat it red hot a
the forge, lay it on the anvil, and cut of
the length of a nail; then, laying away
the rest of the rod, they a the piece
they have cut off, pound it out at a poin
! at one end, and pound on a head at thu
other. A very slow operation, you see
when you think of how the machine
snap them off cold. A whole family
scarcely ever earn more than five dollar
a week at the work, and part of that ha
to &C for the coal they use.
i One of the nail factories in u coun
try, that 1 have read about, uses On
hundred and fifty tons of iron in aweek
all of which is bitten up into nails.