The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1871-06-08

to attend we are not informed whether
it is to be next fourth of July or next
Christmas Who will tell US?
S-W-at
The Journal Of Education for June is
at hand, and as good as ever.
MAKING NAILS. Don't you think it
must be a curious pair of jaws that can
bite off chunk Of cold iron as easily as
you can bite stick of candy?
You can hardly believeit. Wait till l
tell you
One Of the most interesting places I
ever visited was 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. I wanted
to stuff my ears with cotton: but l
thought that would not be very civil to
my guide, and after little [ got used to
| it, and soon found myself so interested
that [ really forgot the noise
Some machines nip off the tacks so fast
that stream of finished tacks runs down
tube into reservoirs thousands 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 must tell you how they do it.
First the iron bar, as it comes from the
iron works, is put between immense
rollers, which fattens it out as nicely as
a cook can roll out pie-crust with a roll
/ ing-pin. The bar of iron is thus made
into sheet, just thick enough for the
nails they want to make. It goes next
to the Sitting machine, which makes no
more fuss about Sitting it into proper
widths for nails than our scissors make
about cutting paper.
It is cut little longer than the nail is
to be, because the head is to be made.
When the strips of iron are all ready,
a man takes one, slips the edge into the
steel jaws told you Of
These jaws are worked by steam pow
er and instantly they bite off nail, while
a furious little hammer springs out sud
denly and with one blow on the end
fattens it, and thus makes head
If you want tn know what blow that
must be, take a piece of iron and try to
I pound a head on it yourself
The instant the head is made the laws
open and the nail drops out finished Of
course it is done much quicker than I
have been telling you, for machine can
make brads (Which l 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 |
hope they won't, but mnst admit it is
hard to believe that story.
After the tacks come out of the machine
they are blue" as it is called It is
done by heating them in an oven or an
iron plate
They then go into the packing-room
where one girl can weigh and put into
papers two thousand papers of tacks in a
day
That's another stough story, but my
guide assured me it was true.
How many kind of nails can YOU name?
You will probably be surprised to hear
that two hundred kinds of nails are made
in one MISUNDERSTANDING with spikes
which weigh nearly a half pound each,
and ending with the tiniest kind of ia cks
not a quarter of an inch long.
Men didn't always have machines to
make nails for them; and of course thew
had to make them by hand. That was
no easy matter; and, in fact, they couldn't
make them out 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 GRAND
fathers did.
Every man has little forge-such as
you have seen in blacksmith shon if
you live in village-and an anvil
Every child is put to work to make nails
at eight or nine years of age; because
they earn so little that eyerv one IF .
family must help earn their bread. OF
course those children have no fine to
learn to read, and many grown women
cen neither read nor write.
This is the way they make the nail /:
They buy iron rods just the right size for
the nails they make; for one family
always make the same size of nail. They
take one of these rods, heat it red hot at
the forge, lay it on the anvil, and cut off
the length OF nail; then, laying away
the rest OF the rod, they take the piece
they have cut of, pound it out to a point
at the end, and pound on a head at the
other A very slow operation, Won gee
when you think of how the machines
snap off cold iron. A whole family can
scarce ever earn more than five dollars
week at the work, and part of that has
to go for the coal they use.
! One of the nail factories in our country
that have read about, uses one hundred
and fifty tons OF iron in week, all of
which is bitten up into nails.