The weekly Oskaloosa herald. [volume] (Oskaloosa, Iowa) 1855-1885, 1874-06-18
A Curious Pair of Jaws,

hoht you tHluk III must De curious
pair of jaws that can bite off a chunk
OF iron as easily as you can bite off
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 fear.
ful. l wanted to stuff my ears with
cotton; but l thought that would
net be very civil to my guide, and
after a little l got used to it, and
soon found myself 50 much interest.
ed that l soon forgot the noise.-
Some machines nip off the tacks 80
fast that a stream of finished tarks
runs down tin tube into a reservoir
thousands in minute. Eisten to
the ticking of the clock, and reflect
that every time it ticks at least 20
tacks are snapped of.
But must tell you how they do
1t. First, theiron bar, as it comes
from the iron works, is put between
immense rollers, which fatten it out
as nicely as the cook can roll out pie
crust with a rolling pin. The bar of
iron is thus made into sheet. lust
thick enough for the nails they want
to make. 1t goes next to the Sitting
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
little longer than the nail is to be,
because the heads are to be made.
When the strips of iron are all
ready, a man takes one, and slips the
end into the steel jaws told you of.
These Jaws ere worked by steam
power, and instantly they bite off a
nail, while furious little hammer
springs out suddenly, and with one
blow on the end of the bit of iron
tiattens it, and thus makes head
If you want to know what a blow
that must be, take piece of iron
and try to pound a head on it your
self.
The.instant the head is made, the
jaws open and the nail drC ps out fin
ished. Of course it is done much
quicker than / have been telling you,
for machine can make brads
(Which need MT tell the boys are
small nails without heads) at the rate
of three thousand a minute. 1t is
said that "fgures wont lie," and 1
hope they wont; but l must admit
tits hard to believe that story.
After the tacks come out of the
machine, they are "blued," as it is
called, tits done by heating them
in an oven or on an iron plate. Then
they go to the packing room, where
one girl can weigh and put into pa
pers, two thousand papers of tacks
in day. That's another tough sto.
ry, but my guide assured me that
was the truth.
How many kinds of nails can YOU
name? You will probably be sur.
prised to hear that two hundred
kinds OF nails are made in one facto.
ry, beginning with spikes which
weigh nearly half pound each, and
ending with the tiniest kind of tacks,
not a quarter of an inch long.
Men did MT always have machines
to make nails for them, and of course
they had to make them by hand
That was no easy matter, and, in
fact, they could p't make them of
cold iron, but had to heat every one.
In some parts of Eng'nd 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 taken
these. So they work at nail-making
as their grandtathers did. Every
man has little torge-such as you
have seen in blacksmith's shop if
you live in a village-and small an
vii. 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 earn
his bread. OF course these children
have no time to learn to read, and
many grown men and women can
neither read nor write. This is the
way they make the nails: They buy
iron rods just the size for the nails
they make-for one family always
makes 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, and
after pounding it to point at one
end, pound a head at the other. A
very slow operation, you see, when
you think of how the machines snap
them off cold. A whole family hard
ly ever earns over FIVE dollars week
at the work, and part of that has to
go for the coal it uses.
One of the nail factories in our
country that l have read about uses
one hundred and fifty tons of iron in
a week, all of which is bitten up in
to nails.-Harpe,'s Basar.