The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1874-04-17
A Curious Pair of Jaws.

y
pair of jaws that can bite off "a chunk
of cold IRON as easily as you can bite
stick of candy?
You can hardly believe it? Wait till
L tell you.
One of the most interesting places
ever visited was q room filled with these
monsters with the sharp steel jaws,
called nail machines. In the first place,
the noise made by several of these ma
chimes in one room is something abso-
lutely fearful. L 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 1t, and soon
found myself so much interested that L
really forgot the noise. Some machines
nip off the tacks so fast that stream
of finished tacks run down tin tube
into reservoir-thousands in 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 tiatten it out as nicely as
n cook can roll out pie-crust with roll
ing-pin. The bar of iron is thus made
into sheet, just 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 scis-
sors 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,
man takes one and slips the end into
the steel jaws L told you of These
jaws are worked by steam power, and
instantly they bite off nail, while a
furious little hammer springs out sud-
denly, and with one blow on the end of
the bit of iron fiattens it, and thus
makes a head. If you want to know
what blow that must be, take 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 fin
ished. OF course it is done much
quicker than L 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 thou
sand a minute. 1t is said that " figures
won't lie, and 1 hope they won't, but j
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.
1t is done by heating them in an oven
or on an iron plate. Then they go to
the packing-room, where one girl car
weigh and put into papers two thousand
papers Of tack in day. That's another
tough story, but my guide assured mt
it was true.
How many kinds of nails can 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 pound
each, and ending with the tiniest kind
of tacks, not a quarter of an inch long
Men didn't always have machines tC
make nails for them, and of course they
had to make them by hand. That was
no such 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, ana the ignorant people
thinking their trade is to be spoiled
will break up and destroy any machinery
that is brought there. SO they work a
nail making as their grandfathers did
Every man has little forge-such a:
you have seen in blacksmith shop il
you live in a village-and small anvil
Every child is put to work to make
nails ut eight or nine years of age, be
cause 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 mel
and women can neither read nor write.
This is the way they make the nails
They buy iron rods just the right siz'
for the nails they make-for one famil,
always makes the same size of nail
They take one of these rods, heat i
red hot at the forge, lay it on the anvil
and cut off the length of nail I; then
laying away the rest of the rod, the.
take the piece they have cut off, poun(
it out to point at one end, and pound
on head at the other. A very SLOW
operation, you see, when you think o
how the machines snap them off cold
A whole family scarcely ever earns NOR
than five dollars week at the work
and part OF that has to go for the coal
uses.
One of the nail factories in our coun
try that / have read about uses on
hundred and fifty,tons of iron in n week
all ofs which is bitten up into nails