Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-12-22
THE DISAPPEARING PIN
A Small Thing, but Ingenuity is Required
in Its Manufacture.
The Vast Number of Pins That Are
Made Each Year-SOme Inter-
estinx Details.

From the Chicago Record.
In State street store window recently
was hollow glass globe filled with pins.
The placard beneath read: Where Do All
of the Pins Go? Here's a Pound of Themo
How Many in the Globe?"
Then followed an announcement that the
lucky guesser would receive a necktie. The
guesses ranged all the way from 500 to
100000.
One afternoon well-dressed young
Yankee walked into the store and said:
Are all of the pins in the globe of the
same size?" He was told that they were.
At once he said: There are 1880 pins in
the globe" and he walked out with bright
red four-in-hand cleaning on his shirt
front.
He was pinmaker and had worked in a
factory where fifty machines made 5000
every minute, or nearly 5,0OO0O0 day. By
working 300 days in a year that factory
could turn out 1,500,0O0Oo0 pins, about
twenty-one for every man, woman and child
in the United States
People wonder how ii is that pins can be
sold so cheap. The reason is found in the
fact that machines do the work and turn
them out too rapidly for them TO 10
counted
Pins are made of an alloy of copper and
zinc-two parts of the first to one part Of
the second The metal is first cast i'm ingots
in an iron mold about six feet long, three
are rolled into sheets about one-eighth Of
an inch thick. The pressure of the rolls
makes the metal infiexible and somewhat
brittle, and the bars are annealed or soft
ened by heat and slow cooling several
times while being reduced from irgots to
sheets. When the sheets have reached the
required thinness they are passed through
Sitting rolls, which slice up the sheets into
rods one-eighth of an inch square, and
these rods are drawn into wire. One erd
of the rod is pointed so that 1t will pass
through a round hole in the steel draw
plate. A pair of powerful nippers grasps
the pointed end of the rod, and as the nip
pers are on a revolving reel, the rod 10
drawn through the hole and comes out on
the other side round WIRE smaller in dia-
meter than the square rod was. The reel
of wire is annealed, and then drawn through
another and smaller hole, and this process
is continued. the wire being annealed each
time, until the size required for the pin is
reached.
The metal, though somewhat stiff, is too
soft to spring out straight, and as the draw
ing reels are of a smaller diameter, the
wire is kinky and set" and must be
Strengthened before II is ready for the PIN
making machine. The kinks are taken out
of the wire by pulling ii through a series
of small Strengthening rolls with horizontal
and vertical rolls alternating in the series.
The wire is then wound on large reel
which is hung over the wonderful pin
making machine.
Black and safety Pins.
In this machine the pin is cut from the
WIRE headed, pointed, sharpened and poll
ished. 1t is a complicated, interesting com-
bination of steel fingers, rollers cams, toy
gle joints, headers, revolving files and BELTS
The wire, caught by pair of rollers, ID
drawn forward into the machine, and quick
as a fash the wire is cut just the right
length; then come two raps from cam and
toggle and the head is on the pin. A steel
finger puts the headed blank on a wheel
under the heading dies and the pointless
pin is carried down between two revolving
steel disks. One of them revolves faster
than the other, SO that the pin Is turned
around as IL travels forward. Just at this
point it comes in contact with four revolv-
ing files, which point the pin, and then an
emery belt puts the first polish on tho
household necessity. The pins drop from
the machine at the rate of 160 a minute
and faster, and fall into a hopper, from
which they are taken to the tinning-room.
In passing through the pin-making ma
chine the pins become covered with oil and
dirt, and this is removed by putting them
into a revolving iron barrel with sawdust.
where they are tumbled about for ten min
utes and thoroughly secured. They are
then ready to be timed. For four hours
they are boiled In a preparation of pure tin,
and are then washed with strong soapsuds
to give them a smooth surface. After
another tumbling in the sawdust they are
ready to be stuck into the papers.
The sticking machine is another ingen-
lOuS piece or mechanism, Tor IL crlmpS tho
paper and sticks in the pins at the same
time.
Black or mourning pins are made from
iron wire and japanned. The old form OF
pin was made in two parts. The head was
made of two turns Of twisted fine wire
which was pressed upon the shank under q
die. A length Of the fine wire was wound
spirally upon a steel rod which was just
the size of the pin shank. This long spiral
was then cut up into sections for the head,
each section taking two turns of the wire.
After the heads had been softened by an
healing they were dumped in a heap be-
fore a boy, who. taking a number Of pin
shanks in his fingers, plunged them int
the heaped up heads. Such of the shauks
which caught heads were handed to q
workman who put them into q die and the
head and shank were pressed tightly to-
gether under a dropped weight.
Since small safety pins were introduced
their use has grown enormously and they
are taking the place of ordinary pins for
many purposes. They are made by ma.
chinery which cuts the spring steel wire to
the proper length, twists the pins and spiral
spring. bends the guard and completes thu