The Portland daily press., 1895-01-05

The Vast Number of Pins tllal are Made
In State street store window recently
was a hollow glass globe filed with pins.
The placard beneath read: Where Do
All of the Pins Go? Here's a Pound OF
Them. How Many in the Globe?"
Then followed an announcement that
the lucky guesser would receive a neck
tie. The guesses ranged all the way
from 500 to 100000.
One afternoon a we'll dressed young
Yankee walked into the store and said
''Are all the pins in the globe of the
same size?" He was told that they were.
At once he said: "There are 1900 pins
in the GLOBE" and he walked out with
a bright red four-i -in-hand cleaning on
his shirt front.
He was pinmaker and had worked
in factory where fifty machines made
5000 every minute, or pearly 500, ,000,0 00C
day. By working 300 days in the
year that factory could turn out 1,500,-
| 600, 0,0cO pins, or about twenty-one for
every man, woman and child in the
United States.
People wonder how it 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 be counted.
Pins are made of an alloy of copper
and Zlnc-two parts of the first to one
part of the second. The metal is first
cast in ingots in an iron mold about
six feet long, in three inches wide and
half as thick. These bars are rollet into
sheets about one-eig hth of an inch thick.
The pressure OF the rolls makes the
metal -infexible and somewhat brittle,
and the bars are annealed or softened
by heat and slow cooling several times
while being reduced from ingots to
sheets When the sheets have reached
the required thinness they are passed
through Sitting rolls, which slice up
the sheets into rods One-elghth of an
inch square, and these rods are drawn
into wire One end of the rod is point.
ed so that it will pass through round
hole in the steel draw plate. pair of
powerful nippers grasps the pointed end
of the rod, aud as the nippers are on a
revolving reel, the rod is drawn through
the hole and comes out on the other side
round wire, smaller in diameter than
the so uaI6 rOQ was. Iue foel OIL WIS is
anuealed, and then drawn through an
other 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
drawing reels are of smaller diameter,
the wire is kinky and "seJ" and must be
Strengthened befor it is ready for the pin
making machine. The kinks are taken
out of the wire by pulling it 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.
In this machine the pin is cut from the
wire, headed, pointed, sharpened and
polished. 1t is a complicated, interest
ing com bination of steel fingers, rollers.
cams, toggle joints. headers, revolving
ils and belts. The wire, caught by a
pair OF rollers is, drawn forward into the
machine, and quick as flash the wire
is cut just the right length; then come
two raps from a 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. Que of them revolves faster
than the other, so that the pin is turned
around as it travels forward. just at
this point it comes in contact with four
revolving flies, which point the pin, and