The daily Gate City and constitution-Democrat. (Keokuk, Iowa) 1916-1922, 1917-10-20

dture of hundreds Of thousands of dollars and
some additional years OF work for the new
Keokuk.
Of course it was necessary that the iron in
dustry here be entirely adequate for the needs
of not only the present but the future; and
they have accomplished this too, for their iron
works is hundred plus in equipment, facill-
ties and skill
The Delicate Processes in Foundry.
The visitor sees in it two main elements: the
foundry and the machine shop.
The foundry, pouring melted iron into
molds, seems to the uninitiated to be a very
simple thing, easily learned. In fact, it is as
complex as dyeing silk, or brewing beer The
astonishing thing in foundry is not the arts
tic forming of the sand molds but the exact
ness which must be maintained in chemical
composition of the metal, in the temperatures
used, and in the most minute details Of every
stage of the work. There are huge travelling
cranes and ovens in which the black sand cores
but there it is chiefly science that wins.
So complex and difficult is the work of
foundry that most Of the makers of machinery
and metal goods have their castings made by
specialists in outside foundries instead OF IN
stalling foundres of their own-they have
learned by bitter experience that foundry is
not natural component OF machinery manu-
featuring but that it is a separate delicate
industry in itself-that it is always cheaper
and better to let the foundry do it because only
the skilled 1OunQfyTndn WITH Spccldl IdClllCleo
can do it right. And by the same token, the
operations in a real modern foundry are too
scientific to make popular reading.
Splitting Hairs Seems Trivial.
The visitor can understand more of the
operations in the machine shOp-but he needs
to be told the remarkable process there insur-
ing exactness beyond any peradventure
There in that machine shop is piece OF
steel, shaped like piece Of dough made into
a German Christmas cake as big as half
bushel of potatoes, revolving evenly in the top
Of big machine; close inspection shows a sort
of chisel blowing out a little groove, thin
groove must be placed and dimensioned within
the thousandth part Of an inch.
One constantly hears there talk about thou
sandth of an inch, and few can sense what
that means-a thousandth of an inch is about
the one-fortieth Of the period which ends this
sentence. The one three-thousandth Of an
inch, sometimes required in that Pechstein
Iron Works machine shop is the One-hundredth
of the width Of this period.
Machines That Seem to Have Brains.
There are lathes turning steel like pine
wood; drill presses boring holes ana the IKE
with astonishing rapidty; a punch weighing
many tons cutting out metal forms as easily
as mother cuts biscuits out of dough; there are
shears that trim off plates of hard steel half
inch thick as easily as one cuts this newspaper;
there are rollers to curve big plates like rolls
of paper and bevel presses to bend them into
any sort of shape with entire accuracy; there
is a trip hammer that f1attens mass Of metal
like hitting an unbaked loaf of bread with a
plank and also may come down to break the
crystal on a watch without injuring the works
or case; there are planers that smoothe OFT the
surfaces Of great masses OF metal like the