The Benson signal., 1920-03-13

been imported from other
countries, notably Ger
many. In the majority Of
cases these home-manufactured prod
ucts were just as good as the imported
products had been, while in not few
instances they excelled them by a wide
margin in point of merit and the
cheapness and speed with which they
could be turned out. One of the lat
est illustrations of what American en-
terprise and ingenuity can accomplish
has just come to light in the announce
ment that Chicago lapidary has per-
fected a method of manufacturing
agate guides for fishing rods which
are not only far superior to those
which formerly came from Germany
that being practically the only coun-
try to make them before the war, but
which can be turned out in fraction
of the time required by the German
methods.
Fishing rod guides made of agate
have long been considered by expert
fishermen to be the best for the pur-
pose; they give fine appearance to
the rod. are practically indestructible,
and permit of such smooth finish that
the wear on the line is reduced to a
minimum. The Germans were the
first to discover these merits of the
agate guides and soon had a virtual
monopoly of the trade throughout the
world Once having established this,
and after creating the belief that good
agate guides could not be made in any
other country. they grew less partic-
ular about the quality of the goods
they turned out. AS matter of fact,
during the last decade they were un-
able to keep pace with the demand
in this and other countries where fish
ing is much in vogue, because of the
very sowness of the methods they
employed.
The guides were all made up in the
mountain country of Germany, where
it was really family proposition,
whole family drilling and grinding
guides during the winter months by
the crudest hand methods and then
in the spring selling their winters out
put to the commercial buyers. through
whom it finally reached America.
Uniformity of size and style, and uni
formity of finish and degree of ac-
curacy could not be maintained by so
many different hands of more or less
experience. especially under pressure
of a large demand, and the result was
that much inferior work began to be
foisted upon the American market,
To hide the inferiOrity of their work
,manship and the many blemishes in
their guides, the German makers
dyed them a deep dark red color by
boiling them in an iron solution. This
practice also enabled them to slip
through many imitation agate guides.
which were made of nothing but hard
glass, and this was the more easily
done because buyers had been led to
believe that genuine agate guides
should be red in color.
This was the situation when a Chi
cagO lapidary of many years expert
ence, whose father and grandfather
had been lapidaries before him in
Amsterdam and familiar with the Ger
man methods of making guides, turned
his attention to their manufacture on
q modern scientific basis. The result
of his efforts was the development of
remarkable cutting drill by means
of which he is enabled to turn out
large quantities of mechanically per-
feet guides in a comparatively short
time, each guide being left the natural
color of the raw agate.
This drill not only works with alb
solute precision, but will bore hole
of any desired size through one
fourth inch slab of agate in from
fifteen to twenty minutes. AS against
this. it took the German guide MAX
ers from fifteen to twenty hours to
bore a similar hole through piece
of genuine agate, using for this pur-
pose a so-called "boW" drill. This
drill was operated entirely by hand
and consisted of a stout piece Of wood
bent into the shape of bow by means
of a leather thong, which in turn, was
wound several times around wooden
spool four or five inches in length and
half an inch in diameter.
In the lower part of the spool was