The mirror., 1922-02-23
HOW HANDLES ARE MADE
By Mr.. W. B. W.

made; the kind of wood that is used and
the process in bringing it into its final
state of finish. Most handles are made
from hickory and ash. The shell-bark
hickory tree furnishes the best wood. First,
because of its hardness; second, because of
its close grain; third, on account of its
toughness. Let us take the ak handle for
our subject, because of its shape and its
common use.
We go to the hardware store to pur-
chase an ak handle. Taking hold of the
handle we feel of its smoothness and no.
tice its shape and if we are not an expert
in the knowledge of woods we naturally
ask these questions: First, what kind of
wood is this? Second, where is it nader
Then we might even ask how are ak han
dies made?
Now we come to the subject of this
short article. AK handles are made of
hickory. There are many handle factories
in the U. S., two of which, located in
Nashville, Tenn, I am familiar with;
Turner, Day and Woolworth Co., and the
Ruther and Scantlon Co. The handle
factory has its timber agent who purchases
the lease on the timber for certain period
of time to cut and haul away all hickory
trees that are forty-fve inches around at
eighteen inches above the ground. The
agent sends the woodsman with his cutters
to the timber, the woodsman blazes all
trees that meet the conditions. The condi-
tions are that the tree is straight, solid
and has no knots or blemishes The cut
tiers saw the trees down and into logs
three feet and four inches long (the fin
ished handle has to be three feet long).
These logs are hauled to the factory by
rail, by boat and sometimes by truck. The
logs are piled just outside of a gangway,
leading to the sawyer's table.
The sawyer's table is large frame
three feet wide and twelve feet long,
covered with small rollers so that the log
slides easily. The sawyer takes the log
and turns it over till he sees the best way
to get the largest number of handle pieces
out of it.. Now he slides his log onto the
running board and guides it into the saw
which cuts it into pieces one and one-half
inches thick by four inches wide at one
end, called the eye end, while it is three
inches square at the other end, called the
butt end. These pieces are stocked on
small fiat cars and run into the kiln. The
kiln is large one-story brick house,
steam heated, and has several rooms or
tunnels. These tunnels are the length of
the house with doors at each end. The
pieces are kept in the kiln for twelve days
at a temperature of 1870 degrees and are
thoroughly cured. Then they are removed
to the open shed which is about twenty
five or thirty feet high and covers several
acres of ground, and stacked to the roof
in square stacks, the length of the handle.
The pieces are cool and dry in couple
of days and then are ready for the factory.
The marker has pattern of the ak
handle, the shape of the handle desired,
made of a thin piece of board. He lays
this on the pieces and draws his pencil
around the pattern, but if the piece is too
narrow, warped, or split, it is discarded,
while the good pieces are carried to the
turning machine (lathe). The machine
is like any lathe used in machine shop,
but used for wood-turning only and run at
much higher speed. 1t can turn out
from FIVE hundred to one thousand han
dies an eight hour day.
These pieces are put in the machine by
putting one end against sharp wo-pointed
steel shaft and one-pointed steel shaft
is screwed into the other end. On one end
of this machine is the pattern handle,
exact shape, but four times the exact size,