AN IMPROVEMENT IN THE FORM OF BOLTS AND. NAILS FOR SHIPS, AND OTHER FASTENINGS
Year: 1821

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, ALEXANDER
LAW, of the Commercial Road, in the Hamlet of Mile End Old Town, in the
Parish of Stepney, Founder, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Fourth, did, by
His Letters Patent under the Great Seal of that part of the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland called England, bearing date at Westminster,
the Seventeenth day of July, in the second year of His reign, give and grant
unto me, the said Alexander Law, my exors, admors, and assigns, His especial
licence, full power, sole privilege and authority, that I, the said Alexander
Law, my exors, adñiors, and assigns, during the terin of years therein men-
tioned, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and vend, within
England, Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, my Invention of
"AN IMPROVEMENT IN THE FORM OF BOLTS AND. NAILS FOR SHIPS, AND OTHER
FASTENINGS;" in which said Letters Patent there is contained a proviso, that
if I, the said Alexander Law, shall not particularly describe and ascertain the
nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed,
by an instrument in writing under my hand and seal, and cause the same to
be inrolled in His Majesty's High Court of Chancery within two calendar
months next and immediately after the date of the said Letters Patent, that
then the said Letters Patent, and all liberties and advantages whatsoever
thereby granted, shall utterly cease, determine, and become void, as in and
by the same (relation being thereunto had) will more fully and at large
appear.

page_text: NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
Alexander Law, do hereby declare that the nature of my said Invention, and
the manner in which the same is to be performed, are particularly described
and ascertained in the following description thereof (that is to say) :-
My said improvement consists in giving the bolts and nails used for ships,
and other fastenings, such a form or figure that when once driven home into
their place they cannot work themselves out by jars or strains; and this I
effect by forming them with four, five, or a greater number of sides, and con-
sequently as many intervening angles), and making the said sides and angles
to wind round the axis of the bolt or nail in a screw form, so that the said
bolts or nails, when in the act of being driven into a hole of proper size, revolve
on their axis as they are made to advance by the force applied to them, and
the pieces therewith bolted together are held much more securely than they
would be with common bolts, as the bolts thus formed cannot be drawn from
either the one piece or the other therewith bolted together by any of the
common strains to which such fastenings are exposed without absolutely
tearing out a portion of the solid substance of the wood. Of these improved
bolts and nails, a proper idea may be formed by conceiving them, in the
process of manufacturing them, to be formed in the first place into polygonal
rods or prisms of as many sides and intervening angles as may be required,
any portion of which rod, if equably twisted, would assume a screwed appear-
ance, and would, in fact, present a kind of screwed bolts, composed of as many
threads as there were angles originally given to the piece of rod before being
thus twisted, and such a piece of polygonal rod, when thus treated, may be
considered as a bolt or nail of my said improved form.
Having thus described the nature of my said Invention, it might, perhaps,
be sufficient to add, that as my said Invention relates to the form only of the
said bolts and rails, and not to the mode of manufacturing them, that they
may be made by any of the processes in use for giving a polygonal twisted
form to pieces of metal, as by founding or by forging, or by first rolling and
then twisting them, all of which processes are already well known to com-
petent mechanicians; but as it may be useful to the public that I should be
somewhat more particular, I shall here add a few remarks as to the modes
that may be employed in the manufacture of bolts and nails of my said
improved form. As to the process of founding or casting such bolts or nails,
every founder will be sufficiently aware that patterns must be provided cor-
responding to the bolts or nails to be produced. Moulds must be formed from
such patterns, and molten metal be poured into the said moulds. The means
to be employed in making bolts or nails of the improved form by forging are

page_text: so well understood by smiths and workers in iron and copper that they require
no other instructions than to be told the number of sides and the degree of
screwage to be given to any required length of bolt or nail, according to its
size. If rolling be employed to form the said imploved bolts or nails (and
which in the large way of manufacture will generally be found adviseable),
then suitable bars or rods of metal have the polygonal form impressed on
them by passing them (when properly heated, if necessary, to render them
sufficiently soft) through rollers, with grooves turned in their surface to give
the required number of angles to the said bars or rods when passing through
them, after which the said rods are to be twisted by any proper mechanical
means, either before they are cut into the lengths required, or after they are
cut into such lengths.
In stating the foregoing means or methods of manufacture, I hereby declare
that I am not to be understood as claiming these means or methods as being
new or of my Invention (my Invention relating only to the improved form of
my bolts and nails for ships, and other fastenings); but the following particulars
applicable to the manufacture of such bolts and nails are, I believe, new, that
is to say, when the said rods, having received their polygonal form by passing
through grooved rollers (as stated above), are delivering themselves from the
rollers, I make them to pass through an additional pair of rollers, both grooved
to the same figure. In passing through the first pair they receive their
polygonal form, as already explained; the second pair, which are of smaller
diameter, placed behind the first, and the grooving therein is made a little
larger or sensibly larger than in the first pair, their use being not to give the
polygonal form to the rods, but to force them, while passing through this
second pair, to take the required degree of twist, for which purpose the end of
the rod, when forced through the first pair, is twisted by any suitable means,
so as to make it enter the second pair with an advance of one or two angles,
according to the degree of twist intended to be impressed on it, in consequence
of, which as it gets forced through the second pair by the force with which it
is delivered from the first pair, it is delivered from the second pair in a regular
twisted form; and farther, for the purpose of assisting in adjusting the degree
of twist to be given to the rods, the framing which carries the second pair
of rollers is so constructed that the rollers of the said second pair can be made
to advance nearer to or recede farther from the first pair. Respecting the
said second pair of rollers, I have farther to remark, that their framing may be
so constructed that the rollers composing this pair may be mado jointly capable
of being turned round the centre of the polygon that is to revolve concentric
with the said centre, in which case, when the polygonal rod has passed into

page_text: them from the first pair, they are then turned (twisting the roil as they thus turn)
till the required degree of twist is obtained, when their framing is secured in,
its. position, and the rod which passes through these rollers from the first pair
of rollers is delivered from them of the degree of twist to which they may.
have been adjusted.
In whichever way the said rods, after receiving their pentagonal form, have
the required degree of twist or screwing communicated to them, they are then
fit for the purpose of forming bolts or nails of the twisted or screwed form
which constitutes my said improvement, all that is then wanted being to cut
the rods into pieces of the lengths. required, and to head the said pieces where
heads are wanted, and point them, if necessary, as in common with the bolts
and nails hitherto in use.
In witness whereof, I, the said Alexander Law, have hereunto set my
hand and seal, this Thirtieth day of August, in the year of our Lord
One thousand eight hundred and twenty-one.