Iron hand

“ You will find, Peter, that you cannot well sink in the liquid iron as deep as your middle, so you must provide yourself with stone shoes. Have an iron ladle in your hand so as to catch the sparkles as they appear, but do not dip your hand in, or it will be charred to a cinder: the ointment, remember, will only preserve the lower part of your body. ”

“ In some castes, when a woman is in labour, an iron sickle is kept on the cot for a similar purpose. After delivery, she keeps iron in some form, e.g., a small crowbar, knife, or nails, in the room, and takes it about with her when she goes out. At a Nāyar funeral in Malabar, the chief mourner holds in his hand, or tucks into his waist-cloth, a piece of iron, generally a long key.34 At a marriage among the Mūsu Kammas in the Telugu country, an iron ring is tied to the milk-post. ”

“ I did not see on this occasion—but the thing has been done over and over again—that a man has gone and held his naked hand in such a stream of molten iron, and has done it without the least injury; all that is required being, to have his hand moist, and if his hand is dry he has merely to dip it in water, and he may hold his hand for a certain time in that stream of molten iron without receiving any injury whatever. ”

“ A large drill is of great service in making branding irons, which, when finished, can be attached to handles either by leaving a piece of metal on the back of the chunk long enough to weld the hand iron to, or a screw may be made at the back to hold it in its place. Some persons make chunk, hand iron, and all from one piece of metal; others form the letters, &c., from narrow strips of iron, bending them to the required figure, and then riveting them fast to a sort of frame. We, however, consider the solid chunk form of iron by far the best and most durable. ”

“ I have handled the conical hammer, and find that the hand is brought so close to the iron that, when it is heated to a glowing redness, the effect upon the fingers must be singularly unpleasant, not to mention the sparks that fly about so liberally when heated iron is struck. ”

“ The iron is naturally very impure and is always very soft, but on the other hand it is very easily rubbed up to a good degree of sharpness and is really much more useful and adaptable to rough work than well-tempered European steel. ”

“ From iron are made nails, hinges, bolts, saws, keys, grids, doors, folding-doors, spades, rods, pitchforks, hooks, barbs, tridents, pots, tripods, anvils, hammers, wedges, chains, hand-cuffs, fetters, hoes, mattocks, sickles, baskets, shovels, harrows, planes, rakes, ploughshares, forks, pans, dishes, ladles, spoons, spits, knives, daggers, swords, axes, darts, javelins, lances, spears, anchors, and much ship's gear. ”

“ Their goosing irons they heat them not in the fire as we do; but hath a pretty device. They make the body of the iron a great deall thicker then ours, which is boss, [190] and which opens at the hand, which boss they fil wt charcoall, which heats the bottom of the iron, which besydes that its very cleanly, they can not burn themselfes so readily, since the hands not hot. ”

“ It is not drawn with the right hand, like the bow of other nations, but by placing the feet upon the weapon itself, and pulling with the whole force of the body; and it despatches arrows called bolts, of hard wood pointed with iron, which the strength of the bow can send through the strongest breastplates, and even through stone walls, where not of uncommon thickness." ”

“ Prescott. “We could sit here till to-morrow morning trying to mention things made of iron, or by means of iron, and then we should be likely to forget many of them.
“If it weren’t for iron and steel implements and tools, men would have hard work to earn a living.
“Dr. Crandon, what does it seem to you that we should lose if we were to lose iron?”
“I’ve been thinking about the arts—surgery, too. We need iron for sculpture, for music, for printing books and papers. We need iron, I should say, for art’s sake.” ”

“ Blacksmiths, locksmiths, tool-makers sometimes express this state by saying the iron is retting, appropriating a word applied exclusively to hemp, which is reduced to pulp and fibre by maceration. Well, the human soul, or, if you will, the threefold powers of body, heart, and intellect, under certain repeated shocks, get into such a condition as fibrous iron. ”

“ You see that a man who works in iron must be both an artist and a smith—he must blow the forge and use the hammer. That gate in cast iron would be almost ugly. In the Swedish wrought iron, it is truly beautiful.
“The old fellows knew much more about the artistic side of iron than we do. Look at the old French locks—even a French king prided himself on his ability to make locks.
“There was a time when an apprentice to a locksmith had to make a masterpiece lock before he could become a master. It usually took him two years to do it, for he had to chase and chisel it from the solid. ”

“ It is a custom for every visitor to bring with him some pieces of iron, to throw against the rocks: the appearance is very strange; old horse-shoes, forks, knives, bars of iron, nails, and barrels of pistols, are hanging from the projecting stones, the nails standing upright, as if they were growing. These pieces of iron have themselves become very powerfully magnetic. ”

“ Prescott. “Heat expands iron. If we didn’t keep it cool, the screw wouldn’t be the right size when it is done.
“Cold naturally works the other way. Ever hear about the iron bridge where the parts wouldn’t quite come together, so they put ice on to do the job?” he asked, but he kept right on, without waiting for Billy to answer.
Billy saw other machines boring holes and rounding corners. It seemed as if iron could cut iron into any shape that anybody wanted. ”

“ With regard to the harder veins which are tractable to iron tools, and likewise with regard to the harder and hardest kind of hangingwall rock, they generally attack them with more powerful iron tools, in fact, with the fourth kind of iron tool, which are called by their appropriate names ”

“ Scales of iron defended the shin and the thigh, sometimes the lower arm as well. The wealthier lords covered the front of every limb with plates of this sort, and there was jointed iron upon their hands. ”

“ The fields and open spaces were filled with iron; a people harder than iron paid universal homage to the hardness of iron. The horror of the dungeon seemed less than the bright gleam of iron. 'Oh, the iron! woe for the iron!' was the confused cry that rose from the citizens. The strong walls shook at the sight of iron: the resolution of young and old fell before the iron."
By the end of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, whole suits of armour were almost invariable, and then came the opportunity for the goldsmith, the damascener, and the niellist. ”

“ I had screwed up my heart to bear the pain as best I might, but when I saw that iron sighed for sheer relief, because I knew it for only a branding tool, and not the torture. And so they branded me on the left cheek, setting the iron between the nose and cheek-bone, where 'twas plainest to be seen. I took the pain and scorching light enough, seeing that I had looked for much worse, and should not have made mention of the thing here at all, were it not for the branding mark they used. ”

“ Prescott,” said Billy, “explained to me about steel, and about forges.”
“When this country was first settled,” said Uncle John, “men had little forges to make iron, just as their wives had spinning wheels to make wool for clothes.
“When they began to make nails—they couldn’t build houses without nails—there was a forge in almost every chimney corner. Children, as well as grown people, used to make nails and tacks in the long winter evenings. People then took nails to the store to pay for things, as in the country they now take eggs.
“That old forge iron was never very pure. ”

“ According to the same author, iron has valuable attributes as a preservative against harmful witchcrafts and sorceries, and may thus be used with advantage both by adults and children. For this purpose it was only necessary to trace a circle about one’s self with a piece of the metal, or thrice to swing a sword around one’s body. ”

“ Smiths render iron sheets tougher with certain liquids, and by blows of the hammer, and from them make shields and breastplates that defy the blows of battle-axes. Iron becomes harder through skill and proper tempering, but also by skill turns out in a softer condition and as pliable as lead. ”

“ Billy looked at him questioningly.
“That was rather technical, wasn’t it, Billy? You see, I was talking to a technical man. Just between you and me, meteoric iron comes down from the sky, from what we call shooting stars. Sometimes large pieces are found. I suppose that much of it falls into the sea. It is the purest iron that has ever been found.”
“What about magnetic iron?” asked Dr. Crandon. “Where does that come from?”
“At the present time,” answered Mr. Prescott, “most of it comes from Sweden and Norway. It makes the best kind of steel. ”

“ Campbell, "really was once worshipped by a people with whom iron was rare. Iron is rare, while stone and bronze weapons are common, in British tombs, and the sword of these stories is a personage. It shines, it cries out—the lives of men are bound up in it. ”

“ When irons are put away, turn the bottoms up. If they are put away for a long time, it is well to give them a thin coating of beeswax.
If you have ever seen any one test an iron with a wet finger to see if it is hot, you will only need the courage to try to be able to do it. Wet your finger in your mouth and strike quickly and lightly on the bottom of the iron; if it—spits, to put it elegantly, the iron is right for average ironing. Rub it on a paper or a cloth and judge from the effect whether it is clean and of the right temperature for the work you are doing. ”

“ Steel for ornaments is made extremely hard and close-grained, so as to bear an exquisite polish. Common hammered iron is chiefly used for works of strength, as horseshoes, bars, bolts, and the like. It will bend but not straighten itself again, as you may see in the kitchen poker. Cast iron is used for pots and caldrons, cannons, cannon-balls, grates, pillars, and many other purposes in which hardness without flexibility is wanted. ”

“ The great ladle swung forward, for a moment, on its tilting gear, and the men bore away their ladles filled with iron that the great dragon had changed from its own dull gray to the brilliant yellow of gold.
The molds, as they were filled, smoked from all their venting places, till, to his picture, Billy added a place for a battle-field.
By the time that the last molds were filled, some of the men began to take off the wooden frames, and there the iron was, gray again, but, this time, shaped for the use of man.
“See,” said Uncle John, coming to the window, “there are our corn cutters. ”

“ The toughness of malleable iron renders it applicable to purposes, where great strength is required, while its difficult fusibility, and property of softening by heat, so as to admit of forging and welding, cause it to be easily wrought.
2. Cast iron, from its cheapness, and from the facility with which its form may be changed, is made the material of numerous structures. Steel, which is the most important compound of iron, exceeds all other metals in hardness and tenacity; and hence it is particularly adapted to the fabrication of cutting instruments. ”

“ While I write, iron is doubtless flowing from blast furnaces in England, Wales, and Scotland; while I write, ingots of white-hot Bessemer steel are being dealt with under the steam-hammer or in the rolling-mills; while I write, horse-shoes are being forged, and, at each moment, in one way or another, pieces of iron of every temperature could be found, from those which are as cold as the iron apparatus used by Sir James Dewar in his experiments in the liquefaction of air, up to the glittering melted steel which is poured from the tilted converter. ”

“ Among the native tribes of South Africa, where iron, owing to the small scale on which they smelt it, is very scarce and valuable, considerable ingenuity is shown in the mounting of an axe blade. This is generally a triangular piece of iron, with one of its sides thinned down and ground to a rounded edge, and the other two tapered to a spike. It is well known that weight is an essential quality in all chopping instruments, and the deficiency of iron has therefore to be made up with wood. ”

“ Prescott, “just remember three things: fuel, blast, and hammer—power, of course, behind the hammer. It’s the different variations that men have been making on those three things that have brought iron where it is to-day.
“Iron ore has so many things besides iron in it that the problem has always been how to get the impurities out.
“The old blacksmiths used to put it in the fire and hammer it; put it back in the fire and hammer again, until they worked most of the other things out. They made what is called forge iron. ”

“ In the next room he stopped again.
“Different kinds of iron,” he said. “Some much harder than others, like tool steel. Iron cuts iron. That’s a planing machine: automatic plane cuts any thickness.”
Billy stopped beside the mighty planer, moving over the large casting as easily as if the iron had been wood and the fierce chisel only a carpenter’s plane.
They went on a little further, then Mr. Prescott turned suddenly. “William,” he asked, “how long is an inch?” ”

“ The only battle-axe [Pg 58] mentioned is of bronze (Iliad xiii. 611) ; axes, as implements, are usually of iron, so are the implements of the ploughman and shepherd. No man in Homer is said to be ‘smitten with the iron’, it is always ‘with the bronze’; but trees are felled ‘with the iron’ (Iliad iv. 485) .
Odysseus shoots ‘through the iron’, that is, through the open work of the iron axe-heads, which were tools. This curious overlap of bronze and iron, the iron being used for implements before it is used for weapons, has no analogy, as far as I am aware, in Central and Northern Europe. ”