Metalwork

“ Metals Used in Hardware Manufacture.—The metals chiefly used in manufacturing the products of the smiths’ art are iron and steel and the copper alloys known as brass and bronze. Iron remains as the chief material of construction for all the cheaper grades of hardware, while brass and bronze are more generally used for “destructible,” or wearing, parts and the finer and more elaborate decorative work. ”

“ Power Presses in Metal Working.
From glass let us now turn to metals. It is their tenacity that chiefly gives them value; this tenacity is usually accompanied by a hardness which disposes us to regard nickel, for example, as of a solidity quite unyielding. But the coins in our pockets prove that under the pressure of minting machinery they are as impressible as wax. In molds and dies, each the counterpart of the other, brass, bronze, iron, steel, and tin-plate take desired forms as readily as if paste. Solid though these metals appear they yield under severe stress with a semi-fluid quality. ”

“ Beyond a certain price, it was more advantageous to purchase metal implements, of copper in the early ages, afterwards of bronze, and lastly of iron. Among the metal-founders and smiths all kinds of examples of these were to be found—axes of an elegant and graceful design, hammers and knives, as well as culinary and domestic utensils, cups, cauldrons, dishes, mountings of doors and coffers, statuettes of men, bulls, monsters, and gods—which could be turned to weapons of all descriptions—arrow and lance heads, swords, daggers, and rounded helmets with neck-piece or visor. ”

“ This metal can be reduced by forging to any shape; but, during the process, it will bear no heat greater than a red heat; and, as it does not admit of welding, like iron, different pieces are united with bolts, or rivets, of the same metal, as in the case of the larger kinds of vessels, or by means of solder made of brass and zinc, or zinc and lead, as in the case of those of smaller dimensions.
5. Brass is applied to a greater variety of purposes in the arts than copper. ”

“ In very truth, even the works of art, elegant, embellished, elaborate, useful, are fashioned in various shapes by the artist from the metals gold, silver, brass, lead, and iron. How few artists could make anything that is beautiful and perfect without using metals? Even if tools of iron or brass were not used, we could not make tools of wood and stone without the help of metal. ”

“ So far as the discoveries of the archeologist have shown, the metals first used by mankind were those which occur native, such as gold, silver and copper. These three possess qualities which would appeal to the primitive workman. They are all bright and beautiful when polished, they are all malleable and easily shaped with the hammer, they respond readily to the graving tool and are highly resistant to fire. The ancient Egyptians knew, and used, gold, copper, silver, iron, lead and tin, and the alloys, bronze, brass, electron and solder. ”

“ A knowledge of the mixture of copper, tin, and zinc, seems to have been among the first discoveries of the metallurgist. Instruments fabricated from these alloys, recommended by the use of ages, the perfection of the art, the splendour and polish of their surfaces, not easily injured by time and weather, would not soon be superseded by the invention of simple iron, inferior in edge and polish, at all times easily injured by rust, and in the early stages of its manufacture converted with difficulty into forms that required proportion or elegance."— (Papers on Iron and Steel, 365-6.) ”

“ Economy of Material
As a step preliminary to designing, and in order that the enrichment may be conventionalized or adapted to conform to the requirements of tools, processes, and materials, it is now imperative to become familiar with a number of common forms of surface enrichment in metal. There are eight processes frequently encountered in the decoration of silver and gold: piercing, etching, chasing or repousséing, enameling, inlaying, stone setting, building, carving. To these may be added planishing, frosting or matting, and oxidizing as methods employed to enrich the entire surface. ”

“ There have been many methods of producing metal-work, yet native workers in all countries have had but two processes upon which they have based their plans, and it is from the smiths who hammered copper and brass into shape, and in later days stamped it, and the founder who cast the metal in moulds, that all our curios come. ”

“ There are tinned brass vessels with incised decorations, sculptured vessels of brass, brass incrusted with copper and copper incrusted with silver, but which can be called the baser and which the richer metals when all assume shapes of such wondrous beauty as the lotas and sarais, and are decorated with designs so pleasing and with a skill so perfect with damascened work, incrustations or enamel? The metal excipient is forgotten in the art. ”

“ The melting and handling of two hundred and twenty tons of bronze metal certainly required appointments, mechanical and otherwise, of the most stupendous character; and the existence of such Works presupposes an intimate acquaintance with the most minute details of the founder’s art, since the natural order of development is from the less to the greater. That is to say, the founder who could manipulate scores of tons of metal in a single great casting could doubtless manipulate a few pounds of metal ”

“ It is one of the glories of this century that metal-working tools and machinery have been invented that take the metal from its inception, mould and adapt it to man’s will in every situation with an infinite saving of time and labour, and with a perfection and uniformity of operation entirely impossible by hand. ”

“ The felling of a tree would occupy a workman a month, unless helped by the destructive action of fire. Dwellings could not be built, the soil could not be tilled, clothes could not be fashioned and made, and the hewing out of a boat was so tedious a process that the wood must have been far gone in decay before it could be launched. It was a great step in advance to discover the art of working in metals, more especially in steel, one of the few metals capable of taking a sharp edge and keeping it. ”

“ COPPER WORK
There is a limited field for metal work in home decoration; but there are some things of metal that combine beauty and utility to a remarkable degree and, in their making, introduce us to most interesting operations. Beginning with the gate, which may be of wrought iron, or with the door knocker, which may be of antique brass, we may find in every home problems of design involving work in metals. ”

“ Gold, as I believe, was everywhere the first metal wrought. The bright nugget tempted the savage, with whom personal ornaments precede dress. It was readily fashioned into any desired shape. The same is true, though in a less degree, of copper; and wherever, as on the American continent, native copper abounds, the next step in metallurgy is to be anticipated. With the discovery of the economic use of the metals, an all-important step had been achieved, leading to the fashioning of useful tools, to architecture, sculpture, pictorial ornamentation, and so to ideography. ”

“ In the sixteenth century, metal workers reached a point of excellence which has never been surpassed, and those marvels of mountings in steel, iron and brass were produced in Italy and Germany, which are far more important as works of Art than the plain and unpretending productions of the coffer maker, which are their raison d'etre. ”

“ The alloys of iron and steel have now attained importance and a new science known as metallography has developed. Professor Arnold, of Sheffield, Sherard Cowper-Coles, Roberts-Austen, Sorby, Tschermak, Tschernoff, Wüst, and Ziegler have been active promoters of this branch of metallurgy, and a closely related one dealing with the effects of the heat treatment of metals.
Developments in the iron industries led to others in the metallurgy of copper, lead, and zinc.
The application of the blast furnace to copper, lead, and zinc smelting was chiefly made in America. ”

“ Fire enabled man to melt metals as if they were wax, to soften iron or copper which a deftly swung hammer shaped as he willed. Here, too, opened the whole world of chemistry, one of its first gifts the power to take an ore worthless when unchanged, and gain from it a battle-axe, a knife, an arrowhead. ”

“ The kind of metal that is easiest to work is cold-rolled sheet copper [29] No. 32 Brown and Sharp gauge, but brass, aluminum and pewter can also be hammered.
[29] Can be bought of Patterson Brothers, Park Row, New York, or of the Frost and Adams Co., Cornhill, Boston, Mass.
Fig. 35c. how to hold a repoussé punch
To get the work ready fasten the piece of sheet metal to a wooden block with a cement made as follows: [86] melt 1 pound of Burgundy pitch in an iron pan, or skillet, and stir in 1 pound of dental plaster of paris, [30] until they are thoroughly mixed. ”

“ The inventions of the nineteenth century, wonderful and innumerable as they are, and marvellous in results produced, are but the fruit of the seed sown in the past, and the blossom of the buds grown upon the stalks of former generations. The early crude stone hatchet has become the keen finished metal implement of to-day, and the latter involves in itself the culmination of a long series of processes for converting the rough ore into the hard and glistening steel. ”

“ The devices on the outer surface were produced by stamping the previously cut out blanks or metal discs with steel dies, after which the necks were soldered in. At the present time every possible kind of metal, from iron to gold, whether pure or mixed; every conceivable woven fabric, from canvas to the finest satin and velvet; every natural production capable of being turned out or pressed, as wood, horn, hoof, pearl, bone, ivory, jet, ivory nuts ”

“ The French type-metal at the beginning of the eighteenth century was notoriously bad, and drove many printers to Frankfort for their types, where they used a very hard composition of steel, iron, copper, brass, tin and lead. ”

“ Hundreds of lathes of every conceivable pattern are planing the solid steel and the solid iron as if it were wood, cutting off with each revolution a more or less thick slice of the hard metal, which curls up like a shaving of deal. ”

“ The artisans may be divided into two great [Pg 410] classes—the workers in metal, and those in wood; the former being employed in making locomotives' wheels, axles, springs, &c., and the latter in constructing the carriages. By far the greatest number of hands are employed in the former.
That our hasty inspection may begin at the beginning, let us peep at the foundry. Both brass and iron are east here, but to-day it is iron. The sandy floor is covered with moulds of all descriptions, and swarthy workmen are preparing them to receive the melted iron. ”

“ The art of engraving on iron or steel for purposes of ornament, and even for printing, in certain cases, is by no means a discovery of modern times; but the substitution of the latter for copper, which has invited the superiority of the British burin to achievements hitherto unattempted by our artists, is entirely a modern practice. ”

“ Some few years ago a very interesting competitive exhibition was held at Ironmongers' Hall at the instigation of the Worshipful Company of Founders, by whom prizes were given for artistic metal-work made by living craftsmen who had studied antique metal-work and had caught somewhat of the spirit of the old artists in copper and brass. ”

“ It is by virtue of presses, enormous in power, that to-day shapes are bestowed on metals in successful rivalry with the ancient art of the founder himself. Indeed the art of conferring form by pouring a liquid into molds is at this hour largely exercised in work where heat plays no part whatever,—as in the tasks of the builder in concrete, the labors of the electrician as he employs a bath to separate a metal from its ore, or to plate a surface with silver or gold.
Diagram of rolls to reduce steel in thickness.
Use Creates Beauty. ”

“ It was learned that tin added to the copper made a stronger metal: bronze. Stone hammers, and bronze and iron tools, were used to make cooking pots, weapons, breast plates, and horse bits, which were formed from moulds and/or forged by bronze smiths and blacksmiths from iron extracted from iron ore heated in bowl- shaped hearths. Typically one man operated the bellows to keep the fire hot while another did the hammering. ”

“ It is doubtless true that implements of stone continued in use long after those of bronze and iron had been invented, arising most probably from the dearness and scarcity of articles of metal; but when the art of smelting and working in iron and steel had sufficiently advanced, the use of stone, and afterwards of bronze tools and weapons, altogether ceased. ”

“ For several years steel has been used in great quantities, instead of copper-plates, by engravers. By this fortunate application of so durable, and it may be added, so economical a material, not only has a new field been discovered admirably suited to yield in perfection the richest and finest graphic productions, which the ingenuity of modern art can accomplish, but to do so through an amazingly numerous series of impressions without perceptible deterioration. ”