Toolhouse

“ In glancing back at these early tool builders, it will be seen that few of them were men of education. All were men of powerful minds, many of them with broad intellectual interests. It is suggestive to note one thing, whatever may be its bearing. Only three of all these men, Matthew Murray and the two Fairbairns, served a regular apprenticeship. Bentham and Brunel were naval officers; Bramah, a farmer’s boy and cabinetmaker; Maudslay, a blacksmith; Clement, a slater; Roberts, a quarry laborer; Nasmyth, a clever school boy; and Whitworth, an office clerk. ”

“ Thomas contributed considerable capital, and a new shop and a foundry were built. At the same time they installed a planer 10 feet wide by 8 feet high, to plane work 45 feet long, a notable tool for that day.
After a few years of struggle, the plant began to grow [255] rapidly and at one time was the largest of its kind in the country. Bement and Sellers were among the first to concentrate wholly on tool building. They confined themselves to work of the highest quality. ”

“ In returning to the city, we saw many iron-works, of which there are eight in the city and vicinity. One of them is a nail factory; the nail-cutting machine acts from above, and the workmen holds the rod to be cut with a pair of tongs, and has to move it at every stroke; a hammer strikes the nail which falls through in such a manner as to form the head. We also saw a steam-engine manufactory of considerable extent. I had seen such an establishment previously in England, but as most of the machines are made here in parts, one cannot see a great deal. ”

“ The work stands without a rival. It is a complete practical treatise on the art of American Tool Making and system of interchangeable manufacturing as carried on to-day in the United States. In it are described and illustrated all of the different types and classes of small tools, fixtures, devices, and special appliances which are in general use in all machine manufacturing and metal working establishments where economy, capacity, and interchangeability in the production of machined metal parts are imperative. ”

“ By 1900, the carpenter's tool chest, fully stocked and fit for the finest craftsman, contained 90 or more tools. Specialization is readily apparent; the change in, and achievement of, the ultimate design of a specific tool is not so easily pinpointed. Only by comparing illustrations and surviving examples can such an evolution be appreciated and in the process, whether pondering the metamorphosis of a plane, a brace and bit, or an auger, the various stages of change encountered coincide with the rise of modern industrial society. ”

“ We are able to machine the earth in much the same way as a piece of metal is machined in the machine shop. In fact, the drill, [252] the circular saw, the slotter, and even the milling machine have their counterpart in the excavating machinery of to-day. Of course we cannot expect to find the counterpart of such machines as the lathe, boring mill, and planer, in which the work revolves against the tool, because this planet of ours is rather too big a piece of stock to be placed between lathe centers or to be bolted to a planer bed. ”

“ The purpose of this book is to bring out the importance of the work and influence of the great tool builders. Few realize that their art is fundamental to all modern industrial arts. Without machine tools modern machinery could not be built. Little is known by the general public as to who the great tool builders were, and less is known of their lives and work. ”

“ The specification describes the object of the invention to be the saving of manual labour, the reduction in the cost of production, and the superior character of the work executed. The tools were fixed on frames driven by machinery, some moving in a rotary direction round an upright shaft, some with the shaft horizontal like an ordinary wood-turning lathe, while in others the tools were fixed on frames sliding in stationary grooves. A wood-planing machine [5] was constructed on the principle of this invention at Woolwich Arsenal, where it still continues in efficient use. ”

“ England and America produced the modern machine tool. In the period mentioned, England developed most of the general machine tools of the present day; the boring machine, engine lathe, planer, shaper, the steam hammer and standard taps and dies. Somewhat later, but partially coincident with this, America developed the special [5] machine tool, the drop hammer, automatic lathes, the widespread commercial use of limit gauges, and the interchangeable system of manufacture. ”

“ There were neither planing, slotting, nor shaping machines, and with the exception of very imperfect lathes and a few drills, the preparatory operations of construction were effected entirely by the hands of the workmen. Now, everything is done by machine tools, with a degree of accuracy which the unaided hand could never accomplish. The automaton, or self-acting, machine tool has within itself an almost creative power; in fact, so great are its powers of adaptation, that there is no operation of the human hand that it does not imitate. ”

“ Every tool had a purpose. It had been invented for some special reason. Sometimes it struck the keynote, as it were, to many of the important contrivances which enable man to obtain a complete mastery over materials.
There were also hung upon the walls, or placed upon shelves, many treasured relics of the first embodiments of his constructive genius. There were many models explaining, step by step, the gradual progress of his teeming inventions and contrivances. The workshop was thus quite a historical museum of mechanism. It exhibited his characteristic qualities in construction. ”

“ Other mass-produced edge tools—axes, adzes, braces and bits, augers, saws, and chisels—illustrated in the trade literature of the toolmakers became, as had the iron-bodied bench plane, standard forms. In the last quarter of the 19th century the tool catalogue replaced Moxon, Duhamel, Diderot, and the builders' manuals as the primary source for the study and identification of hand tools. The Centennial had called attention to the superiority of certain American tools and toolmakers. ”

“ It is singular, that with the immense variety of tools set forth in the preceding chapter, how few, really, require the art of the workman to grind and sharpen. If we take the lathe, the drilling machine, as well as the shaper, planer, milling machine, and all power-driven tools, they are merely mechanism contrived to handle some small, and, apparently, inconsequential tool, which does the work on the material. ”

“ As the Bridgewater Foundry had been so fortunate as to earn for itself a considerable reputation for mechanical contrivances, the workshops were always busy. They were crowded with machine tools in full action, and exhibited to all comers their effectiveness in the most satisfactory manner. Every facility was afforded to those who desired to see them at work; and every machine and machine tool that was turned out became in the hands of its employers the progenitor of a numerous family. ”

“ Having the room you have a place for your first tool, if it is necessary to collect them one at a time, and it is much better to do that than to buy a cheap tool-chest. When you have one tool make a place for it and keep it in its place. A hammer, a saw, a hatchet, a sharp knife, a screw-driver, a gimlet, and a rule are the first tools you will need. ”

“ The principle of the invention consists in constructing and fitting the rest so that, instead of being screwed down to one place, and the tool in the hands of the workman travelling over it, the rest shall itself hold the cutting tool firmly fixed in it, and slide along the surface of the bench in a direction exactly parallel with the axis of the work. Before its invention various methods had been tried with the object of enabling the work to be turned true independent of the dexterity of the workman. ”

“ The merits of the invention being generally admitted, there was a considerable demand for the locks, and the necessity thus arose for inventing a series of original machine-tools to enable them to be manufactured in sufficient quantities to meet the demand. It is probable, indeed, that, but for the contrivance of such tools, the lock could never have come in to general use, as the skill of hand-workmen, no matter how experienced, could not have been relied upon for turning out the article with that degree of accuracy and finish in all the parts which was indispensable for its proper action. ”

“ Nowhere do you find him without tools: without tools he is nothing; with tools he is all." His very first contrivances to support life were tools of the simplest and rudest construction; and his latest achievements in the substitution of machinery for the relief of the human hand and intellect are founded on the use of tools of a still higher order. Hence it is not without good reason that man has by some philosophers been defined as A TOOL-MAKING ANIMAL.
Tools, like everything else, had small beginnings. With the primitive stone-hammer and chisel very little could be done. ”

“ The engineer's plane more resembles the turning-lathe, of which indeed it is but a modification, working up on the same principle, on flat surfaces. The tools or cutters in Clement's machine were similar to those used in the lathe, varying in like manner, but performing their work in right lines,—the tool being stationary and the work moving under it, the tool only travelling when making lateral cuts. ”

“ In a milling machine the cut is carried continuously from its commencement to its end, whereas in a shaping or planing machine the tool does not usually cut during the back or return stroke. In either of these machines, therefore, the operator’s skill is required as much in measuring the work, setting the tools feeds, &c., as in shaping the tools, whereas in the milling machine all the skill required lies in the chucking and adjustment of the work to the cutter, rather than in operating the machine, which may therefore be operated by comparatively unskilled labor. ”

“ There is no economy in making men work with poor light, bad air and in a cold place.
Buying Machine Tools.—Having secured by lease or by purchase a shop, or factory suitably located your next effort will be directed toward equipping it with the proper tools and machinery.
Besides the usual machinists’ hand tools you should buy (1) a gas furnace; (2) a grinder; (3) a plain lathe; (4) a screw cutting lathe; (5) a drill press; (6) a planer; (7) a shaper; (8) perhaps a milling machine, and (9) a buffer. Several of each of these kinds of machines may be needed.
Fig. ”

“ A tool is usually more simple than a machine; it is generally used with the hand, whilst a machine is frequently moved by animal or steam power. The simpler machines are often merely one or more tools placed in a frame, and acted on by a moving power. In pointing out the advantages of tools, we shall commence with some of the simplest.
(11.) To arrange twenty thousand needles thrown promiscuously into a box, mixed and entangled in every possible direction, in such a form that they shall be all parallel to each other, would, at first sight, appear a most tedious occupation ”

“ In the manufacture of the tools special appliances are used and will be referred to presently. The workmen are encouraged to use only tools in sound condition. Each machine-man in the shops has ten checks, and may borrow from the store a corresponding number of tools, but these must be returned as soon as possible for overhaul and re-grinding. The bonus system further induces the men to ensure that their tools are in good condition.
The tool department is separate from the main structure, and in it all jigs, templates, and gauges, as well as tools, are constructed. ”

“ When to these we add the adze, plane-irons, the anger, and the chisel, we sum up the tools principally relied on by the early mechanics for working in wood and iron.
Such continued to be the chief tools in use down almost to our own day. The smith was at first the principal tool-maker; but special branches of trade were gradually established, devoted to tool-making. So long, however, as the workman relied mainly on his dexterity of hand, the amount of production was comparatively limited; for the number of skilled workmen was but small. ”

“ The most necessary tool in a machine shop is a file. It is one of the neglected tools, because the ordinary boy, or workman, sees nothing in it but a strip or a bar with a lot of cross grooves and edges, and he concludes that the only thing necessary is to rub it across a piece of metal until he has worn it down sufficiently for the purpose.
The First Test.—The fact is, the file is so familiar a tool, that it breeds contempt, like many other things closely associated in life. ”

“ The great and small tools, the automata of the machine-shop, are no less triumphs of mechanical genius than the “powerful oscillating engines of the Warrior.” The prime difficulty of the hand-worker was to make two things exactly alike, then followed the impossibility of making many things—the narrow limit of human capacity to produce. At that point the inventor appeared with a machine which would make a thousand things in the time the hand-worker required to make one, and each one of them the exact counterpart of every other. ”

“ At the present day, the turning and fitting shops are furnished not only with the slide lathe, self acting in both directions, and screw-cutting, the drilling-machine, and the screwing machine, but with planing machines competent to plane horizontally, vertically, or at an angle; shaping machines, rapidly reciprocating, and dealing with almost any form of work; nut shaping machines, slot drilling machines, and slotting machines, while the drills have become multiple and radial ”