Illustration: FIG. 2. (‡ BALANCE-HANDLE KNIFE.)
What are called “balance-handle” table-knives are those which when laid on the table, will rest with the blade elevated so as not to touch the cloth (fig. 2). The object sought in this arrangement, is to keep the cloth from being soiled, and the manner of attaining it is simply by making the shoulder project a little and running a small quantity of lead into the hole of the handle before the “tang” of the knife is introduced. The blade and handle or “haft” are united by means of rosin, which is put in powder into the hollow of the handle, and the tang, being made hot, is forced in, melting the rosin, and fixing when cool.
Illustration: CUTTING THE METAL INTO SLIPS.
Illustration: FIG. 1. (‡ NAIL WITH SHOULDER.)
Illustration: FIG. 5. (‡ MACHINED BRADS.)
Nails are made both by hand and machinery, the former being called “wrought,” and the latter “cut” nails. For making nails by hand, a hammer and an anvil only are used. The “nailor,” having put several rods of iron of the required size into the fire to get hot, that he may use one after the other, and so lose no time, takes one out and with the hammer beats it to a point, leaving a little shoulder (fig. 1). He then places it (at the part where the dotted line is in the figure) on a wedge fixed to the anvil, and with a blow of the hammer divides it; it is taken up by tongs, dropped into a hole in the anvil, and the shoulder beaten flat; this is called a “tack” (fig. 2), for a “clasp nail” the head is made of a different form by a particular way of striking it (fig. 3), and the form of the hole in the anvil determines whether they shall be square or round; wrought “brads” have the form of fig. 4. These are the principal forms of nails, but many others are made by soldering shanks to cast heads, as coffin-nails, and some (chiefly used by gardeners and plasterers for driving into brickwork) are made of cast-iron. Machine-made nails are cut by compression from a sheet of iron. Brads are cut out, simply, as in fig. 5, which uses up the whole of the iron without any waste, and requires no finishing; but other forms of nails are cut first into simple wedges, and have the heads finished afterwards either by the blows of a hammer or by compression.