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Page 12
We also saw sheets of copper and German silver made in a similar manner.
The latter is simply brass that has had some nickel added to it to make it
white like silver.
The cylindrical casts above mentioned are placed in machines that draw
them into wire or tubing. The process is a most interesting one, though
rather difficult to describe.
A large quantity of the products of these works is used directly in the
very town, in factories for making clocks, watches, pins, and other
articles.
It is interesting and curious to note how the manufacture of brass in this
country originally started.
During the war of 1812 many useful articles became scarce; among these
were buttons. A man named Benedict, who lived in Waterbury, began to make
them out of bone, and became very prosperous.
About 1830 "Dame Fashion" ordained that brass or gilt buttons should be
worn. At first Benedict imported brass from England, but as he could not
get it of the required thinness, he resolved to make it himself. As copper
was scarce, he travelled about the country, buying up old copper kettles
and other things made of copper, which he melted with zinc, and had the
resulting brass slabs rolled at a neighboring iron rolling-mill. In this
way the great brass industry of the United States started. Its product is
now valued at $60,000,000 a year.
H.H. ROGERS, JR.
APRIL 6th, 1897.
PINS.
Among the factories of interest in and around Waterbury, Conn., is the
Clinton Pin Factory. This is one of the largest in America, and has
perhaps the most highly developed machinery in the world.
It is well to remember that the pin-machine is a purely American
invention, and its immense advantage can be fully appreciated if we recall
that it does the work that was required of eighteen distinct hands hardly
more than fifty years ago.
Pins are made of either brass or iron wire. Those made of the latter are
much cheaper, as the price of iron wire varies from three to five cents a
pound, while brass wire is usually worth fourteen.
The wire is fed to the machine from large reels. It is first cut into the
proper lengths by a small steel knife, so arranged that when the regular
length of wire is drawn, the knife descends and cuts it off. Next, each
small piece of wire, for we can hardly call it anything else yet, is
headed by a sharp rap from a small automatic hammer. Lastly, the blunt
ends are pointed by passing over a series of rapidly revolving
emery-wheels, and the pin falls, the essentially completed article, into a
large box, at the rate of three or four per second.
The pins are now placed in large vats, filled with soft soap and water, to
be freed from the dirt and grease gathered while passing through the
machine. After being thoroughly washed, they are put in the "hopper,"
mixed with bran or sawdust, to be dried. The hopper is shaken rapidly,
and the clean, dry pins fall out at one side, the sawdust at the other.
The tinning or "silvering" process is next in order. To accomplish this,
the pins are put into a vessel containing a solution of cream of tartar
and tin, and boiled for four or five hours. From this they come forth
bright and silvery-looking, to be dried again as before, previous to the
final operation of polishing.
The pins are now ready to be put on papers. The machine which does this is
perhaps one of the most ingenious ever constructed. Quantities of pins are
thrown from time to time into a rapidly vibrating hopper, which causes
them to pass, one by one, into a trough-like slide, that holds the pins by
the head; consequently the imperfect ones are automatically rejected. They
then slide along a groove to the main body of the machine, where they fall
into slits properly distanced, and are pressed into the paper in rows,
twelve in all, containing five hundred and sixteen pins.
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