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MECHANICAL DEPARTMENT. tight iron box with a close cover. For

ANNEALING AND TEMPERING FINE TOOLS. Having had about twenty-five years' experience as a tool maker, I feel confident that I can give your readers a few good points on annealing and tempering

fine tools.

I have occasion to visit the large railroad machine shops and other large shops that use large quantities of fine steel tools, such as taps, fluted reamers, thread-cutting dies, milling cutters, etc., and I find

that almost all of them lose from ten to fifteen per cent of these expensive tools when they are first tempered, or as soon as they are put into use, and at least twenty-five per cent the second time they are hardened, and about fifty per cent the third time. To avoid this large loss and annoyance, have your steel annealed by

the steel manufacturers in short bars from five to six feet long, the sizes you may want, and cut off the required length you may wish for your tools. This will save the forging and consequently much expense, and your tools have not been overheated, and there is no uneven strain on the tool. If your tool is of such a shape that you have to have it forged, do not heat it too quickly, but thoroughly all the way through, and do not hammer nor bend the tool unless it is red hot. Do not

hammer cast steel after the red has all disappeared in any case.

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You may mer blister and shear steel to refine it at a black heat, but never do this with cast

steel, for it will cause your tool to spring or crack. Forged tools should be annealed and roughed out by planing or turning off below the hammer marks, and then annealed again. This will avoid the spring ing when hardened. To anneal small sizes of steel, use iron pipes, plug up one end and fill up with tools. Sift in fine charcoal dust, plug up the other end, and heat it slowly until it is at a good red heat all the way through, then bury it in fine charcoal or wood ashes. If you have not got the wood ashes, use dry sawdust, and in a short time you will have the ashes and the most perfect annealing preparation in the world. Have this in a good

annealing such tools as taps, reamers and milling cutter dies, etc., use fine wood ashes, dish out the centre and replace the ashes with dry sawdust. Heat your steel slowly to a good blood red, and bury it in charcoal dust or fine dust from around the forge, put on your cover and let it remain cold. I always make it a point to get my and let it remain until Monday or until annealing in on Saturday if I possibly can, cold. For hardening I use a good strong salt brine-about three pounds of salt to one pail of soft water, lard oil and resin, about one-sixth resin to five-sixths of oil. When mixed together the oil should be quite warm, also the resin. Pour the resin into the oil and stir it well. Heat your tools slowly and thoroughly all the way through, then immerse in the salt brine. If a tap or fluted reamer, put it down in the centre of the tub as straight as you possibly can, and move it up and down slowly from one to two inches, so as to avoid a water line, until it is chilled about half way or one-third through, as near as you can judge. This you can deof the tongs, caused by the condensing termine quite accurately by the tremble

the sawdust and cover it over with fine

steam around the tool. The tremble will cease when the tool is chilled about half through. Then put the tool from the brine into the oil and resin as quickly as possible, move it up and down gently for a minute or two, then drop it into the oil and let it remain until cold, then take out, brighten, and test the hardness with a sharp file, and you will find that you have about the right temper required. For cast iron and brass you will require the iron. Large tools after remaining in the tool much harder than you will for wrought oil will sometimes draw the temper a little more than required. If the oil commences to boil by the heat of the large tool, have a pail of boiling hot water close to your oil tub, take your large mill or whatever kind of tool it may be, and immerse in the hot water for eight or ten seconds as near as you can judge, and then return it as quickly as possible back to the oil, and let it remain until the oil stops boiling. We will suppose this to be a large mill cut

on top and sides. If you are in a hurry for this tool, and cannot wait until it is quite cold in the oil, you may take it from the oil and put it over a clean slow fire and brighten a few of the teeth, and draw the temper at the same time to suit your work, then return again to the oil and let it remain until cold. It is the safest way to draw the temper on large tools a little on the outside at the same time the temper is drawing from the inside, but there is no occasion to draw the temper on most of your tools from the outside. With this process you will see that the temper is drawn from the inside of tools instead of the outside the old-fashioned way. By tempering tools in this way you have a soft-centered steel. The brine has hardened the tool so far as it is required to be hard, and the oil keeps it hard and allows the center or thick part to cool slowly. It will not throw your tool out of round, but will run on the centres as true as before it was hardened. Milling cutters, taps and fluted reamers only require to be hard on the cutting parts, and with this process you have just what you want, and you can anneal and harden them a dozen times and never break them. The teeth will not crack off as they do in the eld-fashioned way of hardening tools.

Chipping chisels, after forged, should be heated slowly at least three inches from the cutting edge, to take off the uneven strain caused by forging. Never hammer a cold chisel after the red has disappeared, especially on the edges. The corners will break off if you do. Immerse in clean soft water about two inches, and move up and down slowly, keeping the point in the water at least one and one-half inches, until the water will not hiss on the tool. Then brighten and draw the tool to a sky blue, then drop it into cold lard oil and let it remain until cold.

If a tap or any other fine tool should by chance get too hot or burnt, do not take tool from the fire, but shut off the blast. Get some resin, put it on the tool freely, and let it remain in the fire ten or fifteen minutes, occasionally putting on the resin, and letting the tool cool down to a good cherry red, and then immerse as above described, and your tool is as good as if it had not been overheated. I do not recommend overheating steel. It should not be heated more than a cherry red for hardening, and should be heated in a furnace if possible. If you have much tempering to do, it will pay to have one built. A furnace suitable for heating will cost about $125.-C. B. Hunt, in Scientific American.

TWO GREAT GUN LATHES. The two great gun lathes at the South Boston Iron Works are to be removed to the Watervliet Arsenal. These lathes are the largest in this country and among the largest in the world, and are two of the most wonderful pieces of machinery in America. Each lathe is about ninety feet in length; one weighs about 175 tons and the other about 145 tons. Each lathe is capable of turning a piece of work forty feet in length, and, on the other hand, to do work of extreme delicacy and lightness. Each is in fact a perfect and completly fitted lathe. They have been used in South Boston for finishing the twelveinch guns, which are 385 inches in length, and when they came upon the lathe weighed 120 tons each and were turned down to 54 tons. The iron crane which handles these guns weighs about 120 tons. It moves forward and back on tracks laid in the lathe-room, and the overhead gearing of the crane can be swung in any direction or position desired.

These immense gun lathes have been at the South Boston Iron Works since 1882. One of them was built there and the other at the Springfield Arsenal. They were both built at Government expense, and are thus the property of the Government, but they were being purchased by the South Boston Iron Works, payments being made by deductions from money due that concern from the Government for work performed. Now, however, the Government claims these lathes and the crane as its property, and will probably take no account of the payment made upon them by the company, holding that the use of the lathes balances the payments made. On the lathes the South Boston Iron Works has done some very heavy work, including one 12-inch castiron gun now at Sandy Hook; one 10inch cast-iron gun, which is now at the Watertown Arsenal to be steel-tubed and

wire-wrapped; one 12-inch cast-iron gun with steel tube and steel hoops, finished and now at South Boston, and one 12-inch cast-iron gun, which is to have a steel tube and is now at South Boston already bored, but which cannot be finished owing to the removal of the lathes.— The Safety Valve.

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made so by the small amount that is paid some poor mortal for his labor in producing it, and in rushing to take advantage of it they are aiding in keeping some one at starvation wages, for if such things will sell they will be made. When they buy a shirt or pair of overalls, they do not consider that the low price is taken from some poor woman in the crowded cities of the East. If members would act as a unit and demand information of who performed the work on every article they buy, or see that it has the stamp of organized labor on it, they would do more to advance the general good of the order than by paying dues or assessments, and there would be no need for the latter, as it would be an object to have on every article manufactured a stamp that would sell it, which would only come when the producers were fairly paid. A hat that has not the stamp of the Union hatters in it do not take at See that the tobacco you use is not manufactured by a man who would not have a Knight of Labor in his employ. The same is true of clothing, gloves and all that makes up the list of regular needs of men.

any price.

ing the order is made comparatively easy. But when these attacks from the agents of monopoly are seconded and encouraged, and ammunition for them furnished by malignant members of our own order, he who holds the official position may be pardoned for sometimes feeling that the organization he serves is too ungrateful to appreciate the sacrifice made. Standing here, then, and reportng to you what I have done, and what I have tried to do, I know, if no one else knows, that I bring to you the work better than I found it. I know that if the system begun is allowed to be completed there is no organization in existence that will excel this in method, system and discipline.—Chas. H. Litchman.

If tradesmen have any peculiar inconsistency it is in their attitude toward each other. A tradesman of any kind will stand out with his fellows to the bitter end for the maintenance of at least a fair scale of wages. Farther, if he has a family he will get them together in some shape, no matter at what sacrifice, and leave a city, State or country rather than suffer what he conceives to be an injustice to himself as a tradesman. He will "It has been no bed of roses for me. go to any extremity when the necessity I have given service which in any other arises to accomplish his purpose as afdirection, and for any other than the fecting his wages, and never stop for an cause ot labor, would have yielded me a instant to consider how the first step far larger compensation. When, among might have been avoided. And it is as other unjust and insulting attacks, I have simple as he can be. Patronize one anbeen taunted with the exhoritant salary other. A photographer goes to a city ⚫paid, I have wondered if any corporation and advertises that he will take pictures in the land would requite so poorly the for $2.50 per dozen. Artists already in work done by your general officers. A the field have charged $5 theretofore. man who accepts official position in a And straightway the family of the tradeslabor organization at once makes him- man is bundled up and hurried to the self a target for all the attacks that envy, cheap gallery and are photographed malice, jealousy and hate can direct singly and in pairs-it don't cost much against him. No matter though he be you know. But now isn't it the most exas pure as an angel, his actions will be pensive luxnry one can indulge in? In misrepresented, his uterances distorted, the first place, to say nothing of the first his motives misconstrued. That these place, to say nothing of the great probaattacks should be made by the agents of bility of getting cheap work done by monopoly is not strange. They well cheap workmen and cheap chemicals, a know that if those are stricken down who blow has been struck at a fellow-tradesfor the time being occupy the position of man as directly as though the same officials in the order, the work of destroy- patron had gone into another gallery

and offered to do the work of a skilled artist for just one-half the salary the latter was receiving. And this applies to all trades, except possibly the printer he never subscribes for anything he has to pay for, and as to job work he has no need of it. The barber, when he wants anything made by a tinner, will hunt up the cheapest; the tinner, when he wants a shave, will go the cheapest barber. And so on down the list until one gets to the bottom and finds that in response to the competition he himself has created

his own wages are to be cut down, and he strikes, and is mad because the injury to one is not made the concern of all. But again, what would it all amount to if this system of "patronize each other" were carried out to the letter? The wages of any man must be guaged by the purchasing power of the money he receives. And what system of co-operation can regulate the purchasing power of a dollar and so determine the share of the individual workingman?—Duluth Industrial Age.

TWO GREAT MEN.

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One great from the position he holds, the other from the gift of God. Every daily paper we pick up just now has a column or more devoted to the triumphal trip of President and Mrs. Cleveland The trip was planned to please the people, who please themselves in seeing the man who is great by virtue of the position he holds. President Cleveland will return to Washington with the memory of rich food, delicious wines, music, flowers, receptions where beautiful clothes are displayed, the shouts of an admiring and approving people, as well as the speeches he made and had made to him-which were as light and lasting as the foam on a glass of sparkling champagne. All this will not make our great man, by the virtue of his office, think there is any need of legislation to help the great body of Americans to be able to exist in this glorious country.

The next column in the daily papers

speaks of the Convention in Minneapolis, and what a different tale is unfolded! Truly great T. V. Powderly sits with care written on his massive brow, benevolence and divine love lighting up his face, yet stern in the majesty of his integrity and his determination to aid his fellow man. No flowers, music. rare wines or luxuries deaden his senses. But he is keenly alive to the fact that hundreds of sunken and blanehed faces are upturned to him as their earthly Saviour; that thousands of hands are held out imploringly to him as their Guardian above a thought of self. Angel. This great humane man is He looks pityingly down upon those out of the Order who seek to traduce him and give another coloring to his motives; and his heart aches when he is misunderstood by the selfish, ambitious men in the Order.

While the triumphal car of the manof-the-great-position rolls over the country, filled with flattery and self importance, the man-of-the hour with his loved friends and earnest supporters around him, is shaping the destiny of unborn millions in his divine self abnegation.-A. B. M., in Journal of United Labor.

It is to the everlasting honor of the railway employes that they stand in the foremost ranks of the advocates of temperance reform From Winnepeg to the city of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in the thousands of com-. munications from our correspondents on all lines, there breathes but one sentiment, an earnest desire for thorough, genuine, practical temperance reform, a reform clean alike of demagoguery and fanaticism. The only condition stipulated is that the rules of abstinence. be enforced alike with officers and employes, and this the latter have the right to demand.

Believe me, the talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well; and doing well whatever you do.

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