washer. The hand feed was against a stop precisely 

 as the planchets or disks for coins are cut in the U.S. 

 Mint. When for economy tinned iron rivets and 

 washers came into use the same manner of cutting 

 the wire and heading by hand was continued for 

 years before a cutting and heading machine was in- 

 vented and adopted, but for punching out the wash- 

 ers and using full size sheets of copper or iron my 

 father invented and constructed a machine that left 

 the sheets, from which the washers were cut, in a 

 useful form for screens, or for covering cellar windows 

 instead of woven wire, and for various other uses. 



This machine, without any alteration as to plan, 

 continues in use to the present time. It is also used 

 for perforating sheet iron or steel for coal screens and 

 for floors of malt kilns. 



A wooden straight-edge; a shoemaker's leather knife; 

 a rocker or templet, with points to mark the places 

 where holes for the rivets were to be punched by a 

 hollow leather punch; a hollow set punch to drive 

 the washer home and to bring the leather in close 

 contact were used. This set punch was made like 

 a hammer, with an iron handle with a broad, flat- 

 tened end; the face of the hammer portion, drilled 

 out to go over the rivet, was faced with steel; the 

 end on which the blow was struck, soft iron. When 

 this set punch was grasped by the handle in the left 

 hand, a turn of the wrist, after the washer was driven 

 home, would bring the edge of the flat end of the 

 handle on to the washer, and hold it down while the 

 riveting blows were being struck. 



A set punch, to round and finish the riveting; a 

 riveting hammer, an iron mandrel to rivet on, were 



the entire outfit of tools when the first riveted host- 

 was made. But soon labor-saving machinery had to 

 be invented. First in this order came a ratchet ar- 

 rangement to feed the strips of copper under the 

 washer punches, instead of the hand feed. This soon 

 led to the machine that I have above alluded to, in 

 which whole sheets of planished copper, 30 by 60 

 inches, the size then imported, and iron sheets of 

 much greater length, utilized what before was waste. 



Before the machine was invented for cutting the 

 wire into lengths, and by a plunger driven by cam 

 and toggle, upsetting the head forming the rivet (the 

 germ of all rivet and blank headers for wood screws 

 of the present day), samples of hand-made copper 

 rivets and washers were usually sent to England, and 

 a large invoice imported from Birmingham. The 

 washers were well enough, but the rivets were so rough 

 and irregular in size as to be useless for riveting either 

 hose or mail pouches, and they found their way to 

 the brass founder's crucible. 



Screw stretching frames to take the wind out of the 

 sides of sole leather, after they were skirted, and before 

 the hose strips were cut, that the hose in use would 

 keep straight; machines for cutting and trimming, 

 beveling and tapering the ends where the strips of 

 leather were to be spliced together, and simultane- 

 ously punching the double row of holes for the spliced 

 rivets; a machine through which the spliced strips of 

 leather were fed, the rivet holes automatically laid 

 out and punched: all these inventions were but the 

 natural sequence of the invention of riveted hose, or 

 leather water tubes, as it was called by our English 

 progenitors .... [2] 



11 



