I said it would be impossible to estimate or realize 

 what the rejection of the cut nail had cost England. 

 Its invention in America filled a vacuum and was al- 

 most a necessity, not only as to first cost of the nails 

 but as great labor-savers in carpenters' work; that I 

 had noticed that in England every carpenter had in 

 hand either brace and bit, gimlet or brad-awl, accord- 

 ing to the work he was doing, for without them the 

 square uniformly tapered hand-made wrought nail 

 was the best possible form that could be devised to 

 split the wood it was driven into, without first boring 

 a hole to receive it; that its tapered form, if not driven 

 through and clinched, would lose its hold on the least 

 starting back — still the\ continued in common use; 

 that on watching the joiners at work, I believed I was 

 safe in estimating that for every English nail driven, 

 the user of the American cut nail would drive four or 

 five. That in patternmaking shops I had seen the 

 wrought clout in use by having its head flattened edge- 

 ways by a stroke of a hammer, and then it made a 

 ragged hole to be filled with wax or putty. 



Mr. Donkin smiled as he said, "I have long been 

 using in my pattern shop the American cut brads;" 

 then he must understand the point; but I would give 

 another instance of the fixed ways and prejudice of 

 the old country that kept back improvements. 



Mr. E. R. Sheer, a pianoforte maker of Philadel- 

 phia, in fitting work where wood screws had to be 

 withdrawn and again driven in the same holes had 

 found it difficult to make the common square-end 

 English wood screw enter and follow the thread cut 

 by the first insertion; he had mounted a clamp chuck 

 on a foot lathe that would grasp the shank of the 

 screw, then with file and chasing tool he tapered the 

 end of the screw like that of a gimlet. He had given 

 me several of these as samples, with the request that 

 when in Birmingham I would induce some good 

 screw maker to fill a considerable order of gimlet- 

 pointed screws. I had gone to the makers with a 

 prominent shipper of hardware through whom they 

 received most of their American orders, and we had 

 failed to induce any one of them to fill the order; they 

 and their predecessors had always made wood screws 

 as they were then doing, and they would have nothing 

 to do with such new-fangled notions. 



Mr. Donkin did not expect Mr. Ibotson before 

 noon, and said if I could come to his shops one or 

 two hours in advance he thought he could show me 

 a shop that had abandoned some old fixed ways and 

 made fair advances, and added — if it has not kept up 

 with America. [46] 



On going to the shops the following morning I 

 found Mr. Donkin in his office, but still far from well, 

 yet he went with me through the shops; he took great 

 pride in showing and explaining his great engine 

 lathe for turning the drying cylinders. It certainly, 

 for solidity and fine workmanship, came nearer to 

 the lathes of the present day than anything I had 

 previously seen in England. It was calculated to 

 turn cylinders of 4 feet diameter, which at the time 

 it was built was thought to be the largest that would 

 be required, but on one occasion the heads had been 

 raised to take in a still greater diameter, and a larger 

 size lathe was then being constructed. 



I had seen in Manchester many efforts at tools 

 to produce uniformity in various parts of cotton 

 spinning machinery, but nothing to compare with the 

 tools Mr. Donkin had constructed to obtain that end 

 in the heavier machinery for paper mills. His screw 

 bolts were mostly lathe chased, the nuts tapped in 

 the usual way by hand, but afterwards screwed on 

 mandrels and lathe faced. Hexagonal nuts and heads 

 of collar bolts were reduced to standard size and finished 

 by milling with double cutters. As we were going 

 through the shops, a clerk handed Mr. Donkin a letter 

 that had been brought in haste by a special messenger; 

 he glanced over it, asked me to excuse him for a short 

 time, calling on the room foreman to show me around 

 during his absence. Then I noticed that, as at Man- 

 chester, the grindstone and lap wheel were much used 

 in finishing work, but the planing machine then being 

 introduced was destined soon to take their place. 



Mr. Donkin soon returned with the open letter in 

 his hand, and said to me, "Here is a case in point, 

 showing the value and importance of, as far as 

 practicable, making all parts of machinery inter- 

 changeable. Mr. has met with a serious acci- 

 dent to his Fourdrinier machine. The carelessness of 

 an attendant allowing a tool to slip from his hand 

 caused a break, that before the machine could be 

 stopped was carried forward, doing serious damage to 

 other parts of the machine; a messenger with a con- 

 veyance and the request that I lose no time in sending 

 workmen with tools to make repairs. He has fortu- 

 nately given in his letter a full detailed description of 

 damage done, hoping that by so doing I would, in a 

 measure, be prepared and that he would not be 

 obliged to have his mill shut down for more than 

 three or four days." He then added that in the short 

 time he had left me he had dispatched a competent 

 workman with duplicates of all the broken parts, and 

 that by midnight he had no doubt the machine 



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