THE YOUNG FARMER'S MANUAL. 259 



wedging. Should they become loose, let them be wedged well 

 with wedges of hard, tough timber. (See paragraph 345.) Many 

 men will wedge such things with wedges of soft timber; but 

 every good mechanic who knows anything about driving wedges, 

 will tell you, that anything can be wedged very much tighter with 

 hard wood wedges than with wedges of soft wood. Use an inch 

 framing chisel (see Fig. 156) for making checks in the ends of a 

 beetle for the wedges ; and make the wedges a sixteenth of an 

 inch wider than the chisel, and then they will not work out. 

 Some men prefer to have a beetle made without any shoulder for 

 the rings, but my experience teaches me, that a beetle will wear 

 longer, and the rings remain true longer, when it is made with 

 shoulders, than when it is made of a true taper, without shoulders 

 for the rings ; because, if a laborer happens to strike mostly on 

 one side of the end of a beetle, unless the rings are so tight that 

 they cannot be moved by much pounding, one side of the rings 

 will be driven on farther than the other, and the faces will soon 

 become one-sided] and then it wi]l be an awkward tool to strike 

 with. And if the rings are not very tight, when the wood begins 

 to batter and spread over them they will drive on towards the 

 middle of the beetle, and a beetle will be all stove up and worth 

 less before it is half worn out. 



341. The size of the different parts of an ordinary beetle is about 

 as follows : beetle eight or nine inches long, shoulders two inches, 

 rings, of the best of iron, one inch wide, about three-eighths of an 

 inch thick, and about large enough to go on the end of a beetle, 

 five inches in diameter, and handle about thirty inches long. For 

 a strong man the handle should be longer than for boys, or men 

 of inferior strength. "Where the handle enters the head, it should 

 not be less than an inch and a half in diameter. The hilt and 

 straight part of the handle may be made to suit the size of the 

 laborer's hands. A man with small hands and short fingers needs 

 a smaller handle than he who has very large hands, with fingers 

 of a corresponding length. Great care should be exercised in 

 putting in the handle, lest it stand as shown by the dotted handle 

 in the figure. It is no uncommon thing to see handles standing 



