264 THE YOUNG FARMER'S MANUAL. 



sufficiently strong to bear driving. And even if such long 

 wedges were most effective, they would be most inconvenient 

 and unwieldy tools. As the friction in driving wedges is 

 usually so intense, the idea of an intelligent laborer always is, to 

 have the most economical and convenient amount of surface in the 

 sides of the wedge, which will prove most effective under a given 

 number of blows. This leads us to speak of 



THE MOST CONVENIENT AND EFFECTIVE DIMENSIONS OF WEDGES. 



347. Iron wedges for splitting timber should always be so 

 thick and strong that they will not bend nor twist, even when 

 driven into the toughest knots and gnarls. The size which has 

 been found in practice to be the most convenient and effective for 

 ordinary purposes, is about ten inches long, two and a half inches 

 wide, and about two inches in thickness at the head, and of a true 

 taper to the entering edge, which should not be brought entirely 

 to a feather edge ; but the entering edge should be left about a 

 sixteenth of an inch thick when it is tempered, and then ground 

 off to a sharp edge, like the edge of an axe (see Fig. 152). The 

 entering edge of # iron wedges should be made of steel, and tem 

 pered about as hard as for cold-chisels. Iron wedges may be 

 smaller than this, or larger, if desired ; but it is just as well, when 

 a man has two wedges of the size just mentioned, to have gluts, 

 as large iron wedges are rather costly, and are no better follow 

 ing in a check made by iron wedges than a good glut. 



348. One very important consideration, which has been and 

 is entirely overlooked by laborers, is, to have their iron wedges 

 in the most proper order. The head should be a little convex, 

 and the sharp corners on the edge smoothed off a little, so that 

 they will not cut the face of the beetle. The two edges and two 

 sides should be hammered as true as is convenient, and then 

 they should be ground off on the grindstone as smoothly and 

 true as the blade of a saw. After the sides are ground smooth, 

 if they were polished they would enter their whole length with 

 less than half the number of blows which would be required to 

 drive the same wedge unpolished and all battered up, as wedges 



