266 THE YOUNG FARMER'S MANUAL. 



of the proper length, and laid up under shelter in a safe place, 

 where they will be seasoned and ready for use when gluts are 

 needed. None but the hardest and toughest timber should be used 

 for gluts, and if made when the timber is green, they will check 

 less, and it is not half the work to make them that it would be 

 to make them after they are seasoned. Laborers generally make 

 no provision for gluts until they arrive at the woods, or where 

 they are to labor, and then they will make gluts of the limbs of 

 a green tree, which are very poor things for such a purpose, and 

 spend time enough to no good purpose, to pay for half a dozen 

 well-made gluts. And, more than this, gluts made of green 

 timber will seldom last one quarter as long as if seasoned, and 

 they require, many times, twice as many blows to drive them as 

 if they were seasoned. And another thing of importance is, it 

 is not at all practicable to make a glut in a workmanlike manner 

 with the axe only. I know that they are usually made with no 

 other tool but the axe, and they are made of every imaginable 

 shape and form, like Fig. 119, or like Fig. 120, which shows an 

 edge view of a glut which has been made with the axe alone. 

 It will be discovered that the face sides of Fig. 120, which should 

 be as true and smooth as the face of a plane, are very rough and 

 hacked up, and not of a true taper, and will require more than 

 twice as many blows to drive it than if it were true and smooth. 

 He who wishes to appropriate all his strength, or the strength of 

 his laborers, to the most effective purpose when splitting timber, 

 will make his gluts at the work-shop, and have them well sea 

 soned before they are used. 



351. The most pro/cr manner of making a glut is, to dress it 

 off with an axe as true and smooth as practicable, leaving the 

 entering edge never less than half an inch thick. In large gluts 

 the entering edge should be three-fourths of an inch in thickness. 

 Then, put it in the vise and plane it off true and smooth, and 

 round the corners of the head and the corners of the entering 

 edge with the drawing-knife, as shown at Fig. 121, which repre 

 sents a view of the face side of a well-made glut. If the enter 

 ing edg^ of a glut is reduced in making it to a feather edge, it 



