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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July 29, 



tlnkerinK and carpentering— a scrap-box, and that he has 

 learned the value of "self-help." 



There are those who will perhaps think I am writing from 

 experience — looking in the glass and painting my own phiz. 

 Perhaps, to some extent, I am ; I will not altogether deny the 

 charge. Tho I venture, at the same time, to think that the 

 picture will pass as a more or less correct likeness of a good 

 many of us as we appeared in our sanguine salad days of bee- 

 keeping in the long, lung ago — 



■' When all the world was youn? lad. and everjthing wag green. 

 And every goose a swan, lad. and every las^ a queen. 

 Then, hey ! for boot and spur, lad. and ride the world away— 

 Voung blood must have its course, lad, and every dog his daj-." 



Yes ; and when a now prominent member of our fraternity 

 (which his name it is W. Z. H.) was won't to gull the public 

 into the belief that his hives were ma,de of more costly stuff 

 than mere wood by marbleizing the wetpaint with the smoke 

 of a lamp, and carefully sweeping in front of them each morn 

 with a broom 1 — (See page 12, Vol. XXXII of the Journal) — 

 W. Z. had developt into an amateur painter, and was no doubt 

 a bit of a tinker and carpenter to boot — and of course knew 

 tJie vitlue of a scrap-box. 



I hardly care to count the years since a damaged patent 

 lever corkscrew, a derelict sausage-mill, and the entrails of 

 an old Dutch clock formed the nucleus of my own collection 

 of oxidized trash, and to which I still never tire of adding. 

 Indeed, 1 never happen across a bit of cast-away metal — un- 

 less it be some such ponderous trifle as a wreckt railway 

 engine or a rusty ship's anchor and chain — but into my 

 pocket it goes, and reposes there until opportunity offers of 

 adding it to the scores of other " unconsidered trifles " in my 

 now worm-eaten but much cherisht old scrap-box. Half a 

 hinge, or indeed any bit of brass or iron with a hole or two in 

 it, I deem a fairly good find, whilst a battered gun-barrel, an 

 old door-lock, a broken barometer, or an ancient pair of 

 scales, is, either of them, capable of exciting as much ecstasy 

 in the scrap collector's breast as is usually displayed by the 

 enthusiastic philatelist over the acquisition of some such 

 rarity as a "Twopenny green Malta," or " Cape of Good Hope 

 Fourpenny Triangular Blue." 



Owing to the frequent demands upon its contents, my ovvn 

 scrap-box never gets full. It is a rare and interesting collec- 

 tion ; let me show it you. There, comprising the upper crust, 

 you see inter (ilia some odd nuts and bolts, a rusty hook, the 

 stem of a brass candlestick, a padlock hasp, piece of copper 

 syphon, a clock-spring, ditto pendulum, some brass cog- 

 wheels, iron rings, rusty buckles of all sorts and sizes, from 

 those off a pair of suspenders to that big fellow cut from some 

 rotting harness; a wooden faucet, a hollow saucepan handle 

 — ah, that, by-the-by, first gave me the idea of my new swarm- 

 hiving device, and I shall be using it shortly. When a swarm 

 Issues, you know, the queen but there, wait till it is pat- 

 ented, and then you can tell me what you think of it. Now 

 here's a thing that's always coming in handy — the steel ribs of 

 an old umbrella — every joint with a little hole drilled in it, 

 yoii know; further, there's a rusty curb chain, a broken dog's- 

 collar, some brass cartridge cases, the keyboard of a concer- 

 tina, the mouth-piece of a bugle, and the middle section of a 



flute— 



" Their once sweet tones, alas, forever mute." 



Dive through this upper stratum and you'll find an equally 

 multifarious, and, in my eyes, valuable assortment down be- 

 low. What ! an omnium yallierum, of useless rubbish '? A 

 conglomeration of rusty trash ? Well, my friend, perhaps 

 that's all It may seem to you who may not possibly have two 

 mechanical ideas in your head ; but to me It is a treasure 

 chest, a box of untold wealth, from which I draw inspiration 

 to devise, and substantial aid in perfecting what I do devise. 

 Oh, you'd pitch it all away, would you ? Very likely you 



would ; nor heed the old adage to keep a thing seven years 

 before getting rid of it. Now, experience has proved to me 

 that were I to-day to throw away even the most insignificant 

 and seemingly worthless thing in that box, and which may 

 have lain there unrequisitioned any time these last 20 years, 

 I should be sure to have an urgent need for that very thing 

 to-morrow. Strange, is it not? but a fact nevertheltss. 



For instance, a bit of steel, part of the mysterious 

 mechanism of a corset which years and years ago — ah, me ! 

 what memories some of these rusty scraps call up ! Why, 

 there's material for a big book of the most gushing kind of 

 poetry quietly reposing in that worm-eaten old box — which 

 years and years ago, I say, engirdled a thin, wasp-waisted 

 maid, who to-day is a matron fair, fat, and far over forty, 

 and which, after lying fully a score of years in that old scrap- 

 box (the steel, not the matron), has quite recently proved of 

 inestimable value to me, inasmuch as it has enablec^me to util- 

 ize a thousand two-inch sections, which, not fitting my 1%- 

 inch frames, were useless and of no earthly value to me. To 

 reduce their width with a plane was easy enough, but how re- 

 store the slots ? Cutting them out with a knife was far too 

 tedious a process, and my son had once casually suggested 

 " punching them out — somehow." Ah, but how ? 



Well, one day while rummaging in my scrap-box I came 

 across this narrow steel stay-rib ; an idea struck me ; its time 

 had come, the problem of the slots was solved ; and within 

 less than two hours I was, by its aid, nipping out new slols as 

 fast as my son could plane the sections down, or at the rate of 

 500 sections per hour. For the benefit of those who may 

 wish to reduce wide sections to narrow ones, aud who may be 

 mechanically and self-helpfully iuclioed, I will, in a few words, 

 tell how it was done : 



First, I took a (to me) perfectly obsolete tool — a Parker's 

 foundation fastener. On one side of the upper piece I made, 

 by means of a center-bit, an oblong cavity whose sides were 

 the exact shape and size of a section slot. Having first put a 

 sharp edge on my bit of flexible steel, I curved it snugly into 

 this cavity, and then wedged it up tight. In the bottom half 

 of the Parker, and just where this cutter would strike, I 

 chiseled out a J^ inch groove, which I run full of molten lead, 

 and, when cool, smoothed down with a chisel. I then hinged 

 the two parts together, tackt a slightly projecting bit of sec- 

 tion on one side of the bottom half, for a guide (into which 

 the V-groove of the sections to be manipulated fitted), and — • 

 that was all. They cut like cheese, and as clean as a whistle ; 

 and " long before the sun gaed doon " the job was jobbed, 

 and these thousand sections, long regarded as worthless, were 

 now, with a honey-flow at hand, worth fully ten dollars to 

 me. Nor would the closest examination fail to induce any 

 other opinion than that they were turned out just that size 

 from the factory down at Medina, Ohio. The scrap-box served 

 me well that shot ! 



I would add that reducing the width of sections is easily 

 done by placing about a dozen of them between plauks nailed 

 flat on either side of them, and carefully guaged to the right 

 measurement, then plane away. But, easy and simple as the 

 plane is, I fancy sections are too cheap in your part of the 

 globe for many to bother. Like the poor, the supply-dealer 

 is always with you ; here it is different; owing to frequently 

 recurring drouths, the normal scarcity of beepasturage and 

 poor markets, the apiarist has small encouragement, and 

 hence the "supply-dealer" Is, so to say, unknown. It Is a far 

 cry to the States, and what with heavy sea-freight, import 

 dues, landing, wharfage, storage aud breakage, and having 

 to pay at the rate of }4 a, ton for freight on the smallest pack- 

 age, things come so costly that often one must either help one- 

 self or — go without; and that Is how our ingenuity gets de- 

 velopt. 



For Instance, we once read how the late Mr. B. Taylor 



