294 



Popular Science Monthly 



A Turned Down or Pistol Grip 

 Handle for a Garden Rake 



THE straight handle on a rake makes it 

 difficult to grasp when drawing it over 

 the ground, especially where the heap of 

 rubbish to be moved is large and long. To 

 make a better hold for 

 the hand I attached 

 the turned down 

 handle or grip 

 as shown in 

 the illustra- 

 tion. A 

 similar grip 

 makes a 

 broken 

 handle on a garden tool as good as new. 

 To apply the grip, cut a shoulder about 

 3 in. from the end so that the tenon will fit 

 into a hole bored in the prepared grip. 

 The grip is made of a block of hard, even- 

 grained wood, cut to the shape shown. A 

 long wood screw passing through the grip 

 and into the rake handle will make it 

 rigid. — Frank L. Matter. 



A curved grip attached to 

 the end of a rake handle 



A Tool for Accurately Lining 

 Shop Shafting 



IN many shops where machines are belted 

 from lines of shafting little attention is 

 given to the alinement after the shafting 

 has once been lined up unless the settling of 

 the building, the weight of the pulleys and 

 the tension of the belts make it so badly out 

 of line that attention is called to it by the 

 thumping and heating. 



Often shafting is so little out of line that 

 it will show no sign of its condition although 

 it will turn so hard that it will require much 

 more power than it should to turn it. The 

 usual test of throwing off all belts and 

 trying the shaft by hand is not always 

 reliable as the strain of the belts may 

 change the alinement, and a section of 

 shafting not perfectly straight may not 

 show by that test, but may cause trouble 

 when run at speed. 



The method described is a certain, 

 practical and economical way of lining new 

 shafting or of testing an old line of doubtful 

 alinement. It can be applied in small 

 spaces between belts and pulleys and will 

 give dependable results of both the vertical 

 and lateral alinement at one setting of the 

 fingers. It is a great advantage to test a 

 line of shafting while it is under the condi- 

 tions of the tension imposed by its belts 

 and pulleys, as a very tight belt midway 



between two hangers may spring a section 

 of the shafting. This will cause trouble 

 which may not be detected by any test 

 made with the belt off the pulley. 



The method is based upon the fact that 

 when the center lines of two cylinders form 

 a perfectly straight line in their relation to 

 each other, two points, one upon the surface 

 of each of the cylinders, will be exactly the 

 same distance apart when the cylinders are 

 turned. 



The fingers fastened as closely as prac- 

 ticable to the ends of adjoining sections of 

 shafting enlarge the diameters of the 

 shafting and make possible the application 

 of this principle with sufficient accuracy to 

 prove whether the two sections of shaft in 

 question are in perfect alinement. 



It is evident that the longer the fingers 

 the greater will be the degree of accuracy 

 possible to attain, though in many cases 

 fingers which will permit the shaft to turn 

 completely around will give sufficiently 

 accurate results, as the shaft can be tested 

 both above and below and on each side. 



The fingers may be made roughly, for it 

 is immaterial whether they are perfectly 

 square with the shaft or not, as their 

 relation will be the same if each is firmly 

 fastened upon the shafting. They may be 

 held in place by a clamp or by a bolt as 



V-7H 



n h r: 



Wood arms attached to the ends of both 

 shafts to determine the accuracy of the lining 



indicated by the sketch. Care is necessary 

 in measuring the distance between the 

 fingers in their different positions, and in 

 adjusting the shafting so the distance will 

 be exactly the same in whatever position 

 the measurement is taken. 



In lining a new shaft by this method 

 several pairs of fingers may be used at once 

 to save changing, in which case the middle 

 section should be correctly lined and the 

 rest of the shafting lined both ways from 

 it. — Charles A. King. 



