364 BOOK IX. 



piece keeps the ends of the bow distended, and is placed a cubit distant from 

 the head of the bellows ; the ends of this piece are mortised into the ends 

 of the bow and are joined and glued to them ; its length without the tenons 

 is a foot, and its width a palm and two digits. There are, besides, two other 

 very small pieces glued to the head of the bellows and to the lower board, 

 and fastened to them by wooden pegs covered with glue, and they are three 

 palms and two digits long, one palm high, and a digit thick, one half being 

 sUghtly cut away. These pieces keep the ends of the bow away from the 

 hole in the bellows-head, for if they were not there, the ends, forced inward 

 by the great and frequent movement, would be broken. 



The leather is of ox-hide or horse-hide, but that of the ox is far preferable 

 to that of the horse. Each of these hides, for there are two, is three and a 

 half feet wide where they are joined at the back part of the bellows. A 

 long leathern thong is laid along each of the bellows-boards and each of the 

 bows, and fastened by T-shaped iron nails five digits long ; each of the 

 horns of the nails is two and a half digits long and half a digit wide. The 

 hide is attached to the bellows-boards by means of these nails, so that a horn 

 of one nail almost touches the horn of the next ; but it is different with the 

 bows, for the hide is fastened to the back piece of the bow by only two nails, 

 and to the two long pieces by four nails. In this practical manner they put 

 ten nails in one bow and the same number in the other. Sometimes when the 

 smelter is afraid that the vigorous motion of the bellows may pull or tear 

 the hide from the bows, he also fastens it with Uttle strips of pine by means of 

 another kind of nail, but these strips cannot be fastened to the back pieces of 

 the bow, because these are somewhat bent. Some people do not fix the 

 hide to the bellows-boards and bows by iron nails, but by iron screws, 

 screwed at the same time through strips laid over the hide. This method 

 of fastening the hide is less used than the other, although there is no doubt 

 that it surpasses it in excellence. 



Lastly, the head of the beUows, like the rest of the body, consists of two 

 boards, and of a nozzle besides. The upper board is one cubit long, one and a 

 half palms thick. The lower board is part of the whole of the lower bellows- 

 board ; it is of the same length as the upper piece, but a palm and a digit 

 thick. From these two glued together is made the head, into which, when it 

 has been perforated, the nozzle is fixed. The back part of the head, where 

 it is attached to the rest of the beUows-body, is a cubit wide, but three palms 

 forward it becomes two digits narrower. Afterward it is somewhat cut 

 away so that the front end may be rounded, until it is two palms and as 

 many digits in diameter, at which point it is bound with an iron ring three 

 digits wide. 



The nozzle is a pipe made of a thin plate of iron ; the diameter in front is 

 three digits, while at the back, where it is encased in the head of the beUows, 

 it is a pahn high and two palms wide. It thus gradually widens out, especially 

 at the back, in order that a copious wind can penetrate into it ; the whole 

 nozzle is three feet long. 



