232 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph from Waltham Watch Company 



CUTTING MAINSPRINGS IN A MASSACHUSETTS WATCH FACTORY 



A single Massachusetts factory makes fourteen tons of these tiny springs a year. The 

 variation of even 1/500 of an inch in the thickness of the mainspring will affect the time- 

 keeping qualities of a good watch. 



hundred people, and two hundred proc- 

 esses, and serve to confuse the most pa- 

 tient reader, so only the salient features 

 of the shoe's journey through the factory 

 will claim attention. 



In the linings department are big ma- 

 chines that cut uppers cloth, twenty to 

 forty thicknesses at a clip, as easily as a 

 cake-cutter cuts dough. 



Beyond is the uppers leather depart- 

 ment. Here a trained man, with stubby 

 bladed, razor-edge knife, takes the skin, 

 lays it on his cutting board, and. running 

 his knife around his several aluminum 

 patterns, cuts out vamp and quarter and 

 toe piece with accomplished art in getting 

 the maximum of pieces out of the mini- 

 mum of skins. When he has finished 



with a skin it looks like shapeless strings 

 bordering a series of irregular holes. 



In cheaper grades of shoes the leather 

 also is cut by "dinking" machines — me- 

 chanical cake-cutters applied to shoe- 

 making. Only one ply is cut at a time, 

 but there are series of dies for the dif- 

 ferent parts. 



After the quarters, vamps, toe caps, 

 etc., have been cut the leather must be 

 "skived," so as to prevent any raw edges 

 showing in the finished shoe. The edges 

 are fed through a machine that shaves 

 the unfinished side down to a bevel. This 

 is then covered with cement and the thin 

 edges folded over, much as a seamstress 

 lays a hem. 



There are some twenty-odd parts in 



