For ordinary smith's work, however, there were, as
has been said, practically no machine tools at all.
This paucity or absence in some trades, as we have seen, of machine
tools, involved the need of very considerable skill on the part of the
workman. It required the smith to be a man not only of great muscular
power, but to be possessed of an accurate eye and a correct judgment,
in order to produce the forgings which were demanded of him, and to
make the sound work that was needed, especially when that soundness
was required in shafts, and in other pieces which, in those days, were
looked upon as of magnitude; which, indeed, they were, relatively to
the tools which could be brought to operate upon them. The
boiler-maker in his work had to trust almost entirely to the eye for
correctness of form and for regularity of punching, while all parts of
engines and machines which could not be dealt with in the lathe, in
the drilling, or in the screwing machine, had to be prepared by the
use of the chisel and the file.
At the present day, the turning and fitting shops are furnished not
only with the slide lathe, self acting in both directions, and
screw-cutting, the drilling-machine, and the screwing machine, but
with planing machines competent to plane horizontally, vertically, or
at an angle; shaping machines, rapidly reciprocating, and dealing with
almost any form of work; nut shaping machines, slot drilling
machines, and slotting machines, while the drills have become multiple
and radial; and the accuracy of the work is insured by testing on
large surface plates, and by the employment of Whitworth internal and
external standard gauges.
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