CHAPTER VII. HE FINDS THE CLUE.

Thus far our smith had by no means realized the benefits anticipated from the possession of steel. He had, indeed, ascertained what degree of heat it would bear, learned to weld it to iron, made some punches that were a little better than iron ones, and yet he was as far removed from a knowledge of tempering that would enable him to forge and finish a reliable tool of any kind as before; since to heat a piece of steel and plunge it in water, making it so hard and brittle as to be useless, or quenching it when nearly cold, thus rendering it about as soft as iron, did not amount to anything practically.

And yet this man aspired to make an axe; yes, even had dim visions of plane-irons, draw-shaves, chisels, and gouges manufactured by William Richardson, edge tool maker. Aspired, did I say? The expression is too feeble. The idea absorbed his thoughts, and, ever present to his mind, assumed the character of a passion.[Pg 79] It was not a mere whim, but based upon solid grounds.

There were but few ploughs in the place, and not many horses, and they were not shod all round except in the winter. But the axe was in universal use, subject to continual wear, and frequently broken. John Drew was celebrated for giving to his axes a high temper, that rendered them liable to break in frosty weather; one cause of which probably was, that he made up a lot of axes, and then tempered the lot. Upon tempering days he was always more or less under the influence of liquor. Indeed, he thought he could not temper an axe properly, unless he was half drunk; and it must be allowed that many of his neighbors were of the same opinion, while others said, he wanted them to break, in order that he might have a job of repairing. It was too early in the season to plough; the ice had broken up in the river, and having first driven the logs, cut and hauled in the winter, to the mill, he gave his undivided attention to the work, and employed John Bradford to help him cut up and draw the large bar of iron purchased at the store, while Clem and Robert mounted on a block—not being tall enough to reach the handle without—and blew the bellows. John had not struck through two heats with the large sledge when the stone anvil broke in two. This mishap, however, was soon repaired, as there was no lack of stones.

[Pg 80]

While they were placing another stone on the stump, David Montague came in.

"Neighbor Richardson," said he, "it is too bad that a man who is possessed of the industry and ingenuity you are, should be so put to it for tools, and be obliged to work iron on a stone. Now I tell you what I'll do with you. I mean to get out timber and boards in the course of next year to build me a frame house the year after; 'twill take two years to make the shingles and clapboards, hew the frame, and put the house up. Now I'll advance you money to buy an anvil beck (beak) horn, stake, tools to head nails with, and you may pay me in work, shoe my horse and oxen, and make all the nails for my house. I shan't want a nail under a year, and not many under fourteen months, so that you can make them next winter, and at odd jobs."

Nails were then made by hand, of wrought iron. The stake was a species of anvil of small size, and used to point horse-nails on. The beak horn was a very necessary thing at that day, used for welding hollow articles, and for work upon plough irons.

"I am sure, neighbor, you couldn't do me a greater favor, for I need an anvil sadly, though I can get along without the stake and the beck horn."

"You can, perhaps, at present, but you will soon[Pg 81] need them both. I don't think you ought to feel under the least obligation to me, for in advancing this money, I am benefiting myself and the whole neighborhood more than you. It will save me and all of us many a hard tramp through the woods. Besides, I don't like to get down on my knees to John Drew, beg him to work for me, and then pay him twice as much as it is worth."

"So I say, neighbor," said Bradford, "though—to give the devil his due—Drew is as good a blacksmith as ever stood behind an anvil, but mighty uncomfortable. But where are you going to get the bricks, neighbor, to build your chimneys?"

"Make them, John; there's sand and clay both in my pasture. So you see there's work enough for two years to hew the frame, make the shingles and clapboards, cut logs for boards, and make and burn the bricks."

Richardson improved the opportunity, while assisted by Bradford, to forge the polls or iron portion of two axes, and split up iron for nail-rods and also for horseshoes. He had never seen any one temper a tool, but he had often struck for Drew to forge axes; had seen him weld the steel to the iron, and knew he could do that. Although he had hired John to help him draw the large iron, because he could not do it, even with the aid of the boys, without great[Pg 82] outlay of both time and labor, he didn't care to expose his awkwardness before him. In short, he preferred to be alone while adventuring upon this portion of the work, in order that he might study out the matter as he went along with no witness to his mistake but the boys, and as for tempering, we have seen how little he knew in respect to that.

The next morning he made his steel in the shape of a wedge, and split a corresponding crevice in the blade of the axe, and not quite so wide as the steel was thick, in order that it might bind on the sides as it entered, to hold it while heating, and put the whole in the fire for a weld. At the first trial the steel fell out on the ground the moment he struck it, and he lost his heat. He now shut the slit together so that the steel did not quite reach to the bottom, closed it up on the steel a little harder, put the axe in the fire, and before striking, struck the edge of the steel against the side of the anvil, to drive it home to the bottom of the slit, and thus succeeded in making a perfect weld.

But now came the crisis—to temper it. All depended upon this. So important a tool was an axe at that day, men wouldn't hesitate to travel twenty miles additional to a smith who had the reputation of excelling in the art, and no excellence of form or finish could compensate an axe-man for its absence.

[Pg 83]

He was well aware the reason the punch broke was on account of its hardness, and also that if he had, after putting it in water, let it cool some, it would have been less brittle; but he also knew the harder a tool is, the keener it cuts, and, forgetful of the fault in Drew's axes, imagined he could not get it too hard to cut wood. He thought there must be a vast difference between wood and iron, and that the harder the better; it would never break in wood.

Therefore, after finishing as well as he could, he made it as hot as he could without burning, and quenched it, put in a handle, and set to work grinding. The axe proved so hard, although he had made the blade very thin by hammering, that it was almost impossible to grind it, though he put a liberal allowance of sand on the stone. Susan and the boys took turns at the stone, the father encouraging them by declaring that it would cut like a ribbon, for it was harder than Pharaoh's heart.

The implement was ground at length. Richardson whet the edge and forthwith proceeded to a large hemlock that grew near, to try it. If unskilled in making, he was very far from being a novice in the use of an axe.

At the first blow he cried to his family, who were all gathered at the foot of the tree, his wife with the babe in her arms,—

"It's going to cut; I know it is."

[Pg 84]

Leaving the keen instrument buried in the wood, he pulled off his outer garments. The blows now fell thick and heavy.

"Cuts like a razor. Throws the chips well. Never saw an axe work easier in the wood," broke from him at intervals, while the children clapped their hands and capered around the tree till it came crashing to the ground.

The hemlock was scrubby, and one of the lower limbs was dead. Richardson struck the axe into it with all his might; but when he pulled it out, there was a piece of steel out of the middle of the bitt as large as a half-dollar.

Greatly to the surprise of his wife, he manifested no symptoms of discouragement at this disappointment in the moment of victory; he merely said, as with one foot on the butt of the tree, he looked at the shining and crystalline surface of the fracture,—

"Well, I've found out the temper that will shave the wood. I must now find out the highest temper that will stand hemlock knots."

The next thing Richardson did was to try with a file his saw and a draw-shave that cut well. He found they bore no comparison in hardness with the axe he had just broken, yet they were both wood tools, and good ones. He then tried a chopping axe made by Drew. It was softer still, but it cut well and stood hemlock, fir, and spruce knots. He now understood[Pg 85] that tools for wood, especially where blows were given, did not admit of a very high temper.

"I wish," he said, "I did know how it is that blacksmiths tell when steel cools down to a right temper. How I wish I had asked Tom Breslaw!" He sat down on the butt of the tree to reflect. Clem seated himself by his side, while Robert, standing on the tree, wiped the drops of sweat from his father's brow.

"Father," said Clem, at length, clambering into his parent's lap, "what you going to do with the axe now?"

"I'm going," said he, putting his arm fondly around the little questioner, "to try and make it just hard enough to cut, and not break or turn."

"How will you know, father, when you've got just enough out?"

"Guess at it. I can't do any better. If I only had a watch or clock, I'd let it cool two minutes, then four, and see what that would do. Do you understand, my little man?"

"I don't know, father; ain't it just like when mother takes a candle, makes a mark on it with her knitting needle, and says, 'When the candle burns down to that mark, 'twill be half an hour, and then you'll have to go to bed, Clem?'"

"Something like it; but I want something that will tell the minutes."

"Then it would be two minutes hard, father,"[Pg 86] cried Clem, who, with both arms around his parent's neck, had almost got into his mouth. "How funny! Shall I go borrow Mr. Montague's watch?"

"Not now, dear."

Taking the boy by the hand, and the axe in the other hand, he walked thoughtfully towards the shop.

After heating to a cherry red, he laid it on the forge to cool, began to count, and continued counting till the axe was cool. He then chalked down the number on his bellows.

"Father?"

"Don't bother me now, dear;" and he began to think aloud.

"This axe was as hard as glass before I het it; now the temper's all out. It has taken while I could count sixty-four to come out. Now, if sixty-four takes out the whole, thirty-two ought to take out half, sixteen a quarter, eight an eighth. The temper is put into steel when it's put into water; and the hotter the steel, and the quicker the chill, the harder it is. What made that axe so hard was, that I het it so hot, and chilled it quick. If I had made it only half as hot, and then put it in water, the temper wouldn't have begun but half as soon, and then it would have been only half as hard. I guess that axe's about an eighth too hard. I'll heat it just as hot as I did before, and count eight, then put it[Pg 87] in water. I wonder if that'll be the same thing as though I hardened it at full heat, and after that found some rule by which to reduce the temper. I'm afraid it won't. Let me think of it." He sat down on the forge, while Clem, not daring to speak, stood with his great round eyes staring anxiously in his father's face.

"I had an axe of John Drew once that was too hard—kept breaking; but it cut like a razor. I was afraid to touch it to draw the temper; but one day I put the 'poll' of it in the fire to burn the handle out, and the wet cloths I had on the steel to keep it cool got dry while I was talking with a neighbor, and the poll got red hot. I thought I'd drawn all the temper out and spoilt it, but after that it was just hard enough. Now I'll just do the same thing again."

He heated the whole axe, steel, and all, then quenched the whole of the steel in water till it was cold, leaving the rest of the axe red hot.

"Now I'll let that hot iron draw on the steel while I count eight."

He did thus, then quenched the whole; tried it in the knot; it broke, but very little; put it in again, and counted sixteen. It was too soft; the edge turned.

"I don't believe but that red-hot iron draws too savage on the steel; takes the temper out too fast. I'll draw it more gradual and count the same number of times."

[Pg 88]

He now dipped the whole axe in water, edge first, took it out directly, put the poll only on the outside of the fire to keep up a gradual heat, counted sixteen and quenched it. The axe cut much better and neither broke nor turned. He thought he would heat it, count but twelve, and thus see if it wouldn't bear a little higher temper. Just as he was about to take it from the fire little Sue came to call him to dinner.

"Tell your mother I can't come yet; don't know when I can come; to eat dinner, and not wait for me."

"Nor me, nuther," said Clem. "I ain't coming till father comes."

He quenched the axe, put the poll on the fire, and while looking at it and counting, thought he noticed a flaw in the steel. Rubbing it in the sand and coal-dust of the forge till it was bright, he found it was only the edge of a scale raised by the frequent heats. But his attention was instantly arrested by seeing the bright steel change under his eye to a pale yellow, commencing at the point where the steel joined the iron, and gradually extending over it; while he looked, it changed to a darker shade, became brown, almost purple. He had now counted twelve, and quenched it. When he took the axe from the water, the same tinge was on the steel. The axe now cut better and stood well. But he had got hold of an idea he meant to follow out.

[Pg 89]

"I wonder what those colors are," he said. "Who knows but they may be the temper? Just as fast as the temper was let down they changed—grew darker. Wonder what they would have come to, if I hadn't quenched the steel. I'll know." Heating the axe once more, he rubbed it bright, and looked for the colors. For a little time the steel was white; then the pale straw color appeared again, growing darker, till it became brown, with purple spots, then purple, light blue, pigeon blue; then darker, almost black.

"O, father, what handsome colors!"

No reply. Much excited, he quenched the steel, and determined to ascertain whether the colors represented different degrees of hardness. When he found, by careful experiment, they did, he caught the wondering boy in his arms, ran into the house crying,—

"Now, my boy, we've got something that's a better regulator than David Montague's watch, your mother's candle, or counting, either."

Entering the house he shouted,—

"Sue, I've got it! I've found how the blacksmith's do it, or, if I haven't, I've found a way just as good."

His progress was now rapid; he soon ascertained the proper temper for all kinds of tools. The steel of the axe he had experimented with had been through the fire so many times that the life of it was all gone. He therefore put new[Pg 90] steel in it, improved the shape somewhat, ground the whole surface of it before tempering, to take off the hammer marks,—for he had not learned to hammer smooth,—tempered it carefully, and hid it away in the shop.

The next week he procured his anvil, beak-horn, stake, and tools for nails. They came from Boston to Portsmouth, from thence to Kennebunkport, by water; on an ox team to the village, and from there up the river in a canoe.

His land joined Bradford's, and they had appointed a day to build a piece of log fence together. Richardson took his new axe with him, having ground it sharp. Watching his opportunity while Bradford was putting some top poles on the fence, he took Bradford's axe, putting his own in the same place. Bradford, without noticing the difference, took it up and began to chop into the side of a tree.

"Whew! How this axe cuts! Gnaws right into the wood. It ain't my axe; it's William's. Will, where'd you get this axe?"

"Made it."

"The dogs you did."

"It is one of those you helped me forge."

"It's worth two of that axe you are using that John Drew made me. Will you sell it?"

"Yes; that's what I made it for."

"May I put it into the knots?"

"Yes; try it in any fair way, and if it breaks or turns, you needn't take it."

[Pg 91]

Bradford, after making a thorough trial, took it. It was soon noised round that William Richardson had made an axe for John Bradford that beat Drew's all hollow. Every body wondered at the ease with which he took up anything, little knowing the struggle it cost him.

His farming work now came on; but at intervals he made axes that found a ready sale. He made a small pair of bellows in the fall, and a little forge in the chimney corner. The boys learned to make nails, and made nearly all Montague's nails in the winter evenings. He paid less and less attention to farming, and more to working in iron, paid for his land, and built him a frame house. In the autumn of the year that he made the first axe, he found that he could not well make ox and horse-shoes without a vice, and resolved to make something that would answer the purpose.

He began by taking two wide, flat bars of iron, and turned the edge of them over the edge of the anvil, like the head of a railroad spike, in order that, when the flat surfaces came together, these edges might make a face to the vice. To the other ends of each of the bars he welded pieces of the old crane, rendering that portion of the vice that was to fasten to the bench long enough to reach to the ground, and rise eight inches above the edge of the bench, and welded an old horse-shoe on the back side to fasten it to the bench.[Pg 92] The other he made but two-thirds as long, and by making a slot in one, with a hole for a pin, and punching an eye in the other, he contrived both to connect them, and form a hinge joint on which the outer leg of the vice might traverse. Two holes were now punched to receive a bolt that was designed to answer the purpose of a screw, one end of which terminated in a head; the remaining portion was punched at short distances with eyes very long and wide, to receive broad, thick keys or wedges that would endure hard driving.

He now set up the permanent portion of his vice, put the lower end into a flat rock set in the ground, and fastened the upper part to the bench, brought up the other side, and put the bolt through both. The hinge at the bottom permitted the outer jaw of the vice to play back and forth on the bolt in order to open or close it. By means of tapering wedges driven into the eyes in the bolt, he could wedge a piece of iron firmly into his vice to file it, could turn the calks of a horse-shoe or set them at any angle he wished. Whenever the vice did not come up to the eye, and the wedge would not draw, he slipped washers—iron rings—over the bolt to fill the space, and then entering the point of his key, drove it with great force. It was not very convenient, but it answered the purpose effectually, for it was substituting the power of the wedge for that of the screw.

[Pg 93]

"Mother," said Clem, one morning, "will you let me have a piece of your tongs?"

"My tongs, child? What do you want of my tongs?"

"To make some bow-pins—iron ones—for my steer's yoke; father's gone, and said we might play."

"No, child; you're crazy."

"You let father have 'em."

"Well, that was because he wanted a pair of tongs to hold his iron."

"So I want the bow-pins."

"Well, I shan't have my tongs spoilt for nonsense."

"Mother, is that red and white rooster mine?"

"Yes."

"Mine to do what I'm a mind to with?"

"Yes."

In the course of half an hour, Clem, with his rooster under his arm, presented himself at David Montague's door.

"Good morning, Clem. What are you going to do with that rooster?"

"I want to sell him. Andrew said you wanted one."

"Yes; mine froze last winter. What do you ask for him?"

"I'll sell him for that horse-shoe what's hanging on your barn-yard fence."

[Pg 94]

"What on earth do you want of that horse-shoe?"

"I want to make some bow-pins for my steers."

"Well, you may have it, and after you have made 'em, I want to see 'em."

As William Richardson came home, he saw smoke coming out of the chimney of the shop, and heard the sound of the hammer and sledge. Looking through a chink, he saw the boys busy enough. Clem was behind the anvil. They had flattened out the heel calks of the horse-shoe, straightened it, and lapped one part over the other. Just as he looked in, Clem was putting sand on it; in a few moments he took it from the fire, welding hot: Robert struck with the sledge, and they soon drew it out into a thin, square bar.

"I hope you ain't wasting my iron, boys."

"No, father," said Clem, "it's mine. I sold my rooster to Mr. Montague, and bought it. We are going to make some bow-pins, and we don't want anybody to help nor show us; we want to do it."

At this hint Richardson walked into the house. When Clem took the bow-pins to Mr. Montague, the latter told him to make two pairs, and he would buy them of him.

Settlers now began to flock in; a carriage road was made through the woods; wagons and carts[Pg 95] came into use. Montague and others built a sawmill and a grist-mill; the town was incorporated, and Richardson made the mill-chain. This was a wonderful advance from mending the ox-chain before the kitchen fire on a flat stone.

"Neighbor Richardson," said Montague, as he came to get his horse shod, "I was coming home from the village last Tuesday, and met Sam Parker going to get screw-bolts made. Now, it always galls me to have work go out of this place. I think you'd better send to Boston and get tools, so that you can cut screws whenever they are wanted; there will be more call for them every day, for the town is growing fast."

"Thank you, neighbor. I'll think of it."

He resolved to see if he could not make something that would cut screws, before sending to Boston.

It is said that the idea of the principle of gravitation was suggested to Sir Isaac Newton by seeing an apple fall from a tree. He wondered what made it drop to the earth, rather than go in the opposite direction. However that may be, it is certain that a thoughtful man will receive suggestions from things that make no impress upon the stupid and careless.

As William Richardson sat before the fire that night reflecting upon the conversation with Montague, he noticed Clem putting powder into a horn. The boy had rolled a leaf of his last year's [Pg 96]writing-book into the form of a tunnel, fastened it with a pin, and was pouring the powder through it.

When the boy had finished, he said,—

"Clem, hand me that paper before you unpin it."

After looking attentively at it for some time, he said to the boy, who, interested in whatever attracted his father's attention, was looking over his shoulder,—

"Clem, the lines on that paper are a screw."

"Be they, father?"

"Unpin the paper."

Clem did so, and they were all straight again.

"How funny, father!"

"Get my square, and you, Robert, go to the wood-pile and get a piece of birch bark—white birch."

After stripping the bark to a thin sheet, he cut it square. He then set off an inch at one corner, and drew a line from that mark to the corner of the paper on the same side, making an oblique line.

"You see that is up hill, boys—don't you?"

"Yes, father."

He then wrapped the bark round the broom-handle.

"Now it climbs right up the broom-handle; that's the way a screw does; it's just getting up hill by going round."

"What's the good of it, father?" said Clem,[Pg 97] who was altogether of a practical turn, but had never seen a screw.

"I'm going to try to make one in the morning; then you'll see."

The next day he made a steel bolt, or blank, tapering, and of the size of the screws he thought would be generally needed, leaving the head square, and sufficient length of steel to hold it by in the vice. The next thing to determine was, the pitch or inclination of the thread, and its size. On the edge of a piece of birch bark he set off quarter of an inch, and drew a line from that mark to the edge of the bark, and cut it off, giving the rise or pitch. It was the time of year when boys make whistles. He cut an elder sprout just the size of his bolt, spit on it, and pounded it on his knee with the handle of his knife till the bark came off; this bark he slipped over the bolt, pounded up and boiled some pieces of moose horns, made glue and glued it on solid, put the strip of birch bark around the lower part of the bolt, its straight edge in line with the lower edge, and glued it on. There was now a perfectly true spiral round the bolt, the quarter of an inch offset determining the inclination, and also the size of the thread. He now filed out a fork from a thin piece of iron just a quarter of an inch in width, the two points, chisel-edged, one sixteenth of an inch in width each, leaving a space of two [Pg 98]sixteenths between them. Commencing at the narrow end of the birch bark, he followed along its edge, cutting the bark sheath as he went, till he came again to the point from which he started, having cut two spirals through to the steel, with a ridge of bark between them two sixteenths of an inch wide. Putting one side of his fork in the furrow already made, he followed round till he came to the head of the bolt. Placing it in the vice with a three-cornered file, he cut out his thread, the ridges of bark on each side forming a guide for a true thread. With file and cold-chisel he cut out segments in the middle of his bolt, the whole length, leaving the thread on the corners unbroken, thus forming a cutting edge at each corner where the thread was broken. He now hardened and tempered it.

As the next stage of the process, he forged a steel plate,—the ends terminating in handles,—in which he made round holes of various sizes, corresponding to the size of the two ends of his bolt. Into these holes he put this hardened steel screw-tap with plenty of bear's grease, turning it forcibly round with a wrench till the sharp edges at the squares cut a thread on the inside of the hole, and then hardened the plate. With this plate he could cut a screw on the head of a bolt, and with the screw could cut a thread on the inside of a nut. Seizing his broadaxe, he[Pg 99] hewed a great spot on one of the logs of the shop, and wrote on it with chalk,—

"SCREW BOLTS CUT HERE."

Having paid for his land, and being able to buy iron, and in the possession of suitable tools to work with, he resolved to make a proper vice with a screw, instead of a bolt. He made the vice-body, taking pattern from John Drew's, of English make; but the screw of a vice must be square threaded, not a diamond thread, like those he had hitherto made; since, being in constant use, the thread would wear off in a short time. He laid out the screw in the same manner as before, except that instead of sheathing it in bark, he dipped it in beeswax till it was coated, and cut the thread with a file and cold-chisel, and instead of putting the screw through both parts of the vice, made a box for it to work in. It is evident he could not cut a thread in the box, that must be square, like that of the screw, with a screw that was square-threaded; neither could he do it with a chisel or file. He did it in this way: he hammered out some steel wire large enough to more than fill the thread of the screw, and wound it around it; then he drove the screw with the wire on it hard into the box, filling it completely, and fastened the ends of the wire. He then turned the[Pg 100] screw carefully back, and took it out, leaving the hole lined with the wire.

Richardson had in the house a brass plate that had been on a soldier's belt, and procured from Montague the brass top of a fire-shovel; these he cut up and filed up, putting the filings and pieces into the box between the coils of wire with borax. He wrapped the whole box in clay mortar, and dried the mass; then put it in the fire till the clay was red hot, and the brass melted, which soldered the coils of wire fast to the sides of the box, forming a thread.

With the two springs of a broken fox-trap welded together, he made a spring to throw back the jaw of his vice when the screw was turned. After accomplishing all this, he built a frame shop with a brick chimney, paying Montague in work for the bricks, laying them himself; and now he considered himself entitled to wear a leather apron.