THE WOOD-TURNING LABORATORY.
A Radical Change. -- From the Square to the Circle; from Angles to
Spherical, Cylindrical, and Eccentric Forms. -- The Rhythm of
Mechanics. -- The Potter’s Wheel of the Ancients and the
Turning-lathe. -- The Speculation of Holtzapffels on its Origin. --
The Greeks as Turners. -- The Turners of the Middle Ages. -- George
III. at the Lathe. -- Maudslay’s Slide-rest, and the Revolution it
wrought. -- The Natural History of Black-walnut. -- The Practical
Value of Imagination. -- Disraeli’s Tribute to it; Sir Robert Peel’s
Want of it. -- The Laboratory animated by Steam. -- The Boys at the
Lathes. -- Their Manly Bearing. -- The Lesson.
When the twenty-four boys of the Carpenter’s Laboratory have become
expert in the use of the tools employed in carpentry they will be
introduced to the Wood-turning Laboratory. The change is radical--from
the square to the circle, from the prose to the poetry of mechanical
manipulation. Carpentry is distinguished for its corners and angles,
turnery for its spherical, cylindrical, and eccentric forms. In these
forms Nature abounds and delights, and it is in these forms that the
rhythm of mechanics exists. It is by the Turners that the arts are
supplied with a thousand and one things of use and beauty. The machines,
great and small, from the locomotive to the stocking-knitter--without
which the work of the modern world could not be done--these wonderful
contrivances, seemingly more cunning than the hand of man, owe their
very existence to the turning-lathe.
[Illustration: THE WOOD-TURNING LABORATORY.]
The skilled instructor in this department of the school loves to dwell
upon the history of turning. Its origin is enveloped in the obscurity of
early Egyptian traditions. It is the subject of one of the oldest myths,
which runs thus: “Num, the directing spirit of the universe, and oldest
of created beings, first exercised the potter’s art, moulding the human
race on his wheel. Having made the heavens and the earth, and the air,
and the sun and moon, he modelled man out of the dark Nilotic clay, and
into his nostrils breathed the breath of life.”
The Potter’s Wheel of the ancients contained the germ of the
turning-lathe found in every modern machine-shop, whether for the
manipulation of wood or iron. Holtzapffels has an ingenious speculation
as to the origin of the invention of the lathe. In his elaborate work on
“Turning and Mechanical Manipulation” he says,
“It would appear probable that the origin of the lathe may be found in
the revolution given to tools for piercing objects for ornament or use.
At first it may be supposed that a spine or thorn from a tree, a
splinter of bone or a tooth, was alone used and pressed into the work as
we should use a brad-awl. The process would naturally be slow and
unsuitable to hard materials, and this probably suggested to the
primitive mechanic the idea of attaching a splinter of bone or flint to
the end of a short piece of stick, rubbing which between the palms of
his hands would give a rotary motion to the tool.”
Of the steps of progress in invention, from the rude turning-tools of
the ancients down to the beginning of the present century, when
Maudslay’s improvement made the lathe the king of the machine-shop,
little is known. By the Greeks the invention of turning was ascribed to
Dædalus. Phidias, who produced the two great masterpieces of Greek art,
Athene and Jupiter Olympius, was familiar with the then existing system
of wood-turning. In cutting figures on signets and gems in such stones
as agate, carnelian, chalcedony, and amethyst, the Greek artificers used
the wheel and the style. In the abundant ornamentation of Roman
dwellings--their elaborately carved chairs, tables, bedsteads, sofas,
and stools--there is ample evidence of a knowledge of the art of turning
in wood. Improvements were made in turning-tools, and fine ornamental
work was done by the artisans of the Middle Ages, to which the
cathedrals and palaces of the time bear witness. Later, during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, turning became a fashionable
amusement among the French nobility and gentry. Louis XVI. was an expert
locksmith, and spent much of his royal time in that pursuit. The fashion
extended to England. George III. is said to have been an expert
wood-turner, to have been “learned in wheels and treadles, chucks and
chisels;” and as a matter of course a pursuit indulged by kings was
followed by many nobles. There is, however, no evidence that those
distinguished amateurs made any improvements in the tools they used;
inventions and discoveries in this as in all departments of art came
from the other end of the social scale. When the Spaniards sacked
Antwerp in 1585 the Flemish silk-weavers fled to England and set up
their looms there; and a century later, upon the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, the silk industry of England received a new accession of
refugee artisans consisting of persecuted Protestants. Doubtless with
the Flemish weavers there crossed the British Channel representatives of
all the useful arts, including that of turning; for in another hundred
years England took the front rank among nations in nearly all industrial
pursuits.
Among the great inventions and discoveries which distinguished the last
quarter of the eighteenth century, Maudslay’s slide-rest attachment to
the lathe was one of the greatest, if not the greatest. Without it
Watt’s invention would have been of little more real service to mankind
than the French automata of the first quarter of the same century--the
mechanical peacock of Degennes, Vaucauson’s duck, or Maillardet’s
conjurer. Mr. Samuel Smiles, in his admirable book on “Iron-workers and
Tool-makers,” declares that this passion for automata, which gave rise
to many highly ingenious devices, “had the effect of introducing among
the higher order of artists habits of nice and accurate workmanship in
executing delicate pieces of machinery.” And he adds, “The same
combination of mechanical powers which made the steel spider crawl, the
duck quack, or waved the tiny rod of the magician, contributed in future
years to purposes of higher import--the wheels and pinions, which in
these automata almost eluded the human senses by their minuteness,
reappearing in modern times in the stupendous mechanism of our
self-acting lathes, spinning-mules, and steam-engines.”
That there was a logical connection between the two eras of mechanical
contrivance--that of the ingenious automata and that of the useful
modern machines--is extremely probable. That the refugee artisans from
Antwerp and from France had a stimulating effect upon English invention
and discovery there can be little doubt; and that the French automata,
which were much written about, and exhibited as a triumph of mechanical
genius, became known to and exercised an influence upon the minds of
intelligent mechanics is equally probable. We are therefore surprised to
find Mr. Smiles arriving at a conclusion in such direct conflict with
his general views of the gradual growth of inventions, namely, “that
Maudslay’s invention was entirely independent of all that had gone
before, and that he contrived it for the special purpose of overcoming
the difficulties which he himself experienced in turning out duplicate
parts in large numbers.”
But however this may be, Mr. Maudslay’s invention revolutionized the
workshop. Before its introduction the tool of the artisan was guided
solely by muscular strength and the dexterity of the hand; the smallest
variation in the pressure applied rendered the work imperfect. The
slide-rest acting automatically changed all that. With it thousands of
duplicates of the most ponderous, as well as the most minute pieces of
machinery, are executed with the utmost precision. Without it the
steam-engine, whether locomotive or stationary, would have been hardly
more than a dream of genius; for the monster that is to be fed with
steam can be properly constructed only by automatic steam-driven tools;
or, as another has expressed it, “Steam-engines were never properly made
until they made themselves.”
Ten minutes are thus agreeably and profitably occupied by the instructor
in a review of the history of a single invention, and its relations to
the whole field of mechanical work.
Another branch of the lesson consists of an inquiry into the natural
history, qualities, value, and common uses of the wood which is to be
the material of the day’s manipulation--black-walnut. Holding a piece of
the purplish brown wood high in his hand the instructor discharges, as
it were, a volley of questions at the class, “What is it called?” “Where
is it found?” “How large does the tree grow?” “For what is the wood
chiefly used?” Up go a dozen hands. The owner of one of the hands is
recognized, and he rises to tell all about it, but is only allowed to
say “black-walnut.” The next speaker is permitted to say that “the
black-walnut is found all over North America;” the next that it is more
abundant west of the Alleghanies, and most abundant in the valley of the
Mississippi; the next that in a forest it has a limbless trunk from
thirty to fifty feet high, but in the “open” branches near the ground;
the next that it is extensively used in house-finishing, in furniture,
for all kinds of cabinet-work, and especially for gunstocks.
Further inquiry elicits the information that the black-walnut is a
quick-growing, large tree; that its wood is hard, fine-grained, durable,
and susceptible of a high polish, and that through use and exposure it
turns dark, and with great age becomes almost black. One student
describes the leaves, another the fruit or nuts, and states that they
are used in dyeing; a third states that the black-walnut is a great
favorite for planting in the treeless tracts of the West, on account of
its rapid growth and the value of its timber. When the subject appears
to be nearly exhausted, a boy at the farther end of one of the forms
rises timidly and tells the story of the late Mr. W. C. Bryant’s great
black-walnut-tree at Roslyn, Long Island. He concludes, excitedly, “It
is one hundred and seventy years old and twenty-five feet in
circumference.”[1] The timid boy dwells upon his story of the “big”
tree with evident fondness, and his eyes dilate with satisfaction as he
resumes his seat. The circumstance of the great age no less than the
enormous size of the tree has captivated his imagination. The
discriminating instructor will not fail to note such incidents of the
lesson. It is through them that the special aptitudes of students are
disclosed. The instructor will always bear prominently in mind that the
purpose of the school is not to make mechanics but men. Nor will he
forget, as Buckle remarked, that Shakespeare preceded Newton. Buckle
pays a glowing tribute to the usefulness of the imagination. He says,
“Shakespeare and the poets sowed the seed which Newton and the
philosophers reaped.... They drew attention to nature, and thus became
the real founders of all natural science. They did even more than this.
They first impregnated the mind of England with bold and lofty
conceptions. They taught the men of their generation to crave after the
unseen.”
[1] “At Ellerslie, the birthplace of Wallace, exists an oak which is
celebrated as having been a remarkable object in his time, and which
can scarcely, therefore, be less than seven hundred years old. Near
Staines there is a yew-tree older than Magna Charta (1215), and the
yews at Fountains Abbey, in Yorkshire, are probably more than twelve
hundred years old. Eight olive-trees still exist in the Garden of
Olives at Jerusalem which are known to be at least eight hundred years
old.”--“Vegetable Physiology.” By William B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S.,
F.G.S. London: Bell and Daldy. 1865. p. 78.
Disraeli, in his matchless biography of Lord George Bentinck, in summing
up the character of a great English statesman is equally emphatic in
praise of the imagination as a practical quality. He says,
“Thus gifted and thus accomplished, Sir Robert Peel had a great
deficiency--he was without imagination. Wanting imagination, he wanted
prescience. No one was more sagacious when dealing with the
circumstances before him; no one penetrated the present with more
acuteness and accuracy. His judgment was faultless, provided he had not
to deal with the future. Thus it happened through his long career, that
while he always was looked upon as the most prudent and safest of
leaders, he ever, after a protracted display of admirable tactics,
concluded his campaigns by surrendering at discretion. He was so adroit
that he could prolong resistance even beyond its term, but so little
foreseeing that often in the very triumph of his manœuvres he found
himself in an untenable position.”
The timid boy has imagination; if he has application and the logical
faculty he may become an inventor, or he may become an artist--an
engraver or a designer of works of art--or he may become a man of
letters. To the man of vivid imagination and industry all avenues are
open; Disraeli’s wonderful career offers a striking illustration of the
truth of this proposition. The true purpose of education is the
harmonious development of the whole being, and the purpose of this
turning laboratory is to educate these twenty-four boys, not to make
turners of them.
The laboratory is a labyrinth of belts, large and small, of wheels, big
and little, of pulleys and lathes. A student, at a word from the
instructor, moves a lever a few inches, and the breath of life is
breathed into the complicated mass of machinery. The throbbing heart of
the engine far away sends the currents of its power along shafting and
pulleys. The dull, monotonous whir of steam-driven machinery salutes the
ear, and the twenty-four students take their places at the lathes. They
are from fourteen to seventeen years of age, and range in height from
undersize to “full-grown.” They look like little men. Their faces are
grave, showing a sense of responsibility. They are to handle edge-tools
on wood rapidly revolved by the power of steam. There is peril in an
uncautious step, and death lurks in the shafting. Of these dangers they
have been repeatedly warned; and there is in their bearing that
manifestation of wary coolness which we call “nerve,” and which in an
emergency develops into a lofty heroism capable of sublime
self-sacrifice.
This is the very essence of education, its informing spirit. The student
no longer thinks merely of becoming an expert turner; he thinks of
becoming a man! All the powers of his mind are roused to vigorous
action; imagination illumes the path, and reason, following with firm
but cautious step, drives straight to the mark. Rapid development
results from the combination of practice with theory--rapid because
orderly, or natural. The knowledge acquired is at once assimilated, and
becomes a mental resource, subject to draft like a bank account. But
unlike a bank account it increases in the ratio of the frequency with
which drafts are made upon it, and the result is the student leaves
school at seventeen years of age with the reasoning experience of an
ordinarily educated man of forty.
The lesson has been announced by the instructor, its chief points stated
and analyzed, its place in the scale (so to speak) of the art of turnery
defined, its educational value to the mind, the hand, and the eye shown,
and the points of difficulty involved so emphasized as to lead to
painstaking care in the execution of crucial parts. The new tool
required by the lesson is handled in presence of the waiting class by
the instructor; the time of its invention stated; the name of its
inventor given; the method of its manufacture described; and how to
sharpen, take care of, and use it explained with such minuteness of
detail as to insure the making of a permanent impression upon the minds
of students.
[Illustration: COURSE IN THE WOOD-TURNING AND PATTERN LABORATORY.]
The wood-turner’s case contains more than a hundred tools, perhaps a
hundred and fifty, but not more than a score of them are fundamental;
the others are subsidiary, and require very little if any explanation.
The lesson may be one in simple turning, as a table-leg, the round of a
chair, or parts of a section of a miniature garden-fence; or it may be a
set of pulleys, or patterns for various forms of pipe. The pieces of
wood to be wrought or manipulated lie at the feet of the student, and
the working drawing (drawn by the student himself) lies on the bench
before him. The piece of wood to be turned first is adjusted, the
student touches a lever over his head which sets the lathe in motion,
takes the required tool in hand, and the work begins. Guided by the
automatic slide-rest, the sharp point of the tool chips away the
revolving wood until it assumes the form of the drawing lying under the
eye of the operator. Thus the lesson proceeds to the end of the
prescribed period--two hours. The master watches every step of its
progress. If a student is puzzled he receives prompt assistance, so that
no time may be lost. Indeed the relations between instructor and
students are such, or ought to be such, that the question is asked
before the puzzled mind falls into a rut of profitless speculation
through revolving in a circle. But if the true sequential method of
study is followed the student rarely fails, from the vantage ground of a
step securely taken, to comprehend the nature of the next step in the
regular order of succession. This is the Russian system, and it is the
method of the wood-turnery as well as of every department of the Manual
Training School. Hence a certain tool having been mastered, the next
tool in the regular order of succession is more easily understood,
because (1) each tool contains a hint of the nature of its successor,
and (2) each addition to the student’s stock of knowledge confers an
increased capability of comprehension.
When the lesson is concluded the whir of the machinery ceases, and a
great silence falls upon the class as the students assemble about the
instructor, each presenting his piece of work. This is the moment of
friendly criticism. The instructor handles each specimen, comments upon
the character of the workmanship, points out its defects, and calls for
criticisms from the class. These are freely given. There is an animated
discussion, involving explanations on the part of the instructor of the
various causes of defects, and suggestions as to suitable methods of
amendment. Then the pieces of work are marked according to the various
degrees of excellence they exhibit, and the class is dismissed.