[Illustration: Boot and Shoe Machinery Fig. 1]
No manufacturers have taken greater advantage of the ingenuity of the
mechanical engineer than the American boot and shoe makers. Nearly
every operation in the complex process of evolving finished boots
from the plain skins of leather is the object of a special class of
machinery; and for several years past, we have weekly chronicled the
patenting of several improvements in the devices for effecting some
of the numerous operations. We present herewith a series of eight
labor-saving machines of the most approved construction, which we
select from Knight's "American Mechanical Dictionary."[1]
[Footnote 1: Published in numbers by Messrs. Hurd & Houghton, New York
city.]
Fig. 1 is a shoe-edge trimmer, in which the shoe is mounted on a
jack, the carriage of which has a motion of translation and rotation
communicated to it: so that, while the side of the sole is being
trimmed, the shoe is fed longitudinally against the knife, but at the
toe and heel is rotated beneath it. The knife is universally jointed,
to permit the hands of the operator to determine the different bevels
cut.
[Illustration: Boot and Shoe Machinery Fig. 2]
Fig. 2 is an ingenious little machine for placing the eyelets of the
lace holes in position, and fastening them. The eyelets are fed, one
by one, from the reservoir at the top, down the inclined ways, and are
seized at the foot between the plunger and anvil, and they are riveted
in their proper places in the shoe or strip of leather, which is held
and fed by the operator.
[Illustration: Boot and Shoe Machinery Fig. 3]
Fig. 3 is a machine in which a shoe or boot is chucked and revolved
against a burnishing tool, to impart a smooth and elegant finish to
the heel. Our engraving shows a machine with what is called in the
trade a "hot kit," a heated burnishing tool, with a flexible gas pipe
of sufficient length, which follows the oscillations of the burnishing
stock, _a_, and which conveys gas to the interior of the tool, where
it is burnt in a jet. The tool is made to reciprocate over the surface
of the heel, passing from breast to breast at each oscillation with an
elastic pressure.
[Illustration: Boot and Shoe Machinery Fig. 4]
Fig. 4 is a machine for pressing together the "lifts" which compose
a boot or shoe heel, thus dispensing with the handiwork of the
hammer and lapstone. The bed is adjusted vertically by a screw to any
thickness to which the blank heel may be built; and the plunger is
brought down by the depression of the treadle with such force as to
compact the lifts together.
Fig. 5 shows a heel-pricking machine. When the lifts of the heel are
fairly pressed together by the appliance shown in Fig. 4, the pricking
machine pierces the necessary holes through all the lifts at once by
a gang of awls. The compressed heels are first secured together by
tacking, and then placed on the platen; and the plunger, with its gang
of awls, descends with great force.
Fig. 6 is a heel trimmer, known in the trade as the Cote trimmer. The
shoe is held stationary by the treadle clamp; and the knife stock,
which is centrally pivoted to the outer plate or jaw bearing upon the
tread lift, is then grasped in the hands of the operator, and moved to
give a sweeping cut to trim the heel.
Fig. 7 is a machine for pressing boot soles. Beneath the crosshead of
the press is a swinging bed, on each end of which is a form, in order
that a shoe may remain under pressure upon one while the operator
is placing another shoe on the other. The pressure is given by the
treadle, which brings down the upper platen on the channeled sole.
[Illustration: Boot and Shoe Machinery Fig. 5]
[Illustration: Boot and Shoe Machinery Fig. 6]
[Illustration: Boot and Shoe Machinery Fig. 7]
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