Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/557

 1869.] The Gazette. 447 isher, with a pair of scissors, cuts off the glass, takes the rod in his left hand, revolves the half-attached handle on the pitcher, to lengthen it, and, with his plyers, gives the handle somewhat the form of an S, and fastens the lower end down to the lower projection on the pitcher, making it secure by a single pressure of the butt of his plyers ; and shapes up the handle itself by the blades of the plyers. A slight jar of the rod against the 1 edge of a trough then de- taches the pitcher, which is at once taken up on a rod, in the hands of a small boy, and borne off to the annealing furnace. A few steps to the left was a similar gang; engaged in moulding Lamp-Stands. The principal operator stands before an upright iron press, arranged with table, plunger, and stops, the whole ad- justable by means of set-screws, and provided with an iron mould, in two parts, whereof the lower is hinged, to open and free the glass knob, forming the fastening of the lamp itself, and the upper is solid, the upper part sliding, and fitting accurately, upon the lower. When ready, he closes the lower mould, by means of long handles, like those of an old-fashioned waffle-iron, and secured in the same general way — only these move in their hinge laterally, instead of vertically — and, in the same move- ment, adjusts the upper and the lower parts of the mould, leaving upwards the wide open mouth of the latter, which corresponds to the bottom of the lamp- stand. An assistant now drops into the mould an elongating red-hot lump of glass, which the first cuts from the rod, with a large pair of shears, at the same instant pushing the combined mould back to a rest, upon the table of the press. The plunger now descends, and forces the glass into all the minute rami- fications of the mould. The plunger rising, the mould is withdrawn, and the lower part unclasped, enabling the ope- rator to lift in his left hand the moulded glass itself, in the upper part of the mould, which is provided with a handle, at the same time fanning the glass briskly for a few seconds with a common fan, held in his right hand, in order to cool it. He now relieves the stand from the mould with a slight tap, which causes it to rest in the bottom of a little trough, or dry vat, and taking it up, on a broad little wooden spatula, turns it out upon an iron table, bottom downwards. This last motion, the glass being yet warm, and the table perfectly level, causes the stand, by its own weight, to assume the exact shape for resting steadily, when in use. As soon as two are ready, a boy upon an iron instrument, like a baker's peel, carries them to the annealing fur- nace. This method is for the larger sizes, the smaller ones, treated in every other respect the same way, are not fanned. Directly across, and near the opposite side of the place, with a table before him, supporting two open hexagonal moulds, in a heavy iron plate, is a stalwart man forming Tiles. An assistant brings the glass on the end of an iron rod ; and allows it to fall slowly upon the centre of the depression of a mould, when, by estimate, the work- man cuts it away from the lump on the rod, with a large pair of ordinary shears. The moulder then smooths off the top of the mass — or the bottom of the tile — by means of a little board, about half an inch thick, seven inches wide and twenty inches long, which he rotates very briskly over the mass, thus forcing it into all the corners of the mould. Then, sprinkling along a little damp sand upon the glass, he rotates the board upon it again, grinding in the sand, to roughen the under surface of the tile for the cement, in the final setting for floor or pavement. A second tile is formed in the same manner. He then stands up the mould plate ; and with a slight tap, disengages the tiles.