Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/274

 experts are at least as skilled as their predecessors, they fail to produce this particular kind successfully. The experts of former times seem to have possessed some secret for welding together their sheets of metal so that each sheet preserved its individuality though intimately joined to its companions above and below. Experts of the present day are compelled to resort to solder, and it is evident that to lay solder in an absolutely even coat over the surface of a metal plate is almost impossible. Somewhere there is a break of continuity, and a flaw results when the pile of plates is channelled.