Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/69

Rh and involves lathe work in turning as well as the use of the simple hand tools. Four or five patterns are made during the first year. As far as possible each one brings out some new principle and is made a trifle more difficult than its predecessor. The work requires not a little patience and perseverance, for no pieces are accepted which show either inaccurate dimensions or careless workmanship. These two departments comprise the wood work of the year.

Meanwhile the metal work has also been progressing. Each boy has his bench with its vise and accompanying tools, chisels and files, calipers, and rules. The work of the first term consists entirely of chipping and filing. The rough blanks of cast iron have approximately the form of the finished exercise, but they are larger in all their dimensions and their faces are just as they come from the molding sand. To dress them down to the right dimensions, to make the faces smooth and true, the angles right, and later to fit the pieces together so that no line of light shall be visible when they are held up in front of a window or no jamming or friction noticeable when they are taken apart—all this requires nice workmanship, the sort that comes only when we put a great deal of effort into it. It is exacting work and must not be carried too far, or the little workers grow discouraged. Smithing is also begun during the first year. With the opening of the second term the vise work is reduced to three hours a week, and the two hours thus gained are given to smithing. The first exercises are very simple, mere bars of given dimensions, and are done in lead before they are attempted in iron. The use of the tools and the proper way of handling the pieces may thus be learned more leisurely than is possible with red-hot metal. The anvil chorus is here given every day, the little Vulcans half masters and half mastered in the new set of conditions attendant upon the glowing forges. They are taught to draw the metal, to upset, to weld, to forge, and in general to go through all the typical smithing operations. The work is decidedly picturesque. It introduces a new element, that of time, for the metal must be fashioned while it is hot, and makes therefore a new demand upon the worker—he must needs be alert as well as painstaking.

The majority of schools do not follow quite this sequence in their manual work. It is customary to make the joinery and vise work of the first term extend uninterruptedly throughout the rest of the junior year. The plan of making the joinery alternate with pattern-making and the vise work with smithing has been introduced at the Northeast School for a double reason. The vise work, by its very nature, is slow and rather monotonous. It seems to us unwise to dull the boy's interest in his work at the