Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/348

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��Popular Science Monthly

��Bagging Rivet Heads with a Butterfly Net

���The Metal Chips and Heads of Rivets When Cut Off Are Caught in Wire Baskets with Wooden Handles

��CUTTING off rivet heads is a strenu- ous occupation. Bits of metal are likely to fly in unlooked-for directions, sometimes injuring bystanders very severely.

Safety engineers on the Southern Pacific Railroad figure that loose rivet heads flying around with the speed of bullets are not conducive to the general good health and well-being of em- ployees or of the public.

Hence they have equipped all their rivet-cutting gangs with wire baskets mounted on long wooden handles. When using one of these devices, a rivet-cutter angles for the head when it comes off in much the same way as entomologists and youngsters seek to capture moths wilh butterfly nets — in fact, the rivet baskets and a professor's butterfly net look a good deal alike.

At any rate, the baskets have proved themseKes to be a sure pre- ventative of flying rivets; for they catch their prey before it has flown six inches — thus effectually stopping tlu-m in liieir dangerous flight.

��Hungarian Nectar Still in Which Rhubarb Brandy is Made

IN the Pittsburgh ofifice of the Federal Revenue Department there is an apparatus which might be called a home-made moon- shine whiskey outfit if it had not been designed to distil drop by drop the Hungarian nectar known as "rhubarb brandy." The Hungarians drink rhubarb brandy with as much pride and genuine enjoyment as the Italians display when wrestling with spaghetti.

As the rhubarb brandy is supposed to be possessed of medicinal and health- building qualities, being laxative in its action rather than abnormally stimulat- ing in its effects, those who hold it in high regard may object to its being classified with whiskies in general. However, it is made in much the same way. The still by means of which the brandy is made is a copper kettle sealed at the top with the customary "goose neck," and it was confiscated as illicit.

���The Copptr Kettle Outfit Which Distils the Rhubarb Brandy Drop by Drop

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