Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1841 edition. Excerpt: ...Cornish engines the piston waits at the top until this is nearly done, and then moves so very slowly as never to feel any uncondensed steam beneath it. In rotative engines the rapidity of action renders this impossible. I shall enter more fully into these questions in my next. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, Scalfel. February 18,1841. STEAM COOPERAGE. Our attention having been recently attracted by the statements that have appeared of the extraordinary advantages secured by a new patent for the manufacture of staves, shingles, laths, and for wood-cutting in general, we were induced to pay a visit to the works at the Square Shot-tower, Waterloo-bridge, on Monday last. The machinery which we then saw at work appeared to us fully to authorise the expectations of the patentee Captain W. H. Taylor. The process is so simple, and at the same time so effectual, that it must cause an entire revovolution in the trades affected by the invention. The wood, having been cut from the solid timber, by means of circular saws, into blocks of the requisite length and breadth, is first steamed for the purpose of softening and seasoning. The waste steam of the engine is used for this purpose. It is then cut into leaves of the required thickness with extraordinary rapidity by one or other of two sets of machines adapted for this purpose; the one being a species of iron plane working in a vertical direction, the other a large disc, containing two cutters, and performing from 100 to 150 revolutions per minute. Messrs. Bramah and Robinson have just completed a giant machine of this kind, being a disc of thirteen feet in diameter, intended for cutting hogshead staves. Such is the dynamical excellence of the mechanical arrangements, that at the expense of but two...