the tap should be three or four feet long. The hole is drilled. through in order to give complete circulation of the water in cooling it, even though the shank is not heated to redness nor hardened in the least.

The gauge I referred to and exhibited at the meeting of the Society of Arts in Boston, last March, was two and three-eighths inches diameter, and had been hardened and afterwards finished to a definite standard diameter, which was two ten-thousandths of an inch larger than a two and three-eighths gauge. Four days after this finished size had been attained I found it cracked through the center and around the outside, in several directions, but leaving the ends of the cylinder perfectly intact. After carefully measuring the uninjured ends I found them both to be six ten-thousandths of an inch larger than they were originally, which seems to show that the enormous internal strains which had been set up in the gauge by hardening had been relieved by the cracking of the center of the gauge, allowing the ends to assume their normal condition unrestricted by the counteracting forces in the body of the gauge.

This, to my mind, seems to explain fully the reason why the end of a gauge ordinarily becomes smaller in the course of time than the body part, when the latter is strong enough successfully to withstand the pressure outwards of the compressed ends.

It is now nearly four years since the break occurred, and yet there is no perceptible change in the diameter of the ends up to the present time, showing conclusively that the internal strains are now practically neutralized.

Mr. R. W. Hunt.-It was suggested to me that I should give to you a little manufacturing incident within my experience, in regard to the effect of manganese on steel for gun barrels. And while I do not know that it will be of any special value, as there is no prospect of our having a war, and hence do not want gun barrels, at the same time I will give it. During the Russian and Turkish war the Winchester Arms Company had a contract with the Turkish Government for furnishing rifles. Smith & Wesson had also a contract with both the Turks and Russians for furnishing them with revolvers. Both concerns were using imported metal for making parts of those articles. Smith & Wesson were using imported steel, and the Winchester Company using it and what is known as Marshall iron, a special English iron then costing,

I think, about ten cents a pound. At that time the rail business was very bad, and the point with some of us was, is it possible to divert the product of the Bessemer converter into some other channel? And as Troy is perhaps as badly situated as any place in the country to make rails for a great deal more than it is possible to get for them, we tried to make something else. As you will remember, at that time the lessons of the Exhibition of 1876 were fresh in our minds. We had there seen the wonderful things the Swedes had done in Bessemer steel. It happened to be my fate to come in contact with Smith & Wesson and the Winchester Arms companies. They gave me samples of their metal. I took them home, had them analyzed, and then started in to make something to take its place, and we met with success after some failures. The steel is cut into the length necessary to make a barrel, they drill a hole through it and then ream that hole out, and rifle. In the first place they wanted the metal to be soft, and in the next place they wanted to throw a very short chip. If the chip was long and tenacious it would lead the drill off to one side, making it difficult to get the bore of the barrel in the center; and while we were easily able to give them a steel which seemed to be very satisfactory so far as softness and freedom from flaws was concerned, they had difficulties from long chips, and it took considerable puzzling to determine what was the matter. After many experiments I found if we allowed the manganese to run up they would get that kind of chip. Hence it became necessary to make steel having from eighteen to twentytwo one-hundredths carbon, and about four-tenths of manganese. That composition gave them the short chip, and has ever since, I believe, been satisfactory. They used a great many tons of the metal. Smith & Wesson used much of it for the barrels of their pistols, and I have no doubt that many souls reached their reward earlier in consequence. We got a good price too. [Laughter.] Unfortunately we did not establish a Trust, and what then cost them seven or eight cents a pound, I believe they now get for about two and a half. I, of course, am anxious to hear what our fellow members are going to say about the peculiarities of steel, for it has many, but I think the people who handle steel have great many more, and many times, when they blame the metal, he fault lies, perhaps, not with that particular person who is meeting with a disappointment, but with some one through whose hands the metal has passed. It is ever so much more sensitive, as you

so well know, than iron. If it has an enemy in the world, that enemy is heat. I mean good old-fashioned heat, not the kind we have heard of to-night (electrical welding), but the heat coming from the combustion of fuel. I dare say all of you have read the paper presented by Mr. William Metcalf before the Society of Civil Engineers on the treatment of steels, which certainly is worthy, in my judgment, to be a text-book. Now it is true, that as you increase the carbon you increase the danger; therefore temperatures which would be safe with one grade, would be fatal to another.

The machinery builders, like all the rest of the manufacturing world, do not pay as much for steel as they used to, so there is a temptation for the people who make it to be less careful. They must make a large product and sell it cheap in order to get a market. The reason one bar will not take a temper and another will, may be because they come from entirely different lots or heats; but assuming that one end of a bar will stand all sorts of punishment and the other end will not, I would give as an explanation that somebody had done something he ought not to have done to that bar of steel. It may not have been in the blacksmith shop, or the forge shop of the user; it may have been the man who heated that bar in the rolling-mill where it was formed—he may have overheated one end of it. If so, the metal itself was not to blame, it was the man only who was vile. It is such a pure metal; it has often seemed to me that a fit comparison between iron and its sister metal-steel-would be as we compare our coarse natures with those of the dear creatures whom we have with us here to-night. We know how sensitive they are and that of which we take no notice affects their whole being; and so it is with this higher metal. It wants to be treated in a careful manner all the way through, and if you sin your sin will be visited on you and the people who buy from you. Now, as I had occasion say before the Mining Engineers in a paper which I presented in regard to steel rails--I hope some of you will do me the honor to read it when it is in print-there has been a great complaint throughout the United States, in regard to the quality of steel rails; that is, that the present rails are not as good as the rails formerly made. That, to a certain extent, is I think due to the natural tendency to say what was is better than what is. At the same time I think we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the general rails of to-day, or at least of the last few years, are not as

to

good as the best of the rails of the past, and if I believe anything it is that the cause of that deterioration, the principal cause, is the amount of heat there has been applied to the steel in making those rails. The great rails of the past were generally spoken of as the "John Brown rails." We imagined that, when the time did come when those rails would come out of the track so that we could get hold of them and analyze them, that we could find out the reasons for their having given such wonderful service. It was stated that they had been made out of the purest Swedish irons, and we would find they were almost entirely without phosphorus. It was stated also that they were largely made out of charcoal iron, so that the deleterious effect of mineral fuel had not entered into the metal. Now samples from hundreds of those rails have been analyzed, and, chemically, many of them were found about as mean Bessemer steel as you could imagine-no uniformity about them. The carbon jumping through at least ten points, .28 to .38, with some below .25; the phosphorus auywhere from .07 up to .15, and the manganese generally low. I think there is not a rail-maker that to-day would make that steel and send it forth with his guarantee that it was particularly good metal; and still they were the rails that did give this great service. Now, there must have been a reason for it. We easily understand why it is that they were not chemically as pure as was supposed. The laboratory did not then tell us everything. The processes were not perfected so that they could give the minute quantities of phosphorus which can now be determined. Mr. Bessemer himself said that iron containing over .01 of one per cent. of phosphorus was not fit for his process. The truth is he was then using pig-iron that had one-tenth. Ferro-manganese was then unknown. Spiegel contained from eight to ten per cent. of manganese only, so if the maker maintained his carbon from thirty to forty he could not get high manganese. But, as I say, varying as they did in their chemical constitution, giving the results they did, there must be a cause for it. That cause was certainly a physical one. That metal was treated in the most gingerly manner for fear it would go to pieces, and the finishing process applied to it while the metal was at a low temperature. The result was those celebrated rails; and I believe that the result to-day with metals treated the same way would be more celebrated rails.

Mr. F. II. Richards.-Regarding the steel which, as the gentle

man has remarked, he has been furnishing to Smith & Wesson, I wish to say that only a few months ago I had occasion to use the same metal for making the working parts of various small machines, and found it exceedingly satisfactory, principally for the reason that the chip, as he states, is short. This quality of the metal is an exceedingly important matter for the builders of small machinery where they want the threaded holes tapped out to exact sizes, and without reducing the tools too much. This is an instance illustrating how it is that many of the machine-shop conundrums of the present day are being solved by the steel-makers and not by the machinists themselves. In this view, the manufacturers of small wares will, I think, generally agree with me.

Another important matter is the working—or rather re-working-of steel for small tools, such as dies, taps and reamers, and especially such small tools as are used in the tool rooms of manufactories, in what we, down East, call the hardware manufactures. These tools are of great variety, and up to a dozen or twenty years ago it was a custom almost universal to hand-forge the blanks to approximately their final size. These were then finished up and hardened, and I suppose that more various results could scarcely be obtained than were obtained. After a time it began to dawn on some of the master mechanics of those establishments that working steel in a small way was a failure; and I well remember the time when one of them gave out the order that, thereafter, none of those tools should be forged; that they should be cut from the solid bar. The result was an immediate believe they have never gone

and very great improvement, and I back to the old method. The former practice had been so various that very naturally all sorts of theories were afloat as to just how steel should be heated, and just how it should be cooled. The theories were, indeed, almost as various as the steel-workers themselves. At the present time I believe the general practice has become substantially uniform. One tool maker of the olden time would argue that steel would swell by being hardened. Another would argue that it would shrink, and so on. Men working side by side would maintain opposite theories. Much more in this line might be said, but the only point I wish to make is this: that steel suitable to be used for small tools is not improved by working after it is first made. Its true and proper character is given to it in the making, and follows it through life.

It is reported by several competent tool makers that the prefer