Engineers' Tools.

Progress, Volume III, Issue 10, 1 August 1908, Page 338

Engineers' Tools.

BY PETER ELLIS. Machines are made to make machines, wheieby machines are made It is the tools that do the -work; a skilful workman is a skilful toolmaker. Tf only a few manufactured articles of a particular type are requned, special tools for making them may cost more than the articles themselves, unless, perchance, the articles are complicated and expensive. A managing skill is here requiied in contradistinction to mere skill, to decide where special and elaborate tools should be presided, this part of the work of running a manufactoiy being one of the most mipoitant. Oui factones in the colonies all suffer moie 01 less from a small demand for specialties, which

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does not warrant the setting up of tools and plant of a special and elaboiate character — one of the facts, piobably, which prevents us fiom successfully competing with outside rivals. At piesent om home maiket is small, since we have undei a million of people all told; nevertheless, it is pretty clear that too much money is spent in our factories in wages for doing woik with crude appliances lather than in making tools Articles of a particular type must be "\eiy few indeed where it pays better to use the hammer and chisel than the mill and that factory is not worth upholding that cannot command an output of specialties which wan ants at least some special tools. While trusts and trade combines may be undesirable in a general way, it seems a moot point whether manufacturers of specialties would not do well to combine, and so form larger mdi virtual fields for the employment of elaborate and special appliances. Wasted labour benefits no one, and when work is portioned out among many factories, with crude and antiquated tools, there must be wasted labour and considerable extra strain on the workers. Of course many tools are of almost universal use, to wit, the file, but it should be used in these days for finally finishing woik, and not to rasp away inches of solid metal — a sight not uncommon in colonial workshops. The making of tools offers an immense and profitable field for the inventor, for some of the finest pieces of mechanism in the world are mere tools for no other use than to produce special articles in larger quantities, and many useful commodities have been placed within common reach by means of these important aids. As time goes on. specialising work becomes more and moie a necessity, yet tools should not be made to last too long, unless they are simple and inexpensive, because the rapid changes consequent on invention and discovery soon make them obsolete. Here is another factor of good management. A modern manager needs to be somewhat of a prophet to forecast probable developments. Every day makes

the management of an engineering establishment more and more important, and every day asks more and more for intelligence in workmen to devise tools, tor it is the tools that do the work.