Читать книгу Life of an American Workman онлайн

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I had never heard of such a thing; there were none in the shop. When we had to measure the depth of a hole in a piece of metal, we explored the hole with a wire, marked it with a fingernail and then applied the wire to a ruler. Maybe such a measurement would be right to a sixteenth of an inch; nowadays we work in ten-thousandths of an inch.

Well, I got permission to keep that catalogue awhile, and made a depth gauge for myself. It was crude, but it was a great improvement over the wire, fingernail and ruler method. Fixed in a small stand was an arm, forked at the end; attached to that by a thumbscrew was a stem marked in divisions of thirty-seconds of an inch.

Thereafter in making a plug for a hole, I could make it right the first time, without a lot of needless filing and chipping. In a few months I made an even better depth gauge. Superior tools got me better chances in the shop. You see, I was ambitious to do all the kinds of work at which I saw the older men engaged. Consequently, I set to work to make myself a pair of granddaddy calipers, with legs almost as long as my arm. When I had those, I also had the nerve to ask to be allowed to help on the first lathe, the big one on which locomotive piston rods were turned.