Читать книгу The Cambrian Tourist, or, Post-Chaise Companion through Wales: 1828 онлайн

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The pin manufactory was established here by John Tisley, in the year 1626, and the business is now become so extensive, that the returns from London alone are estimated at near twenty thousand pounds per annum. Before the introduction of pins into England, anno 1543, skewers of brass, silver and gold, and likewise thorns curiously scraped, called by the Welsh women pindraen, were used. Though the pins themselves are apparently simple, yet their manufacture is not a little curious and complex. The wire in its most rough state is brought from a wire company in the neighbourhood of Bristol: till the year 1563, English iron wire was drawn out by manual strength. The first operation attending this curious process is the fixing the circular roll of wire to the circumference of a wheel, which in its rotation throwing the wire against a board, with great violence, takes off the black external coat: vitriol is next applied to bring the brass to its common colour. The brass wire being too thick for the purpose of being cut into pins, is reduced to any dimension the workman pleases, by forcibly drawing it through an orifice in a steel plate, of a similar diameter. The wire being thus reduced to its proper dimensions, is next straightened: it is then cut into portions of six inches in length, and afterwards to the size of the pin, and each piece respectively sharpened on a grinding-stone, turned by a wheel. We now come to a distinct branch of the manufactory: the forming the heads, or, as the workmen term it, head spinning: this is accomplished by means of a spinning-wheel, which, with astonishing rapidity, winds the wire round a small rod: this, when drawn out, leaves a hollow tube between the circumvolutions: every two circumvolutions, or turns, being cut with shears, form one head. The heads thus formed are distributed to children, who, with great dexterity, by the assistance of an anvil, or hammer, worked by the foot, fix the point and the head together. The pins, thus formed, are boiled in a copper, containing a solution of block-tin pulverized, and the lees of port; and by this last process, it changes its yellow brassy colour, and assumes the appearance of silver or tin. The labourers are all paid according to the weight of their work.