9. The machine for cutting the short nails, and in serting them in the holes. The apparatus for cutting the nails forms the upper part of the machine. The shears for cutting the nail consists of a loaded lever connected with a treadle. The lever has a cutter near its centre, so that when the foot depresses the treadle the leaver is raised, and cuts against the edge of a hard cutter. A slip of iron being introduced be tween the cutters, has a small piece or nail cut oil from the end of it. This nail, the instant it is cut, falls into a tube, by which it is conveyed to a small tube over the leather, where it is ready for a subse quent operation.
The pattern, or iron plate, with the sole fixed to it, is now again used, and is brought by the method for merly directed, under a blunt piercer, which descends by the action of the treadle. The workman now bringing a hole beneath the piercer, holds a sheet of iron or copper, and pushes it between the open shears, then depressing the treadle, the nail in the tube is forced down by the piercer into ith hole in the leather. At the instant that the nail falls into the leather, the shears close and cut off a new nail, which falls as formerly into a new hole which the operation has wrought beneath it. At every cut the sheet of copper is turned over, in order to form the nails alternately head and point. When all the nails have been insert ed, they are beaten down with a hammer.
5. Machine for punching the long nail holes, and in serting the long nails in the holes. This machine is exactly like the punching machine already described, but it is furnished with additional apparatus to supply the nails and convey them into the holes. These ad ditional parts are a circular brass wheel, nine inches in diameter, and nearly as thick as the nails are long. Great numbers of holes are perforated in it, and ar ranged closely in four circles, one within another. The central point within the four circles of holes has six radii like the spokes of a wheel, and in the very centre is a bolt, which fits loosely upon an upright centre pin, placed in the centre of a small circular table fixed laterally to the upper projecting arm which holds the upper end of the perpendicular slider. The wheel being fixed horizontally, about 18 inches above the table which holds the sole, has a nail put into every hole in its four circles. The holes are large enough to allow the nails to drop through them, but the points rest upon the circular table, at one part of the circumference of which an opening is cut through it, and a small tube descends from the opening to con duct a nail down to the point of the piercer. By the revolution of the wheel, the nails are brought succes sively over the mouth of the tube, so that each falls with its point downward into a small cell exactly be neath the point of the piercer when at its highest po sition. By depressing the piercer with the treadle,
it forces the nail through the cell into the hole in the leather, brought beneath it in the form and manner formerly described. The construction of this cell deserves particular notice. It is conical inside, but when the nail which it grasps is to be forced down by the piercer, the cell opens in two halves, being form ed by semiconical notches in two pieces of steel, which are held together only by being screwed together at one end. They are made so thin as to spring to gether to form the conical cell. While the piercer is ascending, another nail drops from the wheel through the tube into the space or open joint at which the two halves of the cell separate, so that the nail lies close beside the piercer. As soon as the piercer has risen out of the cell its two halves spring together, and the space containing the nail having its faces inclined inwards, these faces throw the nail into the cell, where it sticks till the piercer descends to drive it into the leather.
in order that the circular wheel may furnish a fresh nail after the preceding one has been inserted, the edge of the wheel has serrated teeth equal to the num ber of holes in each of the four circles. A detent tooth goes into these teeth by a hook, so that it will turn the wheel when moved in one direction, but slip over them when turned in the other direction. The detent tooth is jointed to a short lever fixed to the upper end of an upright axis, which, passing down wards through the projecting arms of the main columns, so as to be as near as possible to the per pendicular slider, and a short lever attached to this axis, is kept by a spring against a wedge fixed to the slider. When the slider, therefore, descends, its wedge forces away from it the end of the short lever. This movement is conveyed by the upright axis and upper lever to the detent tooth which slides over the inclined sides of the teeth of the wheel. When the slide reascends, the wedge permits the lever and detent tooth to return to the action of a spring; and a hook of the detent catching a tooth of the wheel turns it round through the space of one tooth or the distance between two nails. When the nails are all put in they are beat down with a hammer, so as to drive all their heads to a level with the surface, leav ing the points projecting through the leather. The sole is then severed from the iron pattern, and put in to the welting stand. .