Labour-eaving expedients in the working of wood have been intro. duce d in recent years nearly in as great variety as in the working of metals. The Americans, on account partly of the abundant supply of timber in that country, have been very successful in this direction. Mr. Moleeworth, in a paper on this subject read before the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1857, said that the Americans have now in use no less than five different groups of wood-planing machines, exhibiting many varieties. In one group the plane has a reciprocating motion ; in another there is a fixed cutter ; in another a rotatory cutter ; in a fourth, the cutter is on a vertical axis ; and in the fifth a socket-piano is used. The angle of the cutter is made to vary u e t quality the wood operated on, the nature of the work, and the speed nient. There are also machines for shaping irregular work ; for tenon ing, either with circular saws or tenoning-cutters ; for copying or carving, by means of rotatory cutters advancing to and receding from an iron pattern ; for dovetailiug, by reciprocating chisels or by dove tailing cutters; for making boats' oars ; for making railway keys ; and for arming, planing, boring, shaping, and jointing timber hi various ways. One ingenious machine shapes the arms and legs of chairs ; there are two vertical cutters revolving in opposite directions, at 1700 revolutions per minute ; the pattern to which the wood is temporarily fastened is so pressed against the cutters as to guide the cut. As the cutters revolve in opposite directions, the work may be pressed against the one or the other, so as to emit the cut to the direction of the grain, without the trouble of reversing the position. In some districts, where wooden houses are made in large numbers for emigrants and hack woodsmen, the timber is cut up with great rapidity ; one saw of a par ticular kind will cut into shape 10,000 shingle boards in a day ; another will cut 60,000 or 70,000 laths in the same time ; while another will plane 60 feet of flooring-boards per minute, tongue and groove them at the same time, and convey the chips and shavings to a fuel-house.
The inventions are little loss varied, although the operations are on a much smaller scale, in England. The Enfield rifle stock is shaped entirely by machines, no lees than a dozen machines being employed in succession, some of the cutters of which revolve 6000 times per minute. A series of machines at Woolwich Arsenal make wooden scabbard-linings for cavalry swords; and so efficient are these, that by their aid two boys can make 500 scabbard-lining. in a day. Rifle-bullets sometimes have a small box-wood plug inserted in the rear of each : there are machines at Woolwich which will cut and shape 300,000 of these plugs per day. Mr. Kinder, of Worcester, has invented and brought into use a complete series of machines for work ing in wood, by the use of which hcScan plane scantlings 6 or 7 inches square ; work the edges of curved timbers on the square ; form both regular and winding bevels ; work oblique sections of irregular figures ; cut tenons with shoulders of almost any pitch; make rebates and grooves of various kinds ; box down or sink irregular surfaces in such a manner that the surface destroyed shall be reproduced at the required depth ; and produce curved or straight beads and mouldings—all by making the wood move while the cutting instrument remains sta tionary. Mr. Wilson, of Banbury, has brought into use a curious series of machines for making broom and mop-handles, umbrella-sticks, bruslebacks, and railway-pegs. 11Ir. Dickie, of Glasgow, has a series of machines for producing irregular forms in wood, such as boot-trees, shoe-lasts, gun-stocks, and shovel-handles, by a kind of differential action of several cutters. Other morticing, moulding, dovetailing, tenoning, planing, jointing, dowelling, rebating, and chamfering. machines have been invented in great variety, and introduced in various ways; but they need not be separately described.
The application of elaborate machines to the production of cheap articles is curiously illustrated in the manufacture of fire-wood and of matches. Terry's fire-wood machinery, introduced in 1857, perform. all the operations of sawing, splitting, cutting, and binding. Rough blocks of wood slide down an inclined table ; they are pressed by a drum against circular saws; they are sawn into pieces of a uniform length; the pieces slide down a shoot to the splitting.mill, and fall against a series of circular cutters, which cut them into flat slab.; the slabs slide down and are split into sticks, which fall into a moveable carriage, and are discharged down smother shoot ; they fall Into a horizontal ehannel, where a piston, by the action of a lever and weight, presses together enough sticks to form one bundle ; the piston drives them half through a circular opening ; wire from a reel is made to peas round the middle of the bundle, where it is twisted and out off; and finally, an incoming bundle pushes out the completed one. Thus the wood is not touched by leuul throughout the operations. In the making of splints for congreves or lueifers, the wood is first cut into blocks by circular saws ; and these are either separated into four sided splints, by a UHL.% of lancet-points rauged equidistant, or into cylindrical splints by being forced through email perforations in a metal plate. The best pine plank, free from knots and irregularities, is alone fit for this purpose; cheap wood would injure the cutting apparatus, and thus would not be cheap in the end. A plank 12 feet long, 11 inches wide, and 3 inches thick, will cut 'up into 200,000 lucifer-match splints of ordinary size ; and some firms thus cut up twenty of such planks in a day.
In an article by Mr. Charles Knight, in the Companion to the Almanac,' for 1861, an account is given of the curious wooden-ware manufactures of Buckinghamshire and one or two neighbouring counties. The beech, elm, and ash trees of those districts are brought into immediate and local manufacturing use. At Chesham are made bread-trenchers, butter-prints, cricket-bats and stumps, money bowls, washing bowls, malt shovels, 'sand shovels, butcher's trays, trundling hoops, toy garden-rollers and garden-rakes, toy wheelbarrows, hat blocks, straw bonnet blocks, and wig blocks. The taste exhibited in these articles is of a humble kind, and very little machinery is employed in the production. Chair making is the chief trade in and around high Wycombe. The many thousand cheap but strong chairs made within the last few years for use in the Crystal Palace, St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, and other public places came from the district in question. One contract of 6000 chairs for barracks, and another of 8000 for the Crystal Palace, are mentioned. "Wycombe," says Mr. Knight, "boasts of making a chair a minute all the year round chairs which would not be unsightly in the handsomest sitting room, and which can be sold at five shillings each. More costly chairs are here produced, as well as the commonest rush bottom chair of the old cottage pattern. But the light caned chair, stained to imitate rosewood, or of the bright natural colour of the beech, and highly polished, finds a demand throughout the kingdom— a demand which might appear fabulous to those who have not reflected upon the extent to which a thriving industrious people create a national wealth which gives an impulse to every occupation, and fills every dwelling with comforts and elegancies of which our forefathers never dreamt. The wondrous cheapness of the Wycombe chair is produced by the division of labour in every manufactory ; and by the competition amongst the manufacturers, in a trade where a small capital and careful organisation will soon reward the humblest enter prises." Some of the operations are conducted In factories of consider able size ; while others are undertaken by workmen in all the villages round.