The traversing- or angle-gaining machine has a horizontal arbor bear ing the gaining-head and traversing at right angles to the length of the bed or table. This is parallel with the spindle of the cutter-head, and has vertical adjustment to suit the thickness of timber and the depth of the gains; also angular adjustment about an axis parallel with the cutter-spin dle. The traversing is done by a hand-wheel and a screw.
Machines are employed to manufacture from soft white woods long fine, fibre-like shavings, called "excelsior," which are used for packing purposes as well as for cheap upholstery. Matting-machines are used to some extent to produce stipple-like indentations as a background for relief carving.
Dovetailing-machines cut out regular dovetail mortises (leaving dove tail tenons) either by rotating cutters or by spiral saws. There are also made false dovetail joints, in which pins projecting from semicircular countersinks fit semicircular scallops having circular holes concentric therewith. Reaming-machines, which are simple boring-machines hav ing a long pod-bit as a reamer, are used to ream the bores of hubs and to clean from them the chips that have been forced into the centre by the mortising-chisels.
Hoop-machines take bars sawed from a plank, point them, plane their sides and edges, and then saw them at such an angle as to make a thick .and a thin edge, producing two hoops from each bar.
Conclusion.—In the foregoing pages there have been outlined some of the many general and special machines which have done so much not only to meet the demand for wood-construction, but also to foster and improve it. The labor of sawing, planing, moulding, matching, tenoning, incising, mortising, boring, bending, polishing, etc., formerly performed by hand, is now clone much more expeditiously and accurately by machines, and these have not only cheapened and bettered the product of the wood-worker, but have also rendered possible the development of new countries and the suc cess of new industries. Their busy hum has waked the echoes of the primeval forest as its giant growths have been reduced to prosaic " lum ber," whose production has brought wealth and population to hundreds of wood-side hamlets, and whose conversion into the innumerable articles required on the farm, in the work-shop, and in the home has added so much to the comfort and convenience of all. In America, under the stimulus of necessity, in newly-setticd communities, wood-working ma chines have been developed to a degree far in advance of those of any other country of the globe. (R. G.)