BUTTON MANUFACTURE. Gold, silver, brass, copper, pewter, mother-of-pearl, hard wood, bone, ivory, horn, leather, paper, glass, silk, wool, cotton, linen, thread, are all formed into buttons, and the manufacture is carried on to a very great extent. Metal buttons with shanks are stamped out of a plate of the mate rial ; and each circular piece or blank' is trimmed and smoothed. The shanks are made of wire by an ingenious machine and are sol dered on to the blanks. After a little further preparation, the buttons (if of the common gilt kind) receive a coating of gold [GILDING], which is now often effected by the electro pro cess. White metal buttons, such as those on soldiers' dresses, are cast in moulds containing ten or twelve dozen, and the shanks are placed in the moulds previously to casting, so that when the buttons are cast the shanks are fixed at the same time. Mother-of pearl buttons are cut out of the pearl shell by a cylindrical saw ; and the shanks are fixed by a kind of dove-tailed projection of the wire in a hole drilled in the shell through one-half its thick ness.
Buttons without shanks are made of mother of -pearl, wood, bone, metal, &c., the metal ones being stamped, and the rest turned. They have four holes through which the thread is passed to fix them on the garment. These holes are stamped in metal buttons, but they are drilled in those which are made of other materials. The holes are drilled while the buttons are in the lathe : four long drills are made to converge towards the but.
ton, and thus the four holes are all drilled at once. The buttons most extensively used at present are those covered with cloth or silk, the manufacture of which has arrived at great perfection. Most varieties of coat-button now consist of two circular blanks of iron, one of thick pasteboard, one of thick canvas, and one of silk or fiorentine. All these are cut out separately with great rapidity, by a stamping press from sheets of the respective materials. Into a kind of die or cell is placed, first, the silk or florentine, then a disc or 'blank' of iron, then the pasteboard, then the canvas, then the other piece of iron—all superposed. A stamping-press, of beautiful construction, fixes all these together, without the aid of any other mode of fastening.
Buttons made of wire rings covered with thread or with linen, and metal buttons made iridescent of minute grooves, are among the varieties of the manufactnre.
A singular method was introduced a few years ago, of imitating covered cloth buttons by a layer of flock, such as is used in paper hangings. In the first place, thin sheets of metal are coated on one side with copal var nish thinned with turpentine, and coloured according to the colour of the flock to be em ployed. After being heated in an oven to 150° Palm., and then allowed to cool, the surface is coated with a kind of paint formed of white lead, linseed oil, gold size, and colouring mat ter. While in this wet state, a quantity of flock is sifted over the surface, and allowed to remain on it twelve hours, by which time a film of flock will have adhered firmly to the metal. The loose flock being shaken off, the sheet is fitted to be cut up into collets or discs for the backs of buttons, to be made in the usual way.
Mr. Prosser's method of making buttons and other small articles of compressed clay was patented in 1840. Clay, clayey earth, or clay combined with a small portion of flint or felspar to give it hardness, is thoroughly dried and ground to a fine powder. The powder is passed through a sieve having about two thousand perforations in a square inch : all particles too large to pass through the perfo rations being rejected. For some coarser pur poses a coarser sieve may be used. Buttons and other small articles are made of this pow der by dies, or moulds and a fly-press. The fly-press is firmly secured to a strong bed or frame; and a die, carrying on its under face the form in reverse (i. e. hollow instead of re lief,) proposed to be given to the top of the button, is screwed to the follower of the press. A &mond tool or die of a kind of T shape, with an impress of the back of the button, fits loosely into a corresponding recess in the bol ster. Below the press there is a treadle sup ported on a fulcrum near its centre, from one end of which a rod passes up through a small hole in the bolster to the lower die or tool. The hollow or recess in the bolster in which this tool rises and falls is of such a depth as to be an exact measure of the quantity of powder necessary for the formation of a but ton. The hollow in the mould being filled with powder, and the powder squared off to an exact level with the top of the mould, such power is applied to the press as will bring down the tool with a force of about 200 lbs. on the square inch, upon the powder lying in the mould. The powder is by this means com pressed into a very dense, bard, and durable substance, having on its surface the device imparted to it by the die. If the button is to have a metallic shank attached to it, a recess is formed at the back of the button for its re ception, by a corresponding projection on the face of the lower die. If the button is to have holes similar to a brace-button, the dies must have such projections as will form these holes while the powder is being pressed into the mould.
In the course of a year or two after this pa tent was obtained, no less than 5000 gross of these buttons were made weekly, at Minton's porcelain works in Staffordshire.
The Vicomte de Serionne took out a patent in 1850, for a somewhat complicated mode of making buttons, which should have a sort of crystalline appearance. They are made of felspar, basalt, lava pumice, granite, or flint. These minerals, or the one to be adopted, is reduced to powder, and made into a paste with salt and flour ; the paste is pressed into a mould, of which the upper and under parts give the device to the button ; and by subse quent modes of treating the surface, the but ton assumes either a transparency, or au agate-like opacity.
Birmingham is the great seat of the Button manufacture in this country. [BIRMINGHA?.] It is supposed that at the present time (1851) there are upwards of 5000 persons employed at Birmingham in making buttons, of whom rather more than half are women and children.