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For meals, where a steam-kettle is not used, it is the best policy to have a cistern holding about 11/2 pints for each man, and to boil this with a gas-burner.  The lighting of the burner at a specified time may be deputed to a boy.  If the men’s dinners have to be heated, it is easy to purchase ovens which will do all the work required by gas at a much cheaper rate than by coal, if we consider the labor and attention necessary with any coal fire.  Not that gas is cheaper than coal; but say we have 100 dinners to warm.  This can be done in a gas-oven in about 20 minutes, at a cost for gas of less than 1d.; in fact, for one-fourth the cost of labor only in attending to a coal fire, without considering the cost of wood or coals.  Gas, in many instances, is an apparently expensive fuel; but when the incidental saving in other matters is taken into consideration, I have found it exceedingly profitable for all except large or continuous work, and in many cases for this also.  I only need instance wire card-making and the brazing shops of wire cable makers to show that a large and free use of gas is compatible with the strictest economy and profitable working.

Of all the tools in a workshop, nothing saves more time and worry than two or three sizes of good blowpipes and an efficient blower.  I have seen in one day more work spoilt, and time lost, for want of these than would have paid for the apparatus twice over; and in almost every shop emergencies are constantly happening in which a good blowpipe will render most efficient service.  Small brazing work can often be done in less time than would be consumed in going to the smith’s hearth and back again, independently of the policy of keeping a man in his own place, and to his own work.  The shrinking on of collars, forging, hardening, and tempering of tools, melting lead or resin out of pipes which have been bent, and endless other odd matters, are constantly turning up; and on these, in the absence of a blowpipe, I have often seen men spend hours instead of minutes.  Things which need a blowpipe are usually most awkward to do without one; and men will go fiddling about and tumbling over each other without seeing really what they intend to do.  They are content, as it all counts in the day’s work; that it comes off the profits is not their concern.  It will, perhaps, be new to many of you that blowpipes can easily be made in a form which admits of any special shape of flame being produced.  I have made for special work—­such as heating up odd shapes of forgings, brands, etc.—­blowpipes constructed of perforated tubes formed to almost every conceivable shape; these being supplied with gas from the ordinary main and a blast of air from a Root’s or foot blower.  I have here an example of a straight-line blowpipe made for heating wire passed along it at a high speed.  The same flame, as you no doubt will readily understand, can be made of any power and of any shape, and will work any side up; in fact,