THE “DIVIDED AXLE.”
Cranks were sometimes shrunk on, sometimes threaded on, and sometimes held on by wedging keys. Of the many ways, the survivors are the transverse key known now as the plain “cotter pin and nut,” and the D-shaped end, the latter being sometimes made like a square with three corners rounded, as recently on the Wolff-American and Remington, for example. A shape quite in vogue now is a tapered round, with one or two sides shaved to a flat and also tapered. Up to the time of the last Garden Show, two years ago, axles had been made in one piece, and the separate cranks had been attached in some of these above-mentioned ways, with a very few exceptions. It may also be said that this was the most ordinary and obvious mode of construction. But at that show appeared a very simple and good specimen of divided axle, the Gard, although not the first, for the [Columbia] had been trying the idea for a year or two, and had set the fashion. For some reason the Gard axle—which was joined at the centre by mortice-and-tenon, each half axle being one piece with its corresponding crank—has not gone much into use. This is probably because makers have desired to have devices of their own; at least, there has since that time been a raging epidemic of “divided axle.” It is quite within bounds to say that at least a page of this journal would be required to intelligently describe and illustrate the manifold devices of perverted and costly ingenuity for cutting the crank axle into two parts and then sticking the sundered parts together again. There are axles cut on single-tenon and on double-tenon; axles with straight bevel, zig-zag bevel, circular-notch lap, and with a long “skived” lap, as if glueing were proposed and a lot of surface were required for a joint; there are sleeves threaded and sleeves not threaded; there are halved hollow axles, to be held together by a screw bolt lengthwise through them. Some of these may perhaps have fallen, together with the makes of which they were a part, in the conflict of last season, but mostly they are still extant. Generally, the division is at or near the centre, but sometimes it is well at one side, thus approaching a more reasonable and quite common form which has axle and one crank in one piece and attaches to them the other crank removably. It is admitted that occasion to remove a crank may occur, and the wearing strain and exposure to dirt are so great on the present crank bracket that some device for detachability is almost necessary; yet only the seeking for peculiarity and the feeling on the part of designers that they must appear to be earning their pay can account for these constructional frenzies which it is not practicable to describe in detail. Here we may say that the Humber still adheres to the ancient and substantial device of separable cranks, held on by the transverse “cotter pin.”
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