“But will you be able to find me again?”
“I can’t help it if you keep to the road. If you jump over the first hedge you come to, and go rambling over the hills, of course I shall not find you.”
“Then there is no fear,” I said; and he walked sharply back, while I strode on slowly and stopped by the open window of one factory, where a couple of men were spinning teapots.
“Spinning teapots!” I fancy I hear some one say; “how’s that done?”
Well, it has always struck me as being so ingenious and such an example of what can be done by working on metal whirled round at a great speed, that I may interest some one in telling all I saw.
The works opposite which I stopped found their motive power in a great wheel just as ours did, but instead of steel being the metal used, the firm worked in what is called Britannia metal, which is an alloy of tin, antimony, zinc, and copper, which being mixed in certain proportions form a metal having the whiteness of tin, but a solidity and firmness given by the three latter metals, that make it very durable, which tin is not.
“Oh, but,” says somebody, “tin is hard enough! Look at the tin saucepans and kettles in every kitchen.”
I beg pardon; those are all made of plates of iron rolled out very thin and then dipped in a bath of tin, to come out white and silvery and clean and ready to keep off rust from attacking the iron. What people call tin plates are really tinned plates. Tin itself is a soft metal that melts and runs like lead.
As I looked through into these works, one man was busy with sheets of rolled-out Britannia metal, thrusting them beneath a stamping press, and at every clang with which this came down a piece of metal like a perfectly flat spoon was cut out and fell aside, while at a corresponding press another man was holding a sheet, and as close as possible out of this he was stamping out flat forks, which, like the spoons, were borne to other presses with dies, and as the flat spoon or fork was thrust in it received a tremendous blow, which shaped the bowl and curved the handle, while men at vices and benches finished them off with files.
I had seen all this before, and how out of a flat sheet of metal what seemed like beautiful silver spoons were made; but I had never yet seen a man spin a teapot, so being holiday-time, and having to wait for Uncle Jack, I stood looking on.