I described in §. 5. ¶. 2. the Lining-stick, But now we are come to Setting up, or Composing of Letters. The Founder must provide many Composing-Sticks; five or six dozen at the least. These Composing-sticks are indeed but long Lining-sticks, about seven or eight and twenty Inches long Handle and all: Whereof the Handle is about three Inches and an half long: But as the Lining-stick I described was made of Brass: So these Composing-sticks are made of Beech-Wood.
When the Boy Sets up Letters (for it is commonly Boys-Work) The Caster Casts about an hundred Quadrats of the same Body about half an Inch broad at least, let the Body be what it will, and of the length of the whole Carriage, only by placing a flat Brass or Iron Plate upon the Stool of the Mold close against the Carriage and Body, to stop the Mettal from running farther.
The Boy (I say) takes the Composing-stick by the Handle in his left hand, clasping it about with his four Fingers, and puts the Quadrat first into the Composing-stick, and lays the Ball of his Thumb upon it, and with the fore-Finger and Thumb of his right-Hand, assisted by his middle-Finger to turn the Letter to a proper position, with its Nick upwards towards the bottom side of the Composing-stick; while it is coming to the Stick, he at the same time lifts up the Thumb of his left-Hand, and with it receives and holds the Letter against the fore-side of the Quadrat, and after it, all the Letters of the same sort, if the Stick will hold them, If not he Sets them in so many Sticks as will hold them: Observing to Set all the Nicks of them upwards, as aforesaid. And as he Set a Quadrat at the beginning of the Composing-stick, so he fills not his Stick so full, but that he may Set another such Quadrat at the end of it.
¶. 7. Some Rules and Circumstances to be observed in Setting up Letters.
1. If they Drive a little out at Head or Foot, so little as not to require new Rubbing again, then he holds his Thumb harder against the Head or Foot, so as to draw the Driving end inward: For else when they come to Scraping, and Dressing the Hook of the Dressing-Hook drawing Square, will endanger the middle or some other part of Letters in the Stick to Spring out: And when they come into the Dressing-block, the Knots of the Blocks drawing also square subject them to the same inconvenience. And if they Drive out at the Head, the Feet will more or less stand off one another: So that when the Tooth of the Plow comes to Dress the Feet, it will more or less job against every Letter, and be apt to make a bowing at the Feet, or at least make a Bur on their sides at the Feet.
2. When Short-Letters are begun to be Set up in a Stick, the whole Stick must be fill’d with Short-Letters: Because when they are Dressing, the Short Letters must be Bearded on both sides the Body: And should Short-Letters or Ascending or Descending or Long stand together, the Short cannot be Bearded because the Stems of the Ascending or Descending or Long-Letters reach upon the Body to the Beard: So that the Short-Letters cannot be Bearded, unless the Stems of the other Letters should be scraped off.
3. When Long-Letters are begun to be Set up in the Stick, none but such must fill it, for the reason aforesaid.
4. If any Letters Kern’d on one side be to be Set up, and the Stems of the same Letters reach not to the opposite Beard as s or f, in Setting up these or such like Letters, every next Letter is turned with its Nick downwards, that the Kern of each Letter may lie over the Beard of its next. But then they must be all Set up again with a Short-Letter between each, that they may be Bearded.
Plate 21.