"Scissors, in like manner, are made by hand, and every pair passes through sixteen or seventeen hands, including fifty or sixty operations, before they are ready for sale. Common scissors are cast, and when riveted, are sold as low as 4s. 6d. per gross! Small pocket knives, too, are cast, both in blades and handles, and sold at 6 s. per gross, or a halfpenny each! These low articles are exported in vast quantities in casks to all parts of the world.
"Snuffers and trays are also articles of extensive production, and the latter are ornamented with landscapes, etched by a Sheffield artist, on a resinous varnish, and finished by being dipped in diluted nitric acid for a few seconds or minutes.
"Messrs. Rodgers also introduced me to an extensive range of workshops for the manufacture of plated and silver ware, in which are produced the most superb breakfast and dinner services. The method of making the silver plate here and at Birmingham merits special notice, because the ancient method was by dissolving mercury in nitrous acid, dipping the copper, and depending on the affinity of the metals, by which a very slight article was produced. But at Sheffield and Birmingham, all plate is now produced by rolling ingots of copper and silver together. About the eighth of an inch in thickness of silver is united by heat to an inch of copper in ingots about the size of a brick. It is then flattened by steel rollers worked by an eighty horse power. The greater malleability of the silver occasions it to spread equally with the copper into a sheet of any required thickness, according to the nature of the article for which it is wanted. I saw some pieces of plated metal, the eighth of an inch thick, rolled by hand into ten times their surface, the silver spreading equally; and I was told that the plating would be perfect if the rolling had reduced it to the thinness of silver paper! This mode of plating secures to modern plate a durability not possessed by any plate silvered by immersion. Hence plated goods are now sought all over the world, and, if fairly used, are nearly as durable as silver itself. Of this material, dinner and dessert services have been manufactured from 50 to 300 guineas, and breakfast sets from 10 to 200 guineas, as sold on the spot.
"At Sheffield are actually cast and finished, most, if not all, the parts of grates sold as their own make by the London furnishing ironmongers. Their names are placed on them, but, in truth, they merely put the parts together. I saw in Messrs. Picklay's rooms superior castings for backs of grates, little inferior in delicacy to plaster of Paris; and for grates connected with one of these patterns, I was told 100 guineas each was lately paid by a northern squire. Grates with folding doors are made here as well as at Chesterfield. The doors are in half heights, so as to serve two purposes, and grates so supplied sell for about two guineas extra. Mr. Picklay has brought the kitchen range to great perfection. With one fire he roasts, boils with water and steam, and bakes. Economy and completeness were never more usefully combined; and a public establishment in Sheffield is fitted with one which has cooked a dinner complete for above three hundred persons. It cost nearly £300, but such grates for small families may be had at ten guineas.
"The mercantile part of the Sheffield trade is performed chiefly by travellers, but the principal shops in London deal directly with the manufacturers here. To humour public prejudice in regard to "Town make," as it is called, and to serve as an advertisement for various retailers in London and other large towns, their connexions in Sheffield keep steel brands, with which their names are placed on the articles, and they thereby pass with the public as the real manufacturers. I saw in different workshops, in Sheffield, the steel brands of our famous town makers, and the articles in wholesale quantities packing up to meet the demand in London for "real town made." This is a standing joke at the expense of cockney credulity among the Sheffield cutlers.
"Sheffield is noted for the manufacture of superior files; and many anecdotes are told of the artifices which have been made use of to aggrandize or to repudiate the celebrity of the marks of some well-known makers.
"In Sheffield generally the workmen get from 20s. to 24s. per week. Dry grinders get £2, and some £5 or £6, and these high wages are paid as an equivalent for the shortness of life. Many women are employed as filers, burnishers, polishers, finishers, &c. &c.; and they get from 6s. to 12s. per week.
"Very fine cutlery is manufactured by Mr. Crawshaw. I saw in his warehouse all those elegant patterns of pen-knives which, in the best shops of London, Bath, &c. excite so much admiration. His lobster knives, with four or more blades, on slit springs, with pearl and tortoiseshell handles, are the most perfect productions of British manufacture. His pen-knives with rounded or beveled backs, to turn in the quill and shave the point, are simple and effective improvements. He showed me plain pocket-knives so highly finished, that the first cost is 38s., yet so deceptive is cutlery, that I might have preferred others which I saw at only 7s. or 8s. It is the same in regard to the scissors of Champion and Son,—articles at two or three guineas did not appear to my uninstructed eye worth more than others at a few shillings; yet in all these high priced articles, nearly the whole cost is in workmanship, and there are but few workmen who can produce them. At the same time, Mr. Crawshaw deals in pen-knives at 5s. per dozen, and Mr. Champion in scissors at 2s. or 3s. per dozen.
"The novelties and curiosities in this way are extremely numerous, and the makers and inventers are as modest and communicative as they are original and ingenious. Thus a knife an inch long, weighing eight pennyweights six grains, containing seventy odd blades and instruments, cost £30 in making: scissors the eighth of an inch long, twenty-five of which weigh but a grain, sold at 3s. per pair: a knife, mounted in gold and pearl, containing thirty blades, is valued at £30; pocket-knives with twenty-six parts are sold at six guineas; the very best two blades mounted with pearl and gold, made by Crawshaw, are in common sale at two guineas in Sheffield. Messrs. Champion are esteemed the best makers of scissors; and ladies' working scissors, in general commerce, are finished and mounted as high as five or ten guineas. The best pocket-knives are made by Crawshaw, and fetch, in mounting, from two to five guineas. He is also the general maker of what are called the 'best town made.' I may here add, that Messrs. Champion can make a single set of table knives and forks, the fair market price of which would be 100 guineas.
"The mechanical ingenuity of Mr. Crawshaw has also been displayed in the construction of AN ORRERY consisting of at least 1,000 wheels, which, by a single winch, turns all the planets in their respective periods; and also the whole of the satellites, including those of Herschell. This orrery, perhaps the completest in the world, was made in all its details by this gentleman, and, in its wheel-work, is an astonishing production.