Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/296

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
282
Walks in the Black Country

the most strange and stirring. Whatever else suggested the name, it might well have come from the process itself. To have recourse to very common similes, divested of all technical terms, a mass of the molten metal about the size and form of a gourd is formed, with the rod in the stem. It is then thrust into a blazing oven whose month is terrible to front, and which would serve the men who attempted it as Nebuchadnezzar's furnace mouth did his servants, if they did not wear a shield before their faces. The red gourd shell is thrust into this roaring oven, and turned rapidly by the long iron stem. This motion soon opens a hole through the butt end of the shell, and it expands to a new size and shape at every revolution in the flame. Now it is a Scotch cap; the next half-minute it is a sailor's tarpaulin hat, very squat, mostly crown with but little brim. A few more turns, and it is all crown, whizzing around like a large circular saw without teeth. The stem is then detached, and it is lifted into an annealing oven and placed on its edge in an iron frame which holds a great number of them upright, seemingly as thick as herrings in a barrel, yet without touching each other. This is just a glance at the process of making "crown glass," and whoever sees it must think of a hat crown when he remembers the operation.

I wonder how many well-instructed men and