Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

THE CUTLERY INDUSTRY. 117 of table knives—ivory, bone, wood, stag horn, buffalo horn, ox horn, mother-o’-pearl shell, tortoiseshell, celluloid, etc.—the cutting and preparation of which furnishes employment for several different classes of workmen and small employers. Halting material dealers buy their ivory and stag horn at the auctions held quarterly at Antwerp, London, and Liverpool. It is then cut up into handles and scales and sold to the facturers. Three or four however, also attend cutlery manu- of the latter, CUTLF2R. AT WORK. (Photo kindly supplied by Messrs. J. Rodgers & Sons, Sheffield.} the sales, and supply their own require- ments direct. The most largely used halting material to-day is celluloid— a manufactured article closely re- sembling ivory and vastly cheaper, and, although not equal to its natural prototype, it is very nice to look at, and wears well. Ivory itself is likely to become more and more a luxury, seeing that the advance of civilisation threatens “ my lord the ele- phant ” with gradual extinction, and the supply of other hafting materials is also contracting through the same cause. Machinery has lately come into use in the manufacture of second-rate cutlery. Table knives are now forged by the goffing hammer—a small steam hammer which delivers blows at a great speed, so as to imitate as nearly as possible the work of a hand forger. There is also another process by which blades are “ flied,” or stamped out of a sheet of metal; but these “ flied ” blades are inferior even to the goffed ones, through lack of the hammering, which has a beneficial effect on the wearing quality of the steel by closing its fibres. Although blades can be produced rapidly and cheaply by these means, there is no doubt that the cheapest table knife in the long run is the hand-forged blade, hafted in best African ivory, which, if taken care of, may be handed clown from generation to generation, and last practically for ever. At the present time a plant of American machinery for forging, grinding', glazing, and finishing table knives entirely by machinery is being worked by a syndicate, but only meagre support has been given to the venture at present It would appear that the conservatism of the British public is a more, serious bar to progress in industrial methods than t h e much talked of con- servatism of the manufacturers. It is most difficult to sell machine-made cutlery, simply be- cause the shape and appearance of the articles appear strange. The typical Shef- field scissor is made in the same form as it always was—the blade, shank, and bow, or ring, being forged out of one piece of steel. In the case of larger scissors, however, the blade is forged on to a shank and bow of common steel, so saving expense. The Germans, using a lower grade of steel, stamp out the complete scissor, blade, shank, and bow ; and they have in recent years secured the bulk of the world’s trade so far as cheap scissors are concerned. Many German scissors are made and used in Sheffield itself, and lately scissors drop-forged in Germany from Sheffield steel are imported in large quantities and finished in Sheffield, on account of the scarcity of local forgers. Many people look upon the scissors trade of Sheffield as a dying industry, and, owing to the small number of apprentices now entering it, the means of production are dwindling in an alarming way. The fancy work on scissors is done by means of filing, which fifty to a hundred years ago was a