Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

COINING PRESSES. 234 BRITAIN AT WORK. rapidity to the place where the moulds stand ready. Here they are tipped up at an angle that allows the glistening, fiery liquid to flow out of the lip of the crucible into the moulds, which one by one are pushed under the burning fountain. If the men have stirred the materials well, the bars will by this time be of a uniform composition, the gold alloyed with one-twelfth of copper, the silver with three-fortieths. But the bars are not always homo- geneous, and a fragment is cut from the first and last bar in each potful, to send to the assayer. If his report is unfavourable, it is melted all over again, and this happens about once in every twenty times. If, on the other hand, the bars are found to be up to the standard, they are cooled, smoothed over at the rou^h edges, and transferred once more to the huge balances, in which the metal that was first weighed on its entrance in the form of ingot is now weighed on its exit in the form of bars. The next stage in the history of money- making is reached by the arrival of the bars THE ANNEALING- ROOM. in the rolling-room. Here a gauger, with a staff of ten assistants, takes possession of the bars, which may be of the thickness of half an inch, and passes them between a succession of powerful steel rollers. By this means they are gradually made longer and thinner, until at length they become thin fillets, slightly thicker than the coins for which they are intended. The first machine is called the breaking-down machine, and it receives each bar into its inexorable jaws ten times over. Four other machines carry on in succession the operation of thinning, but before a fillet is done with it has to endure the pressure of these tremendous rollers more than thirty times. The strips of metal, which now look like the brass bands sometimes used for muslin window blinds, are by this time ready for the cutting room. First of all, they are submitted to the tender mercies of a pair of drags, which have been in use since the year 1816. By this machine the strips are dragged over and over again between two rollers, which give them an even thickness. Each strip is then taken to a cutting press, which punches circular discs out of it at the rate of 150 per minute. The discs hereupon are transferred to a machine, by which they are marked with a pro- jecting rim, and are now ready for the annealing furnaces. After being raised to a cherry-red heat, they remain in these furnaces for a quarter of an hour at a temperature of about 1,600 degrees