Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1892 — SECRET OF A BUTTON. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SECRET OF A BUTTON.

WHAT ONE • MICHT TELL IF IT COULD TALK OF HOME. SlgbtA st a Manufactory—The Method of Cutting Out—How the Dies Are Made——Tlr,© Perfect Article —Au Important Factor of Commerce. How Buttons Are Made. To uae the expression, “not worth a button,” which is often applied to an object apparently worthless, is certainly depreciating all article that is an important factor of commerce, and the making of which gives bread to many thousands of people. Even though the shadow of fashion’s frown fall at present over the button, it is anything but an insignificant article. The ancients do not appear to have made use of the button, except, perhaps, to fasten the drapery of women’s tunics on the shoulder or arms; or to connect the two square pieces of the tunic near the neck. The dies for stamping metal buttons are rated among the highest objects of the die-sinker’s and medalist’s art. In a large button in: nufactory you will see ranges of shelves or pigeon-holes covering both sides of the rooms, each filled with dies, hundreds in number. And upon each one what care and thought have been spent, what ingenuity and knowledge, what skill of eye and hand! In itself it is a curious article, a single die occupying a man from two to three days to a month, according to his ability and the fineness of the pattern to be wrought. To think of 1,000 in a year produced by dint of so much effort and ability, and remember that button-dies are among the highest productions of the art, cannot but elevate one’s respect for buttons. The first step to take then in following throughout the history of a button, says the Chicago Tribune, will be to find out what is this steel die so much heard of and so seldom seen, except by those who go to seek it. It is a block of metal, round or square, as may happen, four or five inches in height and rather smaller at the top than at the bottom. The steel selected must bo of moderately fine grain and uniform texture, and when polished must show no spots or patches under a magnifying glass. After being forged into rQugh blocks the size and shape mentioned the steel is made ns soft as possible by careful annealing—being immersed in a pot of coarsely pounded animal charcoal, then heated to a cherry red and allowed to cool gradually. Next it is “faced up” flatly and smoothly In a lathe, and the engraver takes it In hand. He first sketches his pattern upon it from the drawing before him with a pencil. Then lie begins engraving with the hard, sharply pointed steel engraving tools — gently, for it is always easy to cut away more, but impossible to restore the minutest chip when the stroke has gone too deep. He works out the images of the pattern, obverse and reverse, in intaglio for the upper matrix, and embossed or in bas-relief for the lower. When, after repeated Impressions upon clay from lime to time they are found correct, the matrices are ready to bo hardened. This process is simple enough when plain steel is to be operated upon, but is critical when a delicate engraving is to be preserved intact. Any defect in the mode of coiAlueting it may ruin the labor of majiy weeks. It resembles the previous process of softening as regards the application of high heat, but in this it is cooled quickly to produce the desired hardness, while in the other it was cooled slowly. Each matrix is first treated to a coating of oil and animal charcoal or of lampblack and linseed oil. Then they ere placed face downward in a crueiblo filled with the charcoal and burned. After the cherry-red heat is attained they are taken out with a pair of tongs, plunged in a large vessel of cold water, moved about rapidly till the spluttering ceases, and left in the water till quite cool. If it pipes or sings it Is probably cracked. This, dash into oold wator is the nervous part of tho business, as the fractures are liable to occur then and the whole work of weeks ruined. Sometimes as many as four or six dies have to be struck to secure a minute or delicate pattern. Tho hardened die is now polished by holding it against a revolving iron disk coated with powdered emery and oil and tempered by putting it in water which is gradually raised to the boiling point and as gradually cooled, or by placing it on a heated bar of iron until it acquires a rich straw Color. To increase its strength it is sometimes thrust into a red-hot iron ring of just the diameter to fit it when Hie die is cold; consequently, the ring by contracting as it cools binds the substance Of the die with great force and renders it less liable to crack in the subsequent operations. It is now ready fdV nse in molding the shape of future thousands of buttons. The materials of' which buttons are made are almost innumerable. As one manufacturer remarked, “To make out a long list of materials of whioh they are made is an easy matter, but, excluding tho fatty sdbstances, to name one of which they are not made would be a difficult task.” The most common, however, are metal buttons of steel, brass, iron, and aluminum, pearl, composition, glass, and

covered buttons. F rit as to making met&l buttons. Her.; arc rows of women sad girls, each seated at her machine, a heavy power press. The sheet of metal •bout iO-loi)o'sf an Inch in thickness, is placed under the heavy cutting die on the drawing-press —a motion of the foot , on the pedal, and it descends' hungrily on thw met&l and bites out a circular pieoe. ms fee same time drawing in the edges *#■ the blank. Shifting the sheet, the worker punches out the disks many times faster than the <oook cuts out cookie* from a sjieefc of pastry. The number cut oat In s minuto is beyond belief to those who have not seen it done. One woman can cut as high as 160,000 shells la a day,

By the same method all the round parts of a button are cut out, the cloth in covered buttons, the collet, and mold. The design is next stamped on the upper shell with a drop-hammer. The shell is placed upon the under matrix of the pair of dies we have watched made, and the upper matrix is brought down upon It with great force, and when taken out the pattern is found to be reproduced in every particular. If the shell is to have open spaces, a kind of filigree work on it, this, too, is cut out by the press. The

shell is then taken to the dip-room and immersed in a solution of nitric and sulphuric acids to reuiovo all dirt and stain. After that it is take out and given the ground color—green, red, blue, or whatever it is to be—by dipping it into the proper chemical solutions, and then each one is colored by hand application of French paints and shellac varnishes. It is now ready to bo joined to the remaining parts of, the button. In the meantime the shank, a bit of wire bent to

form an oval, has been inserted by machinery into the aperture in tho back or under shell of the button, soldered in, and baked. All that now remains is to put the top shell on, which is deftly done by a girl, who places the under shell with its shank into a cup-like depression below the die of her pross, places the top shell upon it, and the die, descending, presses it down upon the other and fits the edges so closely over the other that it will not eome off. The now completed button is ready to be sewed on the cards with its allotted number of fellows and placed in boxes for shipment. The steel button retains its natural color, of course, and is not subjected to chemicals. In the French cut-steel but-

tons tho chased parts or facets are done by little girls with hand punches. They become expert at this seemingly tedious work and turn out many hundreds in a day. In some of tho liner patterns, as in a tiny bunch of grapes, the grapes are each put on separately by hand. Steel buttons are given the brown shade merely by subjecting them to a high degreeof heat; the blue by a greater, and the purple by a yot higher degree of heat. Cloth-eovcrod buttons are made by a somewhat different process. The metal pieces and the wooden or pasteboard mold are cut out the same. Some of the machines here are busily punching out the collet or back part and the orifice in it through which the cloth within is to protrude and form the tuft of canvas that is to be laid hold of by the needle which is to sew the button on. This perforation has a serrated edge. Another machine wraps the metal top in cloth, turns down the edges, and fixes in the pasteboard stuffing or mold. Another cuts out the piece of coarse black canvas which is to go between the puffing and the perforated bottom or collet, and which is prevented from being drawn forth by the tug of the tailor’s thri a 1 by means of the serrated edge, which grips it fast. The button is completed by the fixing firmly together of the fine pieces which go to form the common cloth button that may be seen on any man’s coat or woman’s jacket, This is accomplished by the instantaneous pressure which they undergo in another steel matrix into which the operator places them in their proper order, and then by a touch of a lever they are combined in a perfect button. This last operation appears to a novice like a complete piece of jugglery, but it is, of course, dependent on the ingenious construction of the minute implements brought to bear so forcibly on the different materials. It is certainly a wonderful and beautiful apparatus, but cannot well be described to one who has not seen it. The description given is that of the most common kind of Florentine button, but though the mode of making is materially the sM&ethere are slightly different deviees/ormaking conical or flat buttons, rouqfi or elliptic in form; some covered wish Sxquisite patterns of eilk or other expensive material; some designed to project like flower buds, and some to droop pendent in the form of acorns—but the varieties are endless, infinite. As an English writer says; “In somS branches of traffic the wearer calls loudly for new fashions, but in this the sash-

ions tread upon each other and crowd upon the wearer. ” It is worthy of notice to see the ingenious economy practiced by elothrrialters, who contrive to leave spaces between the button patterns, which are woven in pieces many yards in length and half a yard wide, uncovered by any portion of the silken web. This rigid economy, however, Is carried out in the whole business of button making, the scraps of metal being returned to the furnace and even the shreds and fragments of paper to the paper mill. The old-fashioned horn button has almost entirely gone out of common use. At one time it formed a very important branch- of this industry. But, after ail, perhaps the prettiest manufacture of this family of production is the making of pearl buttons. It may be that the charm lies in the material of which they are formed—tho shell which we know to have been not long ago lying in the realms of the deepseavhmizens and the coral beds at the bottom of the Indian seas. The rainbow light gleaming from the pearl shells before us seems to picture something of its foreign surroundings; of the dusky barbarians whose bread depends almost entirely upon the pearl shell, and who dived beneath the waves to reach the wonderful homes of these shells; of the rustling of the palm trees stirred by the tropic breeze blowing from the ricefields as they came to the lijght of the s-un and blue skies for the first time, and their subsequent crowding into barrels and boxes und shipment to far-away America. The finest shells for this purpose come from Singapore. The black pearl comes from the shells of oysters that grow around tho islands in Pacific seas. They are most plentiful around Tahiti and Hawaii. The iridescent - quality of this pearl in the finer material shows a brilliant luster, giving forth all the colors of tho rainbow, and is transparent. Pearl is a hard substance and requires strong and exact machinery to cut it

without injury. The first operation after cleansing tho shell is cutting the blanks, which is done by a tubular saw worked in a latlio. It is caught and held with an iron grip, while the saw cuts out tho disks, which are some as large as a child’s fist as seen on the shaggy' overcoat of a sportsman, or the saucer-like circles on some of tho fashionable jackets, while others are as small as the tiny buttons seen on buby clothes. They are one by one clutched by a sort of pincers and held against a revolving cylinder to bo polished with sand or emery and oil. Then each one is turned and smoothed in a lathe; adorned with designs, stars, dots, concentric rings or leaves; then corded or milled at the edges with streaks almost too fine to be seen by the naked eye. The figures in the middle are to mark the holes by which the buttons are to be sewed on. Into the small center depression a hard drill fixed to a lathe descends and bores the holes. The edges of these holes, as every housewife knows, are sharp. But for tho cutting of tho thread in course of time by these edges the button might lust forever. Now and then the thin pierced bit of pearl in the middle breaks out, but much oftener the button Is lost by the cutting of the thread. In many pearl buttons a shank of metal is inserted. As neither solder nor any adhesive composition can be used an ingenious device is resorted to The shank, below its ring of metal, is split into the form of an inverted V; the turner now cuts at the back of tho button a hole much wider at the bottom than at tho orifice; he inserts the shank at the aperture, and a sharp tap of the hammer causes the -shaped wire to spread out flat, and shank and button are inseparably connected. The button is next polished with soap and rottenstone in the lathe, and it is done. The scraps of pearl left at the factories are crushed and used for a land fertilizer, which purpose it sorves admirably, having great enriching qualities. A large factory will produce several hundred tons of this shell-refuse in a year, which it disposes of for this purpose. Birmingham, England, was long the center of the button industry, but it has spread to various cities. America has many large factories.

PUNCHES AND BUTTONS.

USING THE DROP-HAMMER.

BUFFING AND POLISHING ROOM. IN THE FACTORY.

ELECTROPLATING AND GILDING.