Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1895 — MAKING FLAGS. [ARTICLE]

MAKING FLAGS.

NOVEL INDUSTRY AT BROOKLYN NAVY YARD. Though Our Flag Look* Easy to Make, Yat Such is Not tha Casa - - Foraign Ensigns Difficult to Fashion. Almost every flag that floats from the mastheads of our men of war is made in the flag room of the equipment department in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. There are a few flags made at the Mare Island yard, but the majority of them are made here. Before the equipment of a war vessel is complete she has to be provided with the flags of every nation in the world. Her flag locker will contain over 200 ensigns of different sizes and nationalities. The American flag is made in eight sizes, ranging from the huge No. 1 to the little boat flag, No. 8. The No. 1 size is very rarely made, as few vessels are provided with spars sufficiently lofty to enable them to be used. It is 86 feet long and 28.9 feet in width, or, to use the naval expression, it has a 86-foot fly and a 28.9-foot hoist. The regular flag which is commonly used is the No. 2, which lias a 27.19-foot fly and a 14.85-foot hoist. All vessels carry this size, but the cruisers Brooklyn and Minneapolis are the only ships which carry No. 1. The Columbia, however, has recently been supplied with a No. 1 flag, which she used at the Kiel Canal ceremony. In flag making seven colors are used—red, white, blue, green, brown and orange yellow, while canary yellow has been recently added to the list. Foreign navies have discarded white as a color in (signaling, and have substituted canary yellow. The United States Navy has recently followed this example, because it has been found that white blends in some way with the horizon, and at any distance is invisible. 1 On the floor of tho main flagroom are countersunk little brass plates, which mark the different sizes to which flags must be cut. This was an invention of Master Flagman Crimmins, and obivates constant measuring with a tape line. Most of the foreign flags are cut by means of zinc pattern, some of the designs being very difficult. There are also a number of triangular brass plates in the floor which are used to mark out the signal flags and pennants. Chalk lines continuing from the plates show the accurate dimensions of the desired pennant or code flag. The most difficult flags to make are those of San Salvador and Costa Rica. In the first named all the seven colors are used, and in the second all except brown. Brown is used for bronze, which is the usual color of crowns and imperial insignia in foreign flags. The recently adopted Japanese flag is an extremoly difficult one to make, though the old one was one of the easiest. Japan’s new naval flag consists of a red sun on a white ground, while from the sun red beams radiate to the extremities of the flag. No ray is of the same size, and the proper proportion is difficult to keep] The old flag was merely a white ground with a red circle in the center.

China has also considerably changed her flag. The new dragon is far more fantastic than the old one, and he is represented as about to swallow the red sun. The intricate designs in some of the foreign flags were formerly painted, but it was found that, unless in constant use, the paint cracked. At present the designs are all made by colored bunting. Of course, no shading is possible, but the result is surprisingly good from an artistic point of view, while at the same time the flag is more durable. After a flag has been cut to size, it is put together by women in the sewing room and afterward taken to another room, where it is “headed.” This process consists in attaching a thick band of white duck to the hoist, or part next the mast, and through the lines and attachments by which the flag is handled. The flag then goes down to the storeroom, where it is kept until wanted. In making flags for our navy 50,000 yards of bunting are annually used. The bunting, which is of a fine quality, is subjected to very severe tests before it is finally accepted. There must be thirty-four threads to the inch, and an inch of the fabric must be able to stand a strain along the warp of thirty pounds. There is a curious machine in the fiagroom for making this test. A piece of bunting two inches wide and containing sixty-eight threads across the warp is fixed by a clamp at either end. One clamp is firmly attached to a table, and the other is hooked onto the short end of the arm of a lever. By means of a little winding gear a heavy weight is run along the lever arm until a pressure of sixty pounds is exerted. If the strip of bunting stands the strain it is accepted so far as strength is concerned. The color test is also severe. After being vigorously scrubbed with soap and water the bunting is exposed to direct sunlight for a considerable period. If no signs of fading show the bunting is accepted. Thereis a minimum of waste in cutting the stripes for the American flag. The part left over after cutting stripes for a No. 2 flag i 3 used for a smaller flag, and that left over from the smaller flag does for one still smaller, and so on. Though our flag looks rather easy to make, yet such is ncftr the case. The principal difficulty lies in the union with its galaxy of stars.