Rational Horse Shoeing and Wagon Making
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with rules, tables, recipes, etc., useful to
manufactures, blacksmiths, machinists,
well-drillers, engineers, liverymen,
horse-shoers, farmers, wagon-makers,
mechanics, amateurs and all others who have
occasion to perform the work for which this
book is primarily intended.
behind in competition with the man with good tools in proper
shape. There are smiths who will take in all kinds of shows and
entertainments within fifty miles, but when it comes to tools,
oh, how stingy and saving they are. There is no investment
which will bring such a good return as first-class tools do to a
mechanic. The old maxim, "A mechanic is known by the tools he
uses," is true. Many of the tools used in the shop can be made
by the smith. If less time is spent in the stores and saloon
there will be more time for making tools.
No other mechanic will try to turn out such a variety of work
with so few tools as the blacksmith, even when the smith has
and the tools to be had, he has few in proportion to the work.
There are classes of smiths who will be content with almost
nothing. These men can tell all about the different kinds of
tobacco; they can tell one kind of beer from another in the first
sip, and the smell of the whisky bottle is enough for them to
decide the character of the contents, but when it comes to
every year. But if they are approached on the subject they will generally say, "Oh, I can get along without that." With
them it is not a question of what they need, but what they can get along without.
Some smiths have the Chinaman's nature (stubborn conservatism) to the extent that they will have nothing new, no
matter how superior to their old and inferior tools; what they have been used to is the best.
When the hoof shears were a new thing I ordered a pair and handed them to my horse-shoer, he tried them for a
few minutes and then threw them on the floor and said, "Yankee humbug." I picked them up and tried them myself,
and it took a few days before I got used to them, but then I found that they were a great improvement over the toe
knife. I told my horse shoer to use them and after a while he could not get along without them, but would yet have
used his toe knife if it had not been for the fact that he was compelled to use them. If it was not for the conservatism
by which we are all infected more or less, we would be far more advanced in everything.