Fac-simile by pressure. The handworker
rolls his lump of clay into a soft shapeless
mass, and dashes it into a wooden mould;
a brick is the result. He uses better clay and
better moulds, and produces a tesselated
tile, suitable for mediaeval pavements. He
employs a red clay and a somewhat complex
machine, and there spring forth draining-tiles.
He uses white clay, and a tobacco-pipe
appears. He presses porcelain-clay upon or into
a shallow mould, and the product is a plate,
or a dish, or a saucer. He thrusts a glaring
red mass of hot glass into an iron mould, and
produces a square glass bottle. He pinches
a bit of hot glass between nippers which
have engraved surfaces, and a glass seal is
produced. He heats a metal mould, gives
a loving squeeze to a bit of horn, and
produces a comb, an umbrella-handle,
a knife-handle, a shoe-horn, a button,
and various other horns of plenty. He
places his tin dish-cover on a support, and
presses a swage or mould upon it in such a
way as to produce a pattern. He adjusts a
fiat piece of Britannia metal to a lathe,
and makes a teapot by pressing up the metal
against a revolving mould. He engraves a
device on a hard steel roller, and then presses
this device upon a copper or steel plate or
roller, insomuch that millions of dozens of
Queen's heads can be produced by one single
process of engraving. He warms a flat cake
of gutta percha, and produces anything
you please by pressing it in a mould—from a
tea-tray to a bottle stopper. He mixes
glue and treacle, and makes you a
printing-ink roller. He mixes glue and whitening,
and produces a dough, which, when
pressed into a mould, yields ornaments
for a picture-frame or for a cornice. He
transforms his paper fragments into papier-
maché, and moulds them into various kinds
of ornamental articles.

Fac-simile by stamping. The coiner is the
chief artist of stamps. He impresses the
double device in every coin by a process
of powerful stamping, with dies and /counter-dies,
on which the patient labours of a Wyon
or a Pistrucci have been bestowed. The
brass ornaments for military accoutrements,
for carriages, for household furniture, are
made in enormous number by stamping
sheets of thin brass, with dies properly
engraved. The button trade depends on the
stamping process more than on any other for
its products; for not only are metal buttons
made chiefly by stamping, but the iron skeleton
for a covered button. Spoons are shaped
entirely in the stamping press. Many kinds
of nails are indebted to the stamping press
for existence. The American clocks owe their
cheapness to the uniformity of the pieces,
stamped as they nearly all are out of sheets
of brass.

Fac-simile by punching. Punching and
stamping may seem alike; but in truth they
differ very much. Cutting punches are selected
with especial reference to the size and form
of the hole to be made. If you punch out
a disc from a thin sheet of iron, to make
the core of a silk button, the disc itself
is the object for which you work; but if
you cut out a disc from a thicker sheet, to
make a rivet hole in a boiler plate, the
vacuity is wanted, and not the disc; but
in both cases, the disc and the hole
round depend in size and shape on the
punch. Colanders, wine-strainers, nutmeg-
graters, borders of tinned iron tea-trays, all
are perforated by punching. Zinc plates for
window-blinds and larder doors and other
purposes, are beautifully perforated by punching.
Postage stamps have the little holes by which
they are now so easily severed made by punching.
Sheets of paper are cut for envelopes by
punching. The glittering array of spangles
and stars, with which the school-boy's
theatrical characters are adorned, is produced
by punching small fragments out of sheets
of gilt and coloured paper. Punches are also
used to impress ornaments upon steel dies,
and the matrices for casting type are
fac-similes of punches.

Fac-simile by drawing. If we would
have a leaden pipe an inch in diameter,
we cast a small length of larger pipe, very
thick, but with a small bore, and we draw
and draw through holes of various sizes
until the pipe has thinned and lengthened
itself according to our wants. If we would
have a brass tube, we lap together the two
edges of a sheet of brass, and we give
symmetry to the inside and the out by drawing
through holes with a solid mandril kept
within the tube. If we would make an iron
rod or a railing bar, we draw an oblong piece
of iron between two rollers, until it has
acquired a contour analogous to that of the
grooves cut in the rollers. If we require
wire—whether thick enough to coil round a
telegraphic cable, or thin enough to form the
gauze for a Davy lamp—we draw an iron rod
through such a series of holes in a steel
plate, that it shall become thinner at each
drawing, and at length assume the form of
wire. If we (who are not Italians) would
obtain maccaroni or vermicelli, we draw or
force dough through a series of similar holes.

Fac-simile by tracing. To copy a drawing
with accuracy a pentagraph is often used;
and this, by a simple modification, can produce
a copy which shall be the same size as the
original, or larger or smaller, as may be desired.
The silhouette, by which profile likenesses are
frequently taken, acts on the same principle
as the pentagraph. Little as the surface of
an engine-turned watch may seem to
resemble a profile likeness, there is really
something of the same principle of copying
involved: for the rosettes which are placed
on the lathe oblige the cutting tool to trace
out the same pattern on the watch-case;
and the adjustment of the distance of the
tool from the centre may render the copy either