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'Put him to the die-sinking, said an acquaintance of the family, himself so employed; 'he'll find a use for this kind of thing some day. Die-sinking is not the craft it once was; cheap methods, vulgarising here as everywhere, have diminished the opportunities of capable men; but a fair living was promised the lad if he stuck to his work, and at the age of nineteen he was already earning his pound a week.
The Birmingham die-sinkers admit that they are inferior to the French in design, while in the execution of cutting heavy steel dies, they are decidedly superior. Die-sinking is an art, like painting or sculpture, which requires personal aptitude to enable an apprentice to acquire excellence. It is carried on in Birmingham by men who work themselves, employing two or three journeymen.
The most important part of the die-sinking trade, is that for making patterns in brass, mixed metal, and iron in curtain bands, pins, lamp pillars, cornices, coffin furniture, and all articles in which stamping has superseded the more expensive process of hammering out.
Within the last twenty years, and notably within the last ten years, public taste has required an increased amount of ornament in all domestic manufactures; stimulated by this demand, great improvements have been made in stamping, and excellence in the art of die-sinking has become more widely diffused.
And I was led to do so in thinking of Bob Hewett. Bob wore a collar. In the die-sinking establishment which employed him there were, it is true, two men who belonged to the collarless; but their business was down in the basement of the building, where they kept up a furnace, worked huge stamping-machines, and so on.
His daily work at die-sinking had of course supplied him with this suggestion, and he still found pleasure in work of the same kind.
All our designs are registered, as there is a constant piracy going on, which it is necessary to check." Dies are cut in soft metal and then hardened. Die-sinking is one of the arts so interesting in all its branches, from the first design to the finished coin or ornament, that every intelligent traveller should endeavour to see it.
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