Machinery’s Shop Receipts and Formulas gathers 412 workshop receipts selected from the engineering journal Machinery, classified and revised for reference. This second edition carries a 1911 copyright from The Industrial Press in New York. Its compact arrangement brings together the small material problems that arose in drawing offices, machine shops and maintenance work: marking a blueprint, joining unlike materials, protecting a metal surface or choosing a lubricant.
A collection organized for reference
The volume is a compilation rather than a continuous course written by one named author. Many individual entries retain a contributor’s name and location. That format gives the collection the character of a shared workshop notebook: several approaches to a problem may appear together, allowing the reader to see how practitioners described their own methods.
The contents divide the material by purpose. Blue-printing and drafting-room formulas come first, followed by cements for metals, emery, leather, glass and marble. Later sections address etching fluids, hardening and tempering, polishing, surface colors and coatings, rust, solders, lubricants, varnishes, cleaning compounds and miscellaneous receipts. An index provides another route to a specific topic.
This structure is useful for readers studying the history of repair and manufacturing. It places such subjects as adhesives and corrosion protection beside the processes that created and maintained tools. The book shows how much of early twentieth-century shop work depended on the behavior of materials as well as on the shape of a machine.
Drawing-office and joining materials
The opening pages discuss writing on blueprints, preparing printing paper, correcting or retouching prints and treating finished sheets. Entries distinguish the visibility of a mark from the durability and handling of the paper. Together they document a working environment in which technical information circulated as physical drawings exposed to use, dirt and moisture.
The cement section expands the view from paper to joined materials. Its headings identify different substrates and purposes, including leather and abrasive work. For a historian of practical craft, the value lies in the range of everyday joining problems represented. A receipt intended for one material cannot simply be assumed to serve another, and the classification makes those distinctions visible.
Metal finishing and workshop maintenance
Hardening, tempering and case-hardening occupy their own group. Other sections concern polishing brass, nickel and steel, producing colors or coatings on metals, and removing or preventing rust. Read together, these entries show the difference between altering a surface’s appearance, protecting it from deterioration and changing the working properties of the underlying metal.
Solders and soldering acids are followed by lubricants for bearings and cutting tools. The arrangement connects assembly with operation and upkeep. It is particularly relevant to readers interested in old machine shops, where friction, wear, cutting performance and the condition of exposed surfaces affected both the work and the machinery producing it.
The final groups broaden the collection to paints, varnishes, whitewashes and cleaning materials. These are short reference entries, not a substitute for a modern materials specification. Their names and intended purposes can help identify the kinds of compounds mentioned in older manuals or encountered in accounts of historical workshop practice.
Who will find this book useful?
This free ebook suits industrial historians, collectors of engineering literature, tool researchers and readers building a reference collection on practical self-sufficiency. Its strongest contribution is documentary: it preserves the questions working shops asked and the solutions contributors proposed. The signed entries also show how technical knowledge was exchanged through a periodical.
The formulas belong to 1911 practice. Some ingredients and medical-sounding entries reflect obsolete or hazardous approaches, so the book is best read as historical reference rather than as present-day chemical or health guidance. Modern product information and appropriate professional advice are necessary before adapting any process. The PDF includes searchable text alongside the scanned pages, although recognition errors occur in older type and measurements.
Book details
- Author: Contributors to Machinery
- Publisher: The Industrial Press, New York
- Year: 1911
- Edition: Second edition
- Digital length: 72 PDF pages
- Language: English
- File size: 4.37 MB
