StNicholas [serial] . ss,and wide enough to give the tube a length justtwice that of the finished cracker. From the topof his pile the workman takes a pack of theseslips, lays them out with one end arranged justlike steps, and then slides down the stairs, as itwere, with a brush of paste, so as. to make theouter ends of the slips stick fast when rolledagainst the tube. Then he bends the other —thedry —end around an iron nail, and places the nailunder a board, which rolls it along the slip untilall the paper has curled around it, just as you cansee the old man rolling one in Fig. 2. Once thecra
StNicholas [serial] . ss,and wide enough to give the tube a length justtwice that of the finished cracker. From the topof his pile the workman takes a pack of theseslips, lays them out with one end arranged justlike steps, and then slides down the stairs, as itwere, with a brush of paste, so as. to make theouter ends of the slips stick fast when rolledagainst the tube. Then he bends the other —thedry —end around an iron nail, and places the nailunder a board, which rolls it along the slip untilall the paper has curled around it, just as you cansee the old man rolling one in Fig. 2. Once thecracker skeleton is thus formed, he gives it anextra roll or two down the bench for good mea-sure, slides it off the nail into a basket, and hasanother started before you realize what he isabout. Then one of the small apprentices in theshop arranges the skeletons together in a six-sided bundle, like those on the drying-board inFig. 3, in each of which he puts just 507. Whythat particular number, I could not find FIG 4. WITH A HEAVY KNIFE CUTTING THROUGHA BUNDLE OF CRACKERS. Once dry, the skeletons receive their coveringgarment of red paper, which makes them so trulylittle redskins —this from the hands of one ofthe workers without the aid of any machine what-ever. He just rolls one of the narrow slipsaround the tube with his fingers and hurries the 790 FIRECRACKERS [July, growing agitator into another basket to await thetime for stuffing in the material that will makehim such a lively fellow. Once more, however,they all have to be packed up into the six-sidedbundles, this time with two stout strings tiedaround them a third of the way from the top andbottom, leaving the middle free. You can seeclearly in Fig. 4 the way the workers take theirbig knife and chop right down through the wholebundle to make the clean ends for the tops of theshorter tubes. These shorter tubes next have a thin paper cov-ering pasted over both tops and bottoms beforethe bottoms are closed by tapp
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookidstnicholasse, bookyear1873
