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Title: |
1866 Article-Westinghouse Co., Circular Wood Sawing Machine |
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Source: |
Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year of 1866, pgs. 235-236 |
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Insert Date: |
1/15/2013 8:58:22 PM |
The illustration accompanying this article represents a circular sawing machine, which is extensively employed in the northern and western States for sawing cord-wood into short or long lengths for the stove. In some instances the fire-wood is cut and split in long pieces, like long rails, and sawed short with such a machine. This machine is made by G. Westinghouse, Schenectady, New York. E. & M. Haider, Cobleskill, Schoharie county, New York, also make a similar machine for sawing wood. Messrs. Harder employ a lever on the movable table to hold the wood from turning while the saw is passing through a large stick.
One excellent feature of this machine is the plate balance-wheel, which not only prevents sticks of wood getting into the wheel, but is a perfect security against the bursting of the rim when in high motion. Some wise ones scout at the idea of bursting a good wheel. I have in mind several instances where the balance wheels were bursted into fragments by a high motion. In one instance a man was killed instantly. In another, a portion of the wheel flew more than three hundred yards, and went through the sides of a dwelling-house. In another instance, a Hugh iron wheel, weighing several tons, was broken and a large fragment went upwards through the roof of the shop, made a curve through the air over the tops of the buildings in the city of Auburn, New York, and came down more than one-eighth of a mile distant, passing through the roof and floor of a building and entering the ground. This piece of broken wheel I saw, and measured the distance the fragment was thrown. The same year, I was sawing in a machine shop, when the balance wheel on the journal of the saw that I was using, flew into more than twenty pieces, one of them passing through the floor like a bullet. Fortunately no one was hurt. Had they been plate-wheels none of them would have been broken. |
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1866Westinghouse Co., Circular Wood Sawing Machine
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