A New Boring Apparatus.

Cromwell Argus, Volume II, Issue 101, 17 October 1871, Page 7

A New Boring Apparatus.

A ronnrkible invention is annr.iii3ol from tint grj.it bree mil I of bib ra?-sxvin:» notions, tha Unite 1 States. A ue'.v power of boring las been pineal i 1 the hauls of the h'i'Tiv.i race by the in parity of Mr B. 0. of Philadelphia. Lot no one shudlor at the announce ■nen'i, we have bores enough already, no'; excepting American noes ; for we re illy tliil need this bore, an i shall be much heue/ited by it. What ia it that is ta drill for us all the tough holes in future ? —what explosive is to blast; what new, mist solid, caso-hardsae 1

tool is, striking, to vibrate, or, grinding, to revolve? The new tool is sand: yes, absolutely that most fragmentary, dissolute, and feeble of all things—sand ! And how is sand to do it ?

Simply by being squirted in a continuous stream —for light purposes by air-puffs, an 1 for heavy jobs by steam. About the most impracticable substance known is called corundum ; it is little, if at all, inferior in hardness to that prince among impenetrables, the diamond itself ; yet with a jet of quartz-sand blown through a pipe by steam at 3301b pressure to the square inch, in less than twenty-five minutes a hole an inch and a-half deep, and of the same diameter, shall be made in a solid block of corundum. A blast of tine particles of sand, impelled through a flexible pipe, supersedes for the future a hundred operations in grinding, hammering, and knocking ;in chiselling, whirling, and drilling. For mere engraving, as on glass, a simple blast of air, raised by a rotary-fan, and charged with sand, is all-sufficient, and enables the glass engraver, by using intervening perforated paper, lace, or other media between the sand-stream and the glass, to rapidly produce patterns the most minute, complicated, perfect, and altogether unattainable by any other process. A single particle of sand, blown against the object to bo engraved or bored, what can it do? Almost absolutely nothing. No visible or detestible effect succeeds. Its little tap against glass, or stone, or steel, is inaudible, and seemingly resultless. But there comes another tap, and another—in a moment of time a hundred, a thousand such little taps follow each other ; and if the blast that bears the sand-grains is but strong enough, the best hardened stool gives way almost as easily as tallow, and corundum itself is cut through well nigh like cheese.