PLOUGHMAN'S FRIEND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1941, Page 7

PLOUGHMAN'S FRIEND

RANSOME'S PRINCIPLE. Look at a plough. There is the clevis, the wheel, the colter-clamp, the colter, the round, the pair of handles, and the share and mould-board. All the world over there are ploughs. They cleave the soil in Canada and in Australia and in India and South Africa, as they do in old England—the land where John Masefield watched Callow ploughing, as we may read in the "Everlasting Mercy." The plough was driven in Scotland by Robert Burns, the immortal poet. And when next you see a plough think of Robert Ransome who came into the world in 1753 and went out of in 1830. leaving mankind a rare boon. For it was this Norfolk man. apprenticed to an ironmonger, afterwards proprietor of a small brass foundry, who made the most revolutionary improvement in ploughs since the first were used in the east —perhaps in Egypt. It was in 1803 that he took out a patent for a new method of chilling lhe underside of plough-shares by casting them on an iron mould, the upper part of the mould being of sand. In this manner the underside of the share was chilled and made as hard as steel (or even harder than some kinds of steel) while the upper part remained soft and tough. The consequence of this revolutionary process was that the upper part wearing away quicker than the lower, a sharp cutting edge was always maintained. less draught being required. The custom of laying and sharpening shares was thus avoided. Today all ploughs are made on Robert Ransome's principle.