WONDERFUL FEATS WITH A SAW.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2423, 21 January 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

WONDERFUL FEATS WITH A SAW.

I have often read of the wonderful feats performed by skilled workmen with tools, such as engraving the Lord's Prayer on the back of a silver three-cent piece, or mikiu<,'a steam engine that would stand on a silver quarter, hut I saw some wonders performed the other night that surpassed them all. All the minute articles manufactured heretofore have been made with small tools, and in some cases with the aid of a microscope, but there is a man in the Sea Beach Palace Exposition on Coney Island who works out the most delicate articles with a baud-saw nineteen feet long and revolving at the rate of over a mile a minute. Upon this immense machine the skilled operator in my presence sawed out four chain, all coraplece, with lees and. bacl;*, but so small that tho four wore placed on the end of a lead pencil at one time. Then a dozen knives and fork< of the moat diminutive t-izo were mads and placed around the lead pencil. So small were they that although the entire dozen were placed rouud the pencil not one of them touched the other. Tueu the operator trimmed his finger-nails ou tho huge saw as cleverly and easily as ouo could do it with a penknife. Wetting his thumb, ho pressed the ball of it into some sawdust, and then sawed the sawdust off the thumb without scratching the skin, yet a single nervous twitch of the arm would have cost him a hand. All sorts of curious puzzles are turned out with astonishing rapidity from all sorts of misshapen blocks of wood. Even articles of clothing, as thin and flexible as cloth, are worked out by this magician from little pieces of wood with his big saw. The cap he works in was sawed out of over 1000 pieces of wood, no two of which are the same size or shape.—Brooklyn Eagle.