THREE:When we entered the town in our motor-car, those of the unfortunate population who had escaped from the murderous massacre had already left the town. Between the ruins and the deserted French Red Cross cars we drove to the pontoon bridge which the Germans had flung across the river by the side of the Meuse bridge, which had been blown up. Here we were stopped by German soldiers who guarded the pontoon bridge. In a caf we came across a few of the citizens who had remained. These unfortunate people had no home, no money, and no food, lacked the wherewithal to go farther away, and now depended on the charity of the murderers of their relatives. Twice a day they were allowed to call at one of the German stores for a piece of bread, in exchange for a ticket which167 they might get at the commander's office. The Germans, upholders of morality and "Kultur," saw to it that their victims did not overeat themselves.Tools should never be tempered by immersing their edges or cutting parts in the bath, and then allowing the heat to "run down" to attain a proper temper at the edge. I am well aware that this is attacking a general custom, but it is none the less wrong for that reason. Tools so hardened have a gradually diminishing temper from their point or edge, so that no part is properly tempered, and they require continual re-hardening, which spoils the steel; besides, the extreme edge, the only part which is tempered to a proper shade, is usually spoiled by heating and must be ground away to begin with. No latheman who has once had a set of tools tempered throughout by slow drawing, either in an oven, or on a hot plate, will ever consent to point hardening afterwards. A plate of iron, two to two and one-half inches thick, placed over the top of a tool dressing fire, makes a convenient arrangement for tempering tools, besides adding greatly to the convenience of slow heating, which is almost as important as slow drawing. The writer has by actual experiment determined that the amount of tool dressing [117] and tempering, to say nothing of time wasted in grinding tools, may in ordinary machine fitting be reduced one-third by "oven tempering."
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