FILES AND SAND-PAPERS

HAVING now examined the analogies between the cutting, boring, striking and grasping tools of Nature and Art, we come to those finishing tools which smooth and polish the surface.

The first is the File, an instrument which needs but little description. It consists of a surface of hardened steel, broken up into rough-edged teeth of infinite variety, according to the work which the file has to do. It is rather remarkable, by the way, that at present the English files are infinitely superior to those produced in any other part of the world; that their teeth are all made by hand; and that a genuine Sheffield file will first cut its way through a piece of iron in half the time that would be occupied by a file of any other nation, and then would easily cut its antagonist in two.

As long as the File is intended to work upon metal, there is little difficulty in its manufacture, except that no machinery has yet been invented which can give the peculiar edging of the ridges, and to which is owing the unmistakable “bite” of a real English file.

But there are occasions when the hand of the most cunning file-maker is baffled, and when it is necessary to cut files so delicate that the unaided human eye cannot trace their teeth. Art, therefore, has recourse to Nature, and the cabinet-maker, who cannot obtain any file made by human hands which will answer his purpose in the higher branches of his trade, makes great use of the “Dutch Rush,” as he calls it.