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About thirty years ago, on entering one of our principal
iron ship and engine building works, my chief suggested that
I keep a note-book or its equivalent.
This advice was at once accepted, with advantage to myself, and I hope to others also. The practice has been kept up throughout a very busy life, passed in touch with important industrial establishments in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and with engineers, machinists, and scientists whose acquaintance (and in some instances friendship) I acknowledge as a rare privilege. During a large portion of this time I have contributed editorially and over my own signature and various '' pen-names " to the principal practical journals in English and French, and more recently in German, on both sides of the Atlantic. The favorable reception accorded my published articles and books emboldens me to produce this volume. Its over 500 separate items consist not only of my own and others' widely-scattered items from technical journals, notably Mechanics, Machinery, and the American Machinist (named in order of extent of my indebtedness), but of material either gathered from visits to well-known shops, or based on data contributed by leading machine-tool builders and users. To these latter I have given due credit not only in appropriate places in the body of the book, but in a special list on page 7; and hereby again extend my thanks.
The book was at first proposed under the name ''Machine-Shop
Chat ''; but the large proportion of ''kinks'' and
“wrinkles" therein illustrated or referred to warrants the
change to the present title. As “shop kinks" and "wrinkles"
will always interest me, I hope that my readers will favor
me with short sketches and descriptions concerning their own
and others' practice, especially for unusual work and in
emergencies.
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