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10 MARINE MACHINES FOR SHIP BUILDING. THE DAY OF HAND RIVETING IN SHIP YARDS IS DRAWING TO A CLOSE-- PNEUMATIO RIVETER FOR SHELL WORK. Chicago, Ill., June 15--Chicago enterprise has produced a ship yard tool--another riveting machine--that is the biggest thing of its kind ever gotten up. The new tool was developed at the works of the Chicago Ship Building Co., but patent rights have been acquired by the Chicago Pneumatic Tool Co., and it will be manufactured and sold by that con- cern, which is already well known to ship builders, boiler makers and others having use for air tools. Within a very short time the ship yards of this country--and all other countries following America's lead in labor- saving machinery--will build vessels with practically every rivet in them driven by machinery, and Chicago will be credited with having developed tools for the work. The day of hand riveting in ship yards is drawing to aclose. This seems like a remarkable statement, when we take into con- sideration the thousands of rivets that are required in even a small steel vessel, and the large amount of high-priced labor that has been employed in this line of work, but a visit just now to the Chicago works will con- vince anyone that the facts are not overdrawn. There is now on the stocks at this yard, well along towards the launching stage, a steel tow barge in which many thousands of rivets, entering into decks, bilges, bottom shell, intricate parts of bow and stern, and, in fact, all parts of the structure, have been driven by pneumatic tools. Only two or three thou- sand rivets in the entire ship, put in before a strike was inaugurated on account of the use of these tools, were driven by hand. In a dry dock close to the berth of the new vessel, a repair job on the bow of the steel barge Maida, involving an expenditure of about $12,000, and which is now about finished, has been done entirely with pneumatic tools. The bow of this vessel, which was in collision in the St. Marys river, had to be cut away for a considerable distance back of the stern and all the parts renewed, the job requiring some 10,000 rivets. The stem, driven back a foot or more by the collision, was taken out and straightened; frames RE View. ------ / a were renewed and plates taken off and re-rolled or put in anew. The job as a whole amounted to a rebuild of the vessel's bow, and the work was of a very intricate kind, but pneumatic riveters were used on all of it, and at a cost very much below hand riveting. When the Chicago Pneumatic Tool Co. a short time ago introduced a riveting machine that has been known as the yoke riveter, and which js well adapted to inside work on ships, such as girders, brackets, beam knees, etc., the success of the invention was wonderful. These machines were rapidly adopted in ship yards throughout the United States--at the works of the Cramps, at the Newport News yard, at the Bath Iron Works in all the principal yards of the lakes and in a large number of the Euro. pean yards. They are still being supplied as fast as they can be many- factured on orders that have been crowding the Chicago company to its fullest. capacity. Now the machine that has lately been at work in the Chicago yard, and which has been found equal to all kinds of shell work has been taken over by the tool company and will be manufactured and sold by that company as the Babcock-Gunnell riveter, named for the ship yard managers who have developed it. With riveters of this new type, added to those previously furnished by the pneumatic tool company, the Chicago yard is equipped to drive every rivet in a ship by power, and at a cost only from one-third to one-half as great as the cost of hand work. Illustrations of the new machine as applied to different kinds of work --at the bilges, on side plating, bottom plating, etc.--show quite plainly its construction and operation. A record of 450 7%-inch rivets driven in a day with a single machine has been reached, and it is claimed that this could be exceeded but for a desire to hold the men down to most efficient work. At the regular rate for hand riveting (the labor cost is 3 cents for 34-inch, 8% cents for 7%-inch and 4% cents for l-inch rivets) 450 7-inch rivets would have cost $15.75, whereas the cost with the machine was $5° for the gang and perhaps 50 cents for the power, or at the outside little more than $6 if the investment in the machine itself is also taken into account. One of the best features of the device is its simplicity. Take, for instance, the machine as applied to bottom work, in which the record above referred to was made. It consists of a pneumatic hammer mounted