If the tool is to be sharpened, the jaws must be ground down, whether
the maker grinds them down originally or whether we do it. Is sharpening
worth while, since the tool only costs a few pence?

Well, it's a question each must decide for himself; but I will just
answer two small difficulties which affect the matter.

If grinding the jaws loosens the pivot, it can be hammered tight again
with a punch. If sharpening wears out the oil-stone (as it undoubtedly
does, and oil-stones are expensive things), a piece of fine polished
Westmoreland slate will do as well, and there is no need to be chary of
it. Even a piece of ground-glass with oil will do.

(3) But now as to the handle. I am first to explain the amusing
"mystery" why the old pattern shown in fig. 1 still sells.

It is because the British working-man _is convinced that the wheels in
this handle are better quality than any others_.

Is he right, or is it only an instance of his love for and faith in the
thing he has got used to?

Or can it be that all workmen do not know of the existence of the other
types of handle? In case this is so, I figure some (fig. 17). Or is it
that the wheel for some reason runs less truly in the malleable iron
than in the cast iron?

[Illustration: FIG. 17.]

Certain it is that the whole trade here prefers these wheels, and I am
bound to say that as far as my experience goes they seem to me to work
better than those in other handles.

But as to all the handles themselves, I must now voice our general
complaint.

(1) They are too light.

For tapping our heavy antique and slab-glasses we wish we had a heavier
tool.

(2) They are too thin in the handle for comfort, at least it seems so to
me.

(3) The three gashes cut out of the head of the tool decrease the
weight, and if these were omitted the tool would gain. Their only use
that I can conceive of is that of a very poor substitute for pliers as a
"groseing" tool, if one has forgotten one's pliers. But (as Serjeant
Buzfuz might say) "who _does_ forget his pliers?"

The whole question of the handle is complicated by the fact that some
cutters rest the tool on the forefinger and some on the middle finger in
tapping, and that a handle the sections of which are calculated for the
one will not do equally well for the other.

But the whole thing resolves itself into this, that if we could get a
tool, the handle of which corresponded in all its curves, dimensions,
and sections