Excerpt from The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers Transactions, Vol. 54: 1903-1904 Mr. C. H. Steavenson said that he had had experience with ratchet drilling-machines in Cleveland mines; so when he came to Tyneside he brought a ratchet-drill with him, and had it tried in both stone and coal, but he was sorry to say that it was not successful. The fixing Of the machine was difficult where the post-stone was too hard to drive in a wedge for the purpose Of attaching the machine. In the case of ironstone, the wedge was driven into the rock at the side, and the end Of the machine was fixed against this wedge. A hole was made for the entrance Of the drill, and when the man started to work the ratchet the pressure kept the drill in position. In the post stone Of North of England collieries he found that the wedge could not be driven in far enough to make a sufficiently strong support for the machine, and in the case of blue metal or shale, the stone was too soft. Altogether he found that the ratchet drilling-machine was not so successful as the ordinary stone man's or hewer's hand drilling-machine. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.