CHAPTER I. Introduction (Part 2)

When employers indenture apprentices they become legally responsible that, by some means, their apprentices shall be properly taught. Where technical schools exist this teaching can be easily secured ; but lads require also some encourage- ment and friendly advice to induce them to take full advantage of the opportunity, and the masters should pay all their apprentices' school fees. THE EDUCATION OF' PLUMBERS. 11 Although technical teaching of plumbing cannot super- sede that of the workshop, plumbers' apprentices must learn much more than can be acquired at the bench and on the job before they can hope to become first-class journeymen. Nowadays, masters and foremen are so pressed and hurried they have not time to teach their apprentices, Mid journey- men are not paid to teach possible competitors. Technical schools for plumbers should be modelled on lines to meet the requirements of both employers and employed; therefore the education should consist of some- thing less than the higher training of abstract science which demands time, leisure, and costly appliances, and something more than the rule-of -thumb practice of the workshop bench. The teachers should be both first-class practical plumbers and also scientific theoretical plumbers. There are many plumbers who can do anything with lead, and yet who could not give clear explanations to others of reasons of what they do. Successful teachers must possess a knowledge of the science of the craft, and also a faculty for communi- cating clear instructions and explanations. The technical plumbing teachers are required to turn out their pupils with a moderate but suitable possession of scientific attainments, combined with a practical power of applying that knowledge by manual dexterity and inventive capacity, to lighten and improve their daily labours. Theory and practice must go hand in hand. Working men often reject a new suggestion on the ground that it is only theory. No theory is sound unless it can be applied in practice, and no practice exists that cannot be formulated in theory ; both must be harmoniously combined in technical education. The cost of establishing technical schools, with proper appliances and fully qualified teachers, prevents their general promotion in provincial towns; it will be better to make small beginnings, rather than not to move at all 12 DOMESTIC SANITARY DRAINAGE AND PLUMBING. towards improvement. A small technical plumbing school may be started at a first cost of £50 for benches, tools, and materials, and £50 a year for maintenance expenses, wherever a qualified plumber can be found to teach at a moderate salary, in addition to the students' fees and the result fees. Many scientific teachers would be willing to give occasional free lectures. For plumbing technical workshops, wooden benches will be required, on which to dress the lead, to work up bends, to solder pipe-joints, etc. These benches may be any length, and from 2 feet 6 inches to 3 feet wide, formed of 3-inch hard timber, planed smooth and set level, with sharp rect- angular comers and edges. The benches should rest firmly on strong, steady trestles, and so that either side of benches may be turned up alternately. A melting-pot, holding from one to two hundredwe^ht of lead, set in brickwork over a furnace, will be useful for melting lead for casting, or making solder. The flues should be easily cleaned, and the furnace and ashpit doors should be air-tight and strong. Plumbers* heating stoves, with proper flues, will be necessary. Each student should, if possible, have a stove to himself alone, when engaged in soldering, or in heating lead for bending or bossing ; consequently the number of stoves required will be large, in proportion to the number of students. Half of the workers can be employed on cold work, while the other half are using the stoves and solder- ing; but if each student can be given his own particular stove, bench, lock-up press, and set of tools, and made personally responsible for them, the comfort and advantage all round will be great, but, unfortunately, so will be the first cost. A sand-box 4 ft. 6 in. or 5 feet x 1 f t. 6 in. x 1 ft. 6 in., with iron-founders' moulding sand and a wood cover, will also be required. THE EDUCATION OF PLUMBERS. 13 One or more good brass-finishers' lathes complete, with tools, will be found most practically useful, where such a luxury can be obtained. Plumbers frequently are glad to know how to use a lathe, and find the knowledge useful in getting them over many a difficulty. Fio. 1.— Plumber's Heating-stove. A set or two of stocks and dies, and screwing machines for screwing and tapping iron and brass. A fixed bench, with a smith's vice or two, a portable smith's hearth and bellows, a light anvil and smith's ham- mers for dressing and sharpening tools, and a grindstone will be very .useful. Lead-burning apparatus may be added also, and a hydraulic testing machine. Water tanks giving various heads of pressure, with pipes of various diameters 14 DOMESTIC SANITARY DRAINAGE AND PLUMBING. leading from each to each other, and to discharge over troughs with wastes on ground-level, with full round-way valves on each pipe and to each end, for experimenting on the flow of water and other effects — these are luxuries of technical teaching that may always be desired, but are beyond the attainment of average schools. If, however, the teacher will design the system of appli- ances to suit the number and capacity of his pupils, he can accomplish wonderful results by utilising the students' skill, and can gradually fit up a complete set of appliances for experimental teaching at the mere cost of the materials, while he is at the same time giving the best class of practice — real practice in making tools and fitting plumbing work — ^vastly increasing the personal interest and delight of his pupils in their work, which is the great secret of a teacher's success. It will be desirable, also, to get together for such a school specimens of all descriptions of sanitary appliances— water- closets, valves, meters, cowls. Makers and patentees are often glad to present their special appliances to local technical schools, in order to promote the acquaintance of the students with the working of the various parts, so that they may be skilled to fix or repair them in actual practice abroad or at home. The teacher should be cautious not to advertise any particular appliance, nor to recommend any particular maker by name, but to deal with principles, and if special apparatus be used at all, to use them so as to exemplify principles. The teacher must, however, be free, and it will be his first duty to point out defects or advantages in appliances, to give clear reasons to his pupils for doing so, and always so as to avoid personality. Models, experimental apparatus, and diagrams for illustra- tion should be all prepared and made by the teacher and THE EDUCATION OF PLUMBERS. 15 the pupils working together; the necessary apparatus will thus cost much less than if purchased, and will give the pupils a greater insight into the work than a dozen lectures on the subject. A verbal description of an apparatus or a process may seem clear or otherwise, but when the pupils help to make the apparatus and to fit its parts together, or carry out a process along with the teacher, they will not be likely to forget what they have thus practically learned. The fingers and hands sometimes afford a surer path to the brain than the eye or the ear. " If any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass : for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso is a doer of the work, that man shall be blessed in his deed." Teachers should also endeavour to obtain offers of special prizes to encourage their pupils to produce the best work and the best answering. Prizes will often be freely given by those interested in the success of the enterprise, but in all cases, with the exception of apprentices, the pupils should pay a fee proportioned in each place according to circum- stances. Technical education, as well as bread and butter, is more appreciated when it costs something to get. If the teacher can make arrangements to take his pupils once a month to visit works connected with the trade, such as lead works, rolling mills, pipe-drawing mills, iron works, or if permission could be obtained for them to visit large public buildings where plumbing works were in hand, which might be shown in progress and explained by the teacher, a great interest would be given to technical teaching in the students' minds. Technical education in special night schools cannot alone turn men out as plumbers worthy of the name of craftsmen ; along with it an apprenticeship in the workshop for seven 16 DOMESTIC SANITARY DRAINAGE AND PLUMBING. years is needful, and both should run together like a pair of well-matched driving wheels of a locomotive on two different rails, straight ahead to the goal — Success. Fitting rules to govern apprenticeship will doubtless be recommended by the Plumbers' Company, and, we hope, loyally adopted by the trade as of old time. Suitable wages should be su^ested, r^ulated in accordance with the value of the apprentice to his master, a tangible payment, advancing year by year. Indentures should contain a clause compelling attendance at a technical school. In this age of keen, razor-edged competition at home and abroad the public benefit conferred by technical schools is beginning to be appreciated, so that many worthy and philanthropic people have devoted a portion of their wealth to the promotion and extension of the movement. It is not too much to say that money could not be spent more nobly or to better purpose. The future prosperity of Great Britain and Ireland now depends more upon the progress and successful extension of technical schools, and upon the enthusiasm and perseverance of the rising generation in taking full advantage of them, than perhaps any one of us yet fully comprehends. One of the most valuable endowments for a plumber is the power of drawing, and this faculty should be educed prominently in all technical classes. Drawing-boards, black- boards, tee-squares, rules, triangles, and compasses, should be found at work in every school. Drawing classes should not be taken on the nights when hammering and practical plumbing is in full swing ; quiet- ness is essential for delineation, and a plumbing shop, even a young one, is not such a place of quietness and peace as is suited to the contemplative mind of a young artist in chalk. On the special drawing nights the teacher may with THE EDUCATION OF PLUMBERS. 17 advantage arrange a large blackboard in view of his class, and on it rapidly sketch with chalk, drawn purposely out of all proportion, an irregular form of any kind — a trap, a sanitary appliance — carefully giving the dimensions of every part necessary, in order to enable the students to reduce the roughly sketched figure accurately to a given scale, either with chalk on their blackboard, or on drawing- paper; or he may set as a copy any form of lead-work, and require the students to prepare drawii^s of the surface of sheet lead necessary to be cut out in order to construct a similar work in lead, the students show- ing the methods by which they arrive at the results; or actual models of appliances may be placed before the students, and, either with or without measurements taken by rule from the model, the students may be required to draw from the round, diagrams, in plan, elevation, and perspective, and to delineate various sections of the model It can hardly be expected that all working plumbers who are capable of being teachers of plumbing shall also be advanced teachers of drawing, but the better they under- stand drawing the better will they teach plumbing. In many schools arrangements could be made for a drawing- master to give an hour's lesson once or twice a week in conjunction with the teacher of plumbing. Practical geometry and drawing should go hand in hand, not merely by having diagrams hung up and letting the students copy them, not by setting the students to work at problems which they are likely to forget before they leave the room, but by drawing on the blackboard before their eyes, or by setting the students themselves to draw, the geometric figures which they may hereafter need to construct in real work. Neatness and care in drawing geometrical figures. should be impressed upon the students; the object c 18 DOMESTIC SANITARY DRAINAGE AND PLUMBING. of such practice is to secure accuracy, which can only be attained by precision in practice. Take one easy problem, viz. to bisect a straight line. Here we have a diagram, and the directions: "From A and B, with any radius greater than the half of A B, describe arcs cutting each other in C D. From C draw a right line to D, and it will bisect the line A B." Now, although that is the simplest problem in practical geometry, we can perhaps understand how much better and clearer is the practical method of teaching. The teacher takes a blackboard ; he draws the straight line which he wants bisected, or divided equally in two ; he takes the chalk, and, compass in hand, he shows the meaning of " any radius greater than half of A B"; he describes the arcs, showing them cuttmg each other in C D, and he draws the bisecting right line. He rubs them out, and invites his pupils forward to repeat the process, and the lesson is taught practically, so that it can never be forgotten. Practice in taking tracings off architects' plans should be afforded to the pupils, as this has often to be done in daily work. Drawing to scale should be taught, and the students enabled to read off architects' plans of buildings and fittings. Good old disused plans as specimens may be obtained from local architects, who are generally willing to help forward such classes. These plans should be explained over and over again, if necessary, till each student understands every detaiL Portions of the plans should be enlarged from, Fio. 2 —To bisect a straight line. THE EDUCATION OF PLUMBERS. 19 say, I inch scale to 1 inch scale per foot, as working drawings of details. The object of the teachers should be to enable each student to read and understand any architect's plans they may meet in their daily work, to be able to measure off the lengths of piping, sizes of lead for roof gutters, fiats, flashings, cisterns, troughs, etc., and to lay out the plumbing work necessary and measure up the quantities from the plans. There are very few architects who would not prefer to deal with a master or journeyman able to understand his plans, rather than with those who would need continual information and instruction. A well-educated plumber should be able to understand a plan and specification, to know the proper way to carry out the work, and to give sound reasons why he would do the work one way in preference to any other. That is the man who will make his own way and succeed in his business. If a journeyman plumber can do good sound work quickly we do not say he should necessarily have any theoretical knowledge, but we say that without such knowledge he must ever remain a plumbing machine, doing only just what he may be told to do by those above him ; he never can progress. It is not possible, nor would it be desirable, to limit or determine the exact amoimt of mechanical practice or handiwork which technical teachers should allow to their pupils in the schools ; each teacher is bound to give careful consideration to this matter, so as not to use valuable material lavishly, and yet to see that his pupils are fairly instructed in the practical principles of joint-making, bend- ing, bossing, lead-laying, soldering, etc. This hand-practice should be so arranged and so limited by the teacher in accordance with the means at his disposal as not to become in any sense a substitute, in the student's 20 DOMESTIC SANITARY DRAINAGE AND PLUMBING. mind, for the actual daily work at the bench and on the job, but rather to illustrate and explain the reasons why certain work is done so and so in actual practice — why one way of doing it is wrong and another way is right. Lead-burning, zinc and copper work, gas-fitting, and iron pipework should not be neglected, and the practical principles of heating by hot water, both by high and low pressure systems, should be explained. The students should be trained to apportion the metals and make the various solders used in the trade, to find what impurities will injure solders, and how they may be purified. If possible, without going too deeply into the chemical question, various kinds of waters should be examined and criticised ; ready and simple means of roughly detecting impurities in water and air should be shown by easy experiment; the method of softening hard waters should be tried. Hydraulics and hydrostatics, even in the most elementary fashion, may well be considered ; the more thorough and complete such teaching, the better will be the position of the pupils in after years. Many a practical plumber needs to be taught that he cannot decrease water- pressure on his pipes by reducing the size of his cistern, unless he also reduces the level of the water. The standard for a sanitary plumber will be much higher than it