DeLong on Escapement

Dear Mc
Well this is Christmas Eve. The Factory closes today & does not open again until Jan 3rd. However I have arranged so that I can go along with my work just the same, will have the assistance of the Foreman in the Esc-Room & another besides in fact - I expect to accomplish more next week than I would if the Factory was running. You see we have the Dies all made & the punching out, we now have to get machines set to do the operations and as the machines will be idle next week - we can set them up for our work, we will have a lot of holders to make to hold our fork during the operations & they are a lot of work, then we have to make special Laps for grinding the sides of entire fork. I have a man working on them now. I expect it will take him about a week longer to finish them & the necessary holders. It will not by very long now before we have some watches running. I suppose it seems to you that I have been a long time

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but believe me, it is a lot of work. For every little operation, there has to be a tool made. & you know how fast the most of Toolmakers are, I have made a good many myself, & I also made over 1/2 of the punches & Dies. I made all the ones that - punches the pallet holes as they had no way in locating them accurate, I will send you a few parts next week showing you the different operations, it will be interesting to you, we have never received the pallet -Jewels yet. & I am afraid they are going to delay the game, we had the promise of them this weak, but nothing doing. Wish you could hurry up Sussfield Lerosch a little? Got a letter from Knapp day or so ago, he says Wever wants to know when I will be back to New York, as he has some matters to see me about. Now I cannot tell quite yet when I will be back, but it will be as soon as possible & I can assure you I will be glad, I have been working hard, getting up at 6 am & take my lunch with me, I not get out of the factory from 7 am until about 6 pm have worked a few nights, the machine shop runs

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3 nights out of the week. But I want to impress upon you, Knapp and Wever that the future of this esc depends largely on the success of this first trial in manufacturing it, & I want to thrash out everything that looks like an obsticle while I am here, - because if I leave it to them, they will say, oh, it will cost more to do this or that & we had better not bother with it. All the foremen in different departments, dislike to take any change, as it upsets their regular work & they don't any more pay for doing it. So don't hurry me as I must do this Job right before I leave. Everything is going fine so far.
One man can punch out 20,000 fork blanks per day
" " " Swedge 2,000 " " " "
" " " Shave 2,000 " " " "
" " " Perforate 1,000 " " " "
The above operations are all done with punches & leaves the fork, ready to mill the notch in end & swedge down the dart, this man gets about 3.50 per day so you see up to this point they only cost a trifle of 2/3 cents each. Of course there will be other much more costly operations in the finishing. Well good night & a merry Christmas to your family.

DL