Cutlery is generally understood to comprise all kinds of knives, razors, lancets, and edge tools, including scythes, saws, scissors, shears, spades, and many others; and the manufacture of forks, files, and some other instruments not possessing cutting edges, is frequently included in the business. It will be impossible to give a detailed description of how all these are made, so only two or three must be selected. In a Cutler’s factory knife blades are forged from steel bars in a number of small rooms, each containing a fireplace or hearth, a trough to hold water, and another trough for coke, which is specially prepared for this kind of work; there are also an _anvil_, _hammers_, and some other tools. [Illustration: Cutler’s Hammers. Anvil.] Two persons are engaged in each room, one being called the maker or forger, the other the striker. The forger buries the end of the steel bar in the fire to the extent required; and to determine when it should be removed requires some judgment, since if it be overheated or “burnt,” it will be quite unfit for cutting purposes. On the other hand, it must be sufficiently heated to acquire the proper degree of softness for the operation of shaping the blade from it. When the end of the bar has been properly heated it is brought to the anvil, where it is fashioned by the striker into the required shape by means of a few blows of the hammer. This roughly shaped blade is then cut off from the end of the bar, which is again heated for forming the next shape, and so on to the end. The cutting part of the blade thus rudely formed is next welded to a piece of iron, which forms the bolster, or _shoulder_, that is, the part that rises round the handle of the knife. To make the shoulder of the size and shape required, and to give it neatness and finish, it is introduced into a _die_ by the side of the anvil, and a _swage_ (_see Blacksmith_) placed upon it, to which a few smart blows in the proper direction are given by the striker. [Illustration: Shoulder-iron.]