CARE OF ICE TOOLS.--Provision for preserving the cutting qualities of tools is of great importance. An inferior tool, or one out of repair, will detract from the efficiency of the labor employed to use it. The amount depends on the particular kind of work under consideration, and the comparative condition of the tool with which it is done. Attention to this matter is often neglected, from a failure to properly estimate its importance, or from a mistaken idea of the ease with which an incompetent or ignorant man can spoil the best implement which can be made. Ice saws, of the best type, will, when new, cut rapidly and true; one or two dressings, done in the wrong way, will detract from their cutting efficiency one-fourth or more, and it will be impossible to cut true with them. [Illustration: FIG. 30. TOOTHED TRIMMER BARS, IRON HANDLE.] [Illustration: FIG. 31. TOOTHED TRIMMER BARS, _D_ HANDLE.] [Illustration: FIG. 32. JACK GRAPPLE.] [Illustration: FIG. 33. HANDLE GRAPPLE.] [Illustration: FIG. 34. CHANNEL GRAPPLE.] One man should be trained to correctly dress the saws, and then be held responsible for their work. When the teeth are worn short, or the saws are sprung, send them to the ice tool manufacturer, to have the teeth gummed out to their correct size and shape, and the blades straightened and stiffened. Ice plows are frequently rendered useless by improper dressing or careless handling. The range and proportion of the teeth, as they are when new, must be kept up, and the cutting points sharp and keen. The heels and bottoms must be dressed down regularly with the points,--no more, no less. Only a man of known ability should be allowed, under any pretext, to dress the ice plows. Any delay in plowing may involve the loss of part of the crop, and any detention of the work of those detaching the cakes from the field, from a lack of plowed surface to work upon, may prove to be the cause of an hour or more time lost or frittered away by nine-tenths of the entire force employed, both on the field and in the house. Nine-tenths of the entire wages, for an hour or more, is thus lost to the owner, and an incompetent workman is the apparent cause. The lack of management and system is, more likely, the source of this waste.