Thimble

a device for pushing through the needle without injury to the hand. The word is a perversion of thumb-bell. The German name is finger-hat. The Swedish name is finger-fort. The thimble was used first by the sailmaker. The English sailmaker still wears his thimble on his thumb, and calls it a thummel. The tailor wears his thimble usually on the end of the middle finger of the right hand. In the making, the metal--brass, steel, or silver--is rolled into thin sheets and cut into strips two inches wide. From these strips, round blanks the size of a silver quarter or half dollar, according to the size of the desired thimble, are cut. The blanks are fed to a machine that turns up the narrow rim found at the edge of the thimble. The blank, still flat, is next fed into a mill. A stamp, that is to say, a round-ended plunger, presses the flat metal into a hole and the finger-hat is shaped. Another machine impresses the dents designed to hold the head of the needle. Polishing and engraving or stamping in patterns are later processes. Silver requires to be hardened by the admixture of other metal. Gold thimbles are steel at heart, gilded with gold alloy. Thimbles are made sometimes of hardened India rubber or celluloid. The date of the lady's thimble is unknown. It was used certainly in the time of the English Stuarts.