vious to peeling). Brown stuff is sorted, before it reaches the workman,
into lengths varying from 3 1/2 ft. to 8 or 10 ft., the smallest being
known in London and the home counties as "luke," the largest as "great,"
and the intermediate sizes as "long small," "threepenny" and "middleboro."
White and buff rods are more carefully sorted, the smallest, about 2 ft. or
less, being known as "small tack," and rising sizes as "tack," "short
small," "small," "long small," "threepenny," "middleboro" and "great." Rods
of two to three years' growth, known as "sticks," are used to form the
rigid framework of the bottoms and lids of square work. In every case,
except the last, the stuff is soaked in tanks to render it pliable before
use--brown from three to seven days, white and buff from half-an-hour to
half a day. The rods are used whole for ordinary work, but for baskets of
slight and finer texture each is divided into "skains" of different degrees
of size. "Skains" are osiers cleft into three or four parts, by means of an
implement called a "cleaver," which is a wedge-shaped tool of boxwood
inserted at the point or top end of the rod and run down through its entire
length. They are next drawn through an implement resembling the common
spokeshave, keeping the grain of the split next the iron or stock of the
shave, while the pith is presented to the steel edge of the instrument, and
in order to bring the split into a shape still more regular, it is passed
through another implement called an upright, consisting of a flat piece of
steel, each end of which is fashioned into a cutting edge, like that of an
ordinary chisel and adjusted to the required width by means of a
thumb-screw.

The tools required by a basket-maker are few and simple. They consist,
besides the foregoing, of a shop-knife for cutting out material; a picking
knife for cutting off the protruding butts and tops of the rods after the
work is completed; two or three bodkins of varying sizes; a flat piece of
iron somewhat narrowly triangular in shape for driving the work closely
together; a stout pair of shears and a "dog" or "commander" for
straightening sticks. The employer supplies a screw block or vice for
gripping the bottom and cover sticks of square work, and a lapboard on
which the workman fixes the upsetted bottom while siding up the basket.
This is the full kit. A common round or oval basket may, however, be made
with no other tools than a shop-knife and a bodkin