seldom runs any risk, because he hardens none, or, if he does, be will make the best fit he can of the warped ones, instead of rejecting them. Again, when a first-rate maker has to fit two such surfaces by grinding, he will use oilstone powder as the medium, another will use emery which cuts quicker, and is consequently cheaper to use, but which embeds itself in the metal, and thus continues to grind when the lathe is in use, thereby causing the mandrel to work loose in its bearings. It is easy to test a good mandrel, so far at least as hardness is concerned, for a file will not touch it; while a mandrel left soft will be readily scratched by this tool. Now, the mandrel of a lathe is the important part: a bad one is scarcely worth mounting; while a good one, straight, true, and hard, and running on its bearings without the slightest shake, is worth a great deal, and especially so because it will remain good for fifty years or more, and is worthy of being fitted with all kinds of costly apparatus. There is another matter worthy of note in respect of mandrels. Do not get a heavy, clumsy-looking affair, nor one which has a long bearing in the collar. It is sure to work heavily, and, besides, it will never be a pleasant object to look at. No one who has had experience in this delightful art would accept a mandrel which, whatever its other qualifications, appears to have been picked up at a country blacksmith's. Perhaps the reader will ask, Will not a common cheap mandrel do very well for a beginner, or to turn up all sorts of rough jobs? No doubt it will; but be sure of this, that when you are no longer a beginner but an adept, and when your jobs are no longer rough (that is, we may presume, unworkmanlike and illmade), you will find yourself buying a new lathe of better quality, and the first will be seen to have been a throw-away of money, and to have absolutely prevented you by its clumsiness and want of truth from becoming a good workman. Get as good tools always as your pocket will allow, and then take care of them, and in the end your workshop will have cost you less than if you had, as so many have done, pursued a contrary course. Upon the supposition that a vast number of our readers are obliged to look a little to the question of cost, we think on the whole the following will be the

safest course to pursue in setting up a lathe:-Send to a good maker or dealer whose name is a guarantee of quality for a set of five-inch heads. You may pay rather (very little) less for a fourinch set, and still less for a three-inch; but though the latter may turn theoretically a piece of work of nearly six inches diameter, you would have but a three-inch pulley on the mandrel, or at most a four-inch one, and, the lathe being all in proportion, this work would be almost too much for it and for you. A three-inch would answer merely for light work, small engine cylinders and flywheels, and such like; but it may chance that you desire to turn now and then much larger pieces, requiring a lathe of larger dimensions, and for the general work of the amateur five inches from the lathe bed to the centre or axis of the mandrel is about the handiest size. Now, unless you wish to cut wheels with cogs, or practice ornamental turning, you will scarcely need a division plate on the pully (we shall describe this on a later page), as it will add £2 10s. or £3 to the cost. The mandrel-head with such division plate will cost £5 to £7, and without it, therefore, you ought to get it for £3 10s., which is about the price at Buck's, in Newgatestreet. Now a good deal may be done with a mandrel-head alone without the second or back centre head. The latter, nevertheless, will have to be added, and it is better to get it at once. It will cost from £2 to £3, if well made. If, however, you cannot afford this, you may get instead of such (which is a cylinder head of the best construction) a cast-iron poppit with a plain centre screw through it for £1 or £1 5s., and it may do very well. You may therefore estimate the cost of a set of lathe heads alone at £5, and we repeat that they cannot be well made at a less price, though sometimes you may pick up one second-hand cheaper; but don't attempt this unless you know well what good work is, or unless you know that the person who previously had them would not have purchased an inferior set. Now, if you have done as directed, you have the nucleus, so to speak, of a good lathe, which will not disappoint you; there is, nevertheless, a good deal to be done before you can set it to work. It must be mounted on a lathe bed, and it must have fly-wheel and treadle. An iron bed is the best, nicely planed,

and you may get such an one, four or five feet long, with iron standards and treadle at once to fit the heads, thereby adding £5 more to the cost, or you may set to work and substitute a wooden bed and frame, and put up with a very rough fly-wheel till you can do better. For, remember, although a well-rigged lathe looks better and runs lighter, yet, these lower fittings are of minor importance, and you may well supply them subsequently of more perfect design, using the more homely substitute for the present It is hardly necessary to give a drawing of a lathe, because the machine is well known to amateurs; but the above advice as to the purchase of a good mandrel-head is sound and practical, and worthy of attention. We have, nevertheless, given an illustration of a very useful kind of lathe with some additional apparatus often used therewith, Fig. 125. Now, supposing that the above price is still beyond the mark, it will be necessary to put up with a lathe of inferior workmanship; and, perhaps, in this case it may be as well to buy one complete, or, if not, the heads of the simplest make may be possibly obtained for £2 10s. to £3, and at this figure a lathe of four or even three inch centre is to be preferred. No doubt good work has been done with such a machine, but a little occasional trouble of screwing up, as the mandrel gets slack, and readjustment of parts, must be put up with. A triangle bar lathe of three or four inch centre, with flat rimmed pulley and plain flywheel underneath to take a strap, is the easiest to fit up, because the stand for the fly-wheel may be independent of the upper part, and any two inch plank will do for a bed, being handy and cheap. Lathes are made of this pattern quite good enough for models in brass and small metal work. The article to be turned has to be attached to the mandrel, so that when this is put into revolution by means of the fly-wheel and treadle underneath, a tool held firmly in contact with the work will cut it into a cylindrical form of more or less accuracy, according to the skill of the turner and the correctness with which the mandrel revolves in its bearings. Now, in order to attach the work thus to the mandrel, a set of chucks is necessary, the forms of which are various to suit work of all shapes and sizes. In the first figure of

this section, Fig. 125, A is the nose of the mandrel, to which the chucks are screwed; B, the pulley, or cone of wood, or metal; C, the tightening screw, or back centre point, against which the mandrel turns, the point of the screw entering a conical hole in the mandrel drilled to fit it. This screw and the mandrel being both, in good lathes, of the best steel hardened, the point wears but little even after many years' use, especially if it is so made as not to touch the bottom of the hole, which is usually the casealways in best work. Whenever, in fact, a revolving axle has to be thus supported by centre screws, the hole in its end should be of the form shown in section in Fig. 126, that is, it is to be drilled

FIC 126

with a smaller drill at the bottom than at the upper part; so that a conical point, such as a centre-bolt, will touch its sides but not abut against the bottom of it: thus, not only will the extreme end of such bolt be preserved in its sharply-pointed state, but the small cavity which thus exists beyond it will retain the oil applied to lubricate it, a most important desideratum in all such cases. Chucks are of wood or metal, and sometimes of both combined. Those of wood are easily made, it being only necessary to take a block of the required size, generally a slice of three inches or so in length, and of diameter suited to the work, cut from the end of a round piece of boxwood, ash, beech, or other available material. In one end a hole is bored rather smaller than the screw of the mandrel, upon which it is often screwed by force, thereby causing the mandrel to cut within the hole a screw similar to its own. This is at best a clumsy method. After the hole is bored, it should be cut inside with a tap of the same pitch or thread as the mandrel screw, upon which it can then be readily mounted. Such taps can be bought at tool shops to suit any work of this kind, whether metal or wood; and a set of three for the former and one for the latter will be found very convenient. There is, however,