Ornamental Turning

Mr. Evans is well known as a manufacturer of apparatus for the practice of ornamental turning, and even if the reader were ignorant of this fact, he would suspect it from the style of the writer, which, at times, is a little suggestive of a "circular," both by reason of an occasional superfluity of adjectives, and by the citation of the opinions of distinguished amateur turners in a tone of respect. But apart from this and occasional grammatical slips, the style of the work is well suited to the subject, giving the impression that the author is perfectly able to carry out the handicraft operations which he describes, and has not compiled his work from observation of others. The perusal of this work has brought home to us the fact that while there are an infinite number of ways in which ornamentation can be carried out in the lathe, yet the primary forms are quite limited. This is shown by the close resemblance of the specimens illustrated to those shown in the last volume of Mr. Holtzapffel's book* on the same subject which appeared in 1884. We may safely assume that Mr. Evans, following Mr. Holtzapffel so soon, and writing on the same subject, would endeavour to give his work all the air of originality possible, and the fact that his examples, while never identical with those of his predecessor, are in many instances exceedingly like them, proves that he is working in a field which has been reaped very closely. The author, in treating his subject, assumes that the reader has a fair amount of mechanical knowledge, and leads him through the entire range of ornamental turning, describing the apparatus and processes in clear and precise language. He commences with a very short description of the lathe, and then takes up the subject of chucks and other means of holding work. The dividing plate is next explained, particular stress being laid on the fact that in the author's lathes the pointer can be moved from one set of holes to another without upsetting the adjustment. To render this possible, the first or No. 1 holes of the various rings, are not drilled on a radial line of the plate, but on an arc of a circle struck from the centre around which the pointer moves. The pointer can therefore be moved from one series to another without any motion of the lathe mandrel, each series having the same zero or starting position. The advantage of the arrangement is that if the wrong series has been selected and the cutting commenced, the error can be rectified without trouble. –Engineering, Vol. 45