126 
THE YOUNG SCIENTIST. 
bit and the hammer — may be found in the 
tool-chest of most ingenious boys. In 
making the purchases, however, beware of 
what are called "boy's" tools. They are 
cheap and pretty, but the material and tem- 
per are not what is required. Go, there- 
fore, to some respectable hardware shop, 
and purchase such tools as are sold to me- 
chanics — with good large handles, and finely 
though not fancifully finished — and you 
will have a set of really much more service- 
able tools than any assortment that is 
Fig. 1. 
usually put up for amateurs. A few of the 
tools — including the punches and the V or 
parting tools — can be had only from houses 
that deal in wood- carver's tools, but they 
may be ordered through any hardware mer- 
chant. 
Any good stout table will answer for a 
work bench; but if you can procure a bench 
as made in the engraving (Fig. 1) it will 
greatly facilitate your operations. It should 
Fig. 2. 
be at least forty inches long by twenty-four 
wide, with a bench-vice at one end, and a 
tray at the further side to hold the tools. 
The thickness of the bench should be at 
least two inches, and it should be as fiim 
and as solid as it can be made. It should 
be high enough for you to stand up to your 
work; and have holes bored through at con- 
venient distances, in three rows, to insert 
the hold-fast, of which a sketch is given 
(Fig. 2). The hold-fast is put into one of 
the holes, the work to be held is put under 
the pad, and the screw is turned until the 
work is firmly fixed. This hold-fast is used 
when the wood to be carved is too thin for 
the carver's screw to be inserted into it, and 
when it is not desirable to glue it down on 
another board. In using this hold-fast, we 
always put a piece of some soft wood be- 
tween the pad and the wood that we are 
carving, so as to prevent the teeth of the 
pad from marking it. It is not difficult to 
see that a deep scratch might interfere 
sadly with the delicate part of some leaf. 
Instead of the hold-fast, the carver's screw, 
which is better, may be used. It all lies 
below the table, and there is nothing in the 
Fig. 3. 
way of the carver. This screw, with its 
nut or clamp, is shown in Fig. 3. To use 
it, remove the clamp, grasp the screw in the 
bench vice between two scraps of wood, so 
as to save the jaws of the vice; screw th© 
upper or sharp point into the block to be 
carved; pass the screw down through the 
bench, and then, by means of the clamp or 
nut, make it fast. Where the block is very 
thin, it should be glued to a thick block, a 
thickness of paper being glued between the 
two to facilitate their separation, as will be 
hereafter described. 
The bench that we use is a compound of 
a carver's and joiner's bench, and we can 
strongly recommend it to all amateurs who 
