mended, the lathe will drill the holes and turn the rivets. If the handle of the saucepan is loose, it will do the same. If scissors or knives want grinding, there is the lathe; if the castors on the sofa break down, there is the lathe; if skates need repairs, either of grinding or of any other kind, there is the lathe. In short, it ought to be as much a part of domestic economy as the sewing machine, for it takes the odd stitches in the mechanical department that save money.

Let not the inexperienced reader, who hears of a lathe for the first time, be frightened at this array of terms, or diverted from the use of it by the recital. In its simple form, as shown in Fig. 1, it is readily understood, and, after a little practice, easily managed by any one, and, after the first few weeks, the amateur will realize the fruits of his application.

At first, it had not even a continuous rotary motion, but the spindle was driven by a belt worked by a spring pole or its equivalent. The belt was rolled round the spindle, and the pole allowed to spring up; the spindle then revolved the length of the belt, or rope, for belts were not thought of, and the operation was repeated, the work being done only when the force of the spring pole revolved the spindle and the job the right way.

Foot lathes had, prior to the introduction of the engine lathe, been used on very heavy work. It is but a few years, comparatively speaking—not twenty—since cast-iron shafts, six, eight, and ten inches in diameter, were turned in such lathes. For all that we know to the contrary, many jobs, far exceeding this in size, have been thus executed.

In some shops, there are still standing heavy oaken shears, made of timber twenty inches deep, and four or six inches wide, faced with boiler iron, and in the racks above there are long-shanked tools, with which the men of old were wont to do the work.

These lathes are never used now, except for drilling holes, or for apprentices to practice on, but they serve to show what machinists had to do in olden times, when there were no vise benches to sit on and watch the chips curling off the tool, as men do now.

Hand lathes are not in great favor in large machine shops. They are not used, or should not be, for any purpose except drilling, and then they are no longer hand lathes, but horizontal drilling machines. There is no simple work to be done on a hand lathe that could not be performed to better advantage and more cheaply on a machine constructed for the purpose.

Some large machine shops keep a hand lathe going continually, cutting off stud bolts, facing and rounding up nuts, and similar work. This does not seem profitable. A machine to do this work would do more, of a better quality, than hand labor could.

The foot lathe—the terms hand and foot lathe are synonymous—is generally used, at the present time, by small machinists, manufacturers of gas fixtures, amateurs, etc.; men who do not work a lathe constantly, but are called off to braze or solder, or, perhaps, to fit some detail with a file. For these uses the foot lathe is one of the