The Panorama of Science and Art

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Desrription of the foot lathe. Turning. Turning is an art universally admired; the simplicity of the operation, the facility with which precision in performing it is attained, the agreeable exercise it affords to the mind, the beauty and utility of its products, have drawn, for the amusement of a leisure hour, as well as for objects of real importance, men /' ail ranks into the number of its practisers. It is an art of great antiquity, but when or by whom it was first adopted, Mc must leave the antiquarian to decide. In this place it claims notice, on account of its contributing so essentially to the perfection of several other arts. The machine in which turning is performed, is called a Lathe. Lathes differ very considerably in their general form, their size, and the materials of which they are made. They are commonly classed according to the manner in which they receive their motion. Hence we have the Wheel Lathe, the Foot Lathe, the Hand Lathe or Turning Bench, and the Pole Lnl/ie. For very large work, there are other lathes used, which are wrought by horses, water wheels, or steam engines. We shall in the first instance, describe the foot lathe, which may be converted into a wheel lathe, as often as occasion demands; as, for this end, it is only necessary to fix it in such ? situation as to admit of the requisite addition of a large wheel, turned by one or more men. Fig. I. pi. I. is the perspective view of a foot lathe made entirely of iron, excepting the wheel. The shears or cheeks, which constitute the bed of the lathe, and one of which, BB, is seen in front, are fastened, at one end, by two bolts, ? d, to the upright ?; and at the other end by the bolts a, to the upright Q. These bolts pass entirely through the shears and the uprights, and are each of t...