VI. The simplest method of all is to leave about an inch at either end of the panel and pass screws through these extra portions into the table. When the work is carved these ends may be sawn off.
Fig. 14. Scratch.
The Scratch, Fig. [14]. This is a very convenient and ingenious tool. “It is used,” says J. S. Gibson (“The Wood-Carver,” Edinburgh, 1889), “for running small mouldings and hollows. Where the lines are long and straight it makes finer work than is possible by means of gouges. The cutters are made from pieces of steel barely 1-16th of an inch thick. Broken pieces of saws are generally used for cutters. They must be tightly fixed in the stock. It is worked backwards and forwards gently. When the cutters are filed to the required shape, they have to be finished with a slip stone to take out the file marks. They are sharpened straight across the edges.”
Fig. 15. Router.
The Router, Fig. [15]. This is a small copy of the joiner’s plane of the same name. It consists of a block of wood with a perfectly flat sole; a hole through it at an angle carries the cutter and the wedge by which it is fixed. It is employed for flattening the groundwork after that has been partially excavated with the chisels. The sole of the router rests upon any margins left of the original surface, and being worked about over the ground, the fixed projection of the cutter rapidly reduces the latter to one true level. These routers are made from about nine inches long in the sole to about three inches, the smallest, which little tools have cutters about 1-8th of an inch wide.