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.
Fig. 2.
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 cheapest of tools; for the same person that does the work furnishes the power also, so that a man working on a foot, or hand lathe, as it is often called, ought to have first-class wages. Moreover, a first-rate foot lathe turner is always a good mechanic, for it takes no small degree of dexterity to perform the several jobs with ease, and dispatch, and certainty. To always get hold of the right tool, to use the same properly, so that it will last a reasonable time without being ground or tempered, to rough-turn hollow places with a square edge, to chase a true thread to the right size every time, without making a drunken one, or a slanting one, to make a true thread inside of an oil cup or a box—all these several tasks require good judgment, dexterity, and a steady hand. Of course, where a slide-rest is used, the case is different. We allude, specially, to a cutting tool managed by the hand.
To do all these things, however, it is necessary to have tools, and good ones, or none. It is an old saying, that a bad workman quarrels with his tools, but a good workman has a right to quarrel with bad tools, if he is furnished with them, through chance or design. It is impossible to execute good work with a dull tool, one badly shaped, or unsuited to the purpose, and, therefore, it is important to set out right at the beginning.
There is no tool more efficient in the hands of a good workman, than the diamond point, [Fig. 2], here shown. For roughing off a piece of metal, for squaring up the end, for facing a piece held in the chuck, for running out a curve, or rounding up a globe, it is equally well adapted. It may be truly called the turner’s friend.