Figs. 4 and 5 are ring-stands for the toilette-table—very useful presents these to mothers, sisters, and, last but not least, lady cousins, and other young ladies too, perhaps, who are not cousins. These can be made in a variety of ways, and give great scope for the exercise of your powers of design. The first is a simple pedestal on a stand, turned quite smooth in an elegant and simple curve. The stand is also made without elaborate mouldings, giving altogether a chaste and elegant appearance to the design. The extremity is tipped with ivory, and an ivory ring surrounds the bottom of the pedestal. If this is made in plain deal, and thoroughly well finished and varnished, it will look very well. The nicest soft English wood, however, for this is certainly yew, some of which is beautifully fine in grain; and as it will take an excellent polish, it always looks well; moreover, it can be turned entirely with gouge and chisel.
This ring-stand will be made in two parts; the pedestal being separately turned at one end, a tenon will have to be made as in the case of the candlestick, and just above it the wood is to be turned off a little as if you were going to make a larger tenon. Over this a ring of ivory may be slipped and glued on, and the two can then be turned together. A carpenter’s chisel will do for the ivory, which will be scraped into form by it. It may be polished with a little chalk on a moist rag or flannel. You can buy odds and ends of ivory from the turners in rings and solid pieces, which will come in for all sorts of decorations, and you should save all old handles of knives, tooth-brushes, and such like, for a similar purpose. Both ivory and bone smell very disagreeably when in process of being turned. To tip such articles with ivory, you can drill a small hole in the top of the pedestal with great care, and fit the ivory after being turned into it; or you can, if the work is larger, bore the ivory and slip it on the wood;—much depends upon the size and nature of the work.
The second ring-stand is of rather more elaborate construction. The baskets are made of little turned pedestals fitted into a round piece of wood to form the bottom, and into a ring which makes the rim. Baskets of this form (even apart from the ring-stand) are very neat and useful.
It is very easy to turn rings of any size. Mount a piece of board in the lathe on the taper screw chuck—it need not even be cut to a round form; then determine the size of the proposed ring, and, holding a parting-tool upon the rest turned round to face the work, mark two circles, and deepen the cuts, until the ring falls off. Take care that the outer one is cut through first. The ring thus cut may be afterwards placed upon a cylinder turned to fit it, and finished upon the outside, and then placed inside a chuck of wood bored out to suit the work, and neatly rounded off upon the interior surface. Of course, if you have to make rings of bone or ivory which are already hollow, you can at once run a mandrel or spindle of wood or metal through them and subject them to the various operations required.
Mandrels, or tapered cylinders of brass or iron, fitted as chucks to the mandrel of the lathe, are sold on purpose for this work, but a wooden rod answers just as well, and costs nothing. Turn such a rod a little tapering, and take care not to drive the work too far upon it, because, although at first you can safely drive it on very tightly, if it is of ivory or bone, you will frequently find your ring suddenly split and open when its thickness has been reduced to the required standard. If a number of equal rings are required, it is the best plan to turn a hollow cylinder and then saw off the rings as you are directed to saw off the draughtsmen. They will, of course, have to be finished in a chuck.
If you look round any fancy warehouse in which Swiss carvings are sold, you will see how beautifully soft white pine can be worked in the lathe by keen tools and clever hands. In Tunbridge, too, many thousands of soft-wood articles are manufactured yearly, some plain and merely varnished, and some curiously inlaid with coloured woods, so that you need not despise such materials as willow and sycamore and the various pine woods, which are all capable of being made into pretty articles of one kind or another. The varnish, however, for these is such as to coat them with a glassy layer which does not sink into the wood. Common rosin dissolved in turpentine or in linseed oil, kept on the hob so as to get warm, answers well for these deal articles, and is extensively used where the slight tinge of yellow is not considered important. There are many other much paler varnishes for works of greater value, or where the white wood is to be carefully preserved. Any of these can be had at oil and colour shops.
Fig. 50.