Tools of almost every description may be purchased at reasonable prices, but the practice of making one’s own tools cannot be too strongly recommended.  It affords a way out of many an emergency, and where time is not too valuable, a saving will be realized.  A few bars of fine tool steel, a hammer, and a small anvil, are all that are required, aside from fire and water.  The steel should be heated to a low red, and shaped with as little hammering as possible; it may then be allowed to cool slowly, when it may be filed or ground to give it the required form.  It may now be hardened by heating it to a cherry red and plunging it straight down into clean cool (not too cold) water.  It should then be polished on two of its sides, when the temper may be drawn in the flame of an alcohol lamp or Bunsen gas burner; or, if these are not convenient, a heated bar of iron may be used instead, the tool being placed in contact with it until the required color appears.  This for tools to be used in turning steel, iron, and brass may be a straw color.  For turning wood it may be softer.  The main point to be observed in tempering a tool is to have it as hard as possible without danger of its being broken while in use.  By a little experiment the amateur will be able to suit the temper of his tools to the work in hand.

In the engraving accompanying the present article a number of hand turning tools are shown, also a few tools for the slide rest.  These tools are familiar to machinists and may be well known to many amateurs; but we give them for the benefit of those who are unacquainted with them and for the sake of completeness in this series of articles.

[Illustration:  Turning tools.]

Fig. 1 is the ordinary diamond tool, made from a square bar of steel ground diagonally so as to give it two similar cutting edges.  This tool is perhaps more generally useful than any of the others.  The manner of using it is shown in Fig. 23; it is placed on the tool rest and dexterously moved on the rest as a pivot, causing the point to travel in a circular path along the metal in the lathe.  Of course only a small distance is traveled over before the tool is moved along on the rest.  After a little experience it will be found that by exercising care a good job in plain turning may be done with the tool.

Fig. 2 shows a sharp V shaped tool which will be found useful for many purposes.  Fig. 3 is a V shaped tool for finishing screw threads.  Figs. 4 and 5 are round-nosed tools for concave surfaces; Fig. 6, a square tool for turning convex and plane surfaces.  The tool shown in Fig. 7 should be made right and left; it is useful in turning brass, ivory, hard wood, etc.  Fig. 8 is a separating tool; Fig. 9 is an inside tool, which should be made both right and left, and its point may be either round, V shaped, or square.  Fig. 24 shows the manner of holding an inside tool.  Fig. 10 is a tool for making curved undercuts.  Fig. 11 is a representative of a large class of tools for duplicating a given form.