Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/629

Rh Figs. 14 and 15 will show some of the more complicated designs and effects that may be had from one of these lathes. These look to be very complicated, but are, in reality, quite simple: Fig. 14 having but five continuous lines, including the two plain circles

of the outside, and Fig. 15 has but two; the beautiful effects being produced by the crossing and interlacing of the lines.

Some of the cuttings used for bank notes appear to have thousands of lines, but very few of them have more than twenty, and most have but three or four.

The above diagrams have been engraved for this article by the lathe itself. They have been purposely made much more simple than those used in the bank-note business, in order that the general form may be more readily distinguished. Any one with a

glass and a sharp point may follow the lines which compose these figures.

One peculiarity of lathe-work should be noted. We said, in a former paragraph, that in steel-plate engraving the line cut by the graver prints black. In most of our diagrams, as well as on the notes themselves, the line is white the—interspaces being black.