A great number of small tools and shaping implements are used on some sort of block or surface-table. Every smithy should contain one or more of these tables; and the greater the dimensions of the usual work of the shop, the greater should be the table or tables. The length of large blocks or tables of this class should be about five or six times the width, that the men may make use of nearly the whole surface, instead of working at the edges only. For the convenience of fixing various pieces of work to the table, it should be cast with a large recess for the under side; and also contain a number of slots in various parts of the upper side or surface, and also around the other sides next the workmen. These slots are useful to contain the ends of studs, pins, hooks, poppets, bolt-heads, and other instruments employed for fixing and shaping various classes of forgings. In addition to slots, the table may have several straight lines marked along the surface, and a few other shorter lines marked across at right angles to the long ones. While the table is in use, it is in any convenient part of the shop, and supported with a few wood blocks to raise it to any particular height that maybe desired. When the table is required at some other unusual place, a few wood or iron rollers are put beneath, and it is rolled to its intended destination.

If an instrument of this character is accessible, the straightening, flattening, and adjusting of rods and shafts of all sorts will be greatly facilitated. The lines, being of great length, will admit several men to work at one time in several places along the table ; the lines being also at right angles to each other, will allow work of all sizes, and in all stages of forging, to be put to the lines for adjustment; and when a curve of any particular radius, or diagram of other variety is desired, it may be delineated on the surface with chalk or compass point, and becomes for a time the workman's gauge or standard. Any of the places of intersections of the lines with each other may be selected for centres from which to excribe the necessary arcs or other curves that may be needed, for the adjustment of links, sectors, connecting-rods, eccentric-rods, slide-rods, rings, cranked levers, straight levers, and other varieties of work that are in progress.

One or two of the lines near the edges of the table should be divided into metres, decimetres, centimetres, and millimetres; such an arrangement would tend to abolish the old mode of measuring by inches and parts.

A thick heavy table of this class may also be adapted to a steam-hammer, instead of using it as a portable table in various places. The steam-hammer thus supplied may then be specially reserved for straightening, flattening, adjusting, and cutting to length a variety of rods, axles, and other forgings.

The material of which such tables should be made, is Bessemer metal, or a hard cast iron which is not too hard to admit the planing process; such metal will be durable, and if the intended top or face of the table is downwards at the time of casting, a good surface will be the result. The preparation of the table for use commences with reducing the upper side to a plane by means of a planing machine; after planing, the same machine is the means of marking the long lines on the table, and also the short lines, if the machine is suitable; if not, a steel scriber and straight-edge are employed to mark the short lines, when the planing-machine is not capable of being adapted to the purpose. The method of correctly marking the cross lines consists in bisecting the long lines, or portions of them, in all those places intended for the intersections of the short lines with the long ones. By this means, the marking tool may be afterwards used to enlarge the marks, and the desired right angular positions of the lines are obtained. This class of tables, having a few lines marked on the surfaces, is represented in Fig. 217.