Cut two ends from pieces of 3/8 inch stuff, about 5 inches wide and 6 inches high. Trace on one of the pieces the shape you intend these ends to have. Suppose it is like that in Fig. 77. Then place the two pieces exactly over each other, and screw them into the vice, and saw round the figure drawn. For this purpose you require a frame-saw, one we have not previously mentioned; its construction, however, explains itself, being merely a fine saw blade stretched in a wooden frame. With a large gimlet bore two holes, marked x in Fig. 77, and a third or a fourth between them till it is large enough to admit the blade of the frame-saw. Repeat this process and cut the shape of the leaf. Smooth the outer edge up with a file, rounding off so that the knife-edge is on the inner side, then rub down well with glass-paper. Work up this design of a leaf by filling in the pattern with dark stain. If you use ivy leaves, trace in the veins afterwards with camel's-hair pencil, using a darker stain. Then let the whole get quite dry.

Fig. 77 - Parts of Book-slide.

Now the slide part has to be made: this is by no means difficult. Take a piece of wood, ½ an inch thick, 14 inches long, and 3½ inches wide. Mark a straight line, ¼ of an inch from the edge, all along each side; then with a plane slant off the edge, from the drawn line to the outer edge, then endwise the slab will appear as in section a, Fig. 77. Now take two slips an inch wide, and of the same thickness; bevel off the inner edge of each, so that when turned over, each edge of the slip fits the face of the feathered edge of piece a. Lay them in the position shown in b, Fig. 77; and if they require thinning or smoothing, do it now with the smoothing-plane. Now fit two cross-pieces with short screws to the outer slips, so that the inner piece will slip easily between them, but not loosely. Having fixed this carefully, saw the inner slip into two equal lengths. Cut them carefully so that very little smoothing is afterwards needed; then across the inner ends screw two short pieces, to prevent them from being drawn out at the ends. These we show at c, Fig. 77. At the outer ends put two similar pieces, so that the whole is blocked up to the same level. Having finished the slide, get a pair of small brass hinges for each end, and screw them on to the inner lower edge of the slide itself. Polish or varnish it, and you have a strong book-slide, to carry fifteen or twenty books, and no mean ornament to your library-table.