on both
sides. Then cut a square hole in it, five inches from bench side, to
enable you to allow the rough button to lie whilst you operate on
one side of the back, then on the other. This, as you must see,
enables the wood upon which you are to work, perfect freedom from
obstruction of any sort, whilst the gouge cuts roughly all round, as
shown in plate 3.

So, leaving the convex side as it is for the present, I resume, as
to cutting to the true outline with the knife. You can begin where
you like, but I generally clear the right side first. I cut through
the pencil line, not entirely obliterating it (which you will not
find easy), because, after awhile, I have to efface it altogether
with a file, to a perfect, smooth line. These square corners--these
curves of top, middle, and lower bouts--all and everything must be
well done, and no one thing outside of beauty left for the critical
eye to gape at.

Turning the plate to the outer side, I press it flat, between the
square let into the bench and the three-inch slip clamped about
fifteen inches apart, as spoken of before. This is done so that it
may be rigid whilst I take one-inch rasp 47, and proceed to level
all round the wood to about five-eighths of an inch and
five-thirty-seconds of an inch deep. When I get to the ends of the
back I loosen the wood, and use the file more freely at the end of
the bench. But this is a matter left entirely to the workman. When
this is nicely done, I wet a sponge and damp all I have gone over,
surface and edge alike, and let it thoroughly dry, and when it is
so, I employ medium cut file 63, half round, seven-eighths of an
inch broad, and make the edge of the wood clean, and so even all
round, that my first finger or thumb passes over the surface without
a suspicion of irregularity suggesting itself. This, mind, must be
most carefully done, as otherwise, if you, to make both ends meet,
so to speak, take off _here_ a morsel too much, and a little extra
_there_, to repair your fault, thinking to improve your line, you
will find it _broken_, and no longer in uninterrupted movement, as
it should be. I would rather see almost anything bad about this
noble instrument than a slovenly outline, for it is not only ugly in
itself, but leads to other imperfections, and should be most
strongly condemned in the modern school; it will most certainly be
by me, should a school spring from this book, as is already spoken
of as most likely.

The lin