The next day, as they were about to resume their study, Ralph said: "There is so much to drawing that I hardly know where to begin, or what to leave out; but in shop drawing, a picture will not do; imagine an architect trying to build a skyscraper from a picture. The shop drawing must tell the mechanic everything he needs to know about the object he is making. He cannot keep running to the office asking questions; the drawing must answer them all. That is the reason why the draughting-room is such an important part of every manufacturing plant. Drawing is the language the designer uses to tell the workmen what he wants made. It is doubly important when the designer is hundreds or thousands of miles away from the workman.

"A battle-ship can be designed in Australia and built in England, so this language of the shop has grown to be a very interesting and important art. Every one who works with tools must learn it sooner or later, the sooner the better.

"Usually it is necessary to represent even the simplest object by at least two views. For example, suppose I hand you this sketch a (Fig. 23), and tell you to make two out of wood. You wouldn't know what to do because no thickness is shown, but if I give you this sketch b, you would see immediately that it has practically no thickness and might be a sheet of paper. You learn that from the top view looking down on it.

"The first view is called the front view. Now, suppose I change the top view to this c; thickness is shown here, and if I say, make two of these out of white pine, you would know all that would be necessary to go ahead. "Again, suppose I give you this sketch a (Fig. 24), and ask you to make two out of gum wood. You would be completely at sea, because that front view might have any one of these top views shown at b, c, d, e (Fig. 24). In other words, it might be a triangle without thickness, a wedge, cone, or pyramid.

"So you see, two views are absolutely necessary, and very often a third, taken from the right or left side. The three views of a book would look like Fig. 25. The side view is not necessary in this case, but that is the way it would be drawn if a third were needed. You will have plenty of opportunities for practising this as we get along with our tool work, because in order to understand drawings you must be able to make them. Suppose you try your hand now, by drawing the two views of a cylinder, two inches in diameter and three inches high."Ralph rolled a sheet of paper up until the ends met, to illustrate a cylinder, and the drawing produced by Harry looked like a. (Fig. 26.)

"Now," said Ralph, "no shop drawing is complete unless it shows all the necessary dimensions; so I will put them on to show you how it is done, but after this you must dimension every drawing you make."

The finished drawing of the cylinder is shown at b.

Harry was told to make the mechanical drawing of a cone, 2 inches in diameter, and 3 inches high. While he was working at this problem, Ralph disappeared, and when he returned Harry asked where he had been.

"Never mind. Let me see your drawing," c (Fig. 26). "All right." Then he laid a little wooden object on the table.

"Why, it's a cat," said Harry.

"Yes, a tip cat, and as soon as you make a working drawing of it, you are going to manufacture one with your knife. Please notice that the tip cat is a cylinder with a cone at each end, and two views will show everything about it."

The drawing took longer to make than Harry imagined it would; or it seemed longer because he was so impatient to get to work with his knife. His finished drawing is shown at a (Fig. 28).

The different stages in the making of the tip cat are shown in Fig. 27.

First came the squaring up, shown at a. Then the two ends were whittled down to wedges as shown at b, and these two ends reduced to square pyramids, as at c.Lines a quarter of an inch from each edge were drawn on the four sides of the square part and continued out to the points of the pyramids, as at d. Cutting to this line changed the square to an octagon, and the square pyramids to octagonal ones.

The edges were again whittled off until there were no more to be seen; the cat was smoothed with sand-paper, and called finished.

Harry was delighted, but Ralph said: "That is not the best form for a tip cat, because it will roll. We will make a bat for it now, and after we have played with it awhile, we'll make a better one; just the same except that the centre part will be left square and only the ends rounded." (Fig. 28, b.)

The bat they made is shown in Fig. 29. Its handle was cut out with the coping saw and whittled to the lines. Ralph explained that anything to be held should be rounded, or it would be hard on the hand, so all the edges were curved with the knife and finished with sand-paper.

They had so much fun with the cat and bat that woodwork was forgotten for two afternoons. The third day it rained, so the boys were glad to get at work again in the shop.

Ralph suggested that, as they were doing so much drawing, it might be well to make a pencil sharpener.

The drawing they produced is shown in Fig. 30. This was easily worked out in ¹/₈-inch wood with a piece of sand-paper glued in the oblong space.

The sand-paper suggested match scratchers, and as they are useful articles, several designs were worked up for Christmas gifts. Three of these are shown in Fig. 31, but after a good deal of discussion it was decided that for scratching matches a longer space for sand-paper was necessary, and three other designs (Fig. 32) were the result of several hours' work.

"I'm getting tired of match scratchers," exclaimed Harry; "let's make some toys!"

"Very well, we'll get ready for Santa Claus, and provide a stock of things for our numerous young cousins," replied Ralph. "This will give us a chance to use our coping saw, and I have been wanting to do that for a long time."