Synopses & Reviews
If you're building a solid walnut cabinet to store your hairpiece and your girlie magazines, you don't have to be much more accurate than 1/32" with the table saw. But if you want to build a steam engine or a tool grinder, that kind of tolerance won't hack it.
You'll need precision. And you can learn about precision from turn-of-the-century machinists right here. You get well-illustrated how-to. Check out the table of contents, and you'll see what I mean. Besides learning to measure dovetail slides and V-ways, or making index dials for your dividing head, you'll build a stand for a microscope and use it to examine, among other things, cutters for that engraving machine you're building.
Within each section are numerious paragraphs such as stops for setting the miller table, making a pair of plates from a master, an accurate grooving operation, boring small deep holes, correcting the hardened master, and more.
Most of this book was taken from articles that appeared in American Machinist Magazine. Excellent book with unusual information written by people who knew what they were talking about. Good stuff.