To grip such a piece, a couple of angular-gap clamps should be used, similar to those shown in Fig. 629. These should be made of soft steel or iron, and may be provided with gaps of three or four different sizes, to render them suitable for various work ; or they may have but one pair of gaps, and be made to suit pieces of different thicknesses by placing packing-pieces between the gap-sides and the work. A pair of such clamps consist of four principal pieces, two for each clamp ; one of these two is a thick lump of soft steel, iron, copper, or other material, which has the angular gap, and is therefore the grip, and the other piece is a thin plate of steel to which the grip is riveted, or fastened with screws that can be easily taken out when a different grip-piece is required. The thin plate is bent to fit the top of the vice-jaw, and the particular material selected for the grips, is suited to the pieces of work to be held. For rough forged iron and steel, the grip is of steel or iron; for smooth iron or steel that must not be bruised, copper grips are very effectual; for gun-metal and brass, ash wood grips, and also leather ones, are suitable, if the work is only a few pounds in weight, but for a heavy piece of brass it is advisable to use a pair of copper grips, and put a piece of canvas into immediate contact with each grip and the work, or instead of canvas, a sheet of clean emery cloth doubled together with the emery outwards. For the particular piece of cylindrical steel to be now heated, a pair of clamps having iron grips, are therefore suitable. Whatever may be the special use or shapes of the clamps, each one should be fastened to the vice-jaw by means of a small screw, which is denoted by S in the Figure. Such a screw prevents the clamp falling about, and is applicable to all classes of clamps, and the screwed hole in the vice-jaw is made to suit all the clamps that may be applied, by making the hole in each clamp large enough to allow freedom, and by providing screws with broad thin heads.

As soon as the cylindrical piece is smoothed at one end by means of smooth filing, it is ready for scribing. This consists in making a circular line around the work at a proper distance from the smooth extremity first filed and tolerably squared. The scribing is effected with a scriber-block while the work stands with its smooth extremity in contact with a table's plane surface, as represented in Fig. 621. If it is decided to make the piece about three inches long, the scriber-point is adjusted to three inches and a thirty-second above the table's surface, and the scriber-block is moved around the work while the point is in contact, both the work and block being held in close contact with the table during scribing. To render the mark distinct, a little soft chalk is rubbed upon the work at about the place of the intended line. When it is scribed, the boundary of the hidden plane to be produced, is indicated, and the rough end is next bevelled to make it resemble Fig. 620. If the piece is but little longer than the finished length, the bevelling is done with a rough flat file, while the lump is held in the vice, and when bevelled appears as in Fig. 620; but if a long rough piece is to be cut off, the work when scribed appears as in Fig. 621, and is next bevelled by making a bevelled groove around the piece at the scribed line, by means of a three-cornered file, or a half-round one.

After the work is bevelled or grooved, according to the amount of metal to be cut off, it is reduced with chipping or rough filing. When chipping is necessary, the bevel is an effectual means of preventing the breaking of the work at the edge of the intended plane during hammering. While the operator is chipping the front edge of the work nearest to him, there is no risk of breaking off more than is necessary, because he is driving the chisel towards the centre of the end, where there is an abundance of metal to resist the tendency to breakage; but during a chipping with heavy blows at the edge furthest from him, the work will break in an irregular manner at some place which is below the hidden plane to be produced, if the bevel referred to is not first made. The bevel is also quite necessary if the work requires only filing, because the operator is thereby enabled to continue the filing until the entire bevelled part is cut off, without being required to look at or examine the work in any way, to see if he is filing parallel to the plane end to be made.

To chip such an end in an easy manner, when chipping is necessary, it is advisable to first use a small grooving chisel shown by Fig. 322, to make a few narrow grooves across the bevelled part of the work, and to afterwards cut off the ridges that remain, with a proper planing chisel, denoted by Fig. 321. If a quarter of an inch or three-eighths needs cutting off, it will be necessary to make a few more grooves after the planing chisel has been once driven over the end; and to again cut off the ridges with the planing chisel as before.

By thus reducing the end until all the bevelled part is cut off, the work is made ready for measuring, either with an outside calliper, a gap-gauge, or a jaws shown by Fig. 421. Of these three tools, a tightly riveted calliper is preferable, especially near the conclusion of the filing. By frequently measuring the length of the work with the callipers, both planes are made parallel to each other at the same time that the piece is reduced to its desired length. The measurements for this purpose should be performed while the block is tightly gripped in the vice in position for filing, which will avoid unfixing and refixing the work in the vice, until the final adjustment of the planes to parallelism with each other, is to be effected.

The finishing of the planes consists in scraping the extremities with an ordinary flat-end scraper, shown by Fig. 330, both ends of the work being made equally plane, unless the piece is to be merely a surface-block. To try the surface of the work during scraping, a standard table may be used similar to that denoted by Fig. 298, which denotes a surface-plate whose plane surface was finally scraped for adjustment while the plate remained standing on one edge, as in the Figure; the plate is therefore used as a standard while in a similar position. The learner who is finally scraping the cylindrical block therefore rubs a little tange upon the standard to mark the prominent portions of the surface in progress when rubbed on the standard. This rubbing causes the oily mixture to adhere to the prominent parts, and the operator exercises sufficient care to scrape only those portions on which the mixture remains, that the desired plane surfaces may be produced.