Having recourse once again to an engine-lathe, we attach a "form" (or guide) plate to the slide-rest, to the profile of which the nose and shell-body together are blended externally. As we are now nearing completion, the next item on the programme is to see how we stand for weight, and in the event of the shell being a trifle on the heavy side, we either take a light cut off, reducing ever so slightly the diameter, or else we shorten the base. There remain now the base-plate and the copper band to complete the whole; the former is either screwed or slipped with a plain circumference into a recess in the base, riveted over with a compressed air riveter, and faced to the required thickness; the latter is pressed hydraulically into a groove, then turned and grooved to the required diameter. A kind of miniature Turkish bath now awaits the long-suffering object of our commiseration, in which it is steamed and cleaned, then placed nose downwards over a tank. In this unenviable position a stream of varnish is generously sprayed with a hand pump up its inside. Thereafter it reposes in an adjacent chamber or stove until the varnish is thoroughly dried and baked; whence emerging, a pneumatic tapping machine is waiting to clear the varnish from the thread of its nose. It is then "boarded" both in regard to weight and overall dimensions, and if passed "A1" by the inspector proceeds into bond, where it remains until "called up," "reporting" at a filling factory, and in due course being "drafted over-seas." Prior to quitting the workshop's busy hum and reverting with our mind's eye to the "battle's magnificently stern array," where we may compare to further, if superficial, purpose the projectile and its mathematically proportioned features with the somewhat violent form of gymnastic exercise in which it is about to delight, a word or two in reference to the evolution of the copper band may not be held amiss, in view of the important _rôle_ it plays relatively to the shell as a whole. The process by which these copper bands or discs were evolved was unique, and inasmuch as it was possible to effect a considerable economy by the evolution of three separate and distinct bands from one original sheet or square of copper, Crewe became responsible not only for the bands components of the 6-inch shell, on the manufacture of which she was exclusively concentrating her endeavours, but was able concurrently to produce for other firms further bands components of both 8-inch and 4·5-inch projectiles.