Ebonite is best worked as if it were brass, with ordinary brass-turning or planing tools. These tools should be as hard as possible, for the edges are apt to suffer severely, and blunt tools leave a very undesirable woolly surface on the ebonite. In turning or shaping ebonite sheets it is as well to begin by taking the skin off one side first, and then reversing the sheet, finishing the second side, and then returning to the first. This is on account of the fact that ebonite sometimes springs a little out of shape when the skin is removed. Turned work in ebonite, if well done, requires no sand-papering, but may be sufficiently polished by a handful of its own shavings and a little vaseline. The advantage of using a polished ebonite surface is that such a surface deteriorates more slowly under the influence of light and air than a surface left rough from the tool. If very highly polished surfaces are required, the ebonite after tooling is worked with fine pumice dust and water, applied on felt, or where possible by means of a felt buff on the lathe, and finally polished with rouge and water, applied on felt or cloth. Ebonite works particularly well under a spiral milling cutter, and sufficiently well under an ordinary rounded planing tool, with cutting angle the same as for brass, and hardened to the lightest straw colour. It is not possible, on the other hand, to use the carpenter's plane with success, for the angle of the tool is too acute and causes the ebonite to chip. In boring ebonite the drill should be withdrawn from the hole pretty often and well lubricated, for if the borings jam, as they are apt to do, the heat developed is very great and the temper of the drill gets spoiled. Ebonite will spoil a drill by heating as quickly as anything known; on the other hand, it may be drilled very fast if proper precaution is taken. It is advisable to expose ebonite to the light as little as possible, especially if the surface is unpolished, for under the combined action of light and air the sulphur at the surface of the ebonite rapidly oxidises, and the ebonite becomes covered with a thin but highly conducting layer of sulphurous or sulphuric acid or their compounds. When this happens the ebonite may be improved by scrubbing with hot water, or washing freely with alcohol rubbed on with cotton waste in the case of apparatus that cannot be dismounted.