THE CHILDREN'S LIBRARY OF WORK AND PLAY. Carpentry and Woodwork

THE CHILDREN'S LIBRARY
OF WORK AND PLAY

PREFACE

There is a period in a boy's life, roughly speaking between the ages of ten and sixteen, when his interests and energy turn in the direction of making things. It may be called the creative period, and with many of us it ends nearer sixty than sixteen. At one time it will take the form of a mania for building boats; again it may be automobiles or aeroplanes.

The boy is very susceptible to suggestion. A great automobile race occurs, and for weeks the building and racing of toy automobiles goes on apace. The papers are filled with accounts of an aero meet. Immediately the boy's energy turns to the study and manufacture of aeroplanes. This abounding interest in the real things of life is perfectly normal and should be encouraged rather than discouraged; but the boy needs guidance, if this energy is to be properly directed. He needs strengthening in his weak points, otherwise he may become superficial and "scattering" in his work, and fail to stick to a thing until, overcoming all obstacles, he succeeds in doing the one thing he set out to do. He may acquire the bad habit of never finishing anything, though continually starting new schemes.

The ability of the average boy is far beyond the general estimate, but intelligent supervision is needed. The pocket knife is his natural tool, yet not one boy out of a thousand realizes its possibilities. An attempt has been made in this volume to suggest some of these, especially for boys living in the city, where a little work shop for himself, unfortunately, is too often a luxury.

The two boys here depicted form a composite picture of several thousand American boys whom it has been the pleasure of the author to guide.

The ability to design new things, and to adapt general rules to personal requirements, is to be encouraged at all times, and this idea has been exemplified in the following pages.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

CARPENTRY AND WOODWORK

I

INTRODUCTORY

Two boys sat on a log whittling. Conversation had ceased and they both seemed absorbed in their work. Presently the younger one became aware of the silence and glanced at the older boy. He gave an exclamation and jumped to his feet. "Why," he cried, "you are making a knife out of wood. Isn't it a beauty! Is it a dagger?"

"No" replied the other, "it is a paper-knife for opening letters and cutting the pages of magazines. It is for father's desk, for his birthday."

"It's a dandy!" continued the youngster. "How can you make such fine things? Why can't I do that kind of work?"

"You can do it," replied Ralph, "but just now there are several reasons why you don't."

"What are they?"

"Well, in the first place you start to whittle without having any clear idea of what you are at work on. It's for all the world like setting out to walk without knowing where you are going. If you start that way, the probabilities are that you will get nowhere, and when you get back and father asks where you have been, you say, 'Oh, nowhere; just took a walk.' That's the way with your knife work. You just whittle and make a lot of chips, and when you get through you have nothing to show for your time and labour. If you want to know a secret—I never start to cut without first making a careful sketch of just what I want to make, with all the important dimensions on it.

"Another reason you don't get any results is that you don't know how to hold your knife, and still another is that you work with a dull tool. Why, that knife of yours is hardly sharp enough to cut butter."

"Will you show me how to do that kind of work?" asked the youngster humbly.

"Yes; on certain conditions."

"What are they?"

"That you will do just as I tell you."

"Will you show me how to make a paper-cutter now?"

"There you go, right off the handle! You are like a young man learning carpentry; you want to start right in to build a house instead of first learning how to use your tools. Why, it has taken me two years in the manual training school to learn how to do this work. No, indeed, if you want to learn how to do woodwork like this you must begin on something simple, learn how to handle wood, and how to keep your tools sharp."

"All right," sighed the younger boy; "I am willing to take lessons and begin at the beginning. What shall we do first?"

"The first thing to do is to throw away your folding penknife. That kind is of very little use. The steel is so poor it won't hold a cutting edge for any time at all, and the knife has a treacherous habit of closing up on your fingers. I will give you a good Swedish whittling knife like mine, and we will start by putting a good cutting edge on it."

So the boys began the first lesson. The fun they had and the things they made, their many experiences, the patience required, and the great skill developed with tools are described in the following pages. What they accomplished, any other boy may do if he will but apply himself with all his energy.

II

FIRST EXPERIMENTS—THE KNIFE AND ITS POSSIBILITIES

The older boy, after a search through his treasure chest, selected a knife with a blade about two and a half inches long.

Incidentally, the smaller boy caught a glimpse of the inside of that chest and it made his eyes bulge—but that is another story.

Harry took it and went through the motions of whittling an imaginary stick.

"Now," said Ralph, "we will go out to the wood pile and see what we can find. White pine makes the best wood to start on, because it is usually straight grained, soft, and free from sap; but it is getting scarce and expensive, so we must be economical, as it is a very easy matter to waste lots of lumber."

After some searching, they found part of a pine board, about a foot long and an inch thick. Ralph chopped out a piece with a hatchet and deftly split it to about an inch and a half wide. His skill was a revelation to Harry, who saw that even a hatchet could be used with precision.

"Now," said Ralph, "I want you to cut this piece of rough pine to a smooth, straight piece, just an inch square."

"Oh, that's easy," replied Harry eagerly. "Just watch me."

"Take care," said Ralph. "I said an inch square; anything less than an inch will be wrong. Just imagine that this is a problem in arithmetic and you are trying to find the answer. If you succeed in making it just an inch square the answer will be correct; anything larger or smaller than the exact size will be wrong. In the first place, hold your knife so that it makes a slant or oblique angle with the wood, like this (Fig. 2)," he said, taking the wood in his left hand and the knife in his right. "That gives what we call a paring action, and is much easier (Fig. 3) than the stiff way you were holding it, at right angles with the stick."

"Now remember that the trouble with beginners is that they usually take off too much material. Make light, easy cuts and try to get one side of the wood perfectly straight first."

This was a harder job than Harry had expected, but after much testing and sighting (Fig. 4) Ralph said it would do for the first attempt. "Now," he said, "you may consider this first side the foundation of your house. Make a pencil mark on it near one of the edges, what the woodworker would call his witness mark. It means that this side or face is finished and the edge nearest the pencil mark is to be trued up next."

This proved even a harder job than the first, because after whittling and testing until he had the second side straight and true, Ralph tested it with a square and found that the second edge was not at right angles with the first, or working face. It was finally straightened, however, to stand the try square test fairly well.

An inch was next marked off at each end on face number one, and a sharp pencil line drawn from end to end. Harry then whittled this third side down to the line, and tested again with the try square. It seemed easier to do now, and the thickness was obtained in the same way. It looked as if they never would get that piece of pine exactly square, and even when Ralph said it would do, they measured it with a rule and found it an eighth of an inch too small each way.

Harry was disgusted. "The answer is wrong after all," he exclaimed, "but I'll learn to do that if it takes me a month."

"That's the right sporting spirit," said Ralph. "Keep at it till you get it. It's the hardest thing you will ever have to do with a knife, and it's unfortunate that you have to tackle it the first thing; but it's like learning to play the piano, you must learn the notes and scales and how to use your fingers before you can play a real piece. Every time you try this, you are gaining skill and the control of your hands. After a while you will be able to do it easily and think nothing of it."

Several days later Harry brought in a piece that he had been working on and Ralph tested it carefully with rule and try square. He gave Harry a pat on the back. "Good for you, boy; you are coming along splendidly," he said. "How many of these have you tried?"

"Twenty," said Harry meekly.

"Well, now, I'll show you how the Indians used to record their exploits. We'll put a notch on this stick for every one you've tried to make, and you can keep it as a souvenir of your first attempts at whittling." So with great care they measured off six two-inch spaces on each edge, carefully drew notches with a pencil and rule, and as carefully cut each notch to the line. (Fig. 5.)

Harry was delighted with the result.

They then hunted up a small screw eye, found the exact centre of the end of the stick by drawing two diagonals, fastened the screw eye in the centre and tied to it a piece of red, white and blue ribbon. A quarter-inch bevel was made around each end as a finishing touch.

This piece of white pine, with its twenty notches, hangs to-day in Harry's room, and every once in awhile he counts the notches to make sure they are all there, and recalls the trial that each one represents.

Harry was so much pleased with his notched trophy stick that he wanted to begin something else at once, and he was immediately started on a key rack.

"Too many homes," said Ralph, sagely, "have no definite place to keep keys. Those that have no tags are always a nuisance. Every key or bunch of keys should have a tag attached and should be hung on a certain hook where it can be found without searching. Now we'll make a sketch of a key rack before doing anything else, to find out just how large a piece of stick we shall need."

The drawing they produced is shown in Fig. 6 and called for a piece of wood seven inches long, an inch wide, and half an inch thick. As the key rack was to be a permanent household article, they decided on gum wood as more suitable than pine, it being easy to work and having a satisfactory appearance.

The different stages in the process of cutting out are shown in Fig. 6. At a is shown the stock squared up with the knife to the extreme outside dimensions. The ends were then whittled down to the form shown at b and the blank piece was ready for notching. The notches were carefully drawn with a sharp hard pencil and cut as shown at c. The ends were bevelled by whittling to the lines, and the inner edges of the notches in the centre were whittled back to the middle of each edge. Then the knife work was finished.

Three brass screw hooks were placed in the centre of the large blank spaces, and two small screw eyes fastened into the upper edge for hanging the key rack on the wall.

Each stage of the work had been worked out so carefully that the boys hardly realized what a satisfactory result they were getting. When it was finally hung in the boys' room, of course some keys must be put on it, and as they had no tags, the making of some followed as a matter of course. A search through their small stock of woods disclosed a few little pieces of holly, the remains of fret saw work, about an eighth of an inch thick. This proved to be ideal material, and half a dozen key tags were made of the size and shape shown in Fig. 7. The holes were made with a brad awl, the tags fastened to the rings by small pieces of wire, and the names of the keys printed on the different tags with black drawing ink.

The form they finally decided on is shown in Fig. 8. Ralph insisted on the design being carefully drawn on a piece of thin wood, a quarter of an inch thick. Harry found whittling to curved lines somewhat harder than notching, but he produced a fairly satisfactory result. Ralph was a very exacting teacher, always having in mind his own training in school. He showed Harry how to cut out the curves at the ends without cutting his thumb (Fig. 9.) and gave him much advice about whittling away from himself, whenever possible.

When the knife work was finished, Ralph explained that where curved edges were cut it was allowable to smooth with a piece of fine sand-paper, although as a rule it was to be avoided.

Harry wanted to know why, and Ralph explained that, generally speaking, sand-paper was the hallmark of a poor workman, one who could not do good work with his tools. Sand-paper leaves a scratched surface, for the grit becomes embedded in the wood to a certain extent, and it will immediately ruin the cutting edge of a sharp tool in case one has to be used after the sand-papering. "So," he summed up, "keep your sand-paper and knife as far apart as possible."

About this time the ladies of the household thought that a winder for worsted would come in very handy, and the boys evolved a new form, shown in Fig. 10. This was made only an eighth of an inch thick, and proved so easy of construction that each of the boys made two and "allowed" that "they ought to satisfy the sewing department for some time to come."

The result of this talk was that the little building in the yard which they called their "shop" became a perfect beehive of industry for several weeks. With what money they had saved they purchased a supply of lumber and a few tools the use of which Ralph said he would explain later. He suggested that Harry begin by making some calendar backs, as suitable New Year's presents, because they were easy; and the more complicated articles could be made after Harry had developed a little more skill with the knife.

The drawing he made is shown in Fig. 11. This called for a small calendar about two inches long, an inch and three quarters high, and a space this size was drawn on the centre of the calendar back, while the calendar was glued to the wood.

After two or three of these had been made, Harry decided that they were too small to suit him, and a new design somewhat larger was worked out on paper. It was a little more difficult to follow, because the outline had two reversed curves, but the boys were too busy and interested to be daunted by a trifle like that. (Fig. 12.)

Ralph suggested simple picture frames, and this brought the new problem of cutting out an opening for the picture.

The first design they tried is shown in Fig. 13. Ralph had to show Harry how to make the ellipse with compasses by first constructing two squares or rectangles touching, and with both diagonal lines in each square. By taking for a centre the point where the squares touch, as a and b, and using the length of a diagonal line as a radius, two arcs were drawn at x and y. The ellipse was finished by taking c as a centre, and the distance c d as a radius, to draw arc z, and the other end was finished in the same way.

Ralph explained that this was not a perfect ellipse, but would answer for a small picture frame. The drawing was easy compared to the question of how to cut out the wood to this curved line.

One of the new tools was brought out, and Harry was introduced to the mysteries of the coping saw. (Fig. 14). A thin saw blade was produced and fastened in one end of the frame, the other end being left free. A hole was made inside of the ellipse with a brad awl, the free end of the blade passed through the opening and fastened in the frame of the saw. Resting the picture frame on the edge of a bench, the ellipse was sawed out roughly about ¹⁄₁₆ of an inch inside of the drawing. This remaining sixteenth of an inch was then whittled to the line with a knife and finished with sand-paper. Harry found some difficulty in getting this elliptical opening smooth enough to suit him, so they tried designing for half an hour, and produced a new form (Fig. 15).