Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls Part 15

To shape your bow lay it on a stout, flat piece of timber, and drive five ten-penny nails in the timber, one at the centre of your bow, and the others as in figure below, so as to bend the ends for about six inches in a direction contrary to the direction in which you draw the bow: (Fig.

D.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. D. (A and B are six inches from the ends.

The bow is bent slightly at C.)]

Your bow is now finished as far as the wood-work is concerned, and you may proceed to wrap it from end to end with silk or colored twine, increasing its elasticity and improving the appearance. The ends of the wrap must be concealed as in wrapping a fish-hook. Glue with Spaulding's glue a piece of velvet or even red flannel around the middle to mark your handhold. The ends may in like manner be ornamented by glueing colored pieces upon them.

A hempen string, whipped in the middle with colored silk, to mark the place for your arrow nock to be put, in shooting, will make a very good string.

For arrows any light, tough wood, which splits straight, will do. I use white pine, which may be gotten from an ordinary store-box, and for hunting-arrows seasoned hickory. These must be trimmed straight and true, until they are in thickness about the size of ordinary cedar pencils, from twenty-five to twenty-eight inches in length. They must be feathered and weighted either with lead or copper, or by fastening on sharp awl-points or steel arrow-points with wire.

I used to make six different kinds; a simple copper-wrap, a blunt leaden head, a sharp leaden head like a minie bullet, an awl-point wrapped with copper wire and soldered, and a broad-head hunting-arrow.

To make a copper wrap, wrap with copper wire the last half-inch of the arrow until you get near the end, then lay a needle as large as your wire obliquely along the arrow as in this figure: (Fig. E.) Continue the wrapping until you have weighted the arrow sufficiently; draw out the needle and thrust the end

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. E.]

of your wire through the little pa.s.sage kept by the needle, and draw it tight thus: (Fig. F.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. F (Before wrap was drawn through.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. G. (After wire was drawn through.)]

A blunt leaden head is made by pouring three or four melted buck-shot into a cylinder of paper, wrapped around the end of the arrow, slightly larger at the open end, and tied on by a piece of thread. The wood of the arrow must be cut thus: (Fig. H.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. H.]

The paper is put on thus: (Fig. X.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. X.]

It should look like this after the metal has been poured in and the paper all stripped off. (Fig. I.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. I.]

It should look like this after being sharpened like a minie bullet: (Fig.

J.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. J.]

An awl-point arrow is made by inserting the point in the end of the arrow, wrapping with copper wire, and getting a tinner to drop some solder at the end to fasten the wire and awl-point firmly together. The awl-point looks like this: (Fig. K.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. K.]

The awls (like Fig. L.) are filed like this into teeth-like notches on the part going into the wood, and roundly sharp on the other part thus: (Fig. M.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. L.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. M.]

These may be shot into an oak-tree and extracted by a twist of the hand close to the arrow-point.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. N.]

The broad-head hunting-point (Fig. N.) is put on by slitting the arrow and inserting the flat handle of the arrow point, and wrapping it with silk, sinews, or copper wire. These points can be sharpened along the line A B on a whetstone, and will cut like knives. The hunting arrow looks like this: (Fig. O.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. O.]

To feather an arrow you strip a goose feather from the quill and, after clipping off the part near the quill-end, you mark a line down the arrow from a point one inch from the nock and, spreading some Spaulding's glue along that line apply the feather, lightly pressing it home with forefinger and thumb. After you have glued on one piece lay aside the arrow and fix another, and so on until the first is set, so that you may put on another piece. When you have fastened these feathers on each arrow lay them aside for ten or twelve hours. The three feathers will look like this: (Fig. P.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. P.]

A boy can hardly make a good quiver unless he were to kill some furred animal and make a cylindrical case such as the Indians have, out of its skin. I am afraid that he usually would have to get a harness-maker to make him a quiver out of leather, somewhat larger at the top than at the bottom. It should hold from eight to twelve arrows.

A good target may be made of soft pine, circular or elliptical in shape.

In the latter case a line-shot might count, even though it were farther from the centre. Pieces should be tacked to the back of this target at right angles to the grain of the wood. Differently-colored circles or rings, a little more than the width of an arrow, must be painted on this, with a centre twice the width of an arrow. The outer ring counts one, the next two, three, four and so on to the centre, which of course counts highest. By this plan one's score could be told with perfect accuracy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TARGET.]

If an arrow struck on a line between number three and four it counts three and a half. Anything like this rarely happens. The target is fixed upon an easel formed of three pieces of wood fastened together by a string at the top, and it ought to lean back at the top slightly, away from the archer.

The three arrows count seven, nine, ten--twenty-six in all. In target-shooting you should use awl-pointed, wire-wrapped arrows, as they can be easily drawn out of even a wooden target.

DOLLY'S SHOES.

I can't help wondering if any of the little maidens who are having so much comfort with their beloved dolls in these Christmas holidays, ever think that _somebody_ must have taken a great deal of pains to dress them up so nicely, and above all, to make the tiny garments and hats and shoes.

The doll's _shoes_!--so pretty, so daintily shaped, so beautifully st.i.tched and trimmed, so perfectly, faultlessly finished from heel to toe, the "cunningest things" in all dolly's wardrobe--did it ever occur to the girlie "playing mother," to ask where they came from, and by whose dexterous fingers they were fashioned? She knows well enough that when Angelina Christina, or Luella Rosa Matilda Jennette, has worn these out, there are enough to be bought in the toy shops for twenty-five or thirty cents a pair; _but who makes them?_

That was the question which came into _my_ head one day, and I set to work to find out--doing just what must suggest itself to anybody who wants information, whatever the subject: that is to say, I went to head-quarters, and asked questions.

There are two places in Boston--one a "shoe and leather exchange," and the other the establishment of an importer and dealer in shoe store supplies, where they furnish doll's shoes "to the trade," as the phrase is: one is on Congress street, and the other on Hanover; and the proprietors, Mr. Daniels and Mr. Swanberg, instead of being amused at my errand, very kindly told me what I wanted to know.

Some of the shoes are imported, but they are inferior in style to those made in this country--notwithstanding they come from Paris, and everything from that place is supposed superlatively choice and to be desired, as you are very well aware. In the United States there is one factory--and but one, so far as I could ascertain--which supplies a large quant.i.ty, about fifteen hundred dozens, for the American market, sending them to all parts, and furnishing the toy-stores in Chicago and other western cities, as well as New York, Philadelphia and Boston.

This manufactory is at Bordentown, New Jersey, and has been in existence about twelve years, and the value of stock now sent out is about seven thousand dollars a year; so much money for the wee feet that run on no errands, and save no steps for anybody! The wholesale jobbers of course advance the price, and in the retail stores they are higher yet; so that each tradesman through whose hands they pa.s.s has his trifle of profit in helping to shoe the feet of the doll-people. They retail from a dollar and a dollar and a quarter a dozen, to three dollars and seventy-five cents, according to the style.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOLLY'S SHOES]

They "run," as the dealers express it, in twelve sizes; the "common doll's shoes" (which means shoes for common dolls) vary, however, from the cla.s.s made for wax dolls, which have grades peculiar to themselves, being not only extra full and wider in the soles, but numbering fewer sizes, from one to six only. Of the common kind, the slippers and ties run from one to twelve, the others from three, four or five to that number. They come packed in regular sizes, a "full line," as those for children do, or in a.s.sorted sizes and styles; in small, square boxes, such as shoe dealers know by the name of "cartoon," which is another word for the French _carton_, meaning simply that they are made of paste-board. The tiniest is not much more than an inch long, but is a perfectly formed and finished shoe on that miniature scale; and the largest is almost big enough for Mrs. Tom Thumb, measuring about four inches, and it could certainly be worn by many a baby you have seen.

As for the names, they come in this order:--slippers, ties, ankle ties, Balmorals, b.u.t.toned boots, Polish b.u.t.toned, Polish eyeletted, and Antoinette, which is a heeled, croquet slipper, in which her doll-ship, when engaged in that out-of-door game, can show off her delicate, clocked stockings to advantage.

But what shall I say of the variety in color and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs? They are in white and crimson, in buff and blue, in scarlet and purple, in rose color and violet, in bronze and silver and gold, everything but black, for dolls don't like black except in the tips of their gay Balmoral or Polish boots. And the stuff they are made of is such soft material as can only be found in goat and sheep and kid and glove kid, and _skivers_, which is the name for split leather. I strongly suspected that they were all made of sc.r.a.ps left from large slippers and shoes, but, though this is generally the case, some whole skins have to be used because nothing is ever manufactured for real people boots and shoes and slippers for all kinds of dolls, high and low, rich and poor; to walk in, to dance in, to play croquet in, or to stay at home in; to match their costumes, to match their hair, to match their eyes, to suit them if anything on earth _could_ suit. And every doll could be sure about her "size," for the number is stamped on the bottom of the soles; and I must not forget to say that they have also the "trademark," which is the imprint under the number; this "trade mark" is a pair of boots smaller than anything you can think of.