The Scientific American Boy Part 16

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 210. A Poncho.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 211. Camp Bed in the Rain.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 212. Umbrella with Fly.]

As a precaution against rain, a tall post was set up at the head and another at the foot of the bed, and a rope was stretched over the posts with the ends fastened to stakes driven into the ground. Over this rope a rubber "poncho" was laid to keep off the rain. A "poncho," by the way, is a blanket of rubber cloth about 4-1/2 feet wide and 6 feet long, in the center of which is a slit through which you can put your head; then the rubber cloth falls over you like a cape, as in Fig. 210, and makes a perfect protection against rain. The ponchos these men had were not quite long enough to cover the whole bed, so they fastened umbrellas to the head posts, as shown in Fig. 212. During a shower in the woods the rain comes straight down in large drops, caused by the water collecting on the leaves. To prevent these large drops from splashing through the umbrellas, they laid pieces of cloth over the umbrellas, which served, like the fly of a tent, to check the fall of rain drops.

A NIGHTMARE.

I slept in the mummy case that night and Dutchy in the first sleeping bag. It must have been about midnight when I was awakened by a most unearthly yell. It sent the cold chills running up and down my back. A second scream brought me into action, and I struggled to throw back the head flap, which had become caught. It seemed an age before I could open it and wriggle out of the bag. Dutchy was sitting up in bed with a look of horror on his face, and his whole body was in a tremor of fear. One of the men dashed a gla.s.s of water in his face, which brought him back to his senses. It was only a nightmare, we found. Dutchy dreamed he had been injured in a railway accident and had been taken for dead to the morgue. He tried to let them know that he was alive, but couldn't utter a sound, until finally he burst out with the yells that roused the camp.

Then, as he awoke with the horror of the dream still on him, his eyes fell on the two stretcher beds that looked like biers and the black coffin-like sleeping bag. It was not much wonder that Dutchy was frightened. The camp did certainly have a most ghastly appearance in the vague moonlight that filtered through the trees, and it must have been still more gruesome to see the coffin and biers suddenly burst open and the corpses come running toward him. To prevent any further nightmare we set Dutchy's sleeping bag under the "A" tent, where he would be saved the horror of again waking up in a morgue.

PACK HARNESS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 213. Pack Harness.]

In the morning our friends broke camp and started westward. Dutchy and I watched them packing up their goods into a couple of very compact bundles, which they strapped to their backs with a peculiar pack harness. I took careful note of the way the harness was put together, and when we returned to the island we made two sets for use on our tramping expeditions. A canvas yoke was first cut out to the form shown in Fig. 213. We used two thicknesses of the heaviest brown canvas we could find, binding the two pieces together with tape. The yoke was padded with cotton at the shoulders and a strap was fastened to each shoulder piece. These were arranged to be buckled to a pair of straps fastened to the back of the yoke and pa.s.sing under the arms. Riveted to these straps were a pair of straps used for fastening on the pack. The yoke straps were attached with the rough side against the yoke, while the pack straps were riveted on with the rough side uppermost, as indicated in the drawing.

RIVETING.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 214. Riveting the Straps Together.]

The method of riveting together the leather straps may need a word of explanation. A copper rivet was pa.s.sed through a hole in the two straps; then the washer was slipped over the projecting end of the rivet. This washer had to be jammed down tight against the leather, and to do this we drilled a hole of the diameter of the rivet in a block of wood, and putting this block over the washer, with the end of the rivet projecting into the hole, we hammered the block until the washer was forced down tight against the leather. Then taking a light tack hammer we battered down the end of the rivet onto the washer. Care was taken to do this hammering very lightly, otherwise the end would have been bent over instead of being flattened.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE LAND YACHT.

Only one thing of importance occurred between our Christmas holidays and Eastertide: this was Bill's invention of the tricycle sailboat or land yacht. We had returned to school with sailing on the brain. Our skate sail served us well enough while there was any ice, but as spring came on we wished we had our canoe with us, or even the old scow to sail on the lakes near the school. Once we seriously considered building a sailboat, but the project was given up, as we had few facilities for such work. But Bill wasn't easily baffled, and I wasn't surprised to have him come tearing into the room one day, yelling, "I've got it! I've got it!" In his hands were two bicycle wheels, which I recognized as belonging to a couple of bicycles we had discarded the year before.

"What are you going to do with them?" I inquired.

"I'm going to make a tricycle sailboat."

"What?"

"A tricycle sailboat, a land boat, or anything you've a mind to call it.

I mean a boat just like our ice boat only on bicycle wheels instead of skates. We can sail all over south Jersey on the thing. Come on down and help me build it."

THE FRAME OF THE YACHT.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 215. The Backbone and Crosspiece.]

I followed him to the shed at the back of the school and found that he had already procured a couple of scantlings for the frame of the boat.

The sticks were 2 inches thick and 4 inches wide. The backbone was cut to a length of 10 feet, and a 5-foot link was sawed off for the crosspiece. The two pieces were securely nailed together about 3 feet from the forward end of the backbone. The crosspiece was set on edge, but a notch was cut in it about 1 inch deep to receive the backbone. We might have braced the frame with wooden braces, as in the ice boat, but we thought that this time we would vary the design by using wire bracing instead, thus making the frame much lighter. I asked Bill how he proposed to tighten the wire. Turnbuckles were the thing, but I knew that they were rather expensive.

"Just you leave that to me," said Bill. "I've a scheme that I think will work out all right."

A SIMPLE TURNBUCKLE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 216. An Eye Bolt.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 217. Stretching the Guy Lines.]

At the hardware store of the town we bought a pound of No. 16 iron wire, eight large screw eyes and six eye bolts, with nuts and washers. Both the screw eyes and eye bolts had welded eyes and the shanks of the eye bolts were 6 inches long. A pair of screw eyes were now threaded into the backbone at each side about 18 inches from the end, and at each end of the crosspieces an eye bolt was fastened. I began to see Bill's plan.

He was going to draw the wire taut by tightening up the nuts on the eye bolts. To get the best effect the hole for the eye bolt had to be drilled in on a slant, so that the bolt would pull directly in the line of the wire. To get just the right angle we ran a cord from the screw eye on one side to the point where the bolt was to be inserted, and traced its direction on the crosspiece. The hole for the eye bolt was now drilled parallel with the mark we had traced. The same was done at the other end of the crosspiece. A pair of screw eyes were now screwed into the backbone at the fore end and a pair of eye bolts were set at a corresponding angle in the ends of the crosspiece. The crosspiece was notched at each side so that the nuts and washers on the eye bolts would have a square seating. Then we stretched on the wire guy lines, drawing them as tight as possible, with the eye bolts held in place by a turn or two of the nuts, after which we screwed up the nuts as far as we could, thus drawing up the wire until it was very taut. This done the second nut was threaded onto each bolt against the first so as to lock it in place and prevent it from jarring loose.

STEPPING THE MAST.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 218 The Frame with Wire Braces.]

Our next task was to step the mast. We found in the shed an old flagstaff 15 feet long and 3 inches in diameter. The lower end of this, for about a foot, we whittled down to a diameter of 2 inches, and drove it into a hole in the backbone 12 inches from the forward end. The mast was stayed by a wire stretched from the head to an eye bolt at the fore end of the backbone. The end of the mast which projected below the backbone was stayed with wire running forward to an eye bolt and aft to a screw eye on the backbone, and also with a pair of wires running to screw eyes threaded into the crosspiece near the ends. We couldn't very well use eye bolts on these wires except at the fore end, but we stretched the wires as tight as possible before the screw eyes were screwed all the way in, and then, as we turned the screw eyes, the wire was wound up on them and drawn fairly taut. Fig. 219 shows a side view of the frame, and wires marked 1 and 2 are the same as ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 218, which is a top or plan view of the frame.

MOUNTING THE FRAME ON BICYCLE WHEELS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 219. Bracing the Mast.]

We were now ready to mount the frame on the bicycle wheels. We used only the front wheels of the bicycles with the forks in which they were journaled. The shanks at the top of the forks were firmly driven into holes in the crosspiece near the ends. For the steering wheel Bill took the front fork and wheel of his new bicycle, letting the shank into a hole at the stern end of the backbone.

THE TILLER.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 220. The Tiller.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 221. The Seat.]

For a tiller we used a piece of an old rake handle. A small hole was first drilled into the handle and the end of the stick was then split through the hole, permitting the projecting shank of the fork to be driven tightly into the hole. The split wood was now tightly closed onto the shank by means of a bolt (see Fig. 220). In the rubbish heap we found an old chair. The legs were sawed off and the seat was then firmly nailed to the backbone. The back of the chair was cut down so that it just cleared the tiller.

A "LEG-OF-MUTTON" SAIL.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 222. Leg-of-Mutton Sail.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 223. The Sailor's St.i.tch.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 224. Laying Out the Sail.]

Everything was now completed but the sail. This was a triangular or "leg-of-mutton" affair, of the dimensions given in Fig. 222. It was made of light canvas, 30 inches wide, of which we bought 14 yards. Out of this we took one strip 18 feet long, one 13 feet, one 8 feet, and one 3 feet long. We had no sewing machine, and therefore had to sew the strips together by hand. The selvedge edges of the strips were lapped over each other about an inch and then they were sewed together sailor fashion, that is, each edge was hemmed down, as shown in Fig. 223. The strips were sewed together so that at the foot each projected at least 21 inches below the next shorter one. This done, the sail was cut to the dimensions given, allowing 1-1/2 inches all around for the hem. The hem was turned over a light rope, forming a strong corded edge. At the clew, tack and head loops were formed in the rope which projected from the canvas, and at intervals along the foot the canvas was cut away, exposing the rope so that the sail could be laced to the boom, as ill.u.s.trated. The boom was a pole 11 feet long attached to the mast by means of a screw hook threaded into the end of the boom and hooked into a screw eye on the mast, after which the screw hook was hammered so it would close over the screw eye to keep it from slipping off. The sail was raised by a halyard pa.s.sing over a block at the top of the mast. The sheet was fastened near the end of the boom, pa.s.sed through a block on the backbone, back of the tiller, and through another block on the boom, and was led to a cleat within easy reach of the chair seat.