III—HOUSE-BUILDING FOR BEGINNERS

XII— Some Elementary Principles 238 XIII— Simple Summer Cottages 271 XIV— A Few Simple Structures 291 PART IV—BOAT-BUILDING FOR BEGINNERS XV— A Few Simple Boats 298 PART V—TOOLS AND OPERATIONS XVI— The Common Hand-tools, and Some Every-day Operations, Alphabetically Arranged for Ready Reference 344 Appendix— Matters Relating to Wood, Suggestions about Working Drawings, etc. 507 Index 539

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

It has seemed best to address parts of this book particularly to boys, because the majority of beginners are boys, because boys need more suggestions than men, and because a man can easily pick what he needs from a talk to boys (and perhaps be interested also), while it is usually unprofitable to expect a boy to take hold of a technical subject in the right spirit if it is treated in a style much in advance of his degree of maturity. It is hoped, however, that the older reader also will find enough of those fundamental principles of successful work (many of which do not readily occur to the untrained amateur except as the result of much costly experience) to be a material help to him.

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WOOD-WORKING FOR BEGINNERS

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PART I
A WORKSHOP FOR AMATEURS

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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

When one has made up his mind to make something, he usually wants to begin work at once; so, as I wish you to read this chapter, I will make it quite short. There is a great deal in getting started right, and there are some things to bear in mind if you wish to do good work, as of course you do.

One thing is not to be in too much of a hurry to begin the actual sawing and pounding. The old Latin phrase, "Festina lente" (make haste slowly), is a capital motto for the beginner. Do not wait until your enthusiasm has oozed away, of course, but do stop long enough to think how you are going to make a thing before you begin to saw.

The workman who thinks first and acts afterwards is the one who usually turns out good work, while the one who begins to work without any reflection (as boys, and even men, have been known to do) is apt to spend much of his time in undoing his work, and usually does not get through till after the one who laid it out properly in the first place.[2]

If Homer, in the quotation at the head of this chapter, had been writing about the way boys' work is sometimes done, he might, perhaps, have reversed the positions of some of the words and made "swiftness" and "numerous strokes" the subjects of his emphasis. He has expressed well enough, however, the way that your work should be done, and it is one aim of this book to give you useful hints to that end.

Do not spend your time in working out a lot of set exercises, like joints and odd pieces that do not belong to anything in particular, merely for practice. You will be much more apt to put the right spirit into your work when you make complete and useful articles, and you will get the same practice and experience in the end. There is no need, however, to go through a deal of toilsome experience just to learn a number of simple little things that you might just as well be told in the first place. Begin the process of learning by experience after you have learned what you can from the experience of others. Begin, so far as you can, where others have left off.

Before you begin work it may be interesting to look for a moment at the way boys did their work from fifty to one hundred years ago. Have you read the books by Elijah Kellogg? The reason for speaking of these old-fashioned books is because of the picture they give of the time, not so very long ago, when boys and their elders made all sorts of things which they buy to-day, and also because of the good idea they give of how boys got along generally when they had to shift more for themselves than they do nowadays.

The majority of the boys of that time, not merely on Casco Bay, where Mr. Kellogg places the scenes of his stories, but in hundreds of other places, had to make many things themselves or go without. Of course there was a smaller number in the cities and larger towns who had no good opportunity to make things and were obliged to buy what they could afford (out of what we should call a quite limited variety), or to get the carpenter or other mechanic to make what they needed. But the majority of the boys of that time made things well and had a good time making them. The life they led made them capital "all-round" boys. They could turn their hands, and their heads too, to almost any kind of work, and do it pretty well.

Boys did a good deal of whittling then. This habit, as you doubtless know, still clung to them after they grew up, and opening a jack-knife and beginning to whittle was a common diversion whenever the men rested, whether at the country-store or in the barn or dooryard or at their own firesides. You can see the same habit to-day in some places. The boys whittled splint-brooms of birch in Colonial days in almost every household.