Handicraft For Boys | by A. Frederick Collins

A Word To The Boy

Your life, if you live it like the average boy, is split up into four parts and these are (1) eating, (2) sleeping, (3) working and (4) playing. Now I haven't a word to say about the first three ph...

Chapter I. Carpentry Work And Cabinet Making

Did you ever think about what you'd do if you were shipwrecked on a tropical island like Robinson Crusoe ? Well, if you had a good, strong pocket-knife with you it wouldn't be so terribly bad and i...

The Carpentry Tools You Need

It is a great mistake to go out and buy a cheap chest of tools of whatever size for while there is always a large number of tools in it they are usually of a very poor quality. If you can afford to...

Some Hints on Using Tools

Since I have used tools ever since I was old enough to hold a hammer I can easily tell you just how you should handle them but to become a skilled workman you must be willing to do the rest and that i...

How to Make a Glue-Pot

In these days of preparedness it is easier to buy ready made glue than it is to make it yourself; moreover it is just about as cheap, nearly as good and certainly far less trouble. If you insist on...

How to Sharpen Your Tools

You must have sharp tools if you expect to do a job like a carpenter or a cabinet maker. About Sharpening Saws This is done by filing the teeth with a hand saw taper file and the saw must be hel...

How to Take Care of Your Tools

If your workshop is nice and dry you don't need to put your tools away in a chest or a cabinet after you get through using them each time. But if you use them only once in awhile it is a good plan ...

Kinds of Wood to Use

There are many kinds of woods and each one has its special use in the arts and crafts. For carpentry and cabinet making you will probably not use more than half-a-dozen woods and these are, (1) pine; ...

How to Make Joints

The word joint in woodworking means the place where two or more pieces of wood are fitted together, and hence the words joiner and joinery in woodworking parlance. A The Square Or Butt Jo...

About Working Drawings

When most boys -to say nothing of the majority of men - start to make something they simply knit their eyebrows (not highbrows) and think out how it will look in the concrete - that is when it is all...

Things for You to Make

When you have your workshop ready, your tools at hand, the foregoing ideas of woods in your mind and know about simple working drawings you can go ahead and make things and your first job will probabl...

How to Make a Work Bench

Go to a lumber yard or a planing mill and get one 2 x 2 scantling 12 feet long for the legs, and two 2 x 2 scantlings for the cross bars and the side bars; the middle cross bar can be any kind of a th...

How to Make a Tool Chest

Either birch or chestnut are good woods to make your tool chest of. Make the box, that is the lower part of the chest, and the lid for it of 3/4 inch thick stuff; have the box 9 Fig. 7a. A ...

Chapter II. Scroll Sawing, Wood Turning, Wood Carving, Etc.

As you may have observed, it takes a pretty good sized room for a shop and quite a lot of tools to do carpenter work and cabinet making. Now if you find it hard to get these things don't be discour...

All About Scroll Sawing

Scroll sawing, fret sawing and jig sawing all mean precisely the same thing and that is sawing interlaced and ornamental designs out of wood, or fretwork as it is called. With a scroll saw fram...

A Few Other Helpful Things

A Hand Saw-Table You can saw out your designs much more easily and neatly if you use a hand saw table as shown in Fig. 10. This is a board about 4 x 6 inches on the sides with a V sawed out of o...

How to Trace a Design on Wood

You can draw your own designs or buy them printed ready to use. In either case you must transfer the design to the surface of the wood you are going to saw. To do this lay a sheet of carbon...

Scroll Saws

Foot-Power Scroll Saws There are several makes of foot-power scroll saws on the market and the prices of these range from $4.50 to $25. The Cricket Scroll Saw This is the cheapest foot-power ...

The Fleetwood Scroll Saw

This is the best and consequently the most expensive foot power scroll saw made. It has a swing of nearly 16 inches. It is fitted with a tilting table, a vertical drill and a blowing attachment. ...

Fancy Woods for Scroll Saw Work

Price per foot Name planed to 1/16 to 1/8 in. a thick 3/16 in. less of 1/4 in. Poplar, or White Wood o...

Turning in Wood

And now we come to another and highly fascinating kind of wood-work and this is to spin a stick of wood in a lathe and shape it with a chisel or gouge, or wood turning as it is called. While the ou...

How a Lathe is Made

A wood turning lathe consists of four principal parts, and these are (1) the headstock; (2) the rest; (3) the tailstock; (4) the bed and (5) the stand, the first three parts of which are shown in Fig....

Turning Tools for Wood

The tools used for turning wood 13 are simply chisels and gouges. The chisels are made with four kinds of points, namely, (1) skew point; (2) round point; (3) square point, and (4) spear point, and th...

How to Turn Wood

Before you can turn out a really good job on a lathe you must practice awhile. A good thing to try your hand on is to make some tool handles. The size of these will, of course, depend on what you inte...

The Art Of Wood Carving

Carving is by all odds the hardest of all woodworking processes to learn and yet there are some simple forms of it that are at once easy to do and pretty to look at. While carving is an art in itself ...

The Best Woods for Carving

A wood that is suitable for carving must be tough, even grained and free from knots. For a beginner, and I guess you are one, yellow pine is a good wood to practice on as it is soft and easy to work b...

Chip Carving

You will need only three tools for chip carving and these are (1) a 1/4 inch chisel; (2) a parting tool and (3) a veining tool. The first thing is to get the design you want to carve on the boa...

Panel Carving

In this kind of carving leaves, berries, scrolls and the like are carved out of the surface of the board and as the ground is sunk these objects stand out in relief. Begin by drawing, or transferri...

Carving in Solid Wood

This ranges all the way from carving simple leaves as shown at D to the human form divine. To carve out leaves on a flat surface draw the design as before and carve them out with your gouge to look...

Pyrography, Or Wood Burning

This is a simple and pleasing art and one that is easy to practice. It gets its didactic name from the Greek word pyro, which means fire, and graph, to write, that is writing with fire, ...

Coloring and Staining Wood

Stains and dyes of all colors can be bought of the Devoe and Reynolds Company, 101 Fulton Street, New York. Ebony Stain Brush the wood with a saturated solution of ferrous-sulphate and it will m...

Chapter III. Metals And Metal Working

There is something about working metals that makes a tremendously strong appeal to a fellow and yet it is just as easy to fashion these elements as it is to shape wood, that is, if you have the right ...

The Various Kinds of Tools

Metal working tools are tempered harder than wood working tools and are made of what is known as tool-steel. For your kit of machinists' tools get (1) a ball pein hammer which weights about 8 ounce...

Some Hints on Using the Tools

(1) When you want to rivet something use the ball pein end of the hammer to pound down the end of the rivet as this will spread it out in every direction evenly and you can make is nice and round. (2)...

Metals and their Uses

Like woods each metal has its especial uses and it will depend largely on what you are going to make as to the kind of metal you should make it of. There are five chief metals and a couple of alloy...

Copper

This metal is found in a pure state in large quantities around Lake Superior in the United States and in Chili, South America. It is a fairly hard metal of a reddish color, has a high luster, is malle...

Aluminum

This metal is found everywhere in nature but as it is never found free it is only in the last few years that it has been extracted in large quantities and cheaply enough to bring it into use. It ha...

A Few Useful Alloys

When two or more metals are melted together and mixed they form what is called an alloy. Brass This well known alloy is made by mixing zinc with copper. There are twenty or more different kinds ...

How to Do Metal Work

Now that you know about tools and the properties of metals there are a few other little things which, if you will bear them in mind, will enable you to make nearly anything you want to. The first has ...

Sheet Metal Work

Cutting and Sawing After having traced or otherwise marked out the design or shape you want on the sheet of metal with the sharp point of your center punch or an awl, or scribed it with your divide...

How to Solder Metals

The great secret in soldering metals is to have them perfectly clean and then if you use the right kind of flux and the proper solder you will not have any trouble. Fluxes Ater you have cleaned ...

Bolts and Rivets

Where two pieces of metal are to be fixed together so that they can be taken apart again, machine screws with nuts on them, or bolts,22 will be found useful. A good kind of rivet for small work is ...

Bending Sheet Metal

To bend a metal sheet put it on a wood or metal form and pound it into shape with a wooden mallet. The edges of a piece of sheet metal can be bent either by pounding it over the sharp corner of an ...

Finishing Up Metals

Of course all the rough parts must be smoothed up with a file; then use emery paper or emery cloth to rub out the file marks and finally finish off the surface by polishing it with crocus 23 put on wi...

Lacquering Brass and Copper

To lacquer a brass or a copper article dip it in a weak solution of sulphuric acid and water and then wash it in clean water. Next put the article on a piece of sheet iron and heat it over a gas jet o...

How to Make the Lacquer

Put 1 ounce of tumeric powder, 2 drams of annatto and 2 drams of saffron into 1 pint of alcohol. Let it stand for a week or 10 days and shake it often; pour the clear liquid into a bottle and put i...

Chapter IV. Venetian Bent Iron Work

A very pretty and most useful kind of ornamental iron work came into vogue in Venice, Italy, a long time ago, and as it is easy to do and you need only a few tools and inexpensive materials to do it w...

How to Make a Toaster

This is a good piece of work to start with because it is formed chiefly of straight lines. Draw a plan of it as shown in Fig. 31, full size and then measure the frame and the inside strips - you will...

How to Make an Egg Boiler

Having made the toaster you are ready to try your hand at something a little harder and a good design for your next piece of work is an egg boiler. The picture may look a little complicated but as ...

How to Make a Venetian Plate Holder

To make this plate holder you will have to add a hand drill, a 1/8 inch twist drill, and a center punch -which are described in Chapter III - to your list of tools. Fig. 33. An Artistic ...

A Dead Black Finish for Iron Work

Get 25 cents' worth of japan gold size and 10 cents' worth of pure drop black ground in turpentine and mix them together. 27 Mural means anything that is supported by or has to do with a wall. ...

Tools Needed for Repousse Work

Very few tools are needed for this kind of work but it is important to use the right kind. The repousse hammer is a jeweler's hammer which has one end, or face of it flat and the other rounded like...

Tracing the Design

After you have drawn the design on the sheet of metal either with a pencil or by means of transfer paper you can begin to trace the design by punching it with the straight and curved edge chisels. ...

Bossing the Work

After you have traced the outline of the design with the chisels hold the plate over an alcohol or a Bunsen flame and when it is hot enough you can take it off of the cement. Then cement it to the ...

How to Make a Flat Candlestick

This is a good piece of work for you to start with because it is at once simple, artistic and more or less useful. To make it, cut out a sheet of brass 6 1/2 inches square and draw a spider and his we...

How to Make a Photo Frame

The front of this frame can be made of brass, copper or German silver and the back of it can be made of a sheet of tin or brass. You can make the frame round, oblong or square and with a round or a...

Pierced Metal Work

This is by all odds the simplest and easiest of all art metal work and you won't need any practice to make a good job; then the tools and materials cost but very little and the finished work is really...

Casting And Working Pewter

Since nearly all metals excepting tin and lead have high melting points, it is hard to melt them unless you have a regular furnace. Something About Pewter But casting metals is a fascinating pro...

Making the Mold

Lay the drag, that is the lower half of the flask, on a board or a table; mix dental plaster of Paris with water until it is about as thick as batter and fill the drag with it. Just before the plas...

Engraving On Metal

Engraving on metal is a beautiful art. The method is simple and the effect is striking but it requires a good deal of patience and long practice to do really good work. Fig. 41. Tools For...

Chapter V. Drawing Simply Explained

Free-hand Drawing A picture made by the hand and eye and without the aid of a rule and compass is called free-hand drawing. To be able to do free-hand drawing is one of the nicest accomplishment...

The Proportions of the Human Figure

If you will remember when you are drawing a picture of the human form that the whole figure from neck to toe should be 7 times as long as the head; that the body proper, or torso as it is called, is 4...

Sketching Still Life Objects

It is always more or less hard to sketch inanimate objects with anything like a true portrayal of them from memory but it is quite easy to do so if you have the object itself set up before you to patt...

The Vanishing Point

So when you draw a box or any other object in perspective the lines will meet if you draw them out far enough and then vanish, and hence this is called the vanishing point. To find the vanishing po...

Working Drawings

And now we come to drawings of another kind and these are not intended to please the eye but to work from, hence they are called working drawings. When most boys, and many men, want to make anythin...

Drawing Tools You Should Have

Drawing instruments, or drawing tools as they are commonly called, consist for the most part of (1) one or more pairs of dividers; (2) one or more pairs of compasses with pen and pencil points, a...

Making Plan Drawings

Suppose now you want to draw the plans of a box which, let's imagine, is to be 5 inches high, 6 inches wide and 8 inches long. The first thing to do is to draw out a view of the bottom, which also ser...

Isometric Perspective Drawings

The kind of perspective drawings I told you how to do under the caption of Drawing in Perspective is true perspective but engineers do drawings which they call isometric perspective, that is, while th...

How to Draw a Circle

Should you ever want to draw a circle and have no compasses at hand or should you want to draw a larger circle than you can with your compasses tie a bit of strong thread to a pin, make a loop in the ...

How to Draw a Spiral

Make a loop in one end of a thread as before and tie the other end tightly to a large pin; wind the thread around the pin until all of it is on except the loop; push the pin through the paper on which...

How to Draw an Ellipse

An ellipse can be drawn in the same way as a circle, that is, by means of a string; but instead of one pin you will need two and each pin is driven in at the foci of the ellipse you are to draw as sho...

How to Make and Use a Pantagraph

A panta-graph is a simple mechanical linkage for enlarging, copying or reducing the size of a picture. It is shown in Fig. 51. To make one of these instruments get four strips of wood about 1/8 inc...

How to Make a Reflecting Drawing Board

This is a very simple and easily made optical apparatus for copying pictures and making drawings of flat objects. Get a smooth board, or your drawing board will do; make a wood frame and fit an 8 x...

How to Make Tracings

A very easy and effective way to copy any picture already drawn, or even a photograph, in line, is to use tracing paper. This kind of paper, which you can buy of any dealer in drawing materials, is...

To Make Lasting Impressions

Here is an easy way to make lasting impressions of your own and your friends' finger prints and hands. Take a sheet of heavy glazed white paper, say 5 x 7 inches, and hold it over a kerosene lamp w...

The Ancient and Honored Art of Cutting Silhouettes

Since you are of the younger generation let me tell you just what a silhouette is, and why. It is a profile, or side view, of the head of a person cut out of black paper and mounted on a white card...

Transfer Pictures, or Decalcomania

Of course you know what transfer pictures are. There are very few boys indeed who have not bought and used little 5 cent packages of jim-crow transfer pictures and you will remember that usually only ...

How to Transfer the Pictures

The regular pictures can be transferred to wood, metal, painted surfaces, etc., but instead of soaking them in water alone as you used to with the toy pictures you give the face of them a very thin co...

Chapter VI. Some Kinks In Photography

Since the slogan you press the button and we'll do the rest has come to be so well known everybody makes photographs. But there are a number of kinks in and side issues of photography that are amusing...

How to Make Blue Prints

This is the very simplest and one of the most useful kinds of photography. You need but very little material to make the pictures with and the little you need will cost less than a dollar. ...

Another Kind of Contact Printing

If you like nature you can use the above process of contact printing to fine advantage. Instead of blue paper it is better to use what is known as solio paper42 or silver paper.43 To make a contact...

How To Tone and Fix the Picture

To tone a silver print means to change its color and give it more brilliancy and this is done by putting it in a chemical solution made of chloride of gold, or toning bath as it is called. To fix a...

The Simplest Kind of a Camera

When you can buy a real camera for two or three dollars it seems of little use to make one, so just consider the camera I shall describe as a scientific curiosity rather than an apparatus of utility. ...

How to Develop a Dry Plate

Next take your camera into your dark-room and develop the plate, that is, immerse it in a chemical solution called a developer to bring the picture out on it. To do this you must get a tray and put th...

How to Make the Developer

You can make a good, tried and true developer in two solutions as follows: Pyro Solution, A Take 1 ounce of pyrogallic acid, called pyro for short, dissolve it in 28 ounces of water and then add...

A Good and Cheap Camera

To take real pictures you want a real camera. Now there are many kinds of hand cameras but there is only one size that I am going to try to interest you in and that is one which will make pictures 31/...

How to Make an Enlarging Apparatus

To make an enlarged picture of a small negative take out the back of your camera and get two perfectly clear sheets of glass to fit the opening. 50 With this kind of a camera you can see the object...

How to Make an Enlargement

When you have the apparatus ready set the camera and the illuminator, as the box with the light in it is called, on another table. Put the negative between two plain sheets of glass and then fasten th...

A Developer for Bromide Paper

A good stock solution developer for bromide paper, velox paper, films and dry plates can be made by adding these chemicals to 25 ounces of hot water in the order named and stirring in each one until...

How to Make a Reflectoscope

A reflectoscope is a kind of magic lantern but instead of using transparent glass slides you can use any picture or opaque object such as the works of a watch, your hand, etc, and throw an image of it...

How to Make a Magic Lantern

To make a magic lantern out of a camera is just as easy as it is to make a reflectoscope but you will have to buy a condensing lens58 and this will cost 50 cents to $1.00, according to size. For th...

How to Make Radium Photographs

You can make radium photographs, or skiagraphs as they are called, with any one of a number of radioactive substances and at a very small outlay. 59 A stereopticon is really two magic lanterns, but...

Spirit Photographs

When photography was young Sir John Herschel, the great astronomer, got up what he called magic photographs and these have been worked under the name of spirit photographs by half of the mediums in th...

One Way to Catch Big Fish

Of course you know that when an object very near the camera is photographed it will look proportionately larger than when it is photographed a little way off from it. It is simply a case of exaggerate...

Taking Caricature Photographs

The word caricature (pronounced care'-i-ca-ture) means a portrait in which some part of it is distorted so that it produces a comical effect. Now there are a lot of ways to make photographic carica...

Chapter VII. Printing And Its Allied Arts

If there ever was a boy who did not want a printing press I have yet to meet him. Ever since the day when Gutenburg62 invented movable types, and that was some 500 years ago, every boy - and not a few...

The Parts of a Self-Inking Press

The Excelsior is the name of a small self-inking printing press that has been on the market for 50 years and it is a good one. The description of it which follows will fit any other model self-inking ...

How the Press Works

Let's suppose now, that you have the type set in the chase and the chase is fixed in the press; that you have put some ink on the ink-table and a card or a sheet of paper on the platen. Now when yo...

The Press Outfit You Need

Your outfit will, of course, depend largely on the size of press you have. Outfit for a 3 x 5 Press A couple of dollars will buy all the fixtures you need and these consist of (a) a font of type...

About Type and Setting Type

Relative Number of Type Letters In looking over type catalogues you will see that the fonts are listed as 4A, or 8A-10A, etc. Now this means that in the 4A font there are 4 capital A letters and th...

The Sizes of Type

Type is made in standard sizes and not so very long ago each size was known by a name. Then a change was made and the point system,63 as it is called, came into general use. The sizes under the old an...

Your Type Cases

There are two kinds of type cases and these are made to hold (1) the capital, or upper case letters, and (2) the small or lower case letters. The reason the capitals are called upper case letters i...

Setting the Type

Where you have more than one line to set you should by all means use a composing stick and a small one will cost you a dollar. It should be held in the left hand as shown in Fig. 67, that is, with the...

How to Clean Type

As soon as you have printed a job take the chase from the press and before you unlock the form rub the face of the type with a rag dipped in benzine, or turpentine and when all the ink and smut is gon...

The Ink and Rollers

The Ink While 01 course you will buy your ink all ready to use you may like to know how it is made. Here's a recipe for a printing ink that is as old as the hills and as good as gold: Balsam of cap...

Printing in Colors

Printing in two or more colors, or color printing, is not only interesting work to do, but profitable, since you can easily get orders for it. It is a little harder to do a good job with colored inks ...

And Finally Your Stock Supply

You will need a supply of both visiting and business cards; paper for labels, handbills and newspapers - that is, if you intend to print one - and paper for bill-heads, statements, letter-heads and e...

The Art of Paper Making

Of course you know what paper looks like and how it feels, but it is not so likely that you know what it is and how it is made; but paper making is an art so old, so wonderful and so useful, that you ...

How to Bind Books

If you will look at this book carefully you will conclude that it would be next to impossible to bind one that would even faintly resemble it. But while I do not want you to believe that you can do a ...

Chapter VIII. How to Make Rubber Stamps

A rubber stamp is type matter molded in rubber which is then mounted on a block with a handle as shown in Fig. 77. When the stamp is inked and then pressed on a smooth surface it leaves an impression ...

To Make an Ink Pad

Cut out two blocks of pine wood each of which is 1/4 inch thick, 2 inches wide and 3 inches long; cut out four strips of woolen cloth 2 x 3 inches, lay two of the strips on each block and then cover t...

To Make Rubber Stamp Inks

A Black Ink Mix 3 parts of lampblack with 7 parts of olive oil. A Red Ink Mix 2 parts of vermilion with 3 parts of olive oil. A Blue Ink Mix 3 parts of aniline blue and 6 parts of oleic...

How to Make a Copygraph Pad

A copy graph pad, or hectograph, as it is often called - from the Greek hekaton which means 100, and graph to write, hence to write a hundred - is a gelatine pad for duplicating a letter or a drawing....

How to Copy a Letter

You must write your letter with a special aniline ink, called hectograph ink, and use a new steel pen to do it with. While the writing is getting dry take a small clean sponge, wet it with cold wat...

How to Make Hectograph Inks

Black Ink Mix 10 parts of methyl violet; 20 parts of nigrosene; 30 parts of glycerine; 5 parts of gum arabic and 60 parts of alcohol. Heat it until the anilines are dissolved and stir until all are...

Die Sinking. How to Make Badges, Etc.

It is fascinating work to sink a name into a piece of sheet metal with steel dies and yet it is very easy if you have the tools and you can make some money out of it too, for every boy wants a badge o...

How to Make a Burning Brand

A burning brand is useful to mark the handles of tools, boxes or anything made of wood by burning a name or a design into them. To make a burning brand, say with your initials on it, make a cardboa...

Stencils

A stencil is a piece of heavy paper or thin sheet of metal in which letters or a design are cut through with broken lines, and it is used for marking the letters or design on any smooth surface by dau...

Chapter IX. The Art Of Working Glass

One of the most fascinating of the mechanical arts is working in glass. One reason for this is because it is a substance so beautiful, so hard and so fragile that it seems to the ordinary observer to ...

How to Cut Glass

About the simplest and most useful process for you to know is how to cut glass. To cut window glass you need (1) a glass cutter; (2) a drawing board and (3) a T square. There are two kinds of glass...

How to Drill Holes in Glass

To drill a hole through a sheet of glass make a layer of putty 1/2 an inch thick and as large as the sheet you are going to drill and lay the glass on it. The idea of using the bed of putty is to a...

How to Cut Glass Tubing

The First Way A simple way to cut, or rather break off a piece of glass tube evenly is to make a cut all round the tube with a three-cornered file92 and you can break it off at the line without tro...

How to Cut Glass Disks

By sawing out a round board, laying it flat on a sheet of glass and running your glass cutter around the edge of the pattern you can cut out an approximately round disk of glass. Fig. 86. ...

How to Bend Glass Tubing

It is useful to know how to bend a piece of glass tubing, especially if you are interested in chemistry and want to set up some apparatus - in fact you should know how before you ever start to experi...

To Round the Ends of a Tube

When you cut a tube either with a file or a glass cutter the edge of the end will be sharp but not smooth. All you have to do to round it is to heat it in the flame until it begins to melt, when the g...

To Make a Glass Nozzle

In setting up chemical apparatus it very often happens that a glass nozzle is needed. To make a nozzle seal off a piece of glass tube as described above and by nicking it with a file you can have t...

To Make a Hole in a Tube

To make a hole of any size in a tube, or piercing it, as it is called, you ought to have a sharp pointed flame and a. blow-pipe, which is described farther on. Cork up one end of the tube, heat the...

To Join Two Tubes of the Same Size

Put a cork into one end of one of the tubes and hold the other end in the flame as well as one end of the other tube as shown at A in Fig. 91. Let the ends of the tubes get hot enough to melt but n...

How to Make a Blow-Pipe

To Blow a Bulb on the End of a Tube For blowing bulbs on tubes, for flasks and the like, you need a regular glassblower's blow-pipe in order to get a hotter flame than a Bunsen burner gives. ...

How to Blow a Bulb

Take a good piece of glass tube about 3/4 inch in diameter and 15 inches long; draw one end out long and thin for about 3 inches as shown at A in Fig. 93. Then heat a small part of the tube in a la...

How to Etch Glass

There are two ways to etch glass and these are (i) with a sand blast and (2) with acid. The Sand Blast Process The process which follows is a simplified form of the regular sand-blast way of doi...

How to Make Ground Glass

To make ground glass go about it as above described but in this case no stencil is needed. The Acid Process Hydrofluoric acid is made by treating fluor-spar,97 with sulphuric acid. The acid whic...

How to Cement Glass

To cement glass clean the edges or surfaces to be fixed together with hot water in which you have put a little soda; dry well with a clean cloth and then be careful not to let your fingers touch the c...

A Simple Way to Frost Glass

Make a saturated solution of alum, water, which means to dissolve as much alum in hot water as possible. Lay the glass on a perfectly level table and pour on as much of the alum water as you can wi...

Substitutes for Glass

There are a number of substances that can be used instead of glass. In some cases a substitute is better than glass but generally they are used because they are cheaper. Mica This mineral, which...

How to Silver a Mirror

While it is much cheaper to buy a mirror than it is to make one still there are times when it is useful to know how to make one. As you know, a mirror is a sheet of clear glass free from air bubble...

Chapter X. Toys For The Kiddies

If there is as much pleasure in giving as there is in receiving you can get twice as much pleasure out of making toys with your own hands and giving them to your little brothers and sisters - if you ...

How to Make a Policeman's Puzzle

Get two strips of wood 1/4 inch thick, 1/2 an inch wide and II inches long and cut handles on one end of each strip. Saw with your scroll saw out of 1/8 inch thick wood, two policemen 6 inches hi...

How to Make an Automobile Truck

This little toy will bring a lot of unalloyed joy to any tiny, weentie fellow and it's easy to make, too. Cut out a board for the bottom 3/4 inch thick, 4 1/2 inches wide and 14 inches long; trim d...

How to Make a Swell Coaster

This is a practical toy that every little tot will like immensely. It is just as simple as the automobile but it must be made very much stronger. Fig. 98. Plans For A Swell Coaster G...

How to Make a Nifty Wheelbarrow

This is a cute wheelbarrow and will tickle any little choptie 'most half to death and you can make it in no time. Get two sticks of wood 3/4 inch square and 24 inches long and round off one end of ...

How to Make a High-Low Swing

Here is a peace promoter and a queller of disturbances wherever there are very little kiddies around. It is an indoor swing that can be hung from the top of a doorcase. Further, though it may look a l...

How to Make a Stick Horse

This is a great improvement over riding a broomstick because it doesn't take so much imagination to change it into a runaway horse. Saw out of a board 5 inches square the head of a fiery steed as s...

How to Make a Pony and Cart

If this little pony and cart are to be played with in the house you can make it the size marked in Fig. 102 but if it is to be used out-of-doors then you should make it twice the size. Get a nice s...

How to Make a Life-like Goose

Nearly all geese, including goslings, are lifelike unless they are being made ready for the pot but this gray-goose is lifelike in that her head moves out from and back toward her body when she is dra...

How to Make a Wireless Pup

This is a most remarkable bull-pup for he will jump out of the kennel when you or any one else calls him, when you clap your hands or on any other occasion when a loud noise is made. Always make a ...

Chapter XI Home Made Musical Instruments

There is music in everything if you only know how to get it out without cracking it. When a small boy beats a pie-pan with a stick, or drums on a wooden fence he is making music, only the neighbors wo...

The Musical Coins

How to Make Them A simple and very pleasing way to show that there is music even in cold brass is to take a piece of sheet brass, or, better, sheet steel, about 1/16 inch thick and scribe on it wit...

The Musical Tomato Cans

How to Make Them The musical tomato cans make a bombastic instrument - very bombastic I should say. Be that Fig. 107. THE CHOPIN TOMATO CAN as it may, get eight tomato cans, soak ...

The Musical Glasses

How to Make Them Different from the tomato cans, the musical glasses make about the sweetest music ever heard. To make a set get eight very thin glass goblets and mount them on a board 12 inches wi...

The Tubular Harp

How to Make It This easily made instrument gives out tones very much like those of the musical glasses but they are much deeper and louder. Fig. 109 A, B. The Harp Of A Thousand ...

The Musical Push Pipe

How to Make It This musical instrument is an organ pipe but it is played like a slide trombone, that is by pushing in and pulling out a slide that fits inside of it. Spruce is the best wood to m...

The Curious Xylophone

How to Make It This instrument, which is pronounced zil-o-fon', is cheap to make or buy 107 and is easy to learn to play. To make one cut off fifteen bars of a stick of maple 1/2 an inch thick, ...

The Peculiar Tubaphone

How to Make It By using brass tubes, or better, tubes made of bell metal, you can have a xylophone of another order. Use tubing 3/4 inch in diameter and have the first one 5 inches long for the fun...

The Cathedral Chimes

How to Make Them This is one of the easiest musical instruments to make and the music produced by it is impressive in its tone and depth. To make it saw off a board, 3/4 or 7/8 inch thic...

The Aeolian Harp

How to Make It This harp is of very ancient origin and it gets its name from AEolus who, in classic mythology, was the father of the winds, and very appropriately is it named, too, for it is the wi...

An Egyptian Fiddle

How to Make It The early Egyptians invented the fiddle, or rebab as they called it, but they did not play it with a bow. Later in medieval times, that is in about the 9th century, this fiddle came ...

Chapter XII. Some Evening Entertainments

There is a feature of home life that the heads of too many families overlook and that is getting together and having an evening of entertainment which the youngest as well as the oldest member can enj...

Cartoons While You Wait

This is a good feature to start off your season's divertisements with. Make a substantial easel on which to set a large drawing board as shown in Fig. 116, or you can fasten the paper to a wall with t...

Thirty Minutes of Chemistry

Here are some very pretty and easily made experiments in chemistry and as you perform them you can give the explanation I have written about each one which will serve as the patter. The Mystic Glas...

The Magic Fountain

The Effect You show an empty bottle, or Florence flask, and then push a cork with two holes in it into the mouth of the bottle. Next push a glass tube having a nozzle on one end through one of the ...

The Vicious Soap Bubbles

The Effect Show a dish of soap-suds and then blow bubbles with the apparatus described below. When the bubbles take on a size of about 3 inches in diameter shake them off and they will rise slow...

The Uncanny Wheel

The Effect A pitcher is shown full of emptiness and then a cardboard wheel, 4 inches in diameter, with buckets, or cones 1 inch high and 3/4 inch across glued to the rim and which is mounted on a w...

Giving a Travelogue

A travelogue is simply a talk on travel, or on a country, illustrated with pictures of some kind. To be able to give a travel talk does not mean necessarily that you must have traveled or been in t...

An Electrical Soiree

Experiments in electricity are always interesting to all however young or old, for of all the powers that have been harnessed by man it is the least tangible and yet the effects produced by it are the...

Demonstrating Electricity Without Apparatus

Did you ever rub a cat in a dark room in the winter and see the sparks fly? Well this is one way to make electricity without apparatus though you need a cat125 to do it with. 122 Sets of lantern sl...

How Like Repels Like

Electrify two strips of newspaper this time and hold them together by the ends. Instantly the free ends of the papers will fly apart for like signs of electricity repel each other. That is, since b...

The Induction, or Spark Coil

An induction coil is an apparatus for changing a direct low pressure, but large quantity current from a battery into an alternating high pressure but small quantity current, which is called high tensi...

Demonstrating Wireless Telegraphy

All you have to do to make your induction coil into a wireless transmitter, that is, the sending apparatus, is to put a couple of brass balls on the points of the spark-gap, fasten a wire to one of th...

Reading Palms for Fun

Many years ago when P. T. Barnum was exhibiting a sacred white elephant, which was nothing more nor less than a small Indian elephant covered with whitewash, and the good folks were breaking their nec...

How to Read Palms

There are two things which you should learn before you begin to read palms and these are (1) the names of the different parts of the hand, and (2) the lines and mounts of the hand. The names given ...

A Talk on the Steam Engine

For your final evening entertainment give a thumb-nail lecture on steam and the steam-engine. You will find every one is interested in steam because it is one of the great prime movers but there ar...