IT is as natural for boys to want to make things as it is for girls to play with dolls,- a thing the boy abhors. Nearly every man, if he just thinks back a little, can remember how he made, or tried to make, something when he was a boy. Whether he ever finished it or not, the memory of the work is one of a good time.

A description of something to make is more interesting to a boy than any story, - so long as the thing he is reading about is something that will go.

Ever play store? Ever run a real store? A sand store or a lemonade stand? Of course you have, and it is fun too.

I remember a store like that some of us youngsters fixed up when I was a boy. This one was a butcher shop and put up in the empty haymow of the barn.

We fashioned great butchers' cleavers from shingles and siding, with which we cut Hamburg and made sausages, and made long wooden knives, of murderous size and outline, that were used to cut up "steaks" from the biggest potatoes we could find in the bin.

For a chopping block we used chunks of wood from the woodpile, and we weighed out our sales carefully on homemade balances.

Of tin we fashioned a butcher's saw. Our money - made from paper rubbed over a coin with a pencil - was sent up to the cashier by a real cash carrier running on a wire. That was before the days when cash registers were known to us, or I suppose we would have had one of them.

But the scales were the thing, and lucky was the one whose turn it came to keep store and who could weigh out the purchases. For the benefit of those boys who like to play store, I'm going to tell about those scales.

By making them with a steel spring instead of the rubber band and taking a little care with the bearings, these could be made fairly accurate and graduated with real weights from the grocery store; but for our toy store any unit of weight will do.

Completed Cigar-box Scales Showing how the Parts Fit Together

The completed scales are shown in Figure 1. The box part below, as you can see, is a cigar box. The platform P is a piece of inch wood, cut to shape and fastened to an inch-square post g as in Figures 2 and 3.

This post is held by a three-cornered wooden piece I below, and is pivoted to it at m. Above, the post g is steered straight by a wire lever T.

Both T and I are pivoted to the sides of the cigar box inside at the left - the wire T by the little bent parts p and the lever I by brads n.

The right-hand end of the lever I goes clear to the right-hand end of the box in the middle; and at, or to one side of, its end a post A rises as in Figure 3.

On top of this post and fastened in place, as shown, are two dials of stiff pasteboard or tin with a wheel or large spool between them, as at W.

On the shaft of this spool are the hands H, one on either end, so the weight can be read from either side, and these turn with the spool.

Now from the end of the lever I down in the box a string runs up and around the wheel W, ending in a stout rubber band on the other side and fastened as shown in Figure 4. at R.

CUT IN TWO FIG. 3

This rubber should be just tight enough to hold up the weight of the platform P and the levers below, so that the levers will be as high as they can go when the hand on the dial *s straight up and down, or at zero.

You can see now how the scales work.

If you put any weight on the platform Py it will push the lever I down and pull the string E that connects I with the rubber band after passing around the spool W.

This pull on the string will stretch the band and, as the band stretches and the string pulls, the spool W will turn and thus turn the hand on the dial.

The string will pull until the weight on the platform balances the pull of the rubber. By looking at the dial then and seeing where the hand points, you can show your customer "two pounds" or "two pounds and a half" with as much pride as the real storekeeper.

The parts of the scales, now that we know how they work, are not hard to make.

The wire for T is ordinary baled hay wire or the like. The platform P is fastened to the stick or post g by a single flat-headed screw.

g is joined to I below by the joint indicated in Figure 2, which shows a wire or brad m, Figure 3, running through a hole near the bottom of g, which, in turn, is sticking through a hole in I - a loose fit.

Thus the wire and the brad m act as the axle or pivot, and a couple of pins or brads on either side, as shown, will keep it from sliding out of place.

The size and dimensions I must leave to you, for they will depend on the size of your cigar box.

The wheel W above can be cut from an old curtain rod or you can use a large spool.

Make the stick or post A thick enough so that the dials will be far enough apart to permit the spool to fit loosely between them.

Plug up the hole in the center of the spool, drive darning needles in the exact centers, and slip your dials, which have been cut as directed from heavy pasteboard or tin, over the needles by means of small holes in the centers of the dials.

If you like you can enlarge on a piece of paper the dial in the illustration and use it, pasting it on the tin or pasteboard.

The hand or pointers are glued to small pieces of cork and slipped over the ends of the darning needles after the dials are nailed in position on top of the post A. The pattern for the hands is shown separate, Figure 6.

The rest is easy. You can leave the cover on the box or not, as you see fit, by cutting holes for the posts A and g and fitting it on in halves.