ARTICLES TO BE MADE IN THE WORKSHOP
Even if you are able to use tools quite well, you may still not know how
to go to work to make some particular thing, so it is quite important to
know how to lay out, put together, and finish different kinds of work.
The number of things you _can_ make is legion. The number it is _worth
while_ for you to make is much smaller. Amateurs often say that the work
they do themselves costs more (even counting their own labour as
nothing) than to hire the work done, and it is one aim of this book to
prevent that undesirable result, in some cases at least.
The number of things which you can make more cheaply than you can buy
grows smaller every year. Many things can now be bought ready-made for
less than you would have to pay for the materials. It is foolish to take
the time and money to make many of the games and toys, for instance,
sold so cheaply nowadays. A wheelbarrow is in itself a good thing to
make, but it can be bought so cheaply that it is hardly worth while to
make one. It is true that some of these things you can make _better_,
although not cheaper, than you can easily buy (a sled perhaps); but, as
a rule, your time can be better spent than upon this class of objects,
and you will find but few such given here.
Things like whistles, pea-shooters, and clappers, which are so familiar
to every boy and require no more instruction to make than is handed down
and around from boy to boy, are not given here, as a rule. A few other
things which you might perhaps look for, such as tennis rackets and
snow-shoes, are omitted, because they require more special knowledge and
skill than most beginners can be expected to have. It is easy enough to
see how to make a tennis racket, for instance, so far as the general
idea is concerned; but simply bending a loop, fastening it to a stick,
and lacing the loop, does not make a tennis racket. The holes for the
stringing must be made in a particular way, the stringing must be done
properly, and the whole affair must balance or "hang" right, or be of
little use. It is better to buy such things.
You boys, and many of your elders, like to try all the new-fangled ideas
as fast as they come out, and it is well that you do, but you (as a
class) accept them "for keeps" only after they have stood the test of
many trials. A large book could be filled with descriptions of the
novelties which have appeared within my remembrance, but out of this
number I can count on my fingers all that have come to stay. You will
find all the novelties you can attend to (and more) in the magazines,
etc., so I have been rather conservative in my selection, knowing that
you will permanently accept but the best of the new ideas and come back
in the end, year after year, to the same old things, with only such
additions as have stood the test of actual use.
The objects included embrace a sufficient variety of types to form a
basis of experience and practice, in different kinds of work and in
various details, from which you can launch out into any of these new
plans, or any experiments of your own which you may wish to try, and
thus supply for yourselves the information lacking in many of the
popular descriptions.
Before you make anything bulky measure your shop door or window to see
that you can get it out after you have made it. This may seem a
superfluous caution, but there have been many cases where people have
spent much time in making things which could not be taken from the room
in which they were made without tearing out the door or window casing.
Even Robinson Crusoe, you know, built a boat so far from the water that
he could not launch her.
Do not be deceived by all the complicated, new-fangled variations of
familiar things which abound in the popular publications. Try to make
everything as _simple_ as you can. Look askance on contrivances that are
all tangled up with springs, and levers, and complicated mechanism, and
study them well before you begin to make them.
First figure the cost of the object you intend to make. This book is not
to do your work for you, but to put you on the right track to do it
yourselves, so read _Estimating_, page 54, and the whole of Part I had
best be read before you begin to make the things described hereafter.