Shelters, Shacks and Shanties Part 9

Caves

Ever since "Robinson Crusoe" and "Swiss Family Robinson" were written cave houses have been particularly attractive to boys; no doubt they were just as attractive before these books were written, and that may be the reason the books themselves are so popular; at any rate, when the author was a small boy he was always searching for natural caves, or trying to dig them for himself, and so were all of his companions. One of the most charming features of the "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" stories is that part connected with the cave.

Fig. 155. Fig. 156. Fig. 157. Fig. 157.A. Fig. 157.B. Fig. 157.C.

Fig. 158. Fig. 159. Fig. 160. Fig. 161.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The original American boy's hogan or underground house.]

Dangerous Caves

The trouble is that with caves which the boys dig for themselves there is always serious danger of the roof falling in and smothering the young troglodytes, but a properly built underground hogan is perfectly safe from such accidents.

Framing

After you have levelled off the foundation erect the rear posts of two-by-fours _A_, _B_ and _C_, _D_ (Fig. 156). These posts should be of the same height and tall enough to allow the roof to slant toward the front as in Fig. 155. The front posts _E_, _F_ and _G_, _H_, although shorter than the back posts, should be tall enough to allow headroom. One, two, or three more posts may be erected between the post _A_, _B_ and the post _C_, _D_ if additional strength is required. The same is true of the sides, and in place of having only one post in the middle of each side (_M_, _N_ and _O_, _P_, Fig. 156), there may be two or three posts, all according to the size of the house you are building; the main point is to make _a compact and strong box_ of your framework so that in the wet weather the banks surrounding it will not be tempted to push in the sides and spoil your house.

Decaying Wood

Locust, chestnut, and cedar will last longer than other varieties of wood when exposed to contact with damp earth, but common wood, which rots easily, may be protected by preservatives, one of which is boiled linseed-oil with pulverized charcoal stirred into it until a black paint is produced. Some people say that a coat of charcoal paint will preserve even a ba.s.swood fence post for a lifetime, and if that is true a hogan protected by a coating upon the outside of paint made by stirring fine charcoal into boiled linseed-oil until it is as thick as paint will last longer than any of my readers will have occasion to use the hogan for a playhouse. Erect the frame (Fig. 156) by having some boys hold the uprights in place until they can be secured with temporary braces like those shown running diagonally across from _B_ to _E_ and _A_ to _F_. You may then proceed to board up the sides from the outside of the frame by slipping the planks between the frame and the bank and then nailing from the inside wherever you lack room upon the outside to swing your hammer.

The door-jambs _I_, _J_ and _K_, _L_ will help support the roof.

The Roof

The roof may be made of lumber, as shown by Fig. 160, or it may be made of poles like those shown on the Wyoming Olebo (Fig. 236), or it may be made of planks and covered with tar paper (Figs. 296, 297, 298, and 299), or it may be s.h.i.+ngled, using barrel staves for s.h.i.+ngles, or covered with bits of old tin roofing tacked over the planking--or anything, in fact, which will keep out the water. As for looks, that will not count because the roof is to be afterward covered with sod.

Cliff-House Roof

If you wish to make the roof as the cliff-dwellers made theirs, put your biggest logs crosswise from _A_, _M_, _E_ to _C_, _O_, _G_ of your house for rafters, and across the larger logs lay a lot of small poles as close together as may be, running from the back to the front of the house. Fill in the cracks between with moss or calk them with dry gra.s.s; on them place a layer of brush, browse, or small sticks and over this a thick coating of clay, hard-pan, or ordinary mud and pack it down hard by tramping it with your feet until it becomes a smooth and tightly packed crust; over this you can put your sod and weeds to conceal your secret.

Pa.s.sageway

To make the frame for the underground hall or pa.s.sageway (Fig. 156), first nail _Q_, _S_ across the door-jambs to form the top to the doorway, after which put in the supports _Q_, _R_ and _S_, _T_. Next build the frame _U_, _V_, _X_, _W_ and join it to _Q_, _S_ by the two pieces _Q_, _U_ and _S_, _V_ and put in the middle frame support marked _ZZZZ_.

The pa.s.sageway should be about six feet long and the front doorway (_U_, _V_, _X_, _W_, Figs. 156 and 157) of sufficient size to enable you to creep through with comfort. The bottom piece _W_, _X_ can be nailed to a couple of sticks driven in the ground for that purpose. The next thing in order is the floor, and to make this firm you must lay a number of two-by-fours parallel to _B_, _D_ and _F_, _H_ and see that they are level. You will need a number of shorter pieces of the same material to run parallel to _F_, _H_ and _W_, _X_ for the hall floor, as may be seen in Fig. 157. Across these nail your floor securely as shown in Fig. 155.

There are no windows shown in the diagram, but if the builders wish one it can be placed immediately over the entrance or hallway in the frame marked _I_, _K_, _Q_, _S_ (Fig. 156), in which case the top covering of dirt must be shovelled away from it to admit the light in the same manner that it is in the dugout shown in Fig. 142 and also in the small sketch (Fig. 154).

The ventilator shown in Fig. 155 may be replaced, if thought desirable, by a chimney for an open fire. On account of the need of ventilation a stove would not be the proper thing for an underground house, but an open fire would help the ventilation. In the diagram the ventilator is set over a square hole in the roof; it may be made of a barrel or barrels, with the heads knocked out, placed over the hole in the roof, or kegs, according to the size of the roof. When your house is complete fill in the dirt around the edges, pack it down good and hard by the use of a piece of scantling two by four or four by four as a rammer, then cover the roof with small sticks and fine brush and sod it with growing weeds or gra.s.s.

The Door

You should have a good, stout front door (Fig. 157) and a padlock with which to secure it from trespa.s.sers.

Aures Hinge

A rustic hinge may be made by splitting a forked branch (Fig. 157 _C_) and using the two pieces nailed to the sides of the door-jambs (Fig. 157 _A_) to hold the round ends of the rod (Fig. 157 _B_) run through them. The middle of the _B_ stick is flattened to fit on the surface of the door to which it is nailed. This hinge was invented by Scout Victor Aures of stockade 41144 of Boy Pioneers of America and a description with neat diagrams sent by the inventor to his chief. When all is completed you can conceal the ventilator with dry brush or by planting weeds or shrubs around it, which will not interfere with the ventilation but will conceal the suspicious-looking pipe protruding from the ground. The top of the ventilator should be protected by slats, as in Fig. 161, or by wire netting with about one-quarter-inch mesh in order to keep small animals from jumping or hopping down into your club-house. Of course, a few toads and frogs, field-mice and chipmunks, or even some lizards and harmless snakes would not frighten any real boy, but at the same time they do not want any such creatures living in the same house with them.

Trap-Door

In place of a ventilator or chimney a trap-door may be placed in the roof and used as a secret entrance, access to inside being had by a ladder. A description of an appropriate ladder follows (Figs. 169 and 170).

Fig. 159 shows a rude way to make a chandelier, and as long as your candles burn brightly you may know that the air in your little hogan is pure and fresh. When such a chandelier is used pieces of tin should be nailed above the candles to prevent the heat from burning holes through the roof.

XXV

HOW TO CUT AND NOTCH LOGS

BOYS you have now pa.s.sed through the _grammar school_ of shack making, you are older than you were when you began, you have acquired more skill and more muscle, and it is time to begin to handle the woodsman's axe, to handle it skilfully and to use it as a tool with which to fas.h.i.+on anything from a table to a two-story house. None of you is too young to learn to use the axe. General Grant, George Was.h.i.+ngton, Abraham Lincoln, Billy Sunday--all of them could wield an axe by the time they were eight or nine years old and do it without chopping off their toes or splitting any one else's head open. Remember that every time you hurt yourself with an axe I have a yellow ribbon for you to wear as a "chump mark"; but, joking aside, we must now get down to serious work of preparing the logs in order to build us a little cabin of our own, a log club-house for our gang, or a log camp for our troop of scouts.

Notching Logs

To make the logs hold together at the corners of our cabins it is necessary to lock them in some manner, and the usual way is to notch them.

You may cut flat notches like those shown in Fig. 162 and this will hold the logs together, as shown by 162 _E_ or you may only flatten the ends, making the General Putnam joint shown in Fig. 163. This is called after General Putnam because the log cabins at his old camp near my farm at Redding, Conn., are made in this manner. Or you may use the Pike notch which has a wedge-shaped cut on the lower log, as shown by Fig. 164 _J_, made to fit into a triangular notch shown by 164 _H_. When fitted together these logs look like the sketch marked 164 _F_ which was drawn from a cabin built in this manner.

But the simplest notch is the rounded one shown by _A_, _B_, and _C_ (Fig.

165). When these are locked together they will fit like those shown at Fig. 165 _D_.

Away up North the people dovetail the ends of the logs (Fig. 166) so that their ends fit snugly together and are also securely locked by their dovetail shape. To build a log house, place the two sill logs on the ground or on the foundation made for them, then two other logs across them, as shown in Fig. 168.

Handling the Logs

That the logs may be more easily handled they should be piled up on a skidway which is made by resting the top ends of a number of poles upon a big log or some other sort of elevation and their lower ends upon the ground. With this arrangement the logs may be rolled off without much trouble as they are used.

c.h.i.n.king

A log cabin built with hardwood logs or with pitch-pine logs can seldom be made as tight as one built with the straight spruce logs of the virgin forests. The latter will lie as close as the ones shown in Fig. 162 _E_, while the former, on account of their unevenness, will have large cracks between them like those shown in Fig. 165 _D_. These cracks may be stopped up by quartering small pieces of timber (_Y_ and _W_, Fig. 168) and fitting these quartered pieces into the cracks between the logs where they are held by spikes. This is called "c.h.i.n.king the cabin."

Fig. 162. Fig. 162E Fig. 163. Fig. 164. Fig. 164F. Fig. 165.

Fig. 165C. Fig. 165D. Fig. 166. Fig. 167. Fig. 168. Fig. 168.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Showing how the logs are notched.]