CHAPTER XLIII.—MY FLAGSTAFF, AND HOW I RIGGED IT.
There are many forms of flagstaffs, and many ways of erecting and rigging them. They are sometimes made of iron, and are not unfrequently rigged with wire or with wire rope. Some are fitted with topmasts, yards, and gaffs, others simply consist of the one pole.
The flagstaff we are going to describe is not one that will run our readers into any unnecessary expense. It can be erected, fitted, and rigged by any ordinary boy of average ability, at a small expense, although of course the more money that is laid out upon it the better it should look when erected.
We shall give the description, however, of the very cheapest that can be made consistently with safety. To commence with, the staff itself can be obtained from any builder by purchasing a small scaffold pole, which will cost—according to your skill in bargaining—from one penny to three halfpence a foot. This can either be planed and varnished; or, if our reader is not much of a carpenter, it may be painted white with paint obtained already mixed from the nearest oilshop at about sixpence a pound.
The height we must leave to the taste of the reader, but the following scale will be found convenient, and will look very well. Let the pole be 46 feet in length. Then a hole will have to be dug in the ground 6 feet in depth to receive that amount of the staff. But before it is erected it must be rigged and have the ‘knees’ screwed or nailed upon it. A big flagstaff would have ‘crosstrees’ like the topmast of a ship, but it will be more easy and will look less clumsy simply to fix it with knees. These are pieces of wood which will be described [afterwards], and which have to be fixed about 30 feet from the ground.
The next thing to arrange is the rigging. For that we shall require three shrouds on each side and one stay in front, besides signal halliards to hoist and lower the flag. Two-inch rope will do very well for the shrouds, but 21⁄2-inch would perhaps be a little safer. Rope is sold by weight, and 2-inch rope may be purchased at sixpence a pound, a pound of 2-inch rope equalling one fathom, which is 6 feet. The easiest way of measuring in order to ascertain what length of rope you will require is as follows. Having obtained your staff, lay it upon the ground. Then measure off the 6 feet that has to go in the ground and mark it with a piece of chalk. Now measure the 30 feet and mark the staff where the knees will be placed. Now measure a straight line at right angles to the lower chalk mark, where the staff, when erected, will be flush with the ground.
Fig. 1.
a, Six feet for insertion in ground. b, Thirty feet between ground and the knees. c, Ten feet above the knees. d, Chalk mark for knees. e, Chalk mark for insertion in ground. f, Chalk mark on ground ten feet from staff. g, Straight line. h, Length of one shroud or of the stay.
A good distance is about one-third the height of the staff from the ground to the knees, so we will say 10 feet, and mark the ground. Then stretch a piece of string from the upper mark to the mark on the ground, allowing also the circumference of the staff, that will give you the length of one shroud ([Fig. 1]).
Now you must measure for the ratlines.
Having obtained your rope, the next operation is to cut it into proper lengths. First of all make both ends fast, and stretch it as much as you can. Then measure with the line you used to obtain the length, and cut off two shrouds separately, and the stay. Then cut the remaining rope in half, so as to make two pairs of shrouds. The stay is generally of thicker and stronger rope than the shrouds, but with the staff 6 feet in the ground there is no necessity for this.
Fig 2
A, Pair of shrouds. a, The collar to go over the staff. b, The seizing. B, The single shrouds. a, The cut splice. C, The stay. a, The eye-splice.
Now comes the fitting of the rigging. With the two single shrouds you must make a cut-splice, making the splice sufficiently large to fit nicely over the staff. Then double the two pairs and seize them together separately, A, [Fig. 2], leaving sufficient room to pass over the staff without chafing.
The stay you must fit with an eye-splice; and make the eye large enough, or it will look lubberly. ([Fig. 2])
The eye and collars should be wormed, parcelled, and served, but this is not absolutely necessary, and might look clumsy if done by an amateur. Now screw on the knees; they are triangular pieces of wood to support the rigging and prevent it slipping down the staff. Two bolters, or rounded pieces of wood, will answer the purpose equally well, but they must be firmly attached to the staff. Now put on the rigging—first of all one pair of shrouds, next the other pair, then the single shrouds with the cut splice, and lastly the stay.
The truck must now be placed on the top of the staff. If one is purchased a sheave will be found in it for the signal halliards to reeve through, and these had better be rove at once.
Fig 3
A, Iron spike. B, Cleats, a, wooden. b, iron.
If the reader’s taste runs in such a direction, a vane to show the direction of the wind can be placed on the truck—such as an arrow, a cock, or any of the numerous articles that are sold for the purpose. A cleat ([Fig. 3]) should be screwed to the side of the staff just within easy reach of the arm, say between 3 and 4 feet from the ground, in order to belay or make fast the halliards.
Now fix the staff in the ground, and see that the earth, etc., is well beaten in round it. The next proceeding is to set up the rigging. This may be done with deadeyes or with thimbles; the latter is certainly the neater way of doing it. Setting up with deadeyes need not be described here. The following is the method of doing it with thimbles.
Splice the end of each rope round a thimble, which is done as follows. Open out the rope to the length of twice and a half the round of the rope. Then measure the round of the thimble and the round of the rope, and put the marlin spike in there and commence splicing as though for an eyepiece. Now you will require for each rope an iron spike about 3 feet in length with an eye in it. These must be driven into the ground at regular intervals in a straight line, three on each side of the staff, 10 feet distant, and one for the stay in front. Then obtain some stout seizing stuff, such as cod-line, and splice it into the eye of the spike; then pass it through the thimble and then through the eye again, and so on, pulling it as tight as you can every time. At sea the necessary strength for getting the rigging as tight as possible is obtained with a tackle.
Fig 4
a a a, Shrouds. b, Stay.
Now your staff ought to look like [Fig. 4], and you can commence ratling it down, for which half-inch rope ought to be used.
CHAPTER XLIV.—HOW TO MAKE A POCKET COMPASS AND TIMEPIECE.
By F. Chasemore.
For this, get a wooden tooth-powder box, plain—that is, without projecting rims—take off the lid, and smooth it all over. Next make the compass-card. Cut this circular, about a quarter of an inch smaller than the inside of the box, which should be about two inches and three-quarters in diameter outside. Mark the centre of the card, and mark from this centre the thirty-two points of the compass (as [Fig. 1]). Now make the needle. This must be hard steel; you can get this at the tinman’s or ironmonger’s. Get him to cut it about two inches long and three-eighths of an inch wide in the middle, tapering to a point at each end. The steel should be about a sixteenth of an inch thick. Get him to drill a hole through the middle of this steel about an eighth of an inch in diameter. Get a small piece of brass wire a quarter of an inch in diameter and a quarter of an inch long. File a shoulder to this (as [Fig. 2]) about a sixteenth of an inch wide and an eighth of an inch from the end. Drill a hole triangular in section an eighth of an inch deep and about an eighth of an inch at the outside. Place this through the compass-card. Now magnetize your needle. This is done as follows.
Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 3.
Get a magnet—most boys have one—and draw one end of it from end to end of the needle, always going the same way and never back again. Do this about twenty times and your steel needle will be a permanent magnet. Now place this underneath the compass-card and push the little brass button through the hole in it. Suspend this by placing a point in the hole in the brass stud, and one end of the needle will point towards the north. Mark this point, and turn the card on the stud till that end of the needle points to eighteen and a half degrees west of the north point on the card. Now fasten the brass in the needle by two or three taps with a hammer on the under side of the brass, being careful not to strike the steel. Next fix it more securely with a dot of sealing-wax on each point and card. Now suspend it again on the point, and the north point will dip towards the earth. You must balance the card by putting dots of sealing-wax here and there till it swings quite level.
Next, in the centre of the bottom of your box fix a steel pin about half an inch high, brought to a point that will go loosely in the dent in the brass stud. Put your card on this point and it will swing easily in the box. Line the box with a strip of cardboard a little wider than the height of the top of the brass stud from the bottom of the box. Get a circular glass the size of the inside of the box (your glazier will cut this for you for a few pence). Put it on the shelf formed by the cardboard, which should be glued into the box, and fasten it in its place with a narrow strip of cardboard glued in all round the box.
By putting the glass in you can turn the box about any way in your pocket without the card coming off the peg.
Now to make the timepiece. Make a dial plate of paper the size of the top of the lid. You can first draw this on a sheet of paper, and then placing one leg of a pair of compasses on a point in the twelve-o’clock line—which must in this case be only one line, about half an inch from the six-o’clock line—mark a circle the exact size of the top of the lid. Inside this circle make another about a quarter of an inch from it, and mark the hours inside this circle. Paste this paper on the top of the lid, and put the lid on the box. Now draw a line from the twelve-o’clock line on the lid right down the side of the box; make this line quite perpendicular to the top and bottom. Now make the gnomon. Get a piece of very thin sheet brass or tin-plate about the thickness of a card and cut the gnomon out of it. The shape and size can be got from directions already given. Now with a thin, fine saw, cut the twelve-o’clock line into a slot about a sixteenth of an inch deep and going beyond the six-o’clock line a little, about an eighth of an inch. This slot must be the same depth in the six-o’clock end as at the edge of the lid. You can push the base of the gnomon into this slot, so that the axis edge exactly crosses the six-o’clock line.
To use the compass, take off the lid, place the box level, and note where the north points, and you can determine any point of the compass from that. To use the timepiece, set the box level, and bring the mark in the side of the box to correspond exactly with the north point of the card. Put the gnomon in the slot in the lid, and put the lid on the box without disturbing it, so that the mark in the side of the lid corresponds exactly with the mark in the side of the box, and the shadow of the axis of the gnomon will point out the hour. When you have seen the time, take off the lid, take the gnomon out of the slot, and put it inside the box, laying on the glass, and put the lid on. You can thus carry the whole in your pocket without a fear of it getting out of order; and when you are out for a walk, and the sun shines, you can always tell your way home and the time to go there.
Fig. 4.