At the hardware store of the town we bought a pound of No. 16 iron wire, eight large screw eyes and six eye bolts, with nuts and washers. Both the screw eyes and eye bolts had welded eyes and the shanks of the eye bolts were 6 inches long. A pair of screw eyes were now threaded into the backbone at each side about 18 inches from the end, and at each end of the crosspieces an eye bolt was fastened. I began to see Bill’s plan. He was going to draw the wire taut by tightening up the nuts on the eye bolts. To get the best effect the hole for the eye bolt had to be drilled in on a slant, so that the bolt would pull directly in the line of the wire. To get just the right angle we ran a
Fig. 217. Stretching the Guy Lines. cord from the screw eye on one side to the point where the bolt was to be inserted, and traced its direction on the crosspiece. The hole for the eye bolt was now drilled parallel with the mark we had traced. The same was done at the other end of the crosspiece. A pair of screw eyes were now screwed into the backbone at the fore end and a pair of eye bolts were set at a corresponding angle in the ends of the crosspiece. The crosspiece was notched at each side so that the nuts and washers on the eye bolts would have a square seating. Then we stretched on the wire guy lines, drawing them as tight as possible, with the eye bolts held in place by a turn or two of the nuts, after which we screwed up the nuts as far as we could, thus drawing up the wire until it was very taut. This done the second nut was threaded onto each bolt against the first so as to lock it in place and prevent it from jarring loose.
Stepping the Mast.
Fig. 218 The Frame with Wire Braces.
Our next task was to step the mast. We found in the shed an old flagstaff 15 feet long and 3 inches in diameter. The lower end of this, for about a foot, we whittled down to a diameter of 2 inches, and drove it into a hole in the backbone 12 inches from the forward end. The mast was stayed by a wire stretched from the head to an eye bolt at the fore end of the backbone. The end of the mast which projected below the backbone was stayed with wire running forward to an eye bolt and aft to a screw eye on the backbone, and also with a pair of wires running to screw eyes threaded into the crosspiece near the ends. We couldn’t very well use eye bolts on these wires except at the fore end, but we stretched the wires as tight as possible before the screw eyes were screwed all the way in, and then, as we turned the screw eyes, the wire was wound up on them and drawn fairly taut. Fig. 219 shows a side view of the frame, and wires marked 1 and 2 are the same as illustrated in Fig. 218, which is a top or plan view of the frame.
Mounting the Frame on Bicycle Wheels.