It is best to make the cover next, so that you can test it and see that it works smoothly before any more of the box is put together. It is made of little strips (Fig. 6) three-eighths of an inch wide and two and a half inches long, “sliding fit,” which means that they are to be a little less than two and a half, so that they will slide in a space two and a half inches wide. A sharp rub on the ends with sandpaper will make this slight difference. There are twenty-two of these strips, and they are glued side by side on a strip of white muslin cloth. If you use a piece with a selvage on one side, you will be more sure of making the cover perfectly straight.
Fig. 7 is the handle and is to be nailed flat to the second strip—the one next to the end strip.
Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 are a false bottom and false end, which form the receptacle for the pencils, and hide the mechanism of the cover. They are nailed in position as shown in Fig. 12. The nails to fasten these in place must be a little longer than the others, because they have to be nailed from the outside and must go through two thicknesses of wood and project into a third.
The next piece to make is Fig. 10—an oblong measuring one and a half inches by two and a half, and cut to make a joint with Fig. 2. This is placed across the top and nailed down, covering the rounding end of the “track.”
Now the cover may be slipped into position and the end pieces (Fig. 11), oblongs two and a quarter inches by two and seven-eighths, nailed on, and the box is done.
It is a convenient size, the receptacle for pencils is ample, and to one who does not know, the disappearance of that cover when it opens is a mystery that borders on black art.
A HOME-MADE CHRISTMAS TREE STAND
NOBODY will deny that a Christmas tree has plenty of backbone, but somehow it doesn’t seem to have intelligence enough to use it. Or else it resents the taking away of its roots and the substitution of a shop-made standard that it considers inadequate. As a matter of fact the standards that you can buy in the shops are inadequate for a tree of any size. And so, if the boy of the family is handy with tools, it is up to him to make one.