Never forget to add the bird-house or bird shelter to every gateway you make; it is more important than the gate itself. In my other books I have described and told how to make various forms of bird-houses, including my invention of the woodpecker's house now being manufactured by many firms, including one in Germany, but the reader should make his own bird-houses. I am glad the manufacturers have taken up these ideas for the good they will do the birds, but the ideas were published first solely for the use of the boys in the hopes of educating them both in the conservation of bird life and in the manual training necessary to construct bird-houses.
[Fig. 327.] [Fig. 328.] [Fig. 329.]
Gateways for game preserves, camps, etc.
[Fig. 330.] [Fig. 331.] [Fig. 332.]
Log gate and details of same.
The reader must have, no doubt, noticed that the problems in this book have become more and more difficult as we approach the end, but this is because everything grows; as we acquire skill we naturally seek more and more difficult work on which to exercise our skill. These gateways, however, are none of them too difficult for the boys to build themselves. The main problem to overcome in building the picturesque log gateway shown by [Fig. 331] is not in laying up the logs or constructing the roof—the reader has already learned how to do both in the forepart of this book—but it is in so laying the logs that the slant or incline on the two outsides will be exactly the same, also in so building the sides that when you reach the top of the open way and place your first overhead log, the log will be exactly horizontal, exactly level, as it must be to carry out the plan in a workmanlike manner. [Fig. 330] shows you the framework of the roof, the ridge-pole of which is a plank cut "sway-backed," that is, lower in the centre than at either end. The frame should be roofed with hand-rived shingles, or at least hand-trimmed shingles, if you use the manufactured article of commerce. This gateway is appropriate for a common post-and-rail fence or any of the log fences illustrated in the previous diagrams. [Fig. 332] shows how the fence here shown is constructed: the A logs are bevelled to fit in diagonally, the B and C logs are set in as shown by the dotted line in [Fig. 332.] A gateway like the one shown here would make a splendid and imposing one for a permanent camp, whether it be a Boy Scout, a Girl Pioneer, a private camp for boys, or simply the entrance to a large private estate.
The writer has made these diagrams so that they may be used by men or boys; the last one shows a gateway large enough to admit a "four-in-hand" stage-coach or an automobile, but the boys may build it in miniature so that the opening is only large enough to admit a pedestrian.
