Showing how to make foundations for over-water camps.
My experience with this sort of work leads me to advise the use of piles upon which to build in place of piers of stones. Where I have used such piers upon small inland lakes the tremendous push of the freezing ice has upset them, whereas the ice seems to slide around the piles without pushing them over. The real danger with piles lies in the fact that if the water rises after the ice has frozen around the uprights the water will lift the ice up and the ice will sometimes pull the piles out of the bottom like a dentist pulls teeth. Nevertheless, piles are much better for a foundation for a camp or pier than any crib of rocks, and that is the reason I have shown the cribs in Figs. [75] and [77], made so as to rest upon the bottom supposedly below the level of the winter ice.
XV
SIGNAL-TOWER, GAME LOOKOUT, AND RUSTIC OBSERVATORY
If my present reader happens to be a Boy Scout or a scout-master who wants the scouts to build a tower for exhibition purposes, he can do so by following the directions here given, but if there is real necessity for haste in the erection of this tower, of course we cannot build one as tall as we might where we have more time. With a small tower all the joints may be quickly lashed together with strong, heavy twine, rope, or even wire; and in the wilderness it will probably be necessary to bind the joints with pliable roots, or cordage made of bark or withes; but as this is not a book on woodcraft we will suppose that the reader has secured the proper material for fastening the joints of the frame of this signal-tower and he must now shoulder his axe and go to the woods in order to secure the necessary timber. First let him cut eight straight poles—that is, as straight as he can find them. These poles should be about four and one half inches in diameter at their base and sixteen and one half feet long. After all the branches are trimmed off the poles, cut four more sticks each nine feet long and two and a half or three inches in diameter at the base; when these are trimmed into shape one will need twenty six or seven more stout sticks each four and one half feet long for braces and for flooring for the platform.
Kite Frame
It being supposed that your timber is now all in readiness at the spot where you are to erect the tower, begin by laying out on the ground what we call the "kite frame." First take three of the four-and-one-half-foot sticks, A, B, C ([Fig. 82]), and two of the nine-foot sticks D and E ([Fig. 82]), and, placing them on a level stretch of ground, arrange them in the form of a parallelogram. Put A for the top rail at the top of the parallelogram and C for the bottom of the parallelogram and let them rest upon the sides D and E, but put B under the sides D and E. In order to bind these together securely, the ends of all the sticks must be allowed to project a few inches. B should be far enough below A to give the proper height for a railing around the platform. The platform itself rests upon B. A forms the top railing to the fence around it.