They then hunted up a small screw eye, found the exact centre of the end of the stick by drawing two diagonals, fastened the screw eye in the centre and tied to it a piece of red, white and blue ribbon. A quarter-inch bevel was made around each end as a finishing touch.
This piece of white pine, with its twenty notches, hangs to-day in Harry's room, and every once in awhile he counts the notches to make sure they are all there, and recalls the trial that each one represents.
Harry was so much pleased with his notched trophy stick that he wanted to begin something else at once, and he was immediately started on a key rack.
"Too many homes," said Ralph, sagely, "have no definite place to keep keys. Those that have no tags are always a nuisance. Every key or bunch of keys should have a tag attached and should be hung on a certain hook where it can be found without searching. Now we'll make a sketch of a key rack before doing anything else, to find out just how large a piece of stick we shall need."
The drawing they produced is shown in [Fig. 6] and called for a piece of wood seven inches long, an inch wide, and half an inch thick. As the key rack was to be a permanent household article, they decided on gum wood as more suitable than pine, it being easy to work and having a satisfactory appearance.
Fig. 6. The various steps in making a key rack
The different stages in the process of cutting out are shown in [Fig. 6]. At a is shown the stock squared up with the knife to the extreme outside dimensions. The ends were then whittled down to the form shown at b and the blank piece was ready for notching. The notches were carefully drawn with a sharp hard pencil and cut as shown at c. The ends were bevelled by whittling to the lines, and the inner edges of the notches in the centre were whittled back to the middle of each edge. Then the knife work was finished.
Three brass screw hooks were placed in the centre of the large blank spaces, and two small screw eyes fastened into the upper edge for hanging the key rack on the wall.