The children all promised to memorize these rules.
As the stuff for the boat was not expected for some days, Fred and Nick kept at work about the new boat house, and building up the landing dock. The former fitted up a work bench, and put his little shop in readiness for actual use. Fred also hunted for a nice stick of timber among the old barn ruins, on which to set up the boat. A good piece found, he cut it to a length of 20 feet, and then he and Nick got it into the boat house, where Fred planed it off a little with a rough jack plane, keeping a sharp lookout for nails, sand, or gravel. Nothing destroys the cutting edges of tools more than nails, bits of iron, glass, sand, or small pebbles, which sometimes escape the vigilance of the workman. Especially is this true of saws, which Fred knew quite well since he had once run a good sharp saw against a nail, while cutting a piece of timber in two. This taught him a lesson he never forgot, and whenever he had to cut up old material, he was always careful to examine it all round, and to scrape or brush off all the dirt and sand from the parts through which the saw teeth had to travel. In planing, or "dressing" the stick of timber, the same precautions were taken, and the surface of the wood was made as clean and free from dirt and sand as it possibly could be. Notwithstanding all this, Fred found it almost impossible to keep the cutting iron of his jack plane sharp enough to take off shavings. He had to sharpen it every few minutes. This is nearly always the case when working up wood which has previously been used. However, he managed to "dress" his stick very nicely, and after finishing it, laid it down along the middle of the floor of the shop, putting blocks of wood under it here and there to raise it up from the floor five or six inches. It was then made level on top and fastened down so that it would not move or get out of line. This was about all they could do on the boat until the materials arrived. Nick had managed to fill in the space between the two walls of the little pier with heavy bowlders, and had strengthened the whole with coarse rubble-stone work in such a manner that there was little danger of injury from floating ice or flood tides; and he had covered the whole over with small stones, gravel, and a good thick layer of cement concrete, which made it correspond with the cement walk.
The question of a winch was then taken up with Mr. Gregg and it was decided to construct a simple affair at the end of the boat-house opposite the large doors, where the boat would have to enter.
Fig. 19. Winch and crank
Mr. Gregg suggested, in order to make the end of the building strong enough, that two upright posts be set up, well braced by being fastened to both floor and ceiling, and that the winch be attached to them in a way that would be easy to work, as shown in [Fig. 19], room enough being left between the posts and the wall for the crank to turn without the hand of the operator striking the boards. The cylinder around which the rope should wind ought to be about six inches in diameter, and the crank or handle on the end, not less than fifteen or sixteen inches long. The longer the crank, the less force it would require to haul in the boat. If desired, a crank could be fitted to the other end of the cylinder so that two persons could work at one time, pulling in the weight.
In the evening Mr. Gregg asked the boys and Jessie to visit his room, and he would try to explain the principle and advantages of the wheel and axle, as the winch they were to make was in a measure related to that principle. Mr. Gregg began by saying: "The wheel and axle is merely a modification of the lever and consists of a couple of cylinders turning on a common axis, the larger cylinder is usually called the wheel, the lesser one the axle. This arrangement, which I draw on the blackboard herewith, forms a kind of lever of the first or second class. Considered as a lever, the fulcrum is at the common axis, while the arms of the lever are the radii of the wheel and of the axle.
