Along the inland waterways a raft of this description is a most desirable craft, as it can be towed from place to place, and for pleasure purposes its value cannot be overestimated, as it is a base for hunting and fishing as well as a retreat from village life; and the pleasure and comfort that can be had from a raft like this can well be appreciated when once tried.
To build a house-raft on these plans is not a difficult nor an expensive piece of work, and outside of the cost of the lumber, timber, barrels, and logs the amount is limited, unless finish is contemplated. With materials at hand and the help of three or four good workers, it should not require more than a week to construct this raft and house, and if fitted and painted in the manner described the cost should not exceed from two hundred to three hundred dollars, including all labor and material, according to the locality in which it is constructed.
A Float
In the spring, when every one who owns a boat of any sort is painting and repairing his craft, boat-houses, and floats, a few suggestions in regard to the floats will be found of practical value.
My chum and I own two canoes and a row-boat. The first year we built a boat-house, which exhausted our funds, and we were obliged to wait till the next spring before we could consider the expense of making a float. Most floats are constructed of spars on logs, with a mooring on top.
As we prepared to make the float ourselves, we wanted to find the easiest and cheapest way of doing so. The spars were costly, and, besides, are clumsy, and for a float of adequate size they would have to be so large that we could not move them alone.
As we lived in the city we could not get logs, or, if we could, we should have had a big bill for cartage. It was while we were painting the boat-house one afternoon that we saw an empty barrel go floating by. My chum said he had an idea that we could make a float after all. We went to one of the grocery stores and got four new flour-barrels, with the heads, at a cost of twenty-five cents apiece.
We took them, two by two, over to the boat-house, and then went to a near-by lumber-yard and got three two-by-three sixteen-foot joists, which cost us fifty-five cents, and one hundred square feet of boards such as are sold at thirty dollars a thousand feet. Some nails and our tools, and we were ready to begin work.
First we laid two barrels end to end about two feet apart; then about twelve feet from them we laid the other two in the same way. Then we took two of the joists and laid them on each side of the barrels on edge. Taking the other, we cut it in two pieces six feet long, which left a waste space of four feet in length. We then nailed the two sixteen-foot pieces and the two six-foot pieces together in the form of a rectangle as in Fig. 14.
