“When we put our weight on each rung,” he explained to the interested band, “we shall drive the nails farther into the cedar instead of working them loose. Lots of people don’t think of that and their weight comes down in such direction that gradually the nails are pried out. I don’t trust a ladder that I haven’t made myself. I’m always kind of nervous when I’m up on it.”
When the ladder was finished it looked bulky and heavy, as homemade ladders always look, and Ann was astonished to find that she could lift it easily.
Jo explained that, too. “That’s because of the wood I chose. Cedar and spruce and the pine that grows up North here are lighter than hemlock or yellow pine. Yellow pine comes from down South, and you might as well try to lift a stone. And hemlock is not much good for such work as this, as it cracks too easily and once you drive a nail into it you can never pull it out again. Hemlock is used for rough work only, because it is most unreliable. It will crack when you least expect it and let you fall.”
“I should think oak would be the strongest,” said Ben.
“Oak is about the best lumber that grows in these parts,” Jo agreed, “but it is worth a lot of money and it is hard to get, these days. So it is used for finish wood, that is, for furniture and expensive flooring. And supposing we could get it, it weighs more than yellow pine. I’ll bet you couldn’t lift a ladder made of oak, much less carry it down to the wreck; I know I shouldn’t hanker after that job. It sure is pretty wood, though; the grain runs so evenly.”
“The grain is the darker lines through the boards, isn’t it?” asked Ann. “We helped mother scrape the paint from some chairs last winter and then we smoothed the wood with sandpaper so that the grain would show. They were lovely when we had finished. They looked like satin.”
“Sure,” said Jo. “And the grain comes from the way the tree grows. The longer it takes a tree to grow the finer its grain. Oak is grained straight with narrow lines, and yellow pine has a grain that looks like broad bands of ribbon running through it and it shows much pinker in color. The northern pine—white pine, we call it—is so soft that you can’t see the grain; the boards are all the same color and are very white and the wood is easier to cut with a saw than any hard wood.”
“That is the strangest ladder I ever saw,” said Ben, looking at it critically.
Ann had thought the same thing although she had not cared to say it to Jo. She believed in Jo and he must have had some reason for making it as he had. He had kept his two long poles far apart and the rungs were twice as long as in the ordinary ladder. Naturally it was a short ladder because the porthole was not very high above their heads when they stood below it on the beach, but why make it so very wide?
“It is wide because I wanted it to be very steady and because, if it’s wide enough, more’n one of us can look in the port at the same time.”