Fig. [251].—Make this part of pasteboard.
Old-Fashioned Flintlock Rifle
with its long, slender barrel was used almost daily by our forefathers for securing game as food.
The gun was kept hanging in plain sight over the kitchen mantel-piece, ready for defence at a moment's notice, for in those early days wolves and other wild animals were numerous and dangerous, and enemies were also likely to appear at any time.
You should have one of those queer old guns to adorn your kitchen wall. Get some heavy tinfoil off the top of a bottle, or take a collapsible tube and from it cut a wide strip like [Fig. 250], one narrow, straight strip and two medium-wide straight strips, four in all. Cut the butt end of the gun ([Fig. 251]) of stiff cardboard. Break a piece measuring four and one-half inches from a common coarse steel knitting-needle for your gun-barrel and use a slender, round stick, or the small holder of a draughtsman's pen, cutting it a trifle more than three and one-half inches in length for the ramrod groove.
Fig. [252].—A pin for a ramrod.
Fig. [253].—Slide the paper end in the wood like this.
In the centre of one end of the stick bore a deep hole with the red-hot point of a hat-pin and insert the pointed end of an ordinary pin for a ramrod ([Fig. 252]). Split the other end of the stick up through the centre not quite half an inch and work the butt end of the gun in the opening ([Fig. 253]).