A workshop once started, many little contrivances suggest themselves for convenient working,—a nail must be put up for the apron, a corner found for the working gloves, separate places allotted for oily cloths and clean ones and for the kerosene. The bicycle lamp, if an oil-lamp, should have a stand for trimming and filling, and should be cared for regularly; the best of lamps will smoke occasionally, and the soot must not be allowed to fly about.
From fitting up a bicycle workshop, the transition is easy to studying accomplishments that may be of use—planning tours and trips, exercising scientifically to prepare to enjoy them, studying the construction and improvement of modern contrivances, learning the use of map and compass, investigating camping possibilities, and learning how to depend on limited resources when cut off from supplies. The simple appliances and contrivances of the home workshop lead the mind to appreciation and desire for something better, more workmanlike. A choice of tools suggests itself; and from the first assortment of a couple of wrenches, a few screw-drivers, a hammer, and a couple of wooden boxes, is finally evolved the well-furnished amateur workshop.
The ideal room for this purpose should have a good north light, with windows on two sides if possible, and high enough from the floor to allow a work-bench to be placed in front of the window with the light falling upon it, and a space of ten inches or a foot between the lowest part of the window and the bench; this space to be arranged as a rack for tools. The windows should open and shut easily, and be fitted with two kinds of shades, dark green and white, two pairs of shades to each window, two rolling up from the lower part, and two down from the upper part. Nothing is so fatiguing as working by light not suited to the work to be done. With shades arranged in this way, light may be perfectly controlled, and distributed where needed by means of reflectors. Ventilating and heating, also, must be arranged for.
The workshop should have running water, and a closet for working clothes, which are apt to be oily or greasy. There should be plenty of shelf-room, and an extra cupboard or two. The floor should be of wood, unpainted. There should be a bench for carpenter work and carpenter tools; a bench for cabinet-working tools for fine wood-working; a table for rubber and naphtha; and a long, heavy, narrow bench fitted with vises of different sizes and patterns; a table devoted to the blast furnace, a corner for an anvil and portable forge and another for a lathe and power-saw, though these may be dispensed with. The movable furniture may consist of stools and benches of different heights, and the frames necessary to take down and handle a bicycle on.
Metal can be bent, twisted, cut, pressed, elongated, sawed, stretched, and melted into any shape desired. The tools adapted to this work may consist of holding tools, carving tools, molding tools, and bending tools; and contrivances and tools made to perform certain work, as screw-driver, etc.
Cutting tools are knives, saws, files, and chisels, which perform their work by applied power, whether controlled directly by the hand or otherwise.
The metal-working outfit may contain many varieties of tools.
CHAPTER XVII.
Tires.
In the older forms of wheel, the tire did duty in protecting and strengthening the wheel and holding it together. In the bicycle wheel, the rim is the strengthening and supporting contrivance. The tire protects the rim, and acts as a spring cushion as well, receiving shock and jar. The solid rubber tire was an advance over the old steel tire on the bone-shaking machine, as it was called, in the days when the bicycle was still in its experimental stage.