Stopper for a Bunghole
While we were filling our barrels at the cider mill it was discovered that one barrel had no stopper. This did not bother the cider-mill man, who took up a sound apple of about the dimensions or diameter of the bunghole and squeezed it in, tight as a cork, then shaved it off flush with the barrel staves. We started Home and rolled it around a great deal with the other barrels, yet it held as tightly as any wood stopper.—Contributed by A. A. Kelly, Frazer, Pa.
¶An open umbrella placed on the floor upside down makes an excellent receptacle for catching dirt and plastering when installing electric fixtures.
A Woven-Reed Footstool
By CHARLES M. MILLER
[The various materials referred to in this article by number or size were described in detail in an article on “A Reed Basket,” in the Boy Mechanic, Book 2, page 257.]
Reed furniture has become very popular within the last few years, and the newer designs and methods have been so attractive as to place this constructive effort among the handicraft series of modern art. It is possible so to analyze, simplify, and illustrate this work as to make it feasible for amateurs, and at the same time there are possibilities which involve problems that may try the ability of the skilled workman. In other words, there are possibilities of progress in this kind of furniture making. There are places where careful weaving is the principal aim; again particular attention will be given to corners, or, perhaps, a nicety of modeling will be found necessary to bring out the proper curves involved.
Each piece of reed furniture has a framework, usually of dowels, but it may also be made of boards in such models as small tables, dressers, bedsteads, chests, etc. The board construction is more often covered with flat reed. In footstools there are both kinds of framework. The illustrations show the same parts marked with the same letters throughout the series of sketches.
The Framework of the Stool is Made of Large Dowels, Then Covered with Windings of Reed and a Woven Reed Top and Apron
The framework of the stool is shown in [Fig. 1], in which the rails and posts are made of dowels, ³⁄₄ in. in diameter, and the braces of dowels, ⁵⁄₈ in. in diameter. It will be noticed that the posts extend to the top of the frame for strength in this manner of construction. If the rails rested on top of the post S, the nails would have to be driven into the end grain of the wood, which makes the strength depend entirely on the holding power of the nail in this position, as there is no binding of the upper part to the posts in the weaving. With the post extending to the top, the nail passes through the upper part of the post and into the end grain of the rails, and the rails are bound together horizontally by the weaving.