Part 8

While there are several instruments in the market with which the negative can be taken, most of them are so costly as to be beyond the reach of a boy or a girl with a limited supply of pocket money for a vacation trip; hence I shall choose one that is not only very cheap, but which I know by experiment will perform the work for which it is intended. It is the invention of a young man who has a practical knowledge of photography, and is called the “tourograph.”

At first sight it is a small mahogany box, eight by ten inches broad, with a strap by which one can carry it. But by pulling out a slide in front a lens is revealed; and by drawing out another slide on the top an inner box is shown full of negative plates. This smaller box is fitted in position on top of the larger one, so that the plates, one at a time, can be dropped into a carrying-rack turned by a screw, in the dark chamber below. This plate having been placed in focus, the lens is uncapped for a few seconds, then recapped, and the glass is returned to the box above, where it is kept till evening, or until a favorable time for development. In this way all the plates—eight or ten—in the box may be exposed, and their places filled with fresh ones later on.

The camera is supported upon a tripod, or three-legged stick, which can be closed up until not much larger than an alpenstock.

This is the outline of the mechanical operation necessary to secure the negative. The plates, being ready prepared and packed in little boxes of a dozen each, are transferred to the camera at night, or in a dark room by day, by the aid of a _red_ light. This is obtained by placing a roll of red or orange-colored paper—made expressly for this purpose—around a lamp or candle, as the light that shines through a medium of this color is _non-actinic_, or without the power to produce chemical change in the very sensitive plates. You now have a plate with a latent image of the picture you desire to retain; this plate must pass through a chemical operation before that image will appear.

Imagine yourself in a darkened room illuminated only by the _red_ light, with a plate in your hand on which you fondly hope there is a duplicate of the scene before which you had set up the instrument. To all appearances it is a plate of plain glass, one side covered with a film of gelatine, and if you hold it to the light nothing appears to indicate the change that has taken place in that film since it was exposed to the light. The question is, how to bring that picture out from its hiding-place. First, you must have a shallow pan at hand, and place yourself near a good supply of water. Into the pan you pour the chemicals previously mixed, necessary for the _development_ or bringing out of the hidden image. These chemicals are, oxalate of potash and protosulphate of iron. To simplify matters, the inventor of the tourograph puts up these chemicals in papers, so that you only have to put into four ounces, or a gill, of water[D] one paper of the potash and another of iron; mix well, and the solution is ready for the plate. This must be placed in the tray with the film side up, and the solution flowed over it. When completely covered, let it remain, and carefully watch the development.

[D] The operator should bear in mind that old saying, “A pint’s a pound, the world around,” then he will remember that it contains sixteen fluid ounces, four ounces to the gill, &c.

This is the period of greatest anxiety for the young operator, for it is the critical stage of the proceedings. A few seconds will determine whether you have a picture before you, or merely a square of plain glass. Gradually the details unfold themselves: the “high lights” or white portions first, then the “half tones” or grades of shadow, then the deeper shades of foliage or objects feebly lighted. When the view has come out distinct, seems to progress no farther and to gradually fade away to a deep brown, you have got out all it is possible to obtain from that exposure, and the plate must be removed from the solution, and chemical action arrested by washing in clear water.

Now you have before you tangible evidence of success, but your picture is not complete; it is dull, perhaps obscure, and if exposed to the light of day would quickly vanish. It must now _fixed_ in another solution and in another dish. The “fixing solution” is made by dissolving half an ounce of hyposulphite of soda in five or six ounces of water. Into this place the developed plate, and allow it to remain until all the whitish film is dissolved away. If both operations are faithfully performed you will have, on taking the plate from the solution and holding it to the light, a brilliant picture on glass—the _negative_—with all the lights and shadows reversed, the white portions quite opaque, and the dark parts almost transparent.

Now wash very thoroughly in clear water, beneath a tap if possible, or by pouring a gentle stream over the glass for a few minutes, in order to remove every trace of superfluous chemical substance that might work injury. As a precaution against the possible peeling of the film, it is well to dip the negative in a strong solution of alum and water, then wash again, and set up to dry in a slanting position, with the film side next the wall. When perfectly dry a coat of photographic varnish, furnished with the chemicals, is flowed over the coated side of the glass, and the impression is securely fixed, ready for use in printing. Having secured the negative, your object is virtually attained: the possession of a souvenir of a vacation ramble, a favorite view, or of a picturesque camping-place. If it were my negative, I should take it to some good photographer, and let him prepare from it the prints I wanted, as that expense is small, and involves a good deal of labor for the amateur. But I suppose my readers will wish—as I did years ago—to see the whole process, and to make their own prints or paper pictures.

PRINTING FROM THE NEGATIVE.

White paper coated with albumen is made sensitive to light by being floated upon a solution of chloride of silver in water; and this, when dry, is placed against the negative and exposed to the sun. In this way, by pressing the silvered surface of the paper against the film side of the negative, a duplicate impression of the picture on the glass is transferred to the paper. This may be repeated with other pieces of paper any number of times, until hundreds are obtained from the same negative. Instead of attempting to prepare the paper yourself, it would be better to purchase it already _sensitized_, which you can do of any dealer in photographic goods. A printing-frame, or grooved block with a spring back, is used in printing. After having placed it with the negative and paper in the sun, watch carefully. By removing the frame and retiring to a dark corner, you can examine the paper by unspringing _one-half_ the back at a time, and thus print to the degree desired. It is best to print a little darker than it is designed to have the print when finished, as it will bleach a little in the subsequent process of _toning_. This toning operation, as well as the cutting up of the paper, the placing of it on the negative and removing it, should be performed in a darkened room. When a sufficient number of prints are done, trim them the size they are to be when finished, wash in two or three changes of water, and then place in the “toning bath,” made as follows: Chloride of gold one grain, water ten ounces, saturated solution of bread soda three or four drops. This will change them to a deep bluish or purple color, and gives them that lovely tint we admire in fine photographs.

The chloride of gold is sent in solution, as well as the soda, so that you have but to follow the printed directions accompanying them, putting a certain quantity of each in the water, and your toning bath is at once prepared.

After toning for a few minutes, remove the prints, and place in another dish containing an ounce of hyposulphite of soda dissolved in a pint of water; allow them to remain ten minutes, and then remove and wash an hour or more in water—running water if possible—constantly changing the water and moving the prints about. Then dry your prints and the completed picture is before you, ready for mounting on a card, or pasting in an album.[E] If you wish to obtain merely a “proof,” or a fair print, without the delicacy of shading and tone of the silver print, you can do this with “blue paper,” by simply exposing this prepared paper beneath the negative, and washing and drying without any further toning or fixing.

[E] Many preparations are advertised for sticking the prints to the cards, but common starch paste is about as good as anything. Mix the starch in cold water, very thin, and then boil it, constantly stirring it to break up lumps, and remove from the fire soon as it reaches the boiling point. The prints should be wet and pasted on while quite moist, rubbing them down beneath a sheet of blotting-paper from the centre to the margin, in order to expel all air, that would otherwise cause lumps or wrinkles.

These, in brief, are the various processes necessary for procuring a photographic print; but, as I have already remarked, the negative being your main object, it would be much better to rest content with securing that, and depend upon some photographer to give you the paper impressions.

To recapitulate: For a short trip, fully equipped for taking photographs, we shall need the following:—

A “tourograph,” for plates 4×5 inches, with alpenstock tripod and lens $15.00 One dozen 4×5 plates 1.00 One graduate (or measuring glass) .50 Two developing pans .40 One pound oxalate potash, in papers ready for use, 60 cents, half pound protosulphate of iron, in papers, 10 cents .70 One pound hypo’ soda, in papers, 10 cents, six ounces varnish, 50 cents .60 ------ Sum total for apparatus and chemicals sufficient for development of fifty negatives $18.20

If you will insist upon printing your own views, then you will need in addition—one printing frame .60 One bottle chloride gold sufficient for a certain number of prints as stated in directions with it, 50 cents, one bottle bicarb, soda, 10 cents .60 Sensitized paper for one dozen prints .25 ------ $1.45

In round numbers, for $20.00 you can be fully prepared to set up for yourself as an amateur photographer, and after many trials, with diligence and perseverance, can hope to secure photographs of scenery, interiors, and even portraits, that will compare favorably with the work of professional artists. The above is such an outfit—except that I had a larger camera and larger stock of plates—as I have carried to the West Indies and to Mexico.

Since my return, however, I find that my friend, the inventor, has produced yet another instrument, which he calls his “pocket camera,” which folds up into a small package but one inch and a half in thickness, and weighs but _twenty-four ounces_. This is so constructed that double plate-holders, each containing two dry plates, form the top, sides and back of the camera, and the entire outfit for the taking of eight negatives, sold for ten dollars.

It is only fair to state that other apparatus and outfits can be purchased at rates almost equally low, notably those of the Scovill Manufacturing Company, of New York, who furnish complete equipments from ten dollars up. While I recognize the excellence of these articles, I have selected the “tourograph,” as being something with which I have experimented, and likely, from its simplicity, to meet the wants of beginners.

Since the expense is reduced to so reasonable a sum, and the road is made so easy that any one can travel it, what boy or girl will be deterred from entering this fascinating domain of photography?

If you can secure some old room in the garret, or in some unused corner, cover the window with yellow or orange paper, excluding all other light, and take to it such simple chemicals and apparatus as I have indicated, then what a delightful world for experiment and research is opened to you!

The mysteries of photography; how the subtle changes are wrought by the potent salts and acids, under the influence of the sun, I cannot explain now. But following the outline I have sketched, the rest will appear as you get interested, and you will gain an insight into wonders hitherto unrevealed, and enjoy sensations to which the boys and girls of past generations have been strangers.

XXI.—ARCHERY FOR BOYS.

MR. MAURICE THOMPSON has excited all the grown-up boys who loved in their younger days to draw the bow, by his graceful articles on archery for young men and women.

I want to tell the boys who are wide awake how they may, without too much labor and with but little expense, make their own bows and arrows and targets, having _their_ fun, like their elders, in this health-giving and graceful recreation.

In the first place, after you have made your implements for the sport, you must never shoot at or towards anyone; nor must you ever shoot directly upwards. In the one case you may maim some one for life, and in the other you may put out your own eye as an acquaintance of the writer’s once did in Virginia.

To make a bow take a piece of any tough, elastic wood, as cedar, ash, sassafras or hickory, well-seasoned, about your own length. Trim it so as to taper gradually from the centre to the ends, keeping it flat, at first, until you have it as in this sketch-for a boy, say, five feet in height: (Fig. A)

This represents a bow five feet long, one and a quarter inches broad in the middle, three-fourths of an inch thick at the centre, and a half-inch scant at the ends in breadth and thickness.

Bend the bow across your knee, pulling back both ends, one in each hand, the centre against your knee, and see whether it is easily bent, and whether it springs readily back to its original position. If so your bow is about the right size. Cut near each end the notch for the string as in this figure: (Fig. B.)

Bevel the side of the bow which is to be held towards you, so that a section of your bow will look like this figure: (Fig. C.)

The back or flat part is held from you in shooting, and the bevelled or rounded part towards you. Scrape the bow with glass and smooth it with sandpaper.

To shape your bow lay it on a stout, flat piece of timber, and drive five ten-penny nails in the timber, one at the centre of your bow, and the others as in figure below, so as to bend the ends for about six inches in a direction contrary to the direction in which you draw the bow: (Fig. D.)

Your bow is now finished as far as the woodwork is concerned, and you may proceed to wrap it from end to end with silk or colored twine, increasing its elasticity and improving the appearance. The ends of the wrap must be concealed as in wrapping a fish-hook. Glue with Spaulding’s glue a piece of velvet or even red flannel around the middle to mark your handhold. The ends may in like manner be ornamented by glueing colored pieces upon them.

A hempen string, whipped in the middle with colored silk, to mark the place for your arrow nock to be put, in shooting, will make a very good string.

For arrows any light, tough wood, which splits straight, will do. I use white pine, which may be gotten from an ordinary store-box, and for hunting-arrows seasoned hickory. These must be trimmed straight and true, until they are in thickness about the size of ordinary cedar pencils, from twenty-five to twenty-eight inches in length. They must be feathered and weighted either with lead or copper, or by fastening on sharp awl-points or steel arrow-points with wire.

I used to make six different kinds; a simple copper-wrap, a blunt leaden head, a sharp leaden head like a minie bullet, an awl-point wrapped with copper wire and soldered, and a broad-head hunting-arrow.

To make a copper wrap, wrap with copper wire the last half-inch of the arrow until you get near the end, then lay a needle as large as your wire obliquely along the arrow as in this figure: (Fig. E.) Continue the wrapping until you have weighted the arrow sufficiently; draw out the needle and thrust the end of your wire through the little passage kept by the needle, and draw it tight thus: (Fig. F.)

A blunt leaden head is made by pouring three or four melted buck-shot into a cylinder of paper, wrapped around the end of the arrow, slightly larger at the open end, and tied on by a piece of thread. The wood of the arrow must be cut thus: (Fig. H.)

The paper is put on thus: (Fig. X.)

It should look like this after the metal has been poured in and the paper all stripped off. (Fig. I.)

It should look like this after being sharpened like a minie bullet: (Fig. J.)

An awl-point arrow is made by inserting the point in the end of the arrow, wrapping with copper wire, and getting a tinner to drop some solder at the end to fasten the wire and awl-point firmly together. The awl-point looks like this: (Fig. K.)

The awls (like Fig. L) are filed like this into teeth-like notches on the part going into the wood, and roundly sharp on the other part thus: (Fig. M.) These may be shot into an oak-tree and extracted by a twist of the hand close to the arrow-point.

The broad-head hunting-point (Fig. N) is put on by slitting the arrow and inserting the flat handle of the arrow point, and wrapping it with silk, sinews, or copper wire. These points can be sharpened along the line A B on a whetstone, and will cut like knives. The hunting arrow looks like this: (Fig. O.)

To feather an arrow you strip a goose feather from the quill and, after clipping off the part near the quill-end, you mark a line down the arrow from a point one inch from the nock and, spreading some Spaulding’s glue along that line apply the feather, lightly pressing it home with forefinger and thumb. After you have glued on one piece lay aside the arrow and fix another, and so on until the first is set, so that you may put on another piece. When you have fastened these feathers on each arrow lay them aside for ten or twelve hours. The three feathers will look like this: (Fig. P.)

A boy can hardly make a good quiver unless he were to kill some furred animal and make a cylindrical case such as the Indians have, out of its skin. I am afraid that he usually would have to get a harness-maker to make him a quiver out of leather, somewhat larger at the top than at the bottom. It should hold from eight to twelve arrows.

A good target may be made of soft pine, circular or elliptical in shape. In the latter case a line-shot might count, even though it were farther from the centre. Pieces should be tacked to the back of this target at right angles to the grain of the wood. Differently-colored circles or rings, a little more than the width of an arrow, must be painted on this, with a centre twice the width of an arrow. The outer ring counts one, the next two, three, four and so on to the centre, which of course counts highest. By this plan one’s score could be told with perfect accuracy.

If an arrow struck on a line between number three and four it counts three and a half. Anything like this rarely happens. The target is fixed upon an easel formed of three pieces of wood fastened together by a string at the top, and it ought to lean back at the top slightly, away from the archer.

The three arrows count seven, nine, ten—twenty-six in all. In target-shooting you should use awl-pointed, wire-wrapped arrows, as they can be easily drawn out of even a wooden target.

XXII.—SIR WALTER SCOTT’S IDEA.

SOME years ago, while reading Lockhart’s _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, I came across a passage, in the autobiographical part, which struck me as so suggestive that I copied it; and here I copy it again, after which I will say my little say on the subject (it was when he was a youth, you know):

Wherever I went, I cut a piece of a branch from a tree—these constituted what I called my log-book; and I intended to have a set of chessmen out of them, each having reference to the place where it was cut—as the kings from Falkland and Holy Rood; the queens from Queen Mary’s yew-tree at Crookston; the bishops from abbeys or Episcopal palaces; the knights from baronial residences; the rooks from royal fortresses; and the pawns generally from places worthy of historical note.

Do you suppose he ever did it?

Now I had had the “collecting craze” for years, just as most boys and girls have now; and wherever I had been, had secured something, till a most miscellaneous accumulation was packed away in boxes and drawers about the house. Moreover, the rest of the children, as they grew up, had been possessed with the same idea. The boy who went South had obtained specimens of different kinds of woods; the one who was in the army had picked up relics; the girl who went to the White Mountains, and afterwards to Ticonderoga, had gathered mosses, leaves, and wild flowers.

Besides, all of us who had a duplicate or a bit to spare, had exchanged with some of our friends, just as you are all doing. The thing is in the air. Boys are boys, and girls are girls, everywhere; and fashions repeat themselves, and are passed on. You are doing what we did before you; and by and by, others will do as you are doing.

The result was that we had a little of everything, and a great deal, a very great deal all told; and when spring house-cleaning came around, and as in all proper households, every closet and drawer, bag and bundle was turned inside out, our mother would say: “Why don’t you make something out of these things? Seems to me if I couldn’t, I’d give them to somebody who would.”

There was the trouble—we meant to; forever meaning to do something; but that class, whether old or young, does not usually accomplish much.

But let me tell you of things that _have_ been done—by whom it does not matter. One boy started up on Sir Walter’s plan, and set the example for his comrades (besides correspondents); so that presently hand-books on chess made their appearance in the neighborhood; and there began to be a great deal of turning on lathes, and fine sawing, and whittling, and sand-papering. Pretty soon chess was all the talk; and as that game is one which requires in Wordsworth’s line (written on an altogether different subject)

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill,