Chapter 6
This sort of a house, if built with planks or boards nailed securely to the rafters and covered with earth and sod, will make a splendid cave house for boys and a playhouse for children on the lawn, and it may be covered with green growing sod so as to have the appearance of an ornamental mound. The instinct of the cave-dweller is deeply implanted in the hearts of boys, and every year we have a list of fatal accidents caused by the little fellows digging caves in sand-banks or banks of gravel which frequently fall in and bury the little troglodytes, but they will be safe in a barabara. The shack is ventilated by a chimney hole in the roof as shown by Fig. 146. This hole should be protected in a playhouse. The framework is a good one to use in all parts of the country for more or less permanent camps, but the long entrance and low doorway are unnecessary except in a cold climate or to add to the mystery of the cave house for children. It is a good form for a dugout for a root house or cyclone cellar.
XXIII
THE NAVAJO HOGAN, HORNADAY DUGOUT, AND SOD HOUSE
IF the reader has ever built little log-cabin traps he knows just how to build a Navajo hogan or at least the particular Navajo hogan shown by Figs. 148 and 150. This one is six-sided and may be improved by notching the logs (Figs. 162, 164, 165) and building them up one on top of the other, dome-shaped, to the required height. After laying some rafters for the roof and leaving a hole for the chimney the frame is complete. In hot countries no chimney hole is left in the roof, because the people there do not build fires inside the house; they go indoors to keep cool and not to get warm; but the Navajo hogan also makes a good cold-country house in places where people really need a fire. Make the doorway by leaving an opening (Fig. 150) and chinking the logs along the opening to hold them in place until the door-jamb is nailed or pegged to them, and then build a shed entranceway (Fig. 153), which is necessary because the slanting sides of the house with an unroofed doorway have no protection against the free entrance of dust and rain or snow, and every section of this country is subject to visits from one of these elements. The house is covered with brush, browse, or sod.
Log Dugout
Fig. 152 shows how to make a log dugout by building the walls of the log cabin in a level place dug for it in the bank. Among the log cabins proper (Figs. 162 and 166) we tell how to notch the logs for this purpose.
Fig. 149. Fig. 150. Fig. 151. Fig. 152. Fig. 153. Fig. 154.
Fig. 151 shows one of these log dugouts which I have named the Hornaday from the fact that Doctor William Hornaday happens to be sitting in front of the one represented in the sketch. Fig. 154 shows a dugout with walls made of sod which is piled up like stones in a stone wall. The roofs of all these are very flat and made of logs (Figs. 54, 55, and 56), often with a log pegged to the rafters above the eaves to hold the sod. All such houses are good in dry countries, cold countries, and countries frequented by tornadoes or by winds severe enough to blow down ordinary camps.
The Navajo hogan is an easy sort of a house for boys to build because the lads may use small poles in place of logs with which to build the camp and thus make the labor light enough to suit their undeveloped muscles, but the next illustration shows how to build an American boy's hogan of milled lumber such as one can procure in thickly settled parts of the country.
XXIV
HOW TO BUILD AN AMERICAN BOY'S HOGAN
THE first time any working plans of an underground house for boys were published was when an article by the present writer on the subject appeared in the _Ladies' Home Journal_. Afterward it was published with a lot of similar material in "The Jack of All Trades." Since then other writers have not hesitated to use the author's sketches with very little alteration; imitation is the sincerest compliment, although it is not always fair, but it does, however, show the popularity of the underground-house idea.
The American boy's hogan may be built like the preceding shacks of the material found in the woods or it may be constructed of old boards and waste material to be found in village back yards or on the farm, or, if the boys have the price or if they can interest their fathers or uncles in their scheme, it may be built of milled lumber procured at the lumber-yard.
Frame
Procure some good, sound planks and some pieces of two by four with which to build your frame. The hogan should be large enough to allow room for a table made of a packing-case, some benches, stools, or chairs, and the ceilings should be high enough for the tallest boy to stand erect without bumping his head.
Furniture
One funny thing about this house is that it must be furnished before it is built, because the doorway and passageway will be too small to admit any furniture larger than a stool. Select or make your furniture and have it ready, then decide upon the location of your hogan, which should be, like the Western dugouts, on the edge of some bank (Fig. 158). In this diagram the dotted line shows how the bank originally sloped.
Foundation
The real hard work connected with this is the digging of the foundation; one Y. M. C. A. man started to build one of these hogans, but he "weakened" before he had the foundation dug. He wrote the author a long letter complaining of the hard work; at the same time the author was receiving letters from _boys_ telling how much fun they had in building and finishing their underground houses.
Caves
Ever since "Robinson Crusoe" and "Swiss Family Robinson" were written cave houses have been particularly attractive to boys; no doubt they were just as attractive before these books were written, and that may be the reason the books themselves are so popular; at any rate, when the author was a small boy he was always searching for natural caves, or trying to dig them for himself, and so were all of his companions. One of the most charming features of the "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" stories is that part connected with the cave.
Fig. 155. Fig. 156. Fig. 157. Fig. 157.A. Fig. 157.B. Fig. 157.C.
Fig. 158. Fig. 159. Fig. 160. Fig. 161.
Dangerous Caves
The trouble is that with caves which the boys dig for themselves there is always serious danger of the roof falling in and smothering the young troglodytes, but a properly built underground hogan is perfectly safe from such accidents.
Framing
After you have levelled off the foundation erect the rear posts of two-by-fours _A_, _B_ and _C_, _D_ (Fig. 156). These posts should be of the same height and tall enough to allow the roof to slant toward the front as in Fig. 155. The front posts _E_, _F_ and _G_, _H_, although shorter than the back posts, should be tall enough to allow headroom. One, two, or three more posts may be erected between the post _A_, _B_ and the post _C_, _D_ if additional strength is required. The same is true of the sides, and in place of having only one post in the middle of each side (_M_, _N_ and _O_, _P_, Fig. 156), there may be two or three posts, all according to the size of the house you are building; the main point is to make _a compact and strong box_ of your framework so that in the wet weather the banks surrounding it will not be tempted to push in the sides and spoil your house.
Decaying Wood
Locust, chestnut, and cedar will last longer than other varieties of wood when exposed to contact with damp earth, but common wood, which rots easily, may be protected by preservatives, one of which is boiled linseed-oil with pulverized charcoal stirred into it until a black paint is produced. Some people say that a coat of charcoal paint will preserve even a basswood fence post for a lifetime, and if that is true a hogan protected by a coating upon the outside of paint made by stirring fine charcoal into boiled linseed-oil until it is as thick as paint will last longer than any of my readers will have occasion to use the hogan for a playhouse. Erect the frame (Fig. 156) by having some boys hold the uprights in place until they can be secured with temporary braces like those shown running diagonally across from _B_ to _E_ and _A_ to _F_. You may then proceed to board up the sides from the outside of the frame by slipping the planks between the frame and the bank and then nailing from the inside wherever you lack room upon the outside to swing your hammer. The door-jambs _I_, _J_ and _K_, _L_ will help support the roof.
The Roof
The roof may be made of lumber, as shown by Fig. 160, or it may be made of poles like those shown on the Wyoming Olebo (Fig. 236), or it may be made of planks and covered with tar paper (Figs. 296, 297, 298, and 299), or it may be shingled, using barrel staves for shingles, or covered with bits of old tin roofing tacked over the planking--or anything, in fact, which will keep out the water. As for looks, that will not count because the roof is to be afterward covered with sod.
Cliff-House Roof
If you wish to make the roof as the cliff-dwellers made theirs, put your biggest logs crosswise from _A_, _M_, _E_ to _C_, _O_, _G_ of your house for rafters, and across the larger logs lay a lot of small poles as close together as may be, running from the back to the front of the house. Fill in the cracks between with moss or calk them with dry grass; on them place a layer of brush, browse, or small sticks and over this a thick coating of clay, hard-pan, or ordinary mud and pack it down hard by tramping it with your feet until it becomes a smooth and tightly packed crust; over this you can put your sod and weeds to conceal your secret.
Passageway
To make the frame for the underground hall or passageway (Fig. 156), first nail _Q_, _S_ across the door-jambs to form the top to the doorway, after which put in the supports _Q_, _R_ and _S_, _T_. Next build the frame _U_, _V_, _X_, _W_ and join it to _Q_, _S_ by the two pieces _Q_, _U_ and _S_, _V_ and put in the middle frame support marked _ZZZZ_.
The passageway should be about six feet long and the front doorway (_U_, _V_, _X_, _W_, Figs. 156 and 157) of sufficient size to enable you to creep through with comfort. The bottom piece _W_, _X_ can be nailed to a couple of sticks driven in the ground for that purpose. The next thing in order is the floor, and to make this firm you must lay a number of two-by-fours parallel to _B_, _D_ and _F_, _H_ and see that they are level. You will need a number of shorter pieces of the same material to run parallel to _F_, _H_ and _W_, _X_ for the hall floor, as may be seen in Fig. 157. Across these nail your floor securely as shown in Fig. 155.
There are no windows shown in the diagram, but if the builders wish one it can be placed immediately over the entrance or hallway in the frame marked _I_, _K_, _Q_, _S_ (Fig. 156), in which case the top covering of dirt must be shovelled away from it to admit the light in the same manner that it is in the dugout shown in Fig. 142 and also in the small sketch (Fig. 154). The ventilator shown in Fig. 155 may be replaced, if thought desirable, by a chimney for an open fire. On account of the need of ventilation a stove would not be the proper thing for an underground house, but an open fire would help the ventilation. In the diagram the ventilator is set over a square hole in the roof; it may be made of a barrel or barrels, with the heads knocked out, placed over the hole in the roof, or kegs, according to the size of the roof. When your house is complete fill in the dirt around the edges, pack it down good and hard by the use of a piece of scantling two by four or four by four as a rammer, then cover the roof with small sticks and fine brush and sod it with growing weeds or grass.
The Door
You should have a good, stout front door (Fig. 157) and a padlock with which to secure it from trespassers.
Aures Hinge
A rustic hinge may be made by splitting a forked branch (Fig. 157 _C_) and using the two pieces nailed to the sides of the door-jambs (Fig. 157 _A_) to hold the round ends of the rod (Fig. 157 _B_) run through them. The middle of the _B_ stick is flattened to fit on the surface of the door to which it is nailed. This hinge was invented by Scout Victor Aures of stockade 41144 of Boy Pioneers of America and a description with neat diagrams sent by the inventor to his chief. When all is completed you can conceal the ventilator with dry brush or by planting weeds or shrubs around it, which will not interfere with the ventilation but will conceal the suspicious-looking pipe protruding from the ground. The top of the ventilator should be protected by slats, as in Fig. 161, or by wire netting with about one-quarter-inch mesh in order to keep small animals from jumping or hopping down into your club-house. Of course, a few toads and frogs, field-mice and chipmunks, or even some lizards and harmless snakes would not frighten any real boy, but at the same time they do not want any such creatures living in the same house with them.
Trap-Door
In place of a ventilator or chimney a trap-door may be placed in the roof and used as a secret entrance, access to inside being had by a ladder. A description of an appropriate ladder follows (Figs. 169 and 170).
Fig. 159 shows a rude way to make a chandelier, and as long as your candles burn brightly you may know that the air in your little hogan is pure and fresh. When such a chandelier is used pieces of tin should be nailed above the candles to prevent the heat from burning holes through the roof.
XXV
HOW TO CUT AND NOTCH LOGS
BOYS you have now passed through the _grammar school_ of shack making, you are older than you were when you began, you have acquired more skill and more muscle, and it is time to begin to handle the woodsman's axe, to handle it skilfully and to use it as a tool with which to fashion anything from a table to a two-story house. None of you is too young to learn to use the axe. General Grant, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Billy Sunday--all of them could wield an axe by the time they were eight or nine years old and do it without chopping off their toes or splitting any one else's head open. Remember that every time you hurt yourself with an axe I have a yellow ribbon for you to wear as a "chump mark"; but, joking aside, we must now get down to serious work of preparing the logs in order to build us a little cabin of our own, a log club-house for our gang, or a log camp for our troop of scouts.
Notching Logs
To make the logs hold together at the corners of our cabins it is necessary to lock them in some manner, and the usual way is to notch them. You may cut flat notches like those shown in Fig. 162 and this will hold the logs together, as shown by 162 _E_ or you may only flatten the ends, making the General Putnam joint shown in Fig. 163. This is called after General Putnam because the log cabins at his old camp near my farm at Redding, Conn., are made in this manner. Or you may use the Pike notch which has a wedge-shaped cut on the lower log, as shown by Fig. 164 _J_, made to fit into a triangular notch shown by 164 _H_. When fitted together these logs look like the sketch marked 164 _F_ which was drawn from a cabin built in this manner.
But the simplest notch is the rounded one shown by _A_, _B_, and _C_ (Fig. 165). When these are locked together they will fit like those shown at Fig. 165 _D_.
Away up North the people dovetail the ends of the logs (Fig. 166) so that their ends fit snugly together and are also securely locked by their dovetail shape. To build a log house, place the two sill logs on the ground or on the foundation made for them, then two other logs across them, as shown in Fig. 168.
Handling the Logs
That the logs may be more easily handled they should be piled up on a skidway which is made by resting the top ends of a number of poles upon a big log or some other sort of elevation and their lower ends upon the ground. With this arrangement the logs may be rolled off without much trouble as they are used.
Chinking
A log cabin built with hardwood logs or with pitch-pine logs can seldom be made as tight as one built with the straight spruce logs of the virgin forests. The latter will lie as close as the ones shown in Fig. 162 _E_, while the former, on account of their unevenness, will have large cracks between them like those shown in Fig. 165 _D_. These cracks may be stopped up by quartering small pieces of timber (_Y_ and _W_, Fig. 1681/2) and fitting these quartered pieces into the cracks between the logs where they are held by spikes. This is called "chinking the cabin."
Fig. 162. Fig. 162E Fig. 163. Fig. 164. Fig. 164F. Fig. 165.
Fig. 165C. Fig. 165D. Fig. 166. Fig. 167. Fig. 168. Fig. 1681/2.
To keep the cold and wind out, the cracks may be "mudded" up on the inside with clay or ordinary lime mortar.
Models
Study these diagrams carefully, then sit down on the ground with a pile of little sticks alongside of you and a sharp jack-knife in your hand and proceed to experiment by building miniature log cabins. Really, this is the best way to plan a large cabin if you intend to erect one. From your model you can see at a glance just how to divide your cabin up into rooms, where you want to place the fireplace, windows, and doors; and I would advise you always to make a small model before building. Make the model about one foot three inches long by ten inches wide, using sticks for logs a little less than one inch in diameter--that is, one inch through or one inch thick. I have taken these dimensions or measurements from a little model that I have before me here in my studio, but, of course, you can vary them according to the plans of your cabin.
XXVI
NOTCHED LOG LADDERS
EVER since man learned to use edged tools he has made ladders or steps, or whatever you may call them, by notching logs (Figs. 169 and 170).
Fig. 169. Fig. 170.
A few years ago I took a splendid trip among the unnamed lakes and in what is known as "the unexplored country"--that is, the unmapped country of northwestern Quebec. We travelled over trails that had not been changed by man since canoes were invented. The forests were untouched by the axe of the white man. There were no roads, no houses, no fences, no people except a few wandering Indians, no cattle except caribou and moose, no dogs except wolves, and we slept at night on beds of balsam and paddled by day through rivers and lakes or carried our luggage and our canoes over the portages from one body of water to another over centuries-old trails. At one place the trail led up the side of a mountain to the beetling face of a cliff--a cliff that we had to climb with all our canoes and luggage, and we climbed it on a couple of notched logs, as shown in Fig. 169. By the way, boys, the Indian with the big load on his back is my old friend Bow-Arrow, formerly chief of the Montainais, and the load on his back was sketched from the real one he carried up that ladder portage. This old man was then sixty years of age. But all this talk is for the purpose of telling you the use of the notched log. Our pioneer ancestors used them to ascend to the loft over their cabins where they slept (Fig. 170). It is also a good ladder to use for tree-houses and a first-rate one for our underground hogans when we have an entrance through the top instead of one at the side shown by Fig. 156. Since you have learned how to use the axe you may make one of these primitive ladders to reach the hay-loft in your barn, if you have a barn. You may make the ladder of one log if you set the pole or log upright and notch it on both sides so that you can clasp it with your hand and, placing one foot on each side of it, climb up in that manner.
XXVII
A POLE HOUSE. HOW TO USE A CROSS-CUT SAW AND A FROE
Pole House
FIG. 171 shows a pole house--that is, a house, the walls of which are made by setting straight poles up on end with sides against each other and nailing a beam across the top (Fig. 172) and toe-nailing them (Fig. 173); that is, driving the nails slantingly down through the poles to the sill beneath. Fig. 172 shows how to nail them to the top beam or side-plate. To build a pole house, erect the four corner-posts and any intermediate posts which may be necessary, nailing the plates on top of the posts to hold the frame together (Fig. 172), afterward fitting the other posts in place, as shown in the sketch.
We have not yet arrived at the part of the book where we can build as extensive houses as the one shown here. The drawing is only inserted at this place because it naturally comes with the use of the cross-cut saw. You can, however, without much trouble, build a small pole house without the veranda, and after you have learned how to build the big log houses you can turn back to this page and try a pole house like Fig. 171.
Fig. 171. Fig. 172. Fig. 173. Fig. 174. Fig. 175. Fig. 176. Fig. 177. Fig. 178. Fig. 179.
Sawing on an Angle
Fig. 174 shows how to saw off poles on the bias, as a woman would say, or on an angle, as a man would say. Suppose, for instance, you want to cut the poles to fit the dormer over the veranda shown in Fig. 171. Measure off the height of the middle pole, then the distance along the base from the middle pole to the corner at the eaves. Next fit the poles you are going to use closely together to cover that distance; hold them in place by nailing a plank temporarily across the bottom ends; then place another plank at the point marked for the height of the middle pole, run it down to the bottom plank, and nail it temporarily along this line. Now take hold of one end of the saw, as the fellow does in Fig. 174, and let another boy take the other end of the saw; then by working it back and forth along the line you may saw off the protruding ends of the poles. Proceed in the same manner along the base-board. You will then have half the dormer poles all nicely tacked together and cut in the right shape so that they may be evenly fitted in place, and after they are secured there the marking planks may be knocked off. Fig. 175 shows two boys at work "pit-sawing." They are sawing planks from a log, which is rather hard work but not unpleasant. I know, for I have tried it when I was up among the moonshiners in the mountains of Kentucky. Fig. 176 is from a sketch I made up in Michigan, where two men were sawing down a tree as they frequently do nowadays in place of chopping it down with an axe; this tree, however, was first notched with an axe so that it would fall in the right direction. Fig. 178 shows the peculiar teeth of one of these two-handled saws. It is not necessary for you to be expert on the sort of teeth a saw should have; any saw that cuts well for your purpose is the sort of saw you need.
The Froe
Fig. 179 shows two forms of the froe, an implement used for splitting shakes and shingles and clapboards like those on the roof of Fig. 171. The froe is held by the handle with the left hand and hammered on the top with a mallet held in the right hand. Fig. 177 shows two boys sawing a log up into sections, but for our work in cabin building the woodsman's axe is the real tool we need. The saw is all right and may be used if you have it, but it is a little too civilized for real woodcraft work. You cannot throw one of these saws over your shoulder as you would an axe and go marching into the woods with any comfort. The saw is also a more dangerous implement around camp than even a sharp axe.
XXVIII
LOG-ROLLING AND OTHER BUILDING STUNTS