Spool

“ Take another empty spool and stick a common wire hairpin partially into the hole, bend the hairpin slightly down against the edge of the hole, do the same with three more hair-pins, and you will have a spool with a funnel-like opening of hair-pins at the top (Fig. 513) . In the funnel place a small, light-weight ball made of a crushed bit of bright paper wound around with thread. Raise the spool to your lips and blow gently (Fig. 514) . The ball will rise and fall in mid-air, in the same way that you have seen one of rubber dance at the top of a small fountain or jet of water.
243
Fig. ”

“ The axle upon which the spool turns is a piece of broom-handle 10 inches or so in length (Fig. 30) . Bore two holes through it in the positions shown, for pins to keep the spool in its proper place. Wooden pegs can be cut for pins. For a winding handle, pivot a spool on the right-hand disk by means of a nail or screw. The inner flange of the spool handle may be cut off as shown in Fig. ”

“ The roving spools were placed vertically in a creel between the two sets of rollers, and the rovings reduced to the requisite fineness by the latter; after which each was passed through a coiled eye at the lower end of a flyer leg, and attached to a double-flanged spool which was loosely mounted upon a spindle. At each revolution of a flyer a twist was put into the attenuated roving, and the flyer wrapped as much thread upon a spool as the rollers delivered. ”

“ The score is counted after each attack. If a spool has fallen over, but not off the chair, it counts but half its number; if on the floor, it is "dead," and the whole number is counted.
SPINNING FOR 20.
On a board or piece of cardboard, mark with pencil or ink, the design illustrated, the size of the circles varying with the size of the board.
A top may be made out of an empty spool by taking one end of it and sticking a piece of wood, pointed at one end about an inch long, through it. Each spool makes two tops which are spun with the thumb and forefinger. ”

“ Nine times out of ten you will succeed, and a [45] bubble will swell out from the spool as in Fig. 81. These wooden bubble-blowers last a long time, with no danger of breaking when accidentally dropped on the floor, and you can always find enough to provide one for each of the players who meet for a trial of skill in bubble-blowing.
Fig. 81—You can blow bubbles with a spool.
Now try
Pretty Butterflies
which fly from spools. Cut a butterfly (Fig. 82) from bright-colored tissue paper or thin writing paper, bend at the dotted line and paste on the large end of a very small cork. ”

“ Wind strong cord around the spool, to the end of which a button is fastened to keep the cord from slipping through your fingers; on top of the spool place the flyer, and give the string a vigorous pull, at the same time releasing the spool with your thumb, and the centrifugal force will cause the flyer to revolve rapidly, shoot upward, and sail to a height of fifty or a hundred feet in the air, slowly descending as the revolutions diminish. ”

“ A spool is of small account when the thread is wound off; yet several factories use each from 1800 to 3500 cords of wood every year in making these articles. Thousands of acres of birch trees have been bought at one time by thread manufacturers, for the sole purpose of securing a supply of spools. ”

“ Drive the spool brads a trifle into the shaft to hold the spool in position.
The projecting arm F (Fig. 194) is a strip of tin cut from a can, and must be long enough so each nail-head will strike its end when spool E is revolved. Drive a nail into base A, at G, and, after bending strip F as shown in Fig. ”

“ Smaller ones are easily made of spools without making a disk, or wheel, for them. The more slender the spindle is, the faster one can spin the top. First make a stick about 6" long to fit the hole in the spool. Plane 1" of it tapering as small as 1/8", then glue the spool on 1-1/4" below this small end. Now hold the spool in the vise endwise, and make, with the back-saw, a saw cut half thru the spool on the same slant as the slanting part of the spool ”

“ The spool for the primary is now made up by fixing the other bobbin head on a paper or fibre tube and fastening its54 free end to the left-hand bobbin head, or the spool can be made in the usual way by glueing up two spool ends on a fibre or paper tube and securing the iron core firmly in one end, allowing room, of course, for the brass tube to slide in at the right-hand end. ”

“ There might be seen machinery for making spools—with water-driven lathes, which turned these articles, variously known as “bobbins” and “pirns,” literally off the reel by the thousand. It was a sweet, birch-smelling place and my favourite haunt on all holidays. ”

“ Fig. 75—A Sunday-school room made of spools.
Leave an open space for the doorway at the opposite end of the room from the organ. Build up a column of four large spools at each side of the space and connect them with a strip of paper laid from the top of one column to the top of the other.
Build the fine, large pipe-organ close to the edge of the back room. Stand eight spools in a row tight to each other at equal distances from each boundary side line. Build the [38] row up three spools high, then skipping the end spools, build on two layers of six spools each ”

“ The woman throws these spools about her with flying fingers, in 39and out, over and under one another, and so fast that you can hardly follow the evolutions with your eyes. In the chaos and confusion of skipping spools you wonder how she can possibly pick up the right one every time, and especially how she can go on gossiping with her friends all the time and yet never seem to miss a stitch. The laces these ingenious Flounders were making were very dainty and delicate in texture and very beautiful in design.
Most of the shops in Ostend seemed devoted to the sale of sea shells. ”

“ Bore a three-eighths-inch hole through each upright at F, Fig. 75, and another through the center of each wheel. Now fasten two of the uprights six inches apart upon a block of wood, as shown at A and B, Fig. 77. Whittle a shaft to fit loosely in the holes of the uprights, and, after slipping it into them, fasten one of the wheels upon one end and a small spool upon the other (see C and D in Fig. 77) . A weight of some sort should be fastened to the base, as shown at E. The uprights for the other support should be similarly mounted upon [Pg 49] another block of wood. ”

“ Rubber-bands make the best belts. Cut a hole through the bottom of the cigar-box for the belt extending from the upper shaft to the front axle to pass through. Screw the toy motor to the cigar-box with its pulley directly in line with the upper shaft pulley. [Pg 135] Wrap the spool pulleys with bicycle-tape, to keep the rubber-band belts from slipping.
Fig. 204.—Two Home-made Battery Cells Connected in Series.
The Battery. A dry battery is too heavy for the motor truck to carry; so we must make a special two-cell battery like that shown in Fig. ”

“ Nicholas and I succeeded in chartering the sloop very cheaply; and between laughs, while getting up sail, we agreed that she was even crazier and older than she had been described. She was a big, flat-bottomed, square-sterned craft, sloop-rigged, with a sprung mast, slack rigging, dilapidated sails, and rotten running-gear, clumsy to handle and uncertain in bringing about, and she smelled vilely of coal tar, with which strange stuff she had been smeared from stem to stern and from cabin-roof to centreboard. ”

“ This I soon found in the shape of a very large pond—or lake, I should rather call it—where the water was clear as crystal, and where there was usually a nice light breeze playing over the surface—just strong enough to fill the sails, and drive my little sloop along like a bird on the wing—so that she often crossed the pond before I myself could get round to the other side to receive her into my hands again.
Many a race have I had with my little sloop, in which sometimes she, and sometimes I, proved victorious, according as the wind was favourable or unfavourable to her course. ”

“ Salpice, at Paris, is a shell of this immense Clam, the valves of which are used as receptacles for holy water; it was presented to Francis the First, by the republic of Venice. Fancy the clapping to of such a pair of valves, when the animal closes its shell in alarm, and the strength of the cable required to moor it to the rocks or coral reef. The spotted species here figured has a solid and heavy shell, very elegantly shaped, and beautifully marked, as will be seen; the greatly reduced size of the figure prevents anything like justice being done to the original. ”

“ Then I reel up the slack, and put on another fly, out of my cap, a Popham. Then I fish down the rest of the pool. Near the edge, in the slower part of the water, there is a long slow draw, before I can lift the point of the rod, a salmon jumps high out of the water at me,—and is gone! I never struck him, was too much taken aback at the moment; did not expect him then. Thank goodness, the hook is not off this time.
The next stream is very deep, strong and narrow; the best chance is close in on my side. ”

“ We all know that the hole which each young Pholas makes, when first he takes possession of his rocky home, is extremely minute,—not larger than a small pin's head; now, it stands to reason, that if the shell was the only terebrating agent, the opening of the cavity in question would always remain of the same size, or, perhaps, on account of the action of the water, a slight degree larger than its original dimensions. ”

“ I’ll find a place on the opposite bank of the river where I can moor the winch, and then run a cable across the water to the sloop. We’ll drag her out when you’ve done enough spade-work. But mind, you want to get all that sand clear away from her sides, and make a nice slope up from her bow so that she won’t stick when the winch begins to haul on her. ”

“ The best washing-sponges live in warm seas, attached to the rocks on the sea-bed. Divers go down and obtain them; or else they are dredged up, cleaned, dried, and sorted, and then sent to the market. Some Sponges, called Slime Sponges, have no skeleton, being merely a living mass of slime.
Coral is also the hard skeleton of a little animal, known as the Coral Polyp. The rest of the polyp's body is soft jelly, which many fish regard as good food. The Sea Anemone--another jelly-animal--is first cousin to the Coral Polyp. ”

“ A larger salmon rises close beside us with a tremendous rush, bumps his nose against a jutting rock, and flops back into the pool. Now comes a fish who has made his calculations exactly. He leaves the pool about eight feet from the foot of the fall, rises swiftly, spreads his fins, and curves his tail as if he were flying, strikes the water where it is thickest just below the brink, holds on desperately, and drives himself, with one last wriggle, through the bending stream, over the edge, and up the first step of the foaming stairway. ”

“ From the church we strolled down the river-side, or as near to it as we could, in search of sketchable bits—and shipping, for though some ten miles inland (judging by our map) , Spalding is a seaport, small, but flourishing in its way; brigs and sloops, inconsiderable in size according to modern commercial ideas, find their way thither, and these are more profitable to the artist, if not to their owners, than huge steamers and big iron vessels. Small sea-craft are always picturesque, which is more than can be said of their larger brethren. ”

“ In Spongilla proliferens, a common Indian species, the buds arise [Pg 45] as thickenings of the strands of cells accompanying the radiating spicule-fibres of the skeleton, which project outwards from the surface of the sponge. The thickenings originate beneath the surface and contain, at the earliest stage at which I have as yet examined them, all the elements of the adult organism (i. e. flesh-spicules, ciliated chambers, efferent and afferent canals, parenchyma-cells of various sorts) except skeleton fibres, gemmules, and a dermal membrane. ”

“ My custom is to fish a pool very patiently and thoroughly. It is true that not more than half a dozen times in my life have I ever hooked a salmon other than when the line was straight down the stream, but by keeping the boat in the right course, and handling the rod to suit it, there are several possibilities of presenting the fly on an even keel. ”

“ The head is deeply grooved, and is apparently cut from the middle part of the columella, the shaft being formed from the spine-like basal point. The spiral canal, which is clearly defined, makes but one revolution in the entire length of the pin. In Fig. 5 a somewhat similar specimen is represented. Two fine specimens come from a mound on Fain's Island, Tennessee River. The larger one is made from the columella of some heavy shell, probably the Strombus gigas. The head is cylindrical, and the shaft large, but imperfect. ”

“ Unless sponges are alchemists and can transmute one element into another, the material of which the spicules are made must ultimately come from the water in which the sponges live, or the rocks or other bodies to or near which they are attached. The amount of water that must pass through a large specimen of such a sponge as Spongilla carteri in order that it may obtain materials for its skeleton must be enormous, for silica is an insoluble substance. ”

“ When I reached the deck, some of the men were engaged in heaving in the new cable; others were just then called aft by the captain to assist in bearing off a sloop on one quarter and a schooner on the other, and in disengaging the rigging which had caught in the spars. The sloop had the appearance of a wreck. The laniards of the shrouds had been cut away on both sides, and the tall and tapering mast was quivering and bending like a whipstock, from the action of the wind and the waves. ”