  EVERY boy needs a pencil box. Plain little oblong boxes most of them, with a flat hinged cover, and a little lock that you keep carefully fastened with the key. That is, a boy locks his pencil box when he is able to find the key, but whether it was in his pocket, or fastened to his watch chain, the school-box key always does manage to get away, somewhere—to make its escape. One day, however, the boy sees displayed in the window of a stationery shop, a new sort of pencil box, a most fascinating kind. The cover of the box is made of narrow strips of wood fastened side by side like the strips in the top of a roll-top desk, and when the shopman opens the pencil box to show the boy the inside, the cover just slides right back out of sight, while the boy looks on in open-eyed astonishment. The shopman’s supply of these magic boxes is limited, though, and there is a wild scramble for their possession among the boys who can produce ten cents—for that is the exorbitant price charged by the shopman. The The boy will be able to make his own pencil box, though, and this is the way he must go about it in order to construct one of those fascinating, roll-top ones, just like the one in the shop window. In the first place, a boy must know how to whittle. All that he needs in the way of material is a jack-knife, some pieces of wood three-sixteenths of an inch thick, some more pieces an eighth thick, a strip of white cloth, and some little three-eighth inch nails. The first piece to make (Fig. 1) is the side of the box. It is just a plain oblong of the three-sixteenth inch wood, measuring nine inches long by two and a quarter inches wide. All the pieces are made three-sixteenths thick except the strips for the cover. Two of these sides are necessary of course. Next come two strips nine inches long and a quarter of an inch wide which are fastened, notched side up on the inside of each side, “flush”—even—that is, with the top, with four little nails driven from the outside. The piece which is cut from the end of each of these, as shown in the drawing, is to make a joint which is later to be fitted with Fig. 10. Diagrams of a School Box. Diagrams of a School Box. It is best to make the cover next, so that you can test it and see that it works smoothly before any more of the box is put together. It is made of little strips (Fig. 6) three-eighths of an inch wide and two and a half inches long, “sliding fit,” which means that they are to be a little less than two and a half, so that they will slide in a space two and a half inches wide. A sharp rub on the ends with sandpaper will make this slight difference. There are twenty-two of these strips, and they are glued side by side on a strip of white muslin cloth. If you use a piece with a selvage on one side, you will be more sure of making the cover perfectly straight. Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 are a false bottom and false end, which form the receptacle for the pencils, and hide the mechanism of the cover. They are nailed in position as shown in Fig. 12. The nails to fasten these in place must be a little longer than the others, because they have to be nailed from the outside and must go through two thicknesses of wood and project into a third. The next piece to make is Fig. 10—an oblong measuring one and a half inches by two and a half, and cut to make a joint with Fig. 2. This is placed across the top and nailed down, covering the rounding end of the “track.” Now the cover may be slipped into position and the end pieces (Fig. 11), oblongs two and a quarter inches by two and seven-eighths, nailed on, and the box is done. It is a convenient size, the receptacle for pencils is ample, and to one who does not know, the disappearance of that cover when it opens is a mystery that borders on black art. |
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