Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/502

 474

��Popular Science Monthly

��A Music Stand

AVERY pretty and useful music stand can be easily constructed with inexpensive material. Anyone who can use a hammer, saw, auger, varnish- brush and glue-pot, can make this stand at an astonishingly low cost. The ma- terial necessary can be obtained in al- most any village. The use of the stand is not restricted to music, as the one the author constructed had various uses. The lowest shelf held a set of Shake- speare's works. The next was used for music books, the second for sheet music and the top for holding a lamp, a metro- nome and a match-holder.

The materials will mostly depend upon the advantages: Four boards (dressed to required thickness), IS x 24'; one board (dressed to required thickness), 9" X 18'' ; four iron rods, 4' x 14".

Tacks and putty are required, as well as spools of different sizes and shapes, nails, and glue. The boards will be dressed for a few cents at a planing mill ; the rods can be obtained at a black- smith's and the spools at a dressmaker's, tailor's or milliner's. Thumb tacks may be procured at a book store.

If possible, obtain spools that have had Nos. 36, 40 or 60 cotton thread, and dress the boards, of the first size, to a thick- ness equal to the length of the hole in the spool. This will vary with the size of the spool. Find points on the four similar boards, four inches from the corner, on the di- agonal. This mav be done by drawing the diagonals and marking on them points x inches from each corner. With a W-h\t, bore holes at these points in the four boards (x depends on the radius of the spool in Fig. 3).

Place the spools in a vise and saw each in two, making the cut parallel to the hole in the spool. Then drive the finishing nails, one in each half-spool, as shown in Fig. 1. Commencing at one corner, nail these half spools to each of

���Method of cutting and placing spools

���Music stand easily constructed at small expense and with few tools

the boards, the hole in the spool running at right angles to the top of the board. Some difficulty will be .found in driving the nails into the spools, to avoid split- ting the wood. The boards, when com- pleted thus, will appear as in Fig. 2.

Take the board whose larger dimen- sions are 9" x 18" and complete it. It must be dressed. The spools required for it are common spools that have held silk thread. These must be sawn into halves, the cut made this time at right angles to the hole (Fig. 3). Next, with a good, sharp knife pare off the side, as shown in Fig. 3, just enough to pre- vent rolling. Then into some, drive nails, from one side to the pared side, as shown in Fig. 3. Dress the board to a thickness equal to the smallest di- ameter of the spool, and place this board centrally on one of the other boards. To do this, draw the diagonals on the under side of the smaller board, and measure one diagonal. Then from the middle of the other board (where its diagonals in- tersect) mark off on its diagonal lines equal to one-half the diagonal of the small board. The corner of the smaller board will coincide with the four points just marked. Lay the spools on the larger, around the smaller board, which has been nailed firmly to the larger board (nails being driven from under- neath the larger board). The larger part of the spool is on the outside.

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