Handicraft Stunts

LET each Scout carve a fork and spoon out of wood, with his band totem on handle. Make a needle case out of a fowl's leg or wing bone, thus: Clean and smooth about three inches of the bone plug up one end with a soft wood plug and make a, wooden stopper for the other end. Then with the point of a knife decorate the bone. The lines should be scratched in deeply and then have black paint rubbed into them. If no black paint is handy make a mixture of soot and pine gum, with a little grease, butter or oil.

Make a tackle box or ditty box 2x2x6 inches carved out of solid wood.

Make peach-stone baskets, of a peach-stone shaped with a file.

Turkey Call

An interesting curio is the turkey call. Take a small cigar box and cut off the end as in the figure. Get a piece of slate about 2x3 inches long, or, failing slate, take a flat piece of wood and rub it well with rosin. Draw the two curved edges of the box lightly up this one way, and it will make a wonderfully good imitation of a turkey call.

A Chicken Squawk

This is another call easily made. Take any small round tin box - a condensed milk tin is good - and make a hole through the bottom and into this put a cord. A knot on the inside prevents the cord from slipping through. Rosin the cord and draw the fingers down it with short and long jerks. This give a good imitation of a cackling hen.

Picture frames as in the above illustrations.

Also make beds of willow rods, grass rugs, baskets of spruce roots, etc. as described elsewhere.

Birch-bark boxes and baskets. These are easily made if the bark be softened in hot water before you shape it. The lacing is spruce roots, also softened with hot water.

(See "How to Make Baskets," by Mary white, Double-day, Page & Co., $1 plus 10 cents postage).

Souvenir Spoons

A good indoor activity of Scouts is the making of souvenir spoons. Some craftsmen are clever enough to make these out of wood or of silver. I have found that the best, easy-working material is bone, deer antler or horn. Go to any big drug shop and get one of the 25-cent horn spoons. It is already of a good spoon-shape, of course. The handle is hard, smooth, and ready to be ornamented with any device, cutting it with knife or file, into the owner's totem, or the clan or the tribal totems which naturally suggest themselves.

Skookum Wild Cat Owl Eagle Johnny Bear.

The design should be sketched on with pencil or ink, then realized by shaping the outline with file or knife. The inner lines are merely scratched on the surface.

In general, one should avoid changing the main outline of the spoon handle or cutting it enough to weaken it. Always, rather, adapt the animal to fill the desired space.

There are several purposes the spoon can answer: First as a spoon in camp, especially when prizes are offered to the camp that makes most of its own equipment; next, as a salable article; third, as exhibition article when it is desired to get up a fine exhibit of handicraft products illustrating camp life.