By Dan Beard
Fig 429
The North Woods
A More Elaborate Camp
than the New Brunswick is shown by the illustration of the North Woods (Fig. 429) with a ground plan 8 X 14 feet, or as much larger as the party may demand. This is also an open camp, but there is a log fence around the open end of the shack, with a doorway.
The Door
may be made of boards, if they are to be obtained, or of slabs of wood, or even the bark of of trees, properly to a well-braced frame (Fig. 430).
The old backwoodsman's door hinge was made of an upright pole terminating in a long pin at the top and a short one at the bottom, the pins fitting into auger holes in the logs, as shown in Fig. 430; the hinge rod can be put in place by first slipping the long pin in the hole bored through the top log and then dropping the short pin in the short hole in the bottom log. Even a novice will understand that the pins must be sufficiently smaller in diameter than he hole, to allow them to turn freely.
If the two pins at the ends of the hinge rod are well oiled with a sweet oil, Vaseline, bacon fat or grease of any sort they will be found to move with little friction, but then the porcupines will gnaw them to pieces when the camp is vacant. After the rod is in place nail the door to the hinge.
In case you have no tools for boring holes, make hinges of old bits of leather, soles of old shoes or folded pieces of canvas (Fig. 431). This makes a rude, crude doorway, but if my readers of old American stock they know that their own ancestors were content were content with a deerskin or an old blanket portiere. The proper idea is make the best house and doorway of which your limited time and tools will admit.
The Birch-Bark Roof
is so easily understood from the diagram (Fig. 432) that it probably needs no further description. The reader may see by the illustration that the pieces of bark are laid so as to break joints and also to overlap like shingles; it may also be seen that they are held in place by being weighted down with additional poles laid on top of the bark. Birch bark is an ideal material for the roof; however, almost any bark which can be obtained in suitable-sized pieces will answer the purpose.
