19, 1904-1 
FORES* cANfl SltffiAM; 
Gas Engines and Launches. 
(Continued from />age 414.) 
BY F. K. GRAIN. 
Construction of Hulls. 
In all cases the best construction for the average hull 
is to follow the old and standard method, which consists 
of a natural crook oak stem, oak keel, which should, if 
possible, be in one piece. The transom or backboard 
should also be of oak. The ribs we prefer of straight- 
grained oak, steam bent, and placed not over 12 inches 
apart from Center to center. 
In order to bind the heels of the timber or ribs se- 
curely together and to the keel, they should be con- 
nected by a piece called a floor timber. This may be 
of oak where the boat is moderately flat, but as it ap- 
proaches the bow these timbers, if cut from straight 
stuff, will of course be cross-grained, and they should 
therefore either be bent in or cut from natural crooks. 
It is customary to gouge out a limber hole from the 
timbers near the keel, in order to allow the bilge water 
to drain to the lowest point. 
This method of cutting the limbers of course tends 
to weaken the timbers, and much the most preferable 
plan_ is to gouge out a channel the length of the keel, 
making it sufficiently large, so that a strong copper 
sash chain can be laid in it. By pulling this chain then 
at any time the channel will always be cleansed. 
In fastening the frame together for a power boat, we 
recommend the use of copper rivets, securely fastened 
with burrs where it is possible. In the wake of the 
engine it is a good plan to increase the size of the 
timbers or double the quantity. The planking should 
be of good quality of white cedar, not too wide, and 
fastened along each edge to the timbers with copper 
nails securely burred and riveted. Between each copper 
nail place a galvanized boat nail. This will prevent 
the plank from any inclination- to buckle or warp. Of 
course at the ends of the planking — at the bow and the 
stern — it is necessary to use either galvanized nails 
or brass screws, as it is impossible to put in a copper 
nail and rivet it. The use of copper nails without being 
riveted is useless, for as soon as they corrode they will 
become so loose that they can be picked out with the 
fingers. 
In all smooth planked launches the seams should 
meet on the inside of the planking, being open 
toward the outside. This allows of their being 
caulked, for which purpose cotton is used. After 
caulking, the seams should be thoroughly payed with 
white lead or varnish, depending upon the finish of the 
boat. This will harden the cotton and hold the putty 
afterward used to fill the seams. In the lap streak or so-, 
called clinker-built boat, the upper edge of the plank 
is beveled off about one inch, the next plank lapping 
over it that much, the_ edges being fastened every few 
inches by riveted copper nails. In this method no 
caulking is employed, as the laps of the planking are 
supposed to be drawn firmly together. The upper 
plank of the boat is called sheer streak, and should be 
made of hard wood. On the inside of the boat we 
have a corresponding piece called the clamp, and this 
piece in a launch should be as deep as possible, in 
order to prevent the tendency, which exists in all power 
boats, to hog. 
In hogging, the boat settles at each end, and this is 
caused, of course, by the greatest buoyancy of the boat 
being midships; and in small launches, where the motor 
is placed in the stern and the tank in the bow s there is 
a great tendency to hog. If a deck frame or brace 
were put across the midships of the boat, it would, in 
a great measure, prevent this trouble. 
The deck timbers in the old-fashioned construction 
usually had a knee connecting each end to the side of 
the boat, called daggerknees. These, however, do not 
amount to much in a power boat and, in fact, we 
believe in making all cross-timbering as light as possi- 
ble, as there is very little side strain in a power boat 
as in a sail boat, the strains being all the other way, we 
believe, in ample fore and aft timber. 
On the deck, the plank, which is placed on the out- 
side, is called a planksheer. The decking, filling in the 
planksheer, if made of hard wood in combination with 
a sheer streak and clamp, form a three-sided box around 
the entire outside, adding a great deal of strength to 
the boat. It is customary, however, at present for 
cheapness sake, to sacrifice this planksheer, laying the 
deck to the edge, parallel to the keel. The decks should 
be laid in comparatively narrow strips and thoroughly 
caulked. 
In a great many launches we notice fancy hard- 
wood decks of tongue and groove stuff without 
being caulked. These decks will soon rot out and 
will always be leaky, and there is no way of making 
them tight. In the inside finish of the boat, we believe 
in having as little fancy work as possible, dispensing 
with all beads, O. G. mouldings and other fancy work 
which it is hard to scrape up or reclaim when weather- 
beaten, and we think that after all it has a tendency to 
make a boat look cheap. 
When a bronze propeller wheel is used, the rudder 
shoe, rudder and stem band should also be of brass or 
bronze, otherwise the galvanic action set up by the 
bronze propeller wheel will eat these articles if made 
of steel or iron, particularly of steel, especially of the 
finer grade, which corrodes much faster than iron. 
In installing the engine no matter where located in 
the boat, the foundation should cover as many of the 
timbers as possible and should not rest on the plank- 
ing if it can be avoided. The material for the engine bed 
should be of oak. We have neglected to say anything 
about mahogany for use in boat work, it being of course 
the king of woods when of proper quality, but is little 
employed nowadays on account of the expense. 
In putting cabins on launches, their design will de- 
pend entirely upon the requirements of the owner; 
but we are very sorry to see a growing tendency to 
put high cabins on boats of 25 feet and under, as these 
boats are not sufficiently large or of sufficient beam to 
carry this top hamper, and are unquestionably danger- 
ous, and in a strong blow with the average power are 
unmanageable. If a cabin is desired on a small boat, 
the new style, now called hunting cabins, is by far the 
most preferable. These cabins are of the low trunk 
type, the same as in the old-fashioned sail boats, gen- 
erally covering about two-thirds of the cockpit. 
In designing a cabin launch where any kind of a 
gasolene or naphtha engine is used, the part used as 
an engine room should not be inclosed on the sides, 
as ample opportunity should be given all gases from 
the engine to escape and not be confined in the cabin. 
In the matter of trimmings, or what is termed the 
jewelry for a launch, we have of course but the two, 
brass and galvanized iron, galvanized iron being the 
most serviceable, although it does not look quite as 
attractive, but needs no cleaning. The chocks to which 
the ropes lead, also the cleats, should be about two 
sizes larger than will be shown you by your store- 
keeper, as they invariably put on too small a chock, 
and one that will not hold the rope is worse than no 
chock, and a small cleat is an abomination. 
The anchor for the boat should be in all cases amply 
large, with a good liberal supply of the best rope or 
chain for the same. It must be remembered that the 
anchor upon which the safety of your boat depends, 
and maybe sometimes your life, is the only real prac- 
tical insurance which the average owner carries. There 
are at the present time a number of very excellent 
folding anchors in use which seem to have all the quali- 
ties necessary to make them equal to the old-fashioned 
anchor, and they have the advantage over the old kind, 
of taking up no room whatever. 
All small power boats should carry a pair of good 
stout ash oars, as there is no telling when some acci- 
dent may happen to the machinery or the propeller 
wheel, in which case, should the operator find himself 
in a heavy sea and close on a lee shore, especially with- 
out an anchor, the situation would at least prove 
rather trying. ■-, 
Imgt and §>dlkrg. 
Rifles and Bullets. 
BY WALTER G. HUDSON, M.D. 
This is the first of a series of articles on modern rifle shooting: 
from the pen of Walter G. Hudson, M.D., of New York city,, 
president of the Manhattan Rifle and Revolver Association, and 
recognized as one of the highest authorities on the subject. 
Target shooting as a sport has been more or less sharply divided, 
into match rifle shooting and military rifle shooting. The points 
in which the match rifle differs from the military are its lighter 
trigger pull, finer sights, and better finish; and in addition, vari- 
ous departures from military styles are allowed in the way of.' 
special attachments, butt plates, heavier weight of barrel, etc. 
The match rifle also is developed with accuracy as its chief aim. 
and accuracy at the particular distance it is to be used, while the 
military rifle has to be adapted to all ranges, and be strongly- 
built and serviceable under adverse conditions, even if at the 
expense of some accuracy. 
In view of these considerations, it is scarcely to be wondered 
at that the target rifle, developed with the sole object of shooting: 
from the offhand position at 200 yards, as in vogue by the Ger- 
man-American (Schuetzen) clubs, should differ so much from, 
the long-range match and military rifle. The schuetzen rifle has 
changed but little in many years, and in its present form is 
probably as near perfection for its purpose as it is possible to 
get. Most of the modern schuetzen rifles still use black powder,, 
and in the finest American makes, the bullet is pushed down, 
from the muzzle, as in the old muzzleloading rifles. They are 
■extremely accurate, and the shooting is generally done on shel- 
tered ranges; so that this kind of shooting brings the game down 
to merely one of skillful holding. 
On the other hand, the long-range match rifle has of late years 
approached more and more closely to the military, so much so- 
that most of the match rifles now in use in England are merely 
-military rifles fitted with fine target sights. Skill in shooting at 
the long ranges, whether with military or match rifles, involves 
not only good holding, but also a knowledge of the effects of 
■disturbing factors, such as changes of light, wind, barometric 
pressure, temperature, etc. 
It must not be supposed, however, that schuetzen rifle shooting 
is of no value to riflemen who aspire to honors with the military 
•or long-range rifle. It has the advantage of using very cheap 
ammunition, it is generally done "on ranges provided with facili- 
ties that insure comfort to the shooter during even the coldest 
and most disagreeable weather, and it is the best possible train- 
ing for fine holding. Therefore, it is far better for the riflemen 
-who would keep in practice to shoot 50 or 100 shots at 200 yards 
say once a week or two weeks during the winter with a schuetzen 
rifle than to abandon the game altogether during cold weather. 
There are a large number of civilian riflemen who confine them- 
selves almost entirely to this kind of shooting, and who are, 
nevertheless, very well posted and skillful riflemen, able to take 
up other branches of rifle shooting at short notice; and their 
skill in holding and intimate knowledge of many of the technical- 
ities of the rifle, learned by long and careful practice with their 
■own weapons, certainly put them far in the lead of the novice,, 
no matter what other branch of rifle shooting they adopt. 
But it is in iong-range shooting undoubtedly that the rifleman 
finds the highest development of the sport. And in late years,, 
since the advent of the modern smokeless powder rifle of high 
power and small caliber, it is gratifying to note, in our American 
as well as in the British weapons, that the military and match 
rifle have approached very near to each other. In the old black 
powder days the match rifle, with its paper patched bullet, heavy- 
charge of powder and necessity of cleaning after each shot, was. 
a far different weapon than the military rifle. In those days, to 
attempt to shoot 1,000 yards with a military rifle, would have been, 
considered the height of folly. But now there is little difference 
in the scores made with match and military rifles at these long 
ranges. Indeed, our Krag, when a good barrel can be selected,, 
and when the drag is removed from the trigger pull, is, in the 
opinion of many expert riflemen, fully capable at the mid and 
long ranges of holding its own against the finest match rifles that 
can be produced. There are few target sights that afford better 
aiming than the 1901 model Krag sight, and, while it is true that 
the target sights, as a rule, are further apart and adapted to the 
back position, the modern high power rifle seems to shoot so- 
much better from the prone position as to more than compensate 
for any slight advantage the target sights might thus gain over 
our military sight. A glance over the records of those long- 
range matches of recent years that have been open to both 
military and match rifles, will show that in 90 per cent, of the 
matches the Krag has come out victorious. Indeed, the remark- 
487 
able development of accuracy in the American high power rifte 
within the past few years has not been due to any particular re- 
finement in the weapon or sights, but solely to the improvement 1 
in the bullet and in the more uniform measuring of powder' 
charges. 
To deal understandingly with the differences that have taken 1 
place in rifles since the adoption of the high power principle,, it 
will be necessary to look a little into the principles governing all) 
rifles. A rifle may be regarded as an implement embodying all 
the resources of science and art in the effort to throw a projectile' 
far, swiftly and accurately. The projectile is acted upon by the 
natural forces precisely as is a stone when thrown from the 
hand, the differences, due to the higher velocity of the bullet; 
being in degree and not in kind. The mystery that in the minds 
of the uninitiated is supposed to attend the flight of a bullet k 
chiefly due to the fact that the bullet cannot, under ordinary cir- 
cumstances, be observed in its flight and its motion watched, like 
the stone. 
The first thing that may be taken as true of all projectiles, no 
matter how thrown, is that they fall toward the earth as soon as 
the support is removed from them, just the same as though they 
were not projectiles. But, even while they are falling, the energy 
applied is driving them ahead. From this it will be clear that 
no weapon, however powerful, can drive a bullet so fast that it 
will go in a straight line; it immediately begins to fall as soon 
as it leaves the barrel unless the latter has been directed upward 
to some extent, in which case, besides its forward motion, it will 
rise until the upward force also imparted to it has been expended, 
and then begin to fall according to the well-known law of falling 
bodies— slowly at first, but faster the further it falls. The flight 
of a bullet, therefore, is always in a curved line. 
It does not seem as though air would offer much resistance to 
the passage of a body through it, but any one who has ridden a 
bicycle knows that it does. Moreover, the resistance of the air 
increases much more than proportionately with the speed of the 
moving body, for if the speed be doubled, the resistance will be 
more than quadrupled. The air, therefore, becomes a much 
more potent factor in retarding the progress of a bullet than 
of the stone thrown from the hand, even though, weight for 
weight, the bullet presents less sectional area. The forward 
motion of the projectile, therefore, will become slower the fur- 
ther it travels, while its falling speed is continually increasing 
owing to the laws of gravity; and for this reason the further it 
goes, the more curved will be its flight, until at last it drops to 
the ground. 
It is evident that the greater weight a bullet has in proportion 
to its sectional area, the less will be the degree of the resistance 
opposed to it by the air, other things being equal. An athlete 
could not throw a cork as far as a boy could a piece of lead of 
the same size and shape. Therefore the heaviest available ma- 
terial-lead-is used in the manufacture of the rifle bullets. For 
the same reason, the modern long bullet maintains its' velocity 
much better than the old round bullet used in the musket and 
early muzzleloading rifle. 
But when a bullet is made longer than its diameter, some 
means must be taken to insure its flying in the direction of its 
long axis— point on. This is the object of the spiral grooves that 
are cut on the inside of a rifle barrel, for it is found that if the 
bullet be caused to rotate with sufficient rapidity on its long axis, 
it will not turn sideways during its flight. The degree of this 
twist in the rifling is called its "pitch." The longer the bullet 
in proportion to its diameter, the quicker the pitch of the rifling 
must be; if the bullet is too long for a given pitch of rifling to 
handle, this will be shown by the bullet going through the target 
in a sideways or tipping position— in the parlance of the rifle- 
man, it "keyholes." It is necessary for the bullet to be kept 
point on from consideration of accuracy, as well as to maintain 
its velocity. 
When we increase the proportionate length of our bullets and 
use a quicker twist of rifling, it becomes necessary to harden the 
bullet by the addition of tin or antimony, so that it will hold 
on to the rifling and not be blown straight through the barrel 
without following the grooves— stripping, riflemen call it. But 
when we reach a certain point in lengthening the bullet and 
increasing the pitch of the rifling, no alloy of lead is sufficient to 
give good results. Therefore, in the modern high power rifle, 
the bullet is made up of a core of lead, with' a jacket of very tough 
metal, generally an alloy of copper" and nickel; and the tough 
jacket holds on to the rifling so well that we are enabled to fire 
charges of highly explosive compounds behind the bullet, giving 
nearly double the velocity that it was possible to obtain with the 
old black powder rifle. The modern high power rifle is, there- 
fore, one which fires a jacketed bullet very long in proportion 
to its diameter, by means of a charge of smokeless powder several 
times as strong as black powder, with nearly double the velocity 
obtained with lead bullets and black powder; and as a result of 
the long bullet and high and well sustained velocity, the curve 
described by the bullet is much nearer a straight line— "its 
tajectory is flatter," its penetration greater, and its range longer. 
There is another deviation laterally from the straight line shown 
fey a rifle bullet and more pronounced in rifles having a quick 
twist; this is called "drift." It is a lateral movement due to the 
spin of the bullet on its long axis. As the bullet is constantly 
falling in its flight, the under surface meets with more air re- 
sistance than the upper, and the bullet, therefore, tends to roll 
laterally on this denser air; so that a rifle having a right-hand 
direction to its pitch of rifling, will cause a bullet to drift to the 
right, while one with a left-hand twist will drift to the left. Cor- 
rection of this drift needs to be made on the sights of match 
rifles, but on the military sight of our national arm, the Krag, 
the correction is made automatically when the elevation is 
changed. , 
Gratis (O.) Rifle Club. 
The Gratis Township, O., Rifle Club held their November 
medal shoot on the 5th. The day was pleasant, but a strong wind 
caused several poor scores. The conditions were any rifle, 100yds., 
offhand, 4 shots, possible 48. 
November medal match: 
C Chrismer ..... 12 12 9 12—45 Silas Lee 10 8 9 12—39 
J W Lesher 10 19 11 12—43 M Pence 12 9 6 12—39 
G. O. Chrismer. . 10 11 9 11—41 Geo Busche 10 6 8 11—35 
C Busche ...... 9 11 11 9—40 C Glaze 9 7 8 10—34 
At the conclusion of the medal event three matches for cash 
prizes were shot under the same conditions, three moneys in 
each match. In the first G. Busche and G. O. Chrismer tied for 
first, and the former won, Chrismer second, Pence third. In 
the second, G. O. Chrismer and Pence tied for first. Chrismer 
-won the shoot-off. Pence second, C. Busche third. Third match, 
C. Busche first, J. W. Lesher second, S. Lee third. The scores: 
Prize matches: 
G O Chrismer. 43 46 40—129 C Chrismer......... 39 41 38— 117 
J W Lesher.. 40 41 43—124 M Pence ...42 46 35—123 
C Busche 32 43 44—119 S Lee ......40 34 41—115 
G Busche ..........43 38 38—119 
B. 
