The joints of the hull should then be smeared with either pitch or bath-tub enamel or a thick mixture of white lead may be used.
After having made sure that the hull is perfectly water-tight the worker can proceed to install the power equipment. This consists of a small battery motor driven with two dry cells. The design and installation of such things as stern-tubes and propeller-shafts have been taken up in detail in an earlier part of this book. The strut that holds the propeller-shaft is shown in Fig. 91. This consists merely of a brass bushing held in a bracket made of a strip of brass 1/2 inch wide. The brass strip is wound around the bushing and soldered. It is held to the bottom of the hull by means of two 8-32 brass machine screws. These screws should be tightened to prevent leakage. It would be inadvisable to use wood-screws for this purpose, owing to the fact that the bottom piece of the boat is thin.
The two dry batteries for the motor are held in two tin troughs, as illustrated in Fig. 92. These troughs are fastened to the side of the boat by means of small bolts. They will prevent the boat from shifting its cargo; in other words, they hold the batteries in place and thereby prevent the boat from listing.
The deck and deck fittings should now be furnished. The construction of the forward cabin is shown in Fig. 93. The sides and back are formed with cigar-box wood, while the curved front can best be made with a piece of tin. The top is also cut to shape from cigar-box wood, and should overlap about 1/4 inch. The pilot-house is simplicity itself, being made of a piece of curved tin with three windows cut in it. Four little lugs cut in the tin are bent on the inside and each provided with a hole. These lugs are used to tack the pilot-house to the deck. A small skylight is produced from a solid piece of wood and tacked in place as illustrated in the drawing.
The builder is cautioned not to destroy the appearance of his boat by making the mast too large. After the mast has been nicely sandpapered, a little wire frame is bent to shape and fastened to the top, as shown in Fig. 87. The little wire railing that is placed in front of the mast is then bent to shape, and this and the mast are put in their permanent position. The mast can be held to the deck by boring a hole a little under size and smearing the bottom of the mast with a little glue before it is forced in. Pieces of black thread are run from the top of the mast to the railing at the bottom, as shown. These threads are used to hoist signal flags. Two little angle-pieces are placed on the forward deck, one on each side of the pilot-house. These are for the harbor lights. One should be painted green and one red.