Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1896 — To Make a Shinny Stick. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

To Make a Shinny Stick.

A bright boy writing to the St Nicholas telle how shinny sticks are made. “I get sticks,” he writes, “as nearly straight as possible and bend them at home. I have a board made like this: There are two pins at one end, at 1 and 2, around which the stick Is bent; and at the other end are two rows of holes Into which a pin. No. 3, can be put to hold the handle In place. When the sticks—they should be as green as possible—are in place on the board I put the whole thing in the back of the

furnace, where tha stiqk will bake. In dbout two days the sap is dried out and the stick will keep its curve. "Then I take a belt lace—a leather string about half an inch wide and ono sixteenth of an inch thick—and bind It on the short end. If the stick is split, I bind it first with brass wire and then put the leather binding over the brass.'”

A SHINNY STICK.