The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1868-06-22
Road Making and Mending.

The season is ut haHd when the
greater portion of the work upon the
public highway will be performed. All
are more or less interested III having
good roads, and every citizen should
feel a responsibility upon himself to
such an extent as to lend influence and
means to make them so. A community
keeping their public roads in fine con-
dition do not receive their returns
wholly in having a good carriage track
to ride upon, but an advaEce is made in
the price of real estate. Good roads de-
note thrift and enterprise, and any in
telligent man seeking home will new
er locate in community where good
roads, good churches, and school houses
are not found, let the quality of the soil
be as good as 1t may.
The main thing in making good ronds
is to shape them so as to keep the wa
ter froxl the track, and to do this the
center must be elevates sufficiently to
shed rain, and the bitches properly con-
structed to carry off the water. If the
bed of the road is narrow and water is
allowed to stand in the side bitches,
capillary attraction keeps the dirt
moist, and ruts will form.
Sluiceways are not u,ually plenty
enough, nor are conducting drains, for
pools of water may be seen aleng the
sides of many country roads during
nearly the whole year, and If the water
ever disappears it is by evaporation.
One of the worst features in the man
agement of our roads is working them
but once year, and this in part ac-
counts for the water poels on the way
side: the bitches not being kept open
after they are constructed. Another
bad feature is the plan of filling rut
holes with cobble-heads, for as soon as
the earth around the stones settles, or
washes away, an annoying prominence
is left to jog every one who rides over 1T,
and also obstructs the working of the
scraper. Stone or gravel should never
he put upen the highway, unless enough
is used to macadamize for q certain ex-
tent the whole width of the track.
A leveling scraper will do more work
in repairing roads, than a dozen men
with shovels and other tools, where it
is not necessary TO turn pike, and one
should be kept in every neighborhOod.
A good one may be made as follows ::
Take two planks twelve or fourteen
inches wide and two inches thick; saw
one end of each beveling about two
inches, i. e. so that one edge will be
shorter than, the opposite; this is to
make the top flare out when the planks
are put together. One of these planks
should be eight feet long and the other
two inches shorter. Put them together in
V shape, the shortest edge down, aud
frame in q cross beam of four-by-four
scantling, little above the center, up
and down, and about two feet from the
ends, so as to spread them eight feet
apart. The cross beam should be framed
in with shoulders, and the tenons al
lowed to run through six or eight inches
so that key pins may be put in on the
out sides. .
When all is fitted. bolt saw mill
plate on to the inside of each wing, so
that the back edge of the saw will
come even with the lower edge of the
plank. The point or narrow end of the
scraper should be secured by iron
clasps, as good deal of strain comes
upon this part. The scraper is drawn
open end forward, by staples or clevices
attached near the ends, or from the
shoulders of the cross bar.
An implement of this kind makes a
sweep of eight feet, gathering in all the
hubs and unnatural prominences, and
deposits them in the rut holes and all
interstices making the road level and
nice. If the leveling scraper should be
passed over our country roads once OF
twice month, when the condition OF
the earth would admit eft, road mend.
ing would be comparatively easy to
what it is now, and the condition OF
the public highway hundred fold bet.
ter.-0hio Farmer.