The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-09-01
USE OF CEMENT !. FOR WOOD WHEN
 MAKING SHIPS
Old Prospector Tells How He Constructed Cement
 Boat.

The following letter was received by the Portland Cement Go. from Son. sonate, Salvador, c. A.; Your cable dated yesterday re- garding the reinforced concrete boat reached me last midnight and pro- ceed to explain. %"The row-boat myself and my pros pectins pard' built years since, if still afloat is. thousands of miles from this place, and from nowhere and con- sequently. I am unable to furnish photographs but I will endeavor to furnish you with a apen-picture of its construction. hoping thereby, as ages prevents my presence on the firing line in France. to thus indirectly get a. crack at the Kaiser and his cattle in4the name of democracy, and incl dentallykito aid. our beloved Uncle by boosting his cement, business. I am an American first, ,rl last and all the time, and personally have mo ax to grind = &'.- ,--t7sa 1 Employed with my aforesaid tpard' to hold down the scattered supplies and loose property of a busted mining company back in the sos; we found ourselves with any number of bar | ASIS OI CcIuGnI d1u several IOI1S OF woven wire screen sheets, plus other l mining plunder, and all the unoccu- pied time. the Lord was then mak- ing, on our hands, and when we be- came so thoroughly tired of too much rest that we were becoming quar-
 relson1e we proceeded to do things
 Experiments with cement and
 woven wire in the building of a bath l tub, horse troughs.-. and an tAmeri-
 can cooking-stove,' convinced us that
 what we didn't know about Portland cement, if written out, would make a lmuch larger book than Webster's Die
 tionary and contrary to Joe's-nly
 pard' 's-conviction profane1y express ed whenever anything 5hitched in the proceedings-he knew the d-d thing
 would go to the bottom like a Ekedge
 anchor, and was continually kicking I about our; wasting so much valuable l time, we proceeded to build of stone the first boat of that material, pos Isibly, that ever floated on water. | fWe.d decided to build the boat keel up and I made up drawings on such
 basis! We prepared a cemented building floor curved to the lines ot thee raft's gun'als, marked this floor the center and interior lines of the iboat and to such lines built up with
 
 tsolid ''core'' of the exact interior size and shape of the boat to be.
 Il To fit such a. core as exactly as possible we then built a skeleton boa of the heavy woven screenswire, join. ing the sheets so1idly with copper riv.
 cts. and wire and fitted same over the
 core described, loosely, which we hat previously lplastered with a 1-2 incl .cQat of wood ashes to prevent adhe
 sion of the cement. Our wire was
 quite stiff and heavy but easily work able to shape by hand and maI1e and of aboua 1-2 inch mesh Out T side of this mesh, as we travelled il
 the concrete.a 1 to 1 mixture of ce ment and clean river sand, we built a,
 we went along a retaining dam ol shell of damp clay to hold our con crete in place, calculating as near1, . as possible a uniform thickness of al , inch, excepting on the bottom wher. we gave the job a thickness of near : CT 2.
 Our concrete was sloppy but no too much so to trowel, or too littl, so to pour, but the craft was not pour
 ed. . we put her in the lake after abou
 a months wait and to Joe chagrin she floated O. K; Iopsided and dow1 at the stern, twas true, but she float
 ed-our nigger's verdict was, for d. , Lord, dem is de crazyestes white folk I ebber sawed
 z Joe became at once an enthusias , marine architect hewing that old tul , with<a hatchet until the wire shove, ! in spots and she rode an even kee i. much too high out of the water
 discovered that owing to the continua
 guying with she'll sink like an an . chor, I had been frightened int : building her 1-2 to a foot too deer , She was,i strange to say, springly u1l . der foot as a wooden boat, and ono 2 under way as speedy asl the India, | canoes
 We built a second and much bet f ter boat-18 footer--that we contin 7, ually used with oar and sail until W were forced to. leave that bowling vii
 derness owing to dearth of came
 goods-our only legal tender with tn z nattves-our company having forgot
 ten it's mine, us and our $10 per .da ! as caretakers. This second boat wa
 James Dandy. You will not fou
 boat was built without frames, a sys . tenn which of course would not wor : out with large craft.
 T believe 10000 ton steamers C
 uniform dimensions can be turned ou
 lat IA the cost of wooden ships by tn :, system of reinforced concrete con : struction, and much faster than Uncl . :. Sam can put the engines in them. "Tell your engineers to get thei think boxes tuned up on this propos i, ton if they wish to cut swath 1 V future history.
 "P P. BRANNON." ;- Wine of Year 154O
 l. T4~ ma4