Archive for February 2013
In Case
Just in case you are following my saga of solving the problem with my beloved hand plow, I have progress to report. The best thing I did thus far is write about it, and talk with as many people as possible about it. My ideas for ways to add support to prevent future bending, have expanded significantly with the input I have received from a wide variety of sources.
The solution that thrilled me the most, and was much easier than fabricating a bracket, is simply attaching a length of angle iron and using ring clamps to secure it.
I drew my idea for a brace, on this image, in red: 
It was suggested that a bracket underneath, in the area I was considering, should be much longer, to reach further up the handle. Here it is with the suggested bracing:
Laying a piece of angle iron over the top and clamping it seemed like a much easier plan. I stopped by the hardware store on my way home yesterday, and picked up parts. It didn’t take me long to realize an oversight. There is a plastic piece that needs to float back and forth for adjustment of the blade angle. I won’t be able to clamp the angle iron over that. Unfortunately, it is in the exact area that most needs to be braced.
Luckily, it was also suggested to me that if the fit was right, the angle iron could be inserted inside the tube. Walaa! That will work nicely! So, that is the avenue I am pursuing. I think I am close to succeeding, but I still need to work out a problem in one spot where the angle iron is interfering with my getting a bolt through.
I have some work-arounds in mind for that, and hope to be back in business by the next snowfall.
Wish me luck!
Fatal Flaw
At the end of December, I posted a description of the human-powered snow plow I got for Christmas. It is one of several great presents I received. The thing has been working superbly, right up until the second time I tried to use it.
I was making great progress clearing snow, but after about 10-minutes into the job, something seemed different. It was subtle, but I sensed that something was amiss. I figured out that the handles seemed lower. The main shaft was bending!
Talk about a weak link. This is the critical load bearing arm of the device. How could they design it with such a fatal flaw? I love this plow so much that I immediately began thinking about how I could brace it, to protect the thin tube from needing to bear all the weight. I really want to be able to keep using it.
I disassembled the parts to get down to the failing piece. Then it occurred to me that I should probably contact the manufacturer before modifying it with my own crude methods of attaching something for support. Especially, I thought, in the off-hand chance they knew of this weakness and already had their own fix in the works.
Luckily, I was successful in making contact with a service person, and without hesitation, she offered to replace the failing part. Unfortunately, that meant they didn’t have a fix in place yet. I prodded to see if they knew it was a problem, and she admitted that there have been other calls related to this situation.
I suggested heavier tube, or a support bracket, but I don’t think I was talking to the right person, I needed the responsible engineer. She told me she would have someone look at the weld of the replacement part before they send it to me. I’m not sure looking at it will make much difference.
I’m going to continue with my plan to devise some sort of bracket to keep it from bending at that spot. Everything else about this device has won my favor. The wheels work great, even though it seems like they would slip. The blade/scoop is a good size and shape. I like the dual hand grips. The quick adjustment for angling the blade is simple and functions well. The entire plow is not too heavy to lift. In fact, if it got heavier by way of using a more robust tube for that one piece of the main shaft, the added weight would be well worth it.
This is where John wishes he knew how to weld. And, had a machine to turn down the outside diameter on the one end. And, a way to cut square holes in the sidewall of a tube. I’d make the replacement part myself.
As it is, I will need to rely on the good will of some talented acquaintances, just to come up with a bracket I will be able to attach with common hardware. If it works, maybe I can sell it to the manufacturer of the hand plow.
Love it!
This is not to scale, but shows a hint of what we are contemplating for a hay shed beside the barn. Yesterday, I shoveled a mock driveway that you might be able to discern in front of the image of a shed that I have pasted into the photo I took.
There is no denying that this will impact the visuals of arriving to our place, but we think it will fit in the long run. There will be fencing of the paddock which will run on the near side of that new driveway loop, and often times, horses grazing in the pasture along the entrance. Just the addition of the fence alone is going to greatly alter the way things look in that area.
We don’t think having the hay shed right there, front and center –the first thing you come to when arriving– is ideal, but this is the way to make it most functional. Without having it physically in place to judge, we have to just guess how well it will fit. I fear the reality will be a bit shocking. I expect it to look larger than I am imagining it to be.
We are hoping to be able to adjust to it in a short amount of time, and let the activity surrounding it establish the justification, and the ultimate appropriateness, for the location. This is not the kind of thing that we can easily change our mind on after it is built. By that time, we will be putting our energy toward convincing ourselves how much we totally love it.
Sports Spectating
There was a big sports championship waged yesterday in the U.S., ending the National Football League season for another year. Congratulations to the fans of the Baltimore Ravens.
American football is a team sport, 11 vs. 11. Each play is a battle of eleven different 1-on-1 competitions. I think that is what provides much of the intrigue of our game.
When it comes to players on offense trying to execute a block, all they need to do is occupy the person to whom they are assigned, for the brief moment of play. Sometimes, it can be as simple as getting positioned between the defender and the ball carrier. The offensive team knows where the play is intended to go, so it would seem they have the advantage.
The defensive players are tasked with needing to quickly deduce what is happening, fight off or avoid the block, and then make a play for the ball.
Many of the individual match-ups on any given play, could probably be judged a draw. Then it comes down to a player who can be either a hero, or a goat, which may produce a gain, or loss, of particular significance.
For as slow as the actual 60-minutes of play-clock takes to run (games take around 3 hours), there is a lot of action that happens in each short burst. It is a pleasant distraction from the real world, while it lasts.
Now that we have arrived at the NFL off-season, I can return my discretionary attention to things that actually matter.
As if. I do still have the sport of hockey for frivolous entertainment, you realize. Yes, the truth is, I’m rather hopeless when it comes to the distractions of spectator sports.
Can’t Stop
Okay, I admit it: we are smitten with my son’s new album. I awoke this morning with one particular song running in my head. I just needed to hear it again, and when Cyndie noticed the sound of it playing, she asked me to play it again, out near the kitchen, where she could hear it better, because she wanted to hear that song, too.
If you read yesterday’s post here, and didn’t want to explore all the songs on Julian’s album, I will promote one for your consideration. Listen to “Of Mistress, Master, and Malcontent.” This song includes vocals from Dave Marshall, Julian’s friend in Chicago, and the blend of their voices together is a joy to behold. They have created an arrangement in this song that is captivating, and I think deserves to be heard by a wide audience. I have submitted it to a local radio station for consideration.
Do you think they will be able to see past the gushing parents to take time to consider the music for its own merit?
I hope so. That would make today a real SUPER Sunday.
Enjoy the day!
Big Accomplishment
This past week, we received an email from our son, Julian, with the subject: “My album has been RELEASED!”
Even though some of my son’s taste in music is different than mine, I can’t stop myself from listening to the whole thing, over and over. What a parental rush!
You can read his descriptions of the What, Why, and How, and listen for yourself at the web site he created to share his music: jaywalkerbroadcasts.com.
I recommend you sample enough songs to discover the wide variety of voice and instrument he has put together.
Talk about highly capable, he wrote songs, played all the instruments, sang, recorded, found and financed a professional studio to do mixing and mastering, and then built the web site to distribute his product. And, he did this as a side project to his current full-time day-job. To say we are proud of him, and all he accomplished with this, is an understatement.
When I was young, and heavily interested in recording artists of the time, one thing that boggled my mind was, when individuals would play all the instruments at such an accomplished level, so as to be able to produce a marketable product on their own. Now my own son has done just that!
I remember showing Julian a few things on my guitar when he was little. Then, he took up percussion in the school band, and off he went, playing guitar in rock bands, becoming an accomplished drummer, developing his singing, and developing skills on keyboards and bass guitar. Julian has performed live, in a variety of bands, in a wide range of venues. It’s the stuff that some folks dream of doing, and others actually make a living doing, but he has done it as just one of his many life interests.
Cyndie and I are always thrilled with the music our children make. I’m pretty sure we were annoyingly proud of watching our kids as marching band percussionists for many years. We drove Julian to ‘battle of the bands’ gigs back when he and his school friends didn’t have driver’s licenses. We were also fixated for quite some time on a video that Julian and friend, Dave Marshall, produced while Julian was living, and going to school, in Stockholm, Sweden, and Dave was back in Chicago. I’m including it here again, with Julian’s permission, because we still love it so much.
Julian has now gathered years of his music in a present day recording. He has included guest artists from high school and college days, and put together a legitimate album that he is distributing free on the internet. We think this is a really big accomplishment. I hope you will give it a listen, and then share it with all those who you know that have an appreciation for what he has produced.
If you agree with me, that his efforts are worthy, I invite you to post a comment at his site, or on any of the music sites he links, so he doesn’t just hear it from Mom and Dad. We all know, our support can appear to be a little biased.
Frozen Solid
Not much worth doing on the ranch after a heavy rain downpour in January is followed by plummeting temperatures. Especially when it falls way below zero Fahrenheit. Everything is ice. Extreme ice. It is brutal in so many ways.
First off, our driveway is a disaster. Cyndie suggested I try cleaning it by plowing with the tractor the day after it rained. I balked, fully aware that doing nothing would lead to this, but there were small odds I would have had much success with plowing. Under the slush, it was too icy to provide enough traction, even with chains on the tires. Also, it was still warm enough that the wet slush would stick to the blade, and quickly become too heavy for what little grip my wheels could accomplish. I figured I could make a bigger mess of things than we already had, and get the tractor stuck, to boot.
Now the driveway is one solid block of ice. Either I will get lucky, and it will slough off in big chunks when the next warm up occurs, or we are stuck skating our vehicles up and down the drive for the next few weeks. Either way, any small cracks that existed before, are now being stressed, big time.
Water flows and seeps into every crack and crevass, then it expands with destructive power when it freezes. It’s how we accomplish some of our world class pot holes in the roads around here. I can’t wait to see how the driveway looks, come spring.
The colder it gets, the harder the freeze. The harder the freeze, the more dramatic the breaking. When ice expands, it makes a lot of noise. The bigger the ice, the bigger the noise the cracking ice makes. Standing on a frozen lake, when the ice ruptures, the boom of fracturing ice can be very disquieting. When a mass of ice on top of the roof cracks, it is downright upsetting. Of course, it tends to happen in the darkest, coldest hours of the night, which just so happens to coincide with the time a person is trying to get a restful night’s sleep.
Quite frankly, it scares the hell out of me to be startled awake by, (((BOOM!))). Sleep tight.
Cyndie snapped a shot of me as I was about to enjoy trying to navigate the driveway disaster, walking the trash down to the road last night, with the windchill at 21 below.
Relative Something 