Garagineer, explained

Nope, not a harpoon tip for the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Seems all five of my readers have been confounded by the contraption I cobbled up the other day- here’s the whatzzit.

I do my own felling of firewood here on the ranch, & occasionally it is necessary to connect a “twitch” line to a tree to maneuver the tree around obstacles that will prevent a good fall. In the past, this was accomplished by cutting a 20’ or so sapling, limbing it, & using said pole to push the cable noose up to a point on the tree where winching and/or pulling on it will do some good (IOW, up high to get leverage).
Of course, a pole that long is going to weigh a few pounds, in that the maker of trees has figgered out that a long taper growth pattern gives stability. So the push-pole is a pain to make, heavy, & only lasts a year or so until the tip gets rotted & breaks off, rendering the whole thing unusable.

Now, each year this whole process becomes a tad more difficult as my timeline gets longer, so I pondered on a replacement.

*ponder, ponder*

“Eureka!” , says I. The roof snow rake we use has four, 5’ long interlocking sections, & is all nice & light. Into my junk heap, err, materials depot I dive to find a suitable piece of tubing to fit the end of the aluminum rake handle. Whilst there, I found an old fireplace poker which already had the kind of terminal geometry I had in mind.

Cut off a short section of the poker, heated it with the torch, slapped it on the anvil, & hammered the end of it flat. Drilled a detent hole in the tubing for the handle interlock, drilled the flat part of the poker & the tube for rivets, & assembled.

Now, the whole unit weighs about 6 pounds, instead of the 30 or so of the sapling counterpart. The hook part is a bonus, as it allows me to grab an already choked noose up high for repositioning.

I love my junk pile, err, materials depot.

The Garagineer Strikes Again

I should've thought to invent this years ago... 

Beats cutting down a heavy 20' sapling every year.

Ain't it a beauty?

Happy Easter

"So by our baptism into his death we were buried with Him, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father's glorious power, we too should begin living a new life." Romans 6:4

Nail, meet Hammer

ASM826 wins QOTD with this:

"They’re totem poles to a belief system."

GO read.