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.