So, Who Else Was Forging Metal In Their House This Week?

[Big Frank]

So, who else was forging metal in their basement, or anywhere else in their house this week? Anyone? One of my 4"x4' cedar fence posts is broken off at ground level or a hair below and I had an idea how to shore it up. I have some pieces of pipe in the basement including thin fence rails, and what may have been heavy wall water pipe. I took a piece of the thick thick walled pipe about 1.5" I.D. that one of my neighbor previously used as a fence post, and started grinding on it with a worn-out wheel on my angle grinder. I was using a part of the wheel that was never intended to be used, on a wheel that should have been thrown away, but it still worked. I cut 2 notches about 90 degrees in one end of the pipe which is 5'3" long, and ground the ends to points. When I was done with all that, I ground the thin layer of concrete off the outside of it. Then I heated it for a few minutes with my propane torch and beat the holy snot out of with my 2 pound ball peen hammer. I turned it over and repeated the same on the other side to close it up, then heated and hammered each side again to get more of a taper on it. My idea was to get shaped like a big nail so I can pound it in with my sledge hammer, without the pipe filling up with dirt. I sprayed a bunch of paint on it where I ground the cement off to help prevent rust. I want it to displace the dirt and have a tighter friction fit like a nail in wood. When the ground softens up a little I'm going to place it next to the post and pound into the concrete footing, hopefully until it's about halfway in the ground, but I may be overly optimistic. It may go a few inches and stop. I think I have some kind of brackets to hold pipe. If I can find them, and they're big enough, I can buy some lag screws and bolt them down to the post. I think they're for smaller water pipes or electrical conduit. If I can't find them, or they won't work, I can just use pieces of pipe strap and deck screws. The pipe strap I have is thin but I can double it up to make it stronger.

If you ever wondered what a 5'3" long nail would look like, I'm saying it would be something like this.

[Big Frank]

Yesterday it was in the mid-50s and I figured the ground must be thawed by now. So I grabbed the steel post, step ladder, level, and sledgehammer, and went to work. I lined the post up with the flats on the tip perpendicular to the cedar post, and after a few light hits the head fell off my sledgehammer. The handle rotted away AGAIN. The first time was because it sat in my shed for so many years, and water ran right in whenever it rained. I had it setting on the sole plate instead of the bare concrete most of the time, but it rotted away anyway. I fixed it last year, but not well enough. It still rotted away from setting on the stairs in my damp basement. The plastic wedge broke when I knocked the remaining bit of the handle out, so I pounded in as many 16 penny nails as it would take instead. Most of them went in 1-2", and a few went most of their 3" length. The whole accumulation adds up to a wedge of steel.

Round 2: I went back outside with the newly reassembled sledgehammer and pounded the post in 30" deep. I was going to to stop at 2 feet, but once it got past the concrete or gravel, whatever was around the post, it went in so easily I accidentally went 25", then went another 5" to make sure it was in deep enough. That only left 33" above ground. The fence was leaning away from the post and I had to pull the top in to fasten the 2 together. That fence post just happens to be right across from the corner of my house, where there's a door going down into the basement from the back yard. I didn't want to use the winch on my ATV to pull the fence in, and I don't own a come-along, but I do have some ratchet tie-down straps I use to strap my ATV to the trailer. There's an awning over that 3rd house door with a diagonal 2x4 on each side supporting it. I cut my 15' ratchet straps down to about 5' when I bought them so they're not long enough to drag on the ground. I ratcheted the mechanism on 1 strap to lock it and looped it around the 2x4 supporting the awning. And put the other one around the fence post. When I tried hooking them together they weren't quite long enough, so I locked the ratchet on the strap on the post, hooked onto it with the 3rd strap, hooked the other end on the other strap, pulled the slack out and ratcheted the fence over to the post. I didn't need the 3,500 pound winch with synthetic rope and remote control, a 500 pound tie-down strap worked just fine.

Once everything was n place I cut 3 pieces of pipe strap about 11" long and bent a curve into the middle of each one. Then it was a simple matter of zapping 3, 1 1/4" screws through the end of one strap into the post, wrapping it around the other side and zapping 3 more screws in, then repeating the procedure with the other 2 straps. I filled the pipe from the top to however far down is it went with spray foam, used more spray foam to fill a 24', 15-ounce aluminum T-Ball bat I found next to my car one day, and called it quits. Today I went out with a knife and cleaned up the little bit of excess foam. Then I cut a piece out of the edge of a pill bottle cap because there was no space between the 2 posts to slide it over the pipe. I put a big glob of ALEX PLUS All Purpose Acrylic Latex Caulk Plus Silicone in the bottle cap and smooshed it down on top of the pipe. Now I don't have to worry about the pipe filling up with rain and snow and rusting out too fast. And no wasps or other critters can nest in it either. I had a bolt screwed into the spout of the partly used tube of caulking, with more caulking smeared over the top of it. It was sealed up really well and didn't dry out, so I did the same thing with it today. The covering of caulking stuck to the bolt, leaving the tip of the tube clean, and I scraped that off before I put the bolt back in. I held he sledgehammer with one hand right below the head and one a comfortable distance away, and tapped on the post instead of trying to take a swing at it. Once the pipe was in the ground a certain amount it was easier than driving a nail, except the hammer weighs 16 pounds, plus a half pound of nails, instead of of 16 ounces.   Nailed it!

If anyone is wondering what's up with the downspout, after some @$$hole stepped on it and it folded, I straightened it out by sliding it over one of these steel posts, lying that across my sawhorses and hammering the downspout back into shape. Then I put the broken part in a cast.   I wrapped a whole bunch of 1" wide, O.D. Green duct tape around it. I think I used everything that was left on the roll I got from an army surplus store, and the rest is on my sledgehammer handle where I broke it a long time ago. The duct tape does double-duty as an overstrike protection collar, as well as holding the split together.   There's a carriage bolt in the splash block that keeps the downspout from sliding around, no matter how bad the weather is. The splash block in the front yard has 2 carriage bolts, right in the corners like this one used to, since it's in a straight line with the downspout. I had to take the bolts out of this one, and use one in the left side so it works when it's turned sideways.

[Big Frank]

I almost bought a 10' section of downspout at The Home Depot last week. Then I saw the price of them. $16.48 for a 2 in. x 3 in. x 10 ft. White Aluminum Downspout. No thanks. I use a whole one in the front yard, and cut one in half with a hacksaw to use at this corner of the house, and another half for the awning over the back door that drains into the yard, next to the driveway. That one is split at the seam from the bottom to the middle, so I have the seam facing up and it works as well as a brand new one. It just looks like crap. Even worse than one with a pound of army green 100 mile an hour tape.   If you want the good stuff, this is it. Nashua tape Products 2880. Too bad 1" duct tape seems impossible to find most places, because there are times when it works better than 2" (1.89) or 3" (2.83) wide tape. It was probably .94" wide, but they called it 1" at the store.