Well it's been a while Steeminoids - work has been work and a new computer system that takes great delight in deleting random parts of my input has been a headache unto itself. So this weekend I promised myself to avoid my career work at all costs and get some personal stuff done instead.
That lasted about an hour until work called me with a question.
Anyway I pushed on and started to get a few things done.
-I serviced the wagon and managed to get most of the old oil onto the newspaper. Most, not all, it's still a work in progress.
-I took the family out for coffee and donuts. First it was just a trip to the shopping center for my wife to pick a few things up. Which led to coffee for me and bubbacinos for the kids while we waited. And of course donuts and coffee are a natural progression so...
-I recycled a couple of chairs we were going to thrown out. Cheap wooden chairs that came with out cheap table when we moved here, I sawed off the back of them and created mini tables. They're not pretty but they hold up things like the router in the garage just fine.
-While pulling the chairs apart I looked at the fasteners and thought...I can re purpose these.
-I resurrected the whipper snipper.
I saw resurrect because I'm one of those people who won't give up on something unless it's completely beyond saving or salvage.
Or on fire.
And even then...
So when my $50 Gumtree bargain electric whipper snipper locked itself up and had to be hacked apart just to see what was going on, I put everything aside for a quiet weekend when I could jury rig it (or Macguyver it if you prefer) back to some working order.
(I wasn't paying for it to be fixed either as there's a fair chance the repair bill would be more than the unit is worth)
Hacking it open meant that the head no longer clamped shut and it wouldn't spin effectively unless something held it in place. Some kind of clamp was completely out of the question as was tape or glue. And since I wasn't keen on throwing more money on it than I had to (I quite enjoyed resurrecting an old mower I had back in the day with random junk in the shed. Every time something else broke, I'd find a free fix deep in the back of the shed..) it was just waiting for something nearby that popped up begging to be repurposed.
Like bolts from half a chair destined for the bin.
Using the only drill bit I could find after cleaning up the garage, I manged to drill the exact sized hole (eventually, it was a bit blunt) for the bolt to thread snugly though. You can see evidence of where I had to hack away to free things up.
They're not exactly balanced as you can see but it's a fifty dollar garden implement and not a vital balanced gyroscope so...
So how did it go?
Brilliantly. The cord zipped through the air like an angry hornet and sliced, diced, ploughed and edged to it's hearts content. I even found the sewer cover that hasn't been seen since we moved in here over a year ago..
I think this is it...
Buzz the ninja turtles, we're good for the pizza party!
It wasn't all plain sailing though. Occasionally it bit off more than it could chew:
...and changing the line isn't a quick job at all.
But still, I spent nothing and resurrected my whipper snipper. I'll call that a decent weekend success.
How'd yours go?