Thursday, July 11, 2024

 Eons ago when I used to be soundly beaten in any human powered vehicle race by Mr Slade, irreverently known as Slash, I was disturbed - indeed mildly humiliated - to learn that he was in fact a year older than I.  However I now learn that he is only 60, which means that Mr Einstein was right - if you travel at high speed, time slows down for you.  Which sentence, moderately rearranged, becomes With time you're  interesteder in low speed human powered vehicles, of which the usefullest is the handcart.  Having sheep means attending to their thirst, and having a river at the bottom of a steep drive means building a handcart suitable for pushing two large buckets of water up the hill.  Water being heavy, wheels are better than shoulders, I find.

First you need wheels and tyres and innertubes and since I have been given an inexhaustible number of 26" perfectly good gentlemen's mountain bicycles I have both wheels and an abundance of front forks. 

First - a second first but let that pass - you need to make your wheels run parallel, or the cart will be hard to push and the tyres will rapidly wear.  A mitre saw and a holesaw provide four identical pieces of MDF (medium density fibreboard) which you can lash to the rims at four opposing identical spots.

Now you attach sawn-off front forks...

...and start delicately welding...


...because if you weld indelicately, the welds shrink and everything goes out of alignment.

If you chance to have found the shards of a bedstead thrown into the long grass at the side of the road, New Zealanders being lax in this regard, and you have brought it home to the general dismay of your family...


... you can reappoint its components to form the floor...


...for your buckets...


...taking care not to breath in the zinc fumes from the galvanized tubing. Then you weld the one to t'other...


... adding handles, and a stand to stop it tipping over, being a bit careful to make the handle far enough back so you don't trip over the cart when pushing.  Buckets can now be gaily added, and all that remains to be said is that a lid on each bucket will stop the water sploshing out on the way up the drive.


Hurrah!  another slice of garden clutter.




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