Supposed to get into low three figures today and tomorrow. Yesterday was well into the nineties. It was nice to sit out on the porch in the evening rather than swelter in the cabin. Even though there wasn’t much evening breeze to cool things off I just opened all the windows and let the ceiling fans work while I sat out with the tablet ‘pooter and the bugs.
Sort of took a day yesterday. I needed a domestic day anyway…
…and my back is still killing me though since it’s not getting better there’s no point sitting around being miserable. I can be just as miserable while I work. I’ve been painting off-and-on for more than two months and I’m nowhere near done, really ought to get back to it today before the paint coagulates in the cans but I woke up this morning thinking there’s something else I need to tackle first. Remember this?
Yeah. That’s just embarrassing and I need to go fix it. I let it lay there because it happened right in the middle of the porch project, and it mocks and humiliates me every time I drive by.
Two ways have been discussed to get it to stay confidently vertical in the crappy ground I have to work with: I can brace it from behind on the talus and sort of have a quad mount – that’s clunky but simple and ought to work. Or I can break up the concrete plugs, drive pipes deep into the ground and (after cutting the feet off the angle iron) slide the angle iron down into the pipes. That sounds more elegant and effective, I have a pipe that would work, and I figure if I cut the pipe to lengths and then smash one end of each piece flat I can drive them into the ground with a sledge without the pipe filling with silt. I like that plan a lot.
UNFORTUNATELY my now-chronic back pain thinks it’s the stupidest idea it ever heard of. It’ll be three weeks in Monday since something quietly went sprong in my back, the pain comes and goes but the condition is not improving, and there’s no way I’m effectively swinging a sledge any time soon. I’ll be days physically recovering from one grave digging and that’s not nearly so concussive. It just won’t work.
So…I’m back to this.
I’ve still got a bunch of angle iron left from cutting up that fuel tank stand. I’ll take the plywood off the target stand to lighten it up, then get it more or less vertical, brace it from behind, drill and bolt the braces to the stand, then cut off the excess. I don’t like that solution as well but it’s something I can probably accomplish as opposed to a better plan I can’t do.
I’m with you on the bracing….don’t bother digging. Besides, first good water run through that wash covers everything up again anyway. What I might do also is run some cable, or chain from a loop on the shooting frame, up to a decent height on the wall of the wash. Drive a cleat of some sort in there, and attach the tether. That way once the wash fills and flow runs hard you’ll actually have a chance of finding the damned thing again, lol. Keeping busy is a good thing right now.
I mentioned this earlier (I think…) and I’m still wondering if it would work:
Dig a short hole, maybe 1-2 feet, fill with water, and using a reciprocating motion keep cycling the angle iron up and down, tamping it. As the angle iron goes in keep adding water. I’ve seen 8 ft grounding rods inserted to 4″ above grade with that method.
Angle iron isn’t 5/8″ round rod, but I wonder if the technique would work. If it does, a 1.5 feet or so above grade would give you something to bolt more angle iron to.