#14

Hello everybody,

Shiddymunkie here from ZS; looks like there are a few familiar names. Some fun facts about me:

- Happily married to my high school sweetheart
- Native Coloradan
- Graphic designer by day
- My interests are rather varied, but some central ones include art/design (naturally), philosophy, science, anything related to lucid dreaming, firearms (yeeehaw), and making...things... 

Ok, so that last one is hard to explain -- it's just this weird hobby I have.  I get these 'ideas', usually a device that serves some sort of novel purpose, and find myself compelled to make them.  Sometimes they're just simple contraptions I can slap together in an evening with stuff laying around the house, where as other times they can take months or even years to bring to fruition (and more $$$ than I'd like to admit).  I'm not sure what that's called but it scratches some sort of itch I get, plus I learn all sorts of random/neat skills in the process so that's good.

...yeah.

My dad used to do this kind of thing. He once made an automatic wire stripper and coiler out of a broken down riding lawnmower. Yeah, we had like 300 pounds of copper wire to strip and sell for scrap to raise money for the volunteer fire dept. We made one 40 yard long and one 25 yard long 8 ft high retaining wall in the back yard out of cement ties scavenged from the demolition of a bridge. The tools that were most used were 1. shovels and post hole diggers 2. a riding lawnmower with no deck and a trailer for it. 3. A mortar mixer and wheelbarrow 4. a crane made out of an electric winch and a heavy U beam balanced on scaffolding. Dad thought it would raise our property value. I don't know if it helped the property value or not. I do know it is too late now. We mixed and poured a couple tons of cement. I mean tons literally. To get it out you would need a heavy duty excavator or some serious explosives. 

Anyway, welcome to the forum.