$100 Ideas

3/28/2009

Save Sharp Saw Blades
To protect saw blades and keep my shop safe, I use a lid from an ice cream bucket to store my circular saw blades. With the lip side up, place a blade inside the lid. Then, cut the lip off
another lid and place that lid on top of the blade. By alternating blades with edgeless lids, several blades can be stored in one lid.

LeRoy Patterson
Bloomington, Wis.

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Prevent Rodent Access
Rodents can wreak havoc on a grain vacuum that is in storage. To keep mice out, I covered the auger opening with a discarded gauge wheel from a cultivator. To serve as a guide for securing the cover, I used a peg from an old telephone cross arm. A tarp strap secures the wheel in place. The peg doubles as a handle to take the wheel off.

John Pagels
Paola, Kan.

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Portable Dairy Barn Helper
Dirty bottles and nipples stack up as we work in the dairy barn. To keep them clean, I made a mobile washing station. A piece of plastic is bolted onto a wagon platform, and 1" PVC pipe channels water to two inner rows for bottle rinsing and two outer rows for nipple rinsing. Two PVC ball valves are installed on the
outer rows, so they can be shut off to increase water pressure to wash bottles. Nipple washers are made from cut 1⁄2" PVC pipe, and bottle washers are made with 1" PVC pipe and a PVC cap with three holes drilled in it. It washes 18 bottles and 18 nipples at one time.

To keep dirty bottles and nipples from piling up, Richard Martin built a mobile washing platform to rinse 18 bottles and 18 nipples at one time. Richard is an eighth-grader who works with his father, Ken, on the family’s Ethtin Dairy, located in southern Pennsylvania.

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