I complain frequently about engineers, but secretly have huge respect for them. All the news reports on TV during the pandemic that showed robotic systems filling, sorting and boxing bottles of COVID-19 vaccines gave me an inferiority complex. I watched those robots and mechanical devices grab vaccine bottles and precisely place them in cardboard boxes, and remembered my own attempts to invent gadgets for farm use.
There’s a pile of scrap iron behind the shop that’s the result of my attempt to improve a planter marker arm hinge. It never did work as planned, let alone work better than the original engineer’s design.
That scrap iron pile also harbors a twisted tangle of welded angle iron that was supposed to be a special cradle on a floor jack to help lift high-clearance self-propelled sprayers. It didn’t.
No matter how many sketches I draw with welder’s chalk on bench tops, no matter how many tack-welded prototypes I build, my “improvements” and “inventions” never seem to work as I envision. If one of my creations accidentally performs well enough to avoid the scrap pile, it usually has a lot of hammer marks, grinding gouges and extra welds that were required to “adjust” the original design so it would halfway work like it was supposed to.
I’m living proof there’s nothing more dangerous than a farmer or mechanic with spare time, a pile of scrap iron, and a box of welding rods.
Read more from Dan:
Alternate Uses for Common Things Found in the Farm Shop
Take Time to Review Your Shop Inventory This Winter
Dan Anderson: Neighborly Pranks to Make You Laugh
Dan Anderson: MIG Welding Tips
Dan Anderson: The Devil is in the Details
