Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it
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I've reverse engineered the pool cover motor. It is a PSC induction motor. Easy enough to get that setup for bench testing and I have it running both directions by changing which side of the capacitor I apply power to.
So now I need to preferably get it working from the remote switch by our patio. The way that worked before is that the motor controller (that I've ripped out) fed 24V to the switch and then if you turn it to open it connected to one wire and turn it to close and it would connect to another. These wires are tiny. Virtually no current carrying capacity.
If I put a switch by the motor I could just use a regular SPDT center-off momentary switch. That's one option. Is there an equivalent type of relay or SSR? Something else? Or should I just use two relays? Energize one for one direction and energize the other for the opposite direction? That seems less clean than the relay equivalent of a SPDT center-off momentary switch. But I don't even know if such a thing exists.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Is there an equivalent type of relay or SSR? Something else?
Sorry, dunno -- I rarely deal with that kind of stuff.
@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Or should I just use two relays? Energize one for one direction and energize the other for the opposite direction?
This configuration has a bonus "" setting if both ever get energized at the same time, or if the contacts weld closed. From your point of view, you may consider it a feature.
Otherwise I'd recommend using one of them as an on/off control, and the other as a direction control.Also, remember to check if your relay / SSR can drive inductive loads directly. If it doesn't, and you don't add a snubber, the lifetime of the relay / SSR will be much shorter than it should.
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@Zerosquare said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
This configuration has a bonus "" setting if both ever get energized at the same time, or if the contacts weld closed. From your point of view, you may consider it a feature.
I was planning on adding a breaker in the control box just because of similar possibilities. I had also considered a SSR or backup relay before the ones that control the start direction because if the relays or whatever ever weld themselves shut or fail closed in some way the motor would keep running until shit breaks. Ya know, shit like my newly installed $8,000 cover. The one that we ordered last year that has a one year warranty which expired before we even took delivery.
This pool rehab has been a fiasco.
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@Zerosquare said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Also, remember to check if your relay / SSR can drive inductive loads directly. If it doesn't, and you don't add a snubber, the lifetime of the relay / SSR will be much shorter than it should.
I have a whole gigantic stockpile of 24VAC coil 10A DPDT relays. A friend bought an auction lot a while back and some of the stuff he had no use for (read that as "Has no clue how to use them"). Part of that was several boxes of parts for industrial overhead door openers. Relays, pulleys, shaft materials, sprockets, chains. Man Legos.
So I wouldn't want them to fail but I have a lifetime supply of relays if they do and can order different ones if necessary.
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@Zerosquare one more thing. I've grown to freaking love Wago connectors. They're so freaking handy for stuff like this. I even learned another trick the other day. I only needed the two conductor connectors but I wanted to hook my multimeter up to monitor voltage so I used the three conductor connectors and clipped my multimeter leads into the extra spot.
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If anyone wants to know the kind of quality engineering that you can expect of $8,000 pool covers with $2,000 motors (and that's just replacement parts, a fresh install would double that price) there are magnets that get installed into the cover and reed switches installed on the tracks and it is extremely well known that you should absolutely never trust them and never run them in automatic mode unless you want the entire goddamned thing to destroy itself in unique and interesting ways. It is also susceptible to failing sensors or false positives and prevent the cover from moving at all.
So whatever I design won't even use the reed switches at all. Just a dumb mechanism where you use a momentary switch. Which is how most of them end up anyway.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
I've grown to freaking love Wago connectors.
Yeah. They're a bit pricy, but they're definitely nice to use.
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Is this the DIY thread? I feel like it is.
I want to replace a couple of tiles on my deck and when we did our home extension I had the forethought to scavenge some of the tiles on the area that was built over, so I can reuse the exact same ones (which avoids having to find compatible replacement tiles, and ensures it will look the same which is nicer). But I need to scrape the cement, both on the deck itself (under the tiles I'm replacing) and under the tiles that I'm reusing.
For the deck, hammer and chisel (or the same with power tools), it's a bit boring but not too difficult. For the tiles... I tried chiselling but it doesn't work very well, it's hard not to break the tile itself. It's almost as if the cement was designed to be very strong.
So I had a moment. Or maybe , not sure. Anyway, I grabbed the angle grinder and it works a treat! Well, except that after scraping about 1 tile and half another one, the angle grinder felt a bit weird. Turned it off, let's look at the disk...
Top one is one other disk I grabbed for comparison. Bottom one is what's left of the disk used to scrape the tiles.
OK, sure, it was a cheap all-purposes disk. I guess I will have to buy a (more expensive!) disk specifically for ceramics if I want to have any hope of not using more disks than tiles. But I'm not even sure how long that will last. Thankfully I only have a few tiles to scrape, but still...
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@remi I looked at that and my first thoughts before I read the text was “what version of Norton Utilities is that and is it from the before times when it was still worth some— ”
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@Arantor a CD (DVD, BluRay...) is apparently exactly 12 cm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, this disk is (according to the label, I didn't bother measuring) 11.5 cm in diameter and 1.6 mm thick. I think that most readers will have a small leeway for the thickness (0.4 mm of difference is pretty tiny!).
So you can probably fit it in a CD/DVD player.
I am not going to try it though.
It's not that I fear it'll damage the player, but I just don't really like metal.
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@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
So you can probably fit it in a CD/DVD player.
I am not going to try it though.
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@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
I just don't really like metal.
It's probably TOOL.
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@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
So you can probably fit it in a CD/DVD player.
I am not going to try it though.As it turns out, a CD is just the right size to fit in an old 5 ¼ floppy drive. And get stuck, hard. (Inb4 qooc). My sibling discovered that years ago. Totally ruined the drive.
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@remi they make diamond grinding attachments for angle grinders just for stuff like that. i have a bridge type tile saw so I set the cut depth to only cut the mortar and then make a series of cuts until the mortar is gone. If anyone does this make sure you don't scoot the tile around on its face in the saw slurry as it can scratch the face of the tile pretty badly.
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@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Arantor a CD (DVD, BluRay...) is apparently exactly 12 cm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, this disk is (according to the label, I didn't bother measuring) 11.5 cm in diameter and 1.6 mm thick. I think that most readers will have a small leeway for the thickness (0.4 mm of difference is pretty tiny!).
So you can probably fit it in a CD/DVD player.
I am not going to try it though.
It's not that I fear it'll damage the player, but I just don't really like metal.
A CD sized optical disk will also fit on an angle grinder. You will probably need to thread it on as the center hole is .590" and an angle grinder arbor is .625". I also don't know what utility that would actually have and it definitely wouldn't be safe. But I have seen it come up on YouTube thumbnails and thought to myself that in regards to natural selection,
lifeevolution finds a way. I bet that optical disk manufacturers never thought they needed a warning for that possibility.Bonus evolution points for the fact that the guard won't fit if you do that with a 4.5" grinder, which is the size most regular people are likely to have.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@remi they make diamond grinding attachments for angle grinders just for stuff like that.
Do you mean something like that?
This (or whatever similar I'll find in the shop) is what I'll get next time I go to the hardware shop. But it's not dirt-cheap (it's not very expensive, but not cheap) and since it's somewhat specialised for one job, which I never did before, I had no need of it and didn't buy one.
So when I needed it, of course I did the reasonable thing and went to buy one rather than trying whatever random disk was attached to the tool.
...
OK, moving on.
If anyone does this make sure you don't scoot the tile around on its face in the saw slurry as it can scratch the face of the tile pretty badly.
I actually thought about that from the start! Though I guess it wouldn't matter too much since the point of reusing old tiles is that they look the same as the ones they'll be replacing (except not broken...) so some wear and tear wouldn't be an issue. Then again, the normal wear and tear on tiles isn't "scratched all over" so yeah, I'm being watchful of that.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
A CD sized optical disk will also fit on an angle grinder.
I guess some people like grindcore music.
No, I had no idea it existed and just looked it up for the pun and yes, it's very bad.
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@remi that would work but for just a few tiles you could use one of these:
It is made for cutting tile with an angle grinder but can also do some grinding if needed. Then you wouldn't have a single purpose tool. I use them when I need to notch around something like a pipe or something at the edge of a tile. Or if I just need to cut a few tile and don't feel like setting up the big saw. You can get a pretty clean cut by clamping a piece of wood on the tile to use as a fence. It's a pain to do for very many times, but less of a pain than setting up the big saw and cleaning it up afterwards.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
It is made for cutting tile with an angle grinder but can also do some grinding if needed. Then you wouldn't have a single purpose tool.
Good point. Though tbh I grabbed the first picture without looking too closely at it, and I have no idea what will be in the shop. It's a large one, but they don't stock everything.
OTOH, the more I look at my deck, the more I'm thinking that "a few tiles" might end up being... a bit more than that! So a bigger grinding surface that makes the job faster will probably come in handy.
I know I really should change all the tiles, and actually I should resurface the whole thing because the slope isn't quite right (causing water to pool in the middle, which long-term causes a lot of problems). But the area is just too large and it would end up a far bigger (and costly!) job than simply patching it... though I'll probably come to regret it at some point.
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@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
though I'll probably come to regret it at some point.
Generally about 5 minutes after you've sunk all the cost and energy into the current project, find out you still need to do the full replacement, and the project you did either doesn't make that cheaper or actually makes it more expensive somehow.
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@remi and whichever way you decide to go, don't get anything too aggressive. There are some diamond grinding wheels that have gaps in them so they cut more aggressively with less pressure and I'd be willing to wager that they would tend to cause impacts on tile because of that and would probably break your tiles. You're going to want something with either a continuous rim like the cutting disk that I posted or a grinding wheel with lots of overlapping pucks and no big gaps between them.
Don't be drawn in by "universal" wheels like this:
They are very expensive garbage. They do make good quality wheels of that design but you won't find them in a hardware store and certainly not for under a few hundred bucks.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
There are some diamond grinding wheels that have gaps in them so they cut more aggressively with less pressure and I'd be willing to wager that they would tend to cause impacts on tile because of that and would probably break your tiles.
Do you mean something like that? Yeah, that doesn't look like something I'd want for this job.
(or even the picture I posted above, the gaps are pretty large for my liking, but I've seen some variations that look more "continuous" and again it all depends on what will be in the shop)
I scavenged way more tiles than what I'll need (even if I need way more tiles that I thought...), so I don't care about breaking a few, but that would still be lost time and effort.
Don't be drawn in by "universal" wheels like this:
First time I see that kind of things, but thanks for the tip.
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@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
A CD sized optical disk will also fit on an angle grinder.
I guess some people like grindcore music.
No, I had no idea it existed and just looked it up for the pun and yes, it's very bad.
What? You don't like Cattle Decapitation? pleb
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@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
I want to replace a couple of tiles on my "deck"...
"Patio"?
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@Watson said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
I want to replace a couple of tiles on my "deck"...
"Patio"?
Gazebo
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@Watson probably, yes, thanks!
I think that "deck" sort of implies a wooden structure? At least that's the idea that I get (and making the analogy with an old-style ship which is where "deck" is commonly used).
"Patio" for me (in French) refers more to the space (semi-enclosed, some sort of courtyard) than the surface, which is why I didn't think of it. But this is probably the correct word here.
"Exterior surface next to the house and covered in tiles."
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Gazebo
Are you implying that @remi buried a body?
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@Zerosquare said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Gazebo
Are you implying that @remi buried a body?
Non!
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@Zerosquare said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Are you implying that @remi buried a body?
A recent picture of me and my wife:
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@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Watson probably, yes, thanks!
I think that "deck" sort of implies a wooden structure? At least that's the idea that I get (and making the analogy with an old-style ship which is where "deck" is commonly used).
"Patio" for me (in French) refers more to the space (semi-enclosed, some sort of courtyard) than the surface, which is why I didn't think of it. But this is probably the correct word here.
"Exterior surface next to the house and covered in tiles."
For extra fun, the big sliding door going to your deck is a patio door.
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@ObjectMike said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
For extra fun, the big sliding door going to your deck is a patio door.
We have three doors that lead out to the patio/pool area. On the left is a set of French doors and there is a matching single door to the right of them. Which makes no fucking sense because if you open the French doors they cover the single door. Why they didn't put a fixed sidelight in there is beyond me.
Although I did take out the single door and replaced it with a wall panel so that I could install a dog door in its place.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Arantor a CD (DVD, BluRay...) is apparently exactly 12 cm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, this disk is (according to the label, I didn't bother measuring) 11.5 cm in diameter and 1.6 mm thick. I think that most readers will have a small leeway for the thickness (0.4 mm of difference is pretty tiny!).
So you can probably fit it in a CD/DVD player.
I am not going to try it though.
It's not that I fear it'll damage the player, but I just don't really like metal.
A CD sized optical disk will also fit on an angle grinder. You will probably need to thread it on as the center hole is .590" and an angle grinder arbor is .625". I also don't know what utility that would actually have and it definitely wouldn't be safe. But I have seen it come up on YouTube thumbnails and thought to myself that in regards to natural selection,
lifeevolution finds a way. I bet that optical disk manufacturers never thought they needed a warning for that possibility.Bonus evolution points for the fact that the guard won't fit if you do that with a 4.5" grinder, which is the size most regular people are likely to have.
If anyone wants to see this particular variant of fuckery:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cd+in+angle+grinder
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
If anyone wants to see this particular variant of fuckery:
I get enough weird stuff in my YT suggestions already, TYVM.
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@ObjectMike and as mentioned just above, there are also French doors, which I think aren't patio doors.
But my doors definitely are French, including the sliding ones. So my French doors aren't patio doors but my patio door is French.
(btw, I have no idea why a French door is French) (inb4: various jokes, ha ha so very funny) (my best guess would be classical 17/18th century architecture but really I have no idea)
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@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
French doors, which I think aren't patio doors
Indeed, if they were, we'd write "pâtiaux"
ha ha so very funny
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@remi Here in NL we know the "French balcony", which is a fence immediately in front of the door with no actual balcony surface.
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@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
(inb4: various jokes, ha ha so very funny)
At first you tried fighting against people who make this sort of jokes, but then you gave up and surrendered.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@remi said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Arantor a CD (DVD, BluRay...) is apparently exactly 12 cm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, this disk is (according to the label, I didn't bother measuring) 11.5 cm in diameter and 1.6 mm thick. I think that most readers will have a small leeway for the thickness (0.4 mm of difference is pretty tiny!).
So you can probably fit it in a CD/DVD player.
I am not going to try it though.
It's not that I fear it'll damage the player, but I just don't really like metal.
A CD sized optical disk will also fit on an angle grinder. You will probably need to thread it on as the center hole is .590" and an angle grinder arbor is .625". I also don't know what utility that would actually have and it definitely wouldn't be safe. But I have seen it come up on YouTube thumbnails and thought to myself that in regards to natural selection,
lifeevolution finds a way. I bet that optical disk manufacturers never thought they needed a warning for that possibility.Bonus evolution points for the fact that the guard won't fit if you do that with a 4.5" grinder, which is the size most regular people are likely to have.
If anyone wants to see this particular variant of fuckery:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cd+in+angle+grinder
Makes my skin crawl. In the other hand, in my teens I put CDs in grinders and ran them until they shattered. But I did keep the guard on, because there is a limit even to my stupidity.
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@Carnage said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
there is a limit even to my stupidity.
I always think that there is, but I frequently surprise myself.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Carnage said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
there is a limit even to my stupidity.
I always think that there is, but I frequently surprise myself.
I mean, putting your hand into an active grain screw must seem like a bad idea to you too?
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Don't give him ideas.
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@Carnage said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
I mean, putting your hand into an active grain screw must seem like a bad idea to you too?
That's why they have shear pins, no?
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The other night I was clearing out another area for my wife to landscape. She's really gotten into taking care of the plantings and landscaping around our house.
So anyway, I am bent over with my chainsaw cutting off some saplings and shrubs that she wanted gone and my sunglasses fall off of my head and get mangled by the chainsaw. Shit. Thankfully they are a set of cheapies. I take them and set them on the patio table.
Later that night an old friend stops by, sees the sunglasses and asks what happened to them.
"Oh, I was cutting some stuff out for my wife and they got hit by the chainsaw."
"...........you're what? 43? How have you lived this long?"
"Almost 44, but fair point."I did explain to him that they were not on my face when the chainsaw mangled them.
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Carnage said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
I mean, putting your hand into an active grain screw must seem like a bad idea to you too?
That's why they have shear pins, no?
Yeah, with the added fun bit that they will also pull as much of your body as can fit into the feeding hole before ripping it off. Unless someone finds the emergency stop first. It's probably buried behind a pallet of discarded and heavy crap.
Ah, farms. Great places to grow up.
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@Carnage I once stopped myself from reaching into the discharge chute of a running snowblower.
"On second thought......perhaps I should go get a piece of wood?"
Our snowblower was either made before they started including the plastic shovel things that are made in such a way that they will not reach the impeller, or it was lost before we owned it.
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@Carnage said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Ah, farms. Great places to grow up.
My grandparent's farm had a piece of machinery (I don't remember what it was anymore, but ISTR that it might have been a corn sheller?) that had a crank start like a Model T. And just like a Model T, if you didn't start it correctly it would nearly break your arm or face. Fun times.
Hmmmmm, I wonder if that is a large part of the reason why my shoulders are shot?
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Hmmmmm, I wonder if that is a large part of the reason why my shoulders are shot?
Based on my father as evidence, no, it's the guns. Possibly combined with falling off of roofs.
(He's hunted regularly for ~40+ years and worked as a third-party insurance adjuster, which is where he fell off a roof or two. At this point he can't raise his arms past shoulder-level at all.)
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Carnage said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
Ah, farms. Great places to grow up.
My grandparent's farm had a piece of machinery (I don't remember what it was anymore, but ISTR that it might have been a corn sheller?) that had a crank start like a Model T. And just like a Model T, if you didn't start it correctly it would nearly break your arm or face. Fun times.
Hmmmmm, I wonder if that is a large part of the reason why my shoulders are shot?
Crank starts actually killed people sometimes. They were all gone from the farms where I grew up, but a neighbor had a tractor was started with an explosive charge. I bet that also caused some boo-boos
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@Polygeekery said in Mostly not internet, and mostly just as shit as you make it:
@Carnage I once stopped myself from reaching into the discharge chute of a running snowblower.
"On second thought......perhaps I should go get a piece of wood?"
Our snowblower was either made before they started including the plastic shovel things that are made in such a way that they will not reach the impeller, or it was lost before we owned it.
Yeah, I've done similar a few times. I even once stuck my have in a running hay-blower (basically a ginormoua snowblower) and stopped myself just as it took some skin off a fingertip.
I'm blessed with a lot of dumb luck, paid for with inconsequential bad luck.