Real Men Don’t Pay Other Men

It’s a pivotal day in human history. I used a big-boy gas outfit to heat a part and bend it.

As my stalkers know, I just finished making a cart to hold propane and oxygen for cutting and heating. I have bent things using a hand-held plumber’s torch in the past, and it was okay, but a real torch is like 10 plumber’s torches, and a plumber’s torch can’t cut. I had to have more power. There are just too many heating and cutting jobs in a home workshop.

Today I summoned my androgens and used propane to bend the mounting tabs on a middle buster.

A middle buster is a 3-point implement. It drags or lifts a hook-shaped blade. You can use it for things like digging trenches for wiring and pipes, and you can also rip out stumps with it. I got mine for stumps, and I have torn out a bunch of them. In the process, I bent the tabs holding the pins that attach it to my hitch.

I don’t care about the damage, because the middle buster probably cost $150, and try and guess how much money it has saved me. I don’t know what it would cost to pay a guy to tear stumps out, for the same reason I don’t know what it’s like to ask a big, strong man to parallel-park for me, but it must be a lot.

I clamped the middle buster to my welding table and heated it, destroying a lot of powder coating in the process. Doesn’t matter. Truck bed coating is better than powder coating, and I already have a can. I thought I would have to twist the tabs with a wrench, risking pulling the table over, but it turned out a blacksmith’s hammer was the tool for the job. I beat the tabs until they were very nearly straight. Excellent.

Now I have to cut and weld gussets to reinforce the tabs. I already have the steel. I also want to run a 36″ bar through the tabs instead of using one short pin in each tab. I think a bar will resist bending somewhat better. If it doesn’t, it will bend in such a way that I have to cut it in half to get it out, but that’s okay, because I’m a man, and men have tools.

I love the propane rig, even though I don’t have a proper propane rosebud yet. The acetylene rosebud I used worked fine, which makes me wonder if something is wrong.

Wonderful day in the shop. Think I’ll let my hair down and have a wheat beer.