Posted on 10/08/2004 10:09:25 AM PDT by lowbridge
Not sure where to get those, and they look a little labor intensive. 4 two penny nails and some JB Weld (or two minutes of real welding if you have the skills) will give you a nice caltrop, in an afternoon you can "seed" the yard. Just make sure you get them ALL before mowing.
Karma happens.
The germans used to weld 3 pieces of railroad rail to form a hedgehog, similar to a kids jack. these managed to slow the lightly armored equipment in WWII.
A similar thing can be done with nails and a decent tack weld (or JBWeld). If I recall, the coal miners unions in WV used these "jack rocks" to stop "scab" coal shipments during strikes in the 70's
Well, he put up the next mailbox, only this time he dug a 18" square x 4' deep footer and he mounted the mailbox on a 4" steel pipe that was packed with concrete. He then cased it in with 3/4" pine and gave it a nice fresh coat of white paint. Just for effect, he also mounted a wood cut-out of a cute little momma duck with her little ducklings following behind.
Three nights later, he awoke to a loud bang following by the sound of a sputtering motor and hissing steam. He looked out the window to see an older 4x4 pickup limping away in the night. He called the police and they found some kids pulled off the road a couple of miles away with the front of their truck caved in. The kids said that they accidently hit a tree when they were back in the woods four-wheeling. The officer told my friend that he figured something was amiss when he pulled a cute little wood duckling out of the radiator. Heh, heh, heh...
I have mine right next to a large tree.
Beautiful. That will teach them.
Oh yeah. I know how to make caltrops. And that is all I'm gonna say about it ;0)
I grew up out in the country on a two-lane paved back road, and it never failed that every couple of years, some yahoo would come along and take out our mailbox, which was just a normal rural mailbox on an old phone pole. Finally, my dad got well and truly pissed off and decided to fix things.
He got an I-beam, sank it four feet into the ground, poured concrete around it, painted the aboveground part of the I-beam bright orange, and bolted the mailbox on top.
Two months later, we heard this hellacious crash one Saturday morning. By the time we got down to the mailbox, whatever had hit it had limped off...leaving the shattered remnants of two headlights, a grille, one side-view mirror, most of a fender, part of a windshield, and a hubcap behind. The mailbox was torn off the I-beam and laying twenty yards down the road.
My dad said "forget it" and moved the mailbox to out in front of his business, on another orange-painted I-beam.
}:-)4
I remember when I lived in Jersey, a fellow fixed HIS problem of getting his mailbox run over. He worked at the Philadelphia naval yard andgot a piece of propeller shaft from a destroyer and sunk it 8' intothe groundwith 4 ft above ground with the mailbox on top. My recollection is that the steel was 10" in diameter. It was hit "once" almost cut the car in half and just scraped the paint on the post.
Aha!! A perfect trap for Rat sign vandals.
Kudos to your Dad.
Too substantial - lol!
I deliver mail and have the chance to observe the great lengths to which some people go to protect their mailbox from vandals. Some are very ingenius and I imagine they have foiled a few attempts to destroy their mailboxes.
After reading this, it makes me want to apply some of that ingenuity to Bush/Cheney signs. If we can't catch them, we can at least tattoo their cars to identify them later.
I would have given you a medal.
How about some pictures.
Where in St. Louis was this? I used to live there.
Useless knowledge gained in a youth of D&D. I also know how to make a trebuchet, not particularly useful but they look cool.
We had this happen a lot when i was a kid. My dad finally got one of those tornado anchors (big iron pole with large screw-like threads on the lower 2 feet). Buried it in concrete. The car that hit it wasn't able to drive away....
ROTFL... My parents just didn't understand LOL
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.