- Joined
- Oct 25, 2004
- Messages
- 3,178
Can the hasiya do an honest afternoon's worth of work? I submit that it can.
It's actually the responsibility of the property owners to maintain the lawn but they often have other things going on and don't get over this way as much as they should. The driveway is a particular sticking point. Besides overhanging tree branches and rampant ivy, the blackberries have almost reached the pavement and are continually sending creepers out into the path of vehicles.
Each day (I kid you not - each and every day), after work, I walk down to the mailbox and swing at the really bad ones with my Manix as I go. The next day they will be nearly back to where they were. You can almost see them growing. It's almost as fascinating as it is annoying.
Today I washed my car, saw what the damnable things had done to my clearcoat, and went to war. Targets consisted of apple branches, blackberries, ivy, tall grass, and various weeds - and one concealed steel fencepost. More on that later.
Evidently there used to be a fence along the edge of the driveway in past years. (The landlady disavows all knowledge and she's owned the property for over a decade.) At one point or another someone decided to remove it. Instead of pulling the posts they'd simply cut them off a few inches above the ground. I thought that I knew where they all were. Today, I found a new one.
Here's what they look like:
And, as my luck would have it, I found it with a pretty good swing, just past the hardened zone. It performed pretty much as I'd expected: a one inch section of the edge flattened right out. I decided to keep working to see how it held up and confirmed a suspicion of mine - the curved portion of the edge is vital to good performance on grass and creepers. I could still do the work with the damaged edge but I'd guesstimate that it lost 40% of its cutting efficiency right there. After the game got old I took a water break and had a better look at it.
You ever dinged an edge up real good? Not quite good enough to send Yangdu an email, but good enough that you wince when you see it under strong light? It was one of those. I didn't have a hammer handy so I used a wrecking bar to tap the mess more or less to where it was supposed to be, then hit it with the belt sander. There was quite a bit of deformation so I started with a 40 micron belt. The soft steel up by the tip grinds like butter...two passes on either side, then one pass on either side with the 9 micron to clean things up, then power stropping and finished. The edge now has a slight wave to it and cuts just fine.
Outside of the hardened area the steel can lose its edge quickly; even a few chops against the apple branches (and possibly the ivy) and the edge would dull noticably. Stropping is sufficient to restore it...unless, of course, you're beating on steel tubing.
One final tip for those of you who are plagued with sap and other vegetable gore on their blades: my new product of choice is foaming engine degreaser, no joke. Spray a bit on both sides, give it a minute or two, scrub with a toothbrush and rinse off the residue. It knocks the crud right off and leaves the patina.
It's actually the responsibility of the property owners to maintain the lawn but they often have other things going on and don't get over this way as much as they should. The driveway is a particular sticking point. Besides overhanging tree branches and rampant ivy, the blackberries have almost reached the pavement and are continually sending creepers out into the path of vehicles.
Each day (I kid you not - each and every day), after work, I walk down to the mailbox and swing at the really bad ones with my Manix as I go. The next day they will be nearly back to where they were. You can almost see them growing. It's almost as fascinating as it is annoying.
Today I washed my car, saw what the damnable things had done to my clearcoat, and went to war. Targets consisted of apple branches, blackberries, ivy, tall grass, and various weeds - and one concealed steel fencepost. More on that later.
Evidently there used to be a fence along the edge of the driveway in past years. (The landlady disavows all knowledge and she's owned the property for over a decade.) At one point or another someone decided to remove it. Instead of pulling the posts they'd simply cut them off a few inches above the ground. I thought that I knew where they all were. Today, I found a new one.
Here's what they look like:
And, as my luck would have it, I found it with a pretty good swing, just past the hardened zone. It performed pretty much as I'd expected: a one inch section of the edge flattened right out. I decided to keep working to see how it held up and confirmed a suspicion of mine - the curved portion of the edge is vital to good performance on grass and creepers. I could still do the work with the damaged edge but I'd guesstimate that it lost 40% of its cutting efficiency right there. After the game got old I took a water break and had a better look at it.
You ever dinged an edge up real good? Not quite good enough to send Yangdu an email, but good enough that you wince when you see it under strong light? It was one of those. I didn't have a hammer handy so I used a wrecking bar to tap the mess more or less to where it was supposed to be, then hit it with the belt sander. There was quite a bit of deformation so I started with a 40 micron belt. The soft steel up by the tip grinds like butter...two passes on either side, then one pass on either side with the 9 micron to clean things up, then power stropping and finished. The edge now has a slight wave to it and cuts just fine.
Outside of the hardened area the steel can lose its edge quickly; even a few chops against the apple branches (and possibly the ivy) and the edge would dull noticably. Stropping is sufficient to restore it...unless, of course, you're beating on steel tubing.
One final tip for those of you who are plagued with sap and other vegetable gore on their blades: my new product of choice is foaming engine degreaser, no joke. Spray a bit on both sides, give it a minute or two, scrub with a toothbrush and rinse off the residue. It knocks the crud right off and leaves the patina.
