What is the craziest build idea you ever had ?

[silverdollar6]

I have been thinking of building a two story outhouse, bottom level for enemies.

 

[Lunk]

A buddy of mine had a dad who reloaded shotgun shells. He used to "pirate" a "little" gunpowder here and there for nefarious activity. One time we took a Tonka truck chassis, and bolted an 18" piece of oak 4x4 to it, bored a 12" long by 1" diameter hole in it and packed it with powder. Instant rocket-car, or so we thought. Lit the homemade fuse and ran like h***.

We were very lucky to not still be picking pieces of oak out of our backsides to this day.

Appollo program, we were not...

 

[flINTLOCK]

Mini hand grenade. Took powdered zinc, ammonium nitrate and I believe ammonium chloride mixed together in bottom of small chemistry set bottle. The mix would catch fire when water was applied. Covered the mix with cotton packed tightly down onto it. Filled cap of bottle with water and screwed bottle onto cap upside down so cotton and mix stayed dry. After cap was on tight, threw it as far as I could. Blew up right before hitting the ground. Didn't repeat experiment after bottle cap hit me in the chest, scaring the sh-- out of me. No injury thank god.

 

[toolaholic]

Private rail coach. Using an allum., folding , lounge chair to make a " rail scooter !
Wheel barrow rims , chain saw motor, engineers hat. canaster air horn. Gates go down,
I fly By commute traffic ,red scarf flaying,blasting horn. Throw it in back of waiting pickup a few miles away. Make the news,never get caught! Never did this with My Son ,But You can!

 

[RedDirt]

Fun post. Geez were we dumb and lucky or what...?

DaNang harbor, night patrol, bored on a runabout patrol craft. Two man operation. Object was to create the "perfect" illuminated fountain. One guy'd shoot the M79 (grenade launcher) star shell. The partner would pull the pin on a concussion grenade and count one, two, three (dare I say four) and toss high and far. You'd want the star shell to burst just as the grenade hit the water and shoot a huge geyser up into the center of the star shell. Took lots of practice to get the perfect fountain. Took a lot more luck to come home with two hands. Stupid kids!

The neatest local invention is an auger driven snow machine. Now deceased, when Loyd was a kid he built the prototype with a Harley motorcycle engine and a water tank built into a home-made auger. This was before the advent of snowmobiles. Snow Cat actually sent out a rep to look at the design in the 50's or 60's but they kept with their track design. Later renditions had a 4 cylinder Toyota engine, hydraulic steered front ski and two side skis that had hydraulic trim. The rig sat three on a car bench seat with the driver in the middle position. The auger drive machine was a work of art and really worked well. In the 70's it was our "tow rope" and would easily pull a half a dozen skiers up the hill at once. It is still in a garage up the hill but it hasn't been run in years. Too bad, it was a marvelous machine.

In the 70's I designed a pendulum driven, clock-work, parabolic solar steam generator. Never got past the design stage but I see now some have actually been built though quite a bit more sophisticated than my design. It only took them 30 years to perfect the idea! I still haven't given up building my own "home-sized" model, some day when I retire. Discard satellite dishes are easy to come by now and there are affordable reflective films in the solar marketplace.

Hmm, I was tired yesterday and I'm tired again today. Does that make me re-tired now?

 

[bigdad]

Hey Tool.... whatdoya think? This was taken this past summer.

Private rail coach. Using an allum., folding , lounge chair to make a " rail scooter !
Wheel barrow rims , chain saw motor, engineers hat. canaster air horn. Gates go down,
I fly By commute traffic ,red scarf flaying,blasting horn. Throw it in back of waiting pickup a few miles away. Make the news,never get caught! Never did this with My Son ,But You can!

 

[have_blue]

I've had some beauties in my day. Some actually worked, some didn't. My latest is a "pond digger", that would quickly dig a pond and transport the dirt. You start off with a hopper trailer, and something like a tiller. You hitch it up behind a 25hp or bigger tractor. It tills up the dirt real shallow, maybe 1-3" deep. There is a scoop that collects the dirt, a link belt that transports the dirt up and over the front end of the trailer. When the trailer is full, you haul it away and dump it in thin layers, just the way you picked it up. The pond is dug now, so the obsession has faded.

 

[PineRidge]

In my younger years my buddies and I were facinated with explosives. We used to get inert grenades and then re-activate them with our own materails including the clip/fuse. I won't go into details about how we did that for safety reasons but they were real shockers when they went off.


I had one that was ready to go, it was locked in the glove box of an old Rambler and we planned a weekend when we would detonate it. Meanwhile someone broke into the car one night and stole the grenade. It scared us all so bad we never made another explosive, period.

 

[Renze]

I've had some beauties in my day. Some actually worked, some didn't. My latest is a "pond digger", that would quickly dig a pond and transport the dirt. You start off with a hopper trailer, and something like a tiller. You hitch it up behind a 25hp or bigger tractor. It tills up the dirt real shallow, maybe 1-3" deep. There is a scoop that collects the dirt, a link belt that transports the dirt up and over the front end of the trailer. When the trailer is full, you haul it away and dump it in thin layers, just the way you picked it up. The pond is dug now, so the obsession has faded.

Apart from the tiller, it sounds very similar to the "elevating grader" (not like elevating scraper) except from using a tiller instead of a grader blade to collect the dirt.

Most known are the ones drawn by old caterpillar tractors, but when i tried to google an image for you, i found this horse drawn version:

http://www.nflibrary.ca/nfplindex/data/6/2/91362-505188.jpg

I bet it would be a lot healthier for your tractor and FEL to move dirt this way, than to bust up your front loader, clutch and front axle.

 

[ToadHill]

Does fishing with 1/4 stick of TNT count?