{"id":368,"date":"2011-06-20T20:26:57","date_gmt":"2011-06-21T01:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/junkwood.info\/?p=368"},"modified":"2020-01-13T20:02:37","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T02:02:37","slug":"home-built-lawn-aerator-and-roller-combo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/junkwood.info\/?p=368","title":{"rendered":"Home-built Lawn Aerator and Roller Combo – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

*** Warning***
\n***This post has absolutely nothing to do with wood<\/em><\/strong> but hopefully it is interesting enough to read anyway ***<\/p>\n

\n

I’ve decided to try something wacky and build my own lawn aerator.\u00a0 In addition to poking some holes in the grass, I am hoping that it can smash down the mole tunnels at the same time due to the weight of it after it is filled with concrete.\u00a0 Best yet, I nearly have all the stuff laying around that I need to build it except a piece or two that I can pick up at the local Home Depot… or salvage from my brother’s scrap steel.<\/p>\n

I’m sure the design isn’t the most “safe” configuration, but we’ll let the moles worry about that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Yeah, it sure looks scary to me.<\/p><\/div>\n

I used a drill equipped with a fairly small bit and randomly drilled holes all around the concrete form.\u00a0 I am not too concerned about the cardboard deteriorating.\u00a0 I figure I have the nails embedded deep enough that they won’t slip out on their own.\u00a0\u00a0 Here’s a view from the top to give you an idea of what I mean.<\/p>\n

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The nails are far enough into the cavity to hopefully stay put. They’re a size larger than a regular 16d framing nail so they are pretty hefty.<\/p><\/div>\n

In order to prep the cylinder for pouring I cut a piece of rigid foam into a circle and marked the center.\u00a0 I stuck a piece of 1\/2″ CPVC in the center of it, pulled it out and then stuck it into the concrete form.<\/p>\n

\"Bottom<\/a>

Here’s what will be the bottom side when pouring in the concrete. It serves a few purposes. To hold the CPVC tube in the center when pouring all the concrete in as well as keep all the concrete from running out the bottom.<\/p><\/div>\n

Here it is flipped over and ready for the concrete to be added.\u00a0 I also made another circular foam cutout to hold the top side of the CPVC in the center.<\/p>\n

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Here is the tub with the CPVC pipe in place.<\/p><\/div>\n

I moved it outside and grabbed the concrete bags out of the garage.\u00a0 All the stuff I’ve used so far has been leftovers from other projects.\u00a0 I prefer to ignore the fact that I may have “over-purchased” on previous jobs and choose to believe all the stuff is “free” at this point.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

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Ok ok.. I was sweating too much and my hands were a little too dirty to pick up the camera while mixing up the concrete and filling the form. I do think a flat bottom shovel really helps get it mixed thoroughly and a lot easier.<\/p><\/div>\n

Here it is with it chalk full of concrete and the top foam piece in place.<\/p>\n

\"Filled<\/a>

A wee bit of the concrete bled out of the bottom.\u00a0 I stuck a plastic bag under it just in case, but that really didn’t help at all.<\/p><\/div>\n

I ended up buying a small ball hitch and a piece of round rod for the axle and welded it all together in my brother’s garage.\u00a0 Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures over there during the assembly, but next post I make, I’ll try to take some of the finished product and have it hooked up to my riding lawnmower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*** Warning*** ***This post has absolutely nothing to do with wood but hopefully it is interesting enough to read anyway *** I’ve decided to try something wacky and build my own lawn aerator.\u00a0 In addition to poking some holes in the grass, I am hoping that it can smash down the mole tunnels at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkwood.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkwood.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkwood.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkwood.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkwood.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/junkwood.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":505,"href":"https:\/\/junkwood.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions\/505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkwood.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkwood.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkwood.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}