Kayak Rack

 I have accumulated four kayaks over the past several years and needed a place to store them. I wanted them to be out of the way, out of the sun and weather, and easily accessible.

I had some timber left over from an earlier project this summer and they were in the way in my garage. After looking at them closely, I came up with a plan. It needed to be strong enough to hold the kayaks without expensive bracing, it couldn't be attached to the side of my house, and it needed to be movable.

This is what I came up with. It is free standing and can be pulled away from the wall so I cab power wash the siding when needed. My heaviest kayak is 83 pounds and I can hang from each of these arms.

I laid out each mortise, there are six, then drilled out the waste with a 1.25 inch bit. It took a combination of three chisels to square it off.

I used my table saw, set at three quarters of an inch, to make cuts all around. Then used the chisels to knock off the slices and smooth the tenon. Taking a shaving off at a time, once it was squared and smooth, allowed me to make tight fitting joints. I used a hand sledge hammer to pound them home and drove two screws through to secure the tenons in place. A wooden peg would have been better, but I was pressed for time.

And this is the rack complete with all four kayaks in place.

Simple wood working skills can expand the number of self-help or Do It Yourself projects you are capable of completing. The more you can do for yourself the less you have to pay others to do. Saving money that can be used for other more life supporting things is always my goal.

Mower Deck Repair

We have a saying in the Army, "Nothing is as permanent as the temporary." My temporary pallet wood shed I built several years ago is still standing and still where I store my firewood. So my current temporary fix is a repair to a broken spindle on my mid-mount mower deck.

Last summer my spouse hit an exposed root and knocked a blade right off the mower. I did the same thing a couple weeks later. Since then the mower hasn't cut evenly. One of the blades was slightly bent so I hammered that out. But the problem persisted.

Last weekend I removed the deck to do my normal spring maintenance. My Tractor is a 1995 John Deere 325 and it has 1,000 hours on it. I use it hard mower, hauling a trailer, and plowing snow. But I do all the suggested maintenance, I clean it, and make repairs as needed before anything gets too damaged. But as careful and attentive as I am I found that one of the spindles was broken when I power washed the deck. Two hits on a root must have done it. It is possible to get parts, I think, but I don't have the time or the money at the moment so I needed to do at least a temp repair so I can start cutting grass in a couple weeks.

As you can see, it broke around one of the four bolts. This allowed the spindle and blade to tilt and that's what was causing the uneven cutting. I also didn't want another piece to break and have parts flying out of the mower at a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately it is aluminum and I can't weld aluminum. So I decided to build a reinforcing bracket to put over it and hold it tight together.

I used a piece of cardboard to make a template and then transferred that to a piece of bed frame I had on my junk pile. Bed frame metal is very hard and stiff. I cut it out with an angle grinder with a cutting blade and finished shaping it with a bench grinder and hand files. Then I drilled the bolt hole.

It did take a good bit of trial and error removing a little metal at a time so it would fit snug. Here it is, mounted and supporting the spindle very nicely. The materials were all free and it took me about three hours to fabricate this. That saved me the price of a new spindle. I will now start searching area junk yards to see if I can buy a couple spares in case I break something else.

I cannot recommend enough the need for everyone to learn and practice fabrication skills. I can do basic stick and gas welding as well as blacksmith fabrication of parts. Besides the money you can save, if you buy used equipment or have something that has been out of production for decades, you need to be able to build replacement parts and do your own repairs. Self-sufficiency is a big confidence booster. I can fix pretty much everything I own and I never went to school for these trade skills. Study books, watch videos, go visit shops and ask to watch. These are skills that are marketable.