The Daily Yardman Thread

[bertsmobile1]

Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild

Roger,
When you go to build your "boat" think foam insulation for your building material. Also a great sources of building foam is companies that sell small trailers as they use big blocks of foam to pad the trailers when they stack em up. You can use canned spray foam to glue the blocks together and then cut it with an electric craving knife, hot wire, hand saw or what ever floats your boat so to speak. Then use rasps,files, sand paper and or cheese graters to smooth it out. You can use "poor man's fiberglass" over it. That is old bed sheets glued on with Glidden paint's Gripper latex primer. Then you HAVE to paint it YELLOW. The parents will get it but I bet most of the under 30 crowd will not.
Good luck and post pictures.
Tom

Ooooh That was right out of the triangle.
We used to patch rusty iron roof with canvas & red lead , a paint submariners should be very familiar with.
However if you go that route the dope that canvas aeroplanes are painted with might be worth a look as it shrinks a lot when it dries in order to keep the skin on the plane tight.
I know you can get it in small tins because model aircraft makers use it on the paper skinned models.

 

[Boobala]

Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild

WELLLLLL ....I gues I'll throw my 2 cents into the arena as well .... IF (ut-oh ... theres that word ) you could possibly locate & purchase cheap - hopefully ...an old WW2 era ....(are you ready for this Roger ??? ) Aircraft Reserve fuel DROP tank ... You would be 3/4 done with your project .... or look on craigs-list for plastic food drums/barrels I see them all the time especially here in Central Fl.

I know your imagination and your engineering friend can derive a solution . Obviously.. the plastic food grade barrels are cheaper and much easier to work with along with perhaps a "sub-skeleton " /frame made from electrical conduit ,
either PVC or metallic tube , but unlike the color YELLOW !!!! I would ( it's my nature ) try to appeal to the women folk by painting it ..... Fifty Shades of Grey .. !!!! Ha, Ha, ( LOL ) ..:laughing::laughing:..:2cents:

Sorry folks ... I 've warned ya's before ...sometimes I get this way !!! Have a great one ...Boobala

 

[Roger B]

Re: MTD Yardman Submarine Parade Float

Man you guys are wizards.. But first of all I want to thank you for not laughing at me. I am fortunate to have located such a bunch of "like-minded" people who rather than simply saying, "That's idiotic", said instead: "Hmmmmm, that sounds interesting, here's an idea that may bring it to fruition!"

Tom,

I LOVE the idea of the foam! and Bert-Man I am very familiar with red-lead (and white lead too!) But we'd all be hung by our thumbs for using such dangerous materials today! The model plane dope is good through. And Boo-Boo, your right on the same track as I've been thinking for mounting the hull!

Here is what I had in my somewhat distrubed mind. I was going to attach a light but strong 'inner frame' constructed of 1/2" or 3/4" EMT, (Electrical Metallic Tubing) directly to the tractors frame. Then I was going to cut out wooden "frames" from 1/2" plywood and attach them to the metal inner frame. The wooden frames would have numerous slots cut into their perimeter for light wooden lathes to be fastened into. The wooden frames and wooden lathes would provide the basic shape of the hull.. This would be covered with what I've always called "hen-wire". Then I was going to mix up a sort of 'paper-mache' and apply it over the wire mandrel. Once completed and dry, paint would provide some protection against the elements.

Boobala, the drop tank won't work because it would not be large enough to enclose the entire tractor. Or if it was large enough, it would probably weigh so much the tractor would be unable to move it! I 'hope' to be entirely inside the finished hull when operating it, so it looks like a submarine with wheels.. Don't laugh, we had one of those - strictly for research you understand... Yeah, right.. "research".. LOL

Now I'll have to give foam some serious consideration. I wonder if all the foam we see used for 'packing' could be chopped up and then reconstituted in some way back into a solid that could then be hand shaped as Tom suggested.

I've got the next three months to work up a solid plan, before I can get back to this project.

Roger

 

[Pumper54]

Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild

Roger,

Use the wire form frame that you were thinking about and then spray the canned foam over it or see if there is a local foam insulation company that do it for you. When working with foam you really can't break it down and reform it, you just glue up a bunch of it and then shape it as needed. You can also use sheets of foam to build your frame or cover the "hull" with strips of foam then finish shape it. I think the dope that Bert was talking about would not work with the foam but would be great for a fabric cover. Just a big model airplane like we used to build back in the day. ;-)

Tom

 

[Roger B]

Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild

Roger,

You can also use sheets of foam to build your frame or cover the "hull" with strips of foam then finish shape it.
Tom

Tom,

I'm thinking that if I bought 4'X8' sheets of 3/4" blue (or even 'Pink!') foam board I could cut it into strips and glue it (they make special foam-board glue) to the wooden hull shape, I could then shape that fairly easily, a lot like building a strip-built boat! Any 'holidays' could be filled and filed using spray foam.

We do have spray foam companies here, In fact we had one of them foam the underside of our roof for insulation a number of years ago. It works great!

I really appreciate your idea, it had not occurred to me to use foam. It is a pity it can't be ground up and then have some magic solution mixed in and then spread like "foam-mache". It would act like the aggregate in cement. Makes me think of a product called 'micro-balloons', which are mixed into epoxy resin and used to smooth areas of boat hulls. I've got to think on that for a bit.. Might come up with something yet! It would be lumpy as hell though, wouldn't it?

Roger

 

[bertsmobile1]

Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild

Just remember that styrofoam is very soluible in petrol.
We have a drum with old fuel in it that we drop foam into to get rid of foam packaging.

 

[Roger B]

Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild

Bert-Man,

I have been thinking about how 'sensitive' foam is to a number of solvents, but maybe a coat of rather inert latex paint might be sufficient protection.

What do you do when your "foam recycling barrel" is full? Big fire? Shrimp on the Barbie? Can you BBQ kangaroos? - (Are you a dry rub or a sauce man?? :licking

Roger

 

[bertsmobile1]

Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild

That will never happen.
When the fuel gets a bit thick, I pour it into a 4 / 5 gal drum and set it aside.
Every few years they have a free "drum muster" to get rid of old drums of farm chemicals, so it goes out to them.
Otherwise it is a $ 200 fee at the recycle depot.
We built a styro foam recycling plant to get a "green Certification" for the Olympic games and the day the Parra-Olympics closed, so did the plant.
$ 30,000,000 worth of bull dust for the sole purpose to lie to the rest of the world about how eco friendly we are.

Farming the largest animal that self regulated is numbers according to available food / water, eats what grows naturally, thins down bushfire fuel, has an excellent tasting, lean meat.
What sort of fools do you think we are when we can run an imported animal that does not handle the enviroment particularly well, uses 10 times the water / kg of meat, destroys the pastures that they are feed in , requires constant monitoring to prevent over grazing , produces massive amounts of dung which generate unbelievable amounts of flies & eats almost nothing that grows naturally ?

I mean if we farmed kangaroo ( which is darn fine eating ) we would be doing exactly what those "stupid" black fellas had been doing for about 40,000 years which can't be right cause they had not even managed to invent a wheel so they could carry the stuff they did not need to places the wheel can not traverse for no good reason. Remember we are the better educated, well read , God fearing white men who eat beef. :confused2: :confused2:

Shrimp are Prawns down here and most are eaten boiled then chilled as prawn season is bloody hot down here. Most kangaroo goes into pet food because the "greenies" won't allow it to be sold in supermarkets so you can only get it at specility butchers which makes it expensive. Being that we nearly slaughtered them to extinction to make space for foreign species ( sheep , goats & beef ) so in a knee jerk reaction typical of "White Male Politicians" kangaroos are protected so you are not supposed to shoot them without a license and then you get told how many you can shoot. Gee we really are the smartest thing on the planet arn't we.

 

[Roger B]

Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild

Bert-Man,

I can see that you are less than impressed by the agricultural practices impressed upon your 'island' continent by the wizardry of modern farming. I do find it odd that some group of - - what would you call them?? - - naturalists . . . I dunno, but folks who have seen the errors of "our-ways" and realize that roos are a natural source of protein that should be 'farmed" and put to good use. Buffalo have reached that status here in some parts of the states. The meat is a little lean, but to someone like myself who tried not to buy any 'red' meat, but instead makes the best possible use of venison, it is fine fare indeed...

Do not despair! Things have a way of working themselves out for the good.. You just have to live long enough to see it happen!

Roger

 

[bertsmobile1]

Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild

What I find difficult to believe ( well there are a lot of them really ) is we have a very strong "green" movement down here.
Most of the said same "Greenies" are also active in the anti- racists groups as well.
They are so determined to equalize & elevate the status of the previous human occupants, yet they refuse to believe that they black fellas actually MADE the country like it was when white fellas came here.
They think protecting the enviroment is locking up vast lumps of it and not letting any one in there, despite the fact that for 40,000 + years the locals had been living in & farming this forest by burning