A Bundle of Myrrh

This is for every man who has a mother. Homemade gifts are the best, right? Well, here is a homemade gift idea sure to please the pickiest mother.

Here is a practical gift, made with family love and engineering. Moms don’t like noise. Especially when they are hauling their favorite trailer. They are probably familiar with the rattle between the hitch reciever and the ball drop. Here a a homemade solution, sure to win hearts on Mother’s Day.

Here is a picture of the anti-rattle device in operation. It has a square the fits around the ball drop. It then has a piece that sticks out over the receiver mount, which is attached to the vehicle. A nut is welded to that piece and then a eye bolt is threaded through. The eye-bolt is twisted by hand to hit the receiver mount—-and viola, no more rattle!!!

All your need are some small pieces of fairly sturdy steel and an eyebolt and matching nut and a small welder. A clamp or two helps to keeps things aligned when welding. Simply align them and clamp them down to your ball drop, to ensure a tight fit, and weld the pieces together. Here’s the best thing about this, you probably have the parts lying in your garage already. For the frugal gift maker, this is a perfect Mother’s Day gift. Total it only cost me $0.00. Build one today!

Here is picture of the finished product polished. Parts list: Two large cotter pins; One large bolt with nut; One piece of angle-iron; two eyebolts with one nut.

Make that special mother in your life happy. (Sorry mom, I only made one of these for Aubri, maybe next year). Here is evidence that practical, homemade gifts are the best.

Here I am applying the glass etch. These are 6.5 gallon carboys. I also did all my 5 gallon carboys.

The finished product. It looks simple, but doing 13 carboys was no small feat. I hope to brew this coming week. I decided I need to dilute the hard water here with distilled water. That should improve the quality of my beers.
Happy brewing (or drinking if you don’t brew)!

Lily and I go to story hour at the library here in town sometimes. Unfortunately this time, she slept through most of the stories and the Valentine cookie decorating, but she did wake up to get in the picture with the big kids so she’d make it into the paper. Look how she sat up all by herself!
By the way, we haven’t changed our name from “Hale” to “Halek” in case you were wondering. I guess the reporter was attempting to give us a little “anonymity”. I don’t think it worked.