Ted Nesse – 7\/31\/22<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my teens, I operated a business in the neighborhood doing home repairs. I’d trundle through the Wildbrook\/Woodland neighborhood on our Ford garden tractor (manufactured by Jacobsen Equipment), towing a ramshackle 4×8 foot trailer with whatever my current project needed. I’d go cut lawns, deliver firewood, pick up mowers to repair or bring my tools for an on site home repair, such as replacing a light switch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To promote my business, I made a flyer and (illegally) stuffed mailboxes in the neighborhood. At my mother Dorothy’s suggestion, at the bottom of the list of services I added “Chocolate Butterfluff Pies to Order $5). While I was likely a better mechanic than cook, I knew my way around the kitchen, and I was prepared to deliver. And deliver, I did. I’d guess that I got at least half a dozen orders for the pies. I’d whip them up (literally) in the kitchen, box them in the package the pie crusts came in, and put them in the compartment under the tractor seat for safe delivery. $5 included free delivery, as I went off to some other project in the neighborhood. I can’t imagine ordering a pie for delivery on a tractor from the teenage neighborhood handyman, but I’m glad several of our neighbors did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to a welder, one tool I lusted after was a power washer. At the mower shop where I would trade equipment (and was later employed) they had a high pressure washer that would quickly strip tough grease, dirt, caked grass and such from equipment before the mechanics would start a project. Often, the washing revealed an obvious problem, or even fixed the issue. I wanted one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had a 75 gallon water pressure tank left over from my attempt to repair our well (the problem is that there was no longer water in the well, sigh…). And I had a pump that we used to flood our ice skating rink on the brook the the valley. And a pressure switch from a previous well repair. And I had enthusiasm!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I fed the pump from the garden hose, connected it to the tank and wired up the pressure switch which I had modified for high pressure use. I made a spray nozzle from a pipe fitting that gave an intense spray. What could go wrong?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, I fully realized the danger of the monstrosity I had built. A neighbor had their well pressure switch fail, and the bursting well tank launched from their well room and damaged the floor in the dining room, overhead. I was not going to be in the same room as that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I’d turn on the water, lead the wash hose outside, start the pump and get the heck out of there. I would wash outside of the shop, on the other side of a concrete block wall. About the time the pump would start sounding really bad, my modified pressure switch would shut it down and I had several minutes worth of high pressure water available to clean up my next project for repair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It never did blow up. And I never knew what pressure I was working with, except that it was well over the 100 psi my guage could indicate. It didn’t work as well as today’s ubiquitous power washers, but it sure improved my repair projects. In retrospect, however, it’s probably for the best that I never did try to build a welder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ted Nesse – 7\/31\/22 In my teens, I operated a business in the neighborhood doing home repairs. I’d trundle through the Wildbrook\/Woodland neighborhood on our Ford garden tractor (manufactured by Jacobsen Equipment), towing a ramshackle 4×8 foot trailer with whatever my current project needed. I’d go cut lawns, deliver firewood, pick up mowers to repair… Continue reading It Didn’t Blow Up<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":810,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":672,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/670\/revisions\/672"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}