Re-working pry bar

The closest I have to a BOB is the overnight backpack and tool kit in the car. The kit includes tools for house repairs when I'm visiting. The small pry bar in it is L shaped for more leverage removing wheel covers and inner door panels.

Since I have it out, it needs the edges ground and sanded smoother and Gorilla tape padding to protect the door paint.

When I travelled on a motorcycle I kept watch for the smallest tools that would do the job. I quickly learned that crosscut wood saws were far better than a hatchet when camping, so I carried the smallest hatchet that worked with the impact driver. It's big enough to chop kindling and sharpen tent stakes, saws do the rest better anyway. I think it's this:

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I couldn't find a compact handle for recip saw blades, which are longer and more useful than pocket knife saws, so I made a flat aluminum one that attaches with a screw and wingnut. The wingnut doubles as the handguard.

--jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins
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I learned a lot of tricks like that in the 60's, most of which I wouldn't publicly admit to today.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I've had such a saw for years & years & years. It is handy to keep in the car.

The key word for Googling is "folding". E.g., "folding jab saw".

Reply to
Bob Engelhardt

There are now. I made the handle long before Google existed.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Steve at Enderes created a Google map of all the retailers around me that have ordered the D-26 bar! (That's pretty awesome thing for a manufacturer to do.) The nearest was 15 minutes away and had the bar. I bought one and did a little grinding to sharpen it to my taste.

Turns out that Enderes will sell direct (800 number), but local was better.

Thanks, Bob

Reply to
Bob Engelhardt

I have a little stainless Firestone hand axe in the truck, plus an HF folding pruning saw. Makes quick work of thin campfire branches.

I wanted this one:

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but ended up with this:
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It's a good size/shape for carving and whittling.

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

Kudos for the fabbing of necessary handles.

Look at this sweetie!

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That would be damned handy in myriad places & situations.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

And thanks for the follow up to the story. I read they were under new ownership and were trying to get things up and running again so to speak.

I was going to offer you mine if you couldn't locate one. Mine came either from Home Depot or Menards. Suspect it was HD but too lazy to try digging through old receipts from many years ago...

Glad it worked out for you. You should try a Wonder Bar too if you haven't already.

Reply to
Leon Fisk

I found one many years ago (~25?) that has worked well. I think it came from Sears or maybe US General. The later had a store in a local mall back then. It has a hollow handle with a sliding door. You can keep a few blades there but not the long ones. The blade holder has two ends for either style blade. Has two different notched blade positions. It seems to made from a hard plastic type of material that has proven to be quite durable.

I took some pictures and put a montage here:

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During hunting season I use to carry it in pocket/fanny pack with the blades in the handle. Otherwise it was in one of my toolboxes for work.

Reply to
Leon Fisk

I made mine as a sheath knife with a belt loop for hiking, around

1980. It disassembles and the hollow tapered handle telescopes over the aluminum sheath for storage in a small belt pouch. A few years later much bulkier saw blade handles hit the stores.

The back of the blade doesn't hold a knife edge very well.

--jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Nice. Compact and sturdy are Good Things.

Wouldn't imagine it would.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

I had to use a wood cutting blade that was soft enough to file the teeth for cross-cutting.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I used to have canned gas (white) aka no lead or additives - and a chain saw, an axe, gloves mask and goggles and a 5 pound hammer (later a 7) and a set of wood and steel chisels. And a 20' logging chain. The steel chisels were for wire and cable if a problem.

Used the saw, gas, hammer, steel chisels, chain and a lot of sweat on a a number of times on trips home over the mountains. After Earthquakes trees are tipsy and if the rain hits and wind tree falls are constant.

Often there is another that happens along and works on the log across the road. We would get them safe from rolling and flag them with red plastic ribbon for the Highway Patrol (CHIPS) to call in tree workers to take out the downed tree. Sometimes the we would get there as the pro's were working and we would just watch.

My best pry bar is a 6' green spade with a large flat end. Deflection is nominal when my weight is on the end.

Mart> >

Reply to
Martin Eastburn

What are you doing filing your own teeth? I thought you said it was a recip blade, anyway.

A bimetal blade wouldn't have been any better, since they have HSS teeth on a soft iron back.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Martin Eastburn fired this volley in news:gDyoz.1090$ snipped-for-privacy@fx43.iad:

My fave is a "St. Angelo"-style spade-end bar. 6' hex steel with one 2-

1/2" spade and, and the other drawn to a point.

I've never bent it, in decades of stump-pulling and foundation-raising. Heck, I've cut rock and bricks with it, with no sense that I'd ever damage anything but the cutting edge, easily-dressed.

Lloyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

San Angelo bars are great for prying the rocks out of New England glacial soil but I just found that a Digging bar with a wider, thinner, sharper chisel end is better for chopping stump roots. The mushroom on the other end tamps the fill in post holes.

That means I need the San Angelo bar to dig a post hole and the Digging bar to fill it, since I have both rocks and stumps to remove.

This is nearly useless for serious stump removal.

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It might be useful to cut brush roots in less stony soil and it isn't as tiring to use as the solid steel bars. It seemed like it would remove the bark from a log if I sharpened it; I had only a pine stump to try that on. Several reviewers liked it for stripping off old floor tile.

--jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Those are very nice bars. I've worked with those and the type with the mushroom end. I prefer the San Angelo's flat cutter for tree roots, having cut through 4" roots with one when attempting post holes.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

That's one style I haven't tried for roots. The narrower, offset tip should work better than the wide, centered tip, I'd imagine.

What fill? Don't you mound the crete so it sheds water?

At 5.4#, it would hardly touch live roots and would glance off dead ones. I bought their larger one (no longer sold) when my lovely torsion bar didn't make the trip up here to Oregon. I'd forgotten.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

I try not to do things I can't easily undo, or repair if damaged by a wind or ice storm. My posts are part of structures that are joined at the top and diagonally braced, not free-standing fence posts that need concrete to hold them upright. If a tree falls on them they can be rebuilt quickly from spare timbers. Thus the posts rest on flat rocks in sand-filled holes, except for the more permanent back deck whose columns sit on 4' deep concrete footings.

--jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I've never built a pole barn, but I undersand that they do it with the gravel-bottomed rammed-earth style, similar to the way you mention. I'm lucky, too, in that I don't even know what the term "frost heave" means, except from reading about it.

Galvanized U sunk in the concrete footing, with post on top? Works well.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

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