Hick Pipes Up

You may recall that Hick has been paving the gravel road. Hick and his buddy, Buddy. Buddy supplies the materials, left over from his free-lance dump truck hauling. Hick provides the labor. He's pretty much on call to smooth out the blacktop when Buddy gets a load. Let the record show that blacktop waits for no Hick. It must be spread before it cools. Or Buddy will have a truck full of hardened blacktop. HOS (Hick's Oldest Son) had been called in recently to assist, since Hick has a spare tractor just sitting around, and HOS is currently not working on the railroad.

When we last critiqued the roads that Hick (and Buddy) built, they left a little to be desired. They had paved one side of the gravel road hill, and since I reported them told you of their progress, they have done both sides of the hill.

Yes, it's still not smooth. Very bumpy. Hick says the first time, they had to get that load out before it hardened, and Buddy drove his dump truck over it, thinking that would smooth it out, but it resulted in ruts. Permanent ruts. You can't put the genie back in the lamp, or spread blacktop once it has hardened. Hick says that on the second effort, the left side of the road here, looking at it from the downhill angle, they used a roller he's had for a while, bought from a local guy, that Hick used for flattening the ground. Like after the FedEx guy left ruts. But that this roller wasn't heavy enough. Being Hick, he decided that they need a better roller. Of course that's something he can design and construct.

The plan was to get a piece of pipe, fill it with leftover concrete from the floor of the new Freight Container Garage, make a frame for it, and VOILA! A road roller to pull behind Hick's tractor. His newest one, from that MoDOT auction, the blue New Holland. I figured that out, because he made sure to spray paint the frame and roller to match the tractor. And it ain't green like the John Deere.

For those of you interested in Hick's fiddlings, I'll document his roller construction.

That's Hick's pipe. He got if from a general contractor who had done work for him for years at his factory. It's a steel pipe, 72 inches long, 20 inch diameter, and 1/4 inch thick. Hick got it for free, due to his connections, but it would have cost somebody else $300-$400.

There's the frame, laid out in the BARn. The tongue came from his old roller, and the metal was scrap that he had laying around. He welded it together with the help of HOS.

There it is, welded, with more of Hick's treasures on display behind it.

Of course Hick couldn't be seen tooling around our enclave pulling a junky roller, so he used some paint he'd kept from when he worked at his OLD employer. The one back when we first got married. Before Genius was even on the horizon. Hick is not one to throw anything away.

Hick stood the pipe on end, and when the concrete workers were done pouring the Freight Container Garage floor, they poured the excess in the pipe.

Here's the finished product. Hick spent $40 on bearings. Not that I know what they are. Hick says that's what makes the roller roll. So that's all the money he has in this little project. Too bad it was too late to use on the hill I travel down every day. But they used it yesterday on HOS's hill when Buddy got another load of blacktop.

Here's the master craftsman, posing with his completed project. It was a happy accident that I caught Hick and HOS giving the roller a test run, across the front yard/field, as I was headed to town. HOS was riding on the frame of the roller, and stepped off to take some pictures for himself.

Hick says it worked great, but that if he had it to do over...he might have used a shorter pipe, with a greater diameter. For more weight, and less surface area. Look for a new roller, coming (hopefully not too) soon.