Work in the country, in the garden or vegetable garden cannot be called easy. Therefore, interest in rational ways of doing things and devices that make work easier and faster does not wane. Today we’ll look at a way to make a simple hand tool with your own hands, with which you can easily remove weeds, replant plants, plant seeds and much more.
You will need:
- a piece of an old 50 mm metal pipe;
- two metal pipes 25-30 mm in diameter and 1 m long;
- a sheet of paper, a ruler, a pencil and glue;
- bench vice;
- Bulgarian;
- a small steel strip 4-5 mm thick and 200 mm long;
- drill with drill bit;
- set of M6 bolt, two washers and nut;
- welding machine.
Hand tool making process
To make working parts from a pipe, we cut out a sheet of paper measuring 150 by 95 mm, a kind of pattern.We draw straight lines from the corners of the smaller side of the format to the center of the opposite side. There should be two patterns.
We apply glue to the back side of the sheet and carefully glue it to the surface of the pipe, precisely aligning the short side of the sheet with the end of the pipe, which should be strictly perpendicular to its longitudinal axis.
We clamp the pipe with the glued pattern into a bench vice and use a grinder to make cuts along the lines on the paper. We turn the pipe 180 degrees and repeat exactly the same operation on the other side of the pipe.
As a result, two wedges with cylindrical surfaces are formed at the end of the pipe. Using the same grinder, we cut them off from the rest of the pipe along a section normal to the axis of the pipe, at their very base. This is what the working parts of our homemade product look like.
Now we take two identical metal pipes of a smaller diameter and a length of approximately one meter. On each of them, at one end we make a cutout with a diameter of 30-35 mm.
We install the working parts of the future uprooter-planter into these cutouts with their convex side down in the longitudinal direction so that their base is in contact with the end of the cutout, and their axis coincides with the longitudinal axis of the pipe.
In this position, we connect these parts of the tool to each other using a welding process from the back side.
We cut out two plates measuring 35 by 80 mm from sheet metal, one short side of which should be cut at an angle of 15-20 degrees, and the other rounded. From the rounded side closer to the edge in the center of the plates, use a drill to drill holes with a diameter of 6.5 mm.
We fasten the plates together using an M6 bolt, two washers and a nut.The plates should easily rotate relative to each other in one direction or the other around the bolt rod as an axis.
We weld the hinge at a distance of 250 mm from the top of the working parts of the lifter to the handles so that the tubular “peaks” can close tightly when the top of the handles are pulled apart and open when they are brought together.
Using homemade products in action
First, we use the device as a weed remover, as intended. To do this, hold the handles approximately parallel to each other and stick the slightly apart working parts on both sides of the weed and press down the hinge with your foot, deepening the tool.
We move the handles to the sides, while the grips in the ground move and squeeze the bottom of the weed and the roots. We lift the device up and pull the weed out of the ground along with the roots. The more massive the plant, the more it is necessary to move the handles before burying the working parts of our uprooter into the ground.
But it turned out that our homemade product can be used for another purpose. It can also be used to make holes in the ground and plant seeds of various plants.
To do this, we spread the handles as far apart as possible, and we insert the closed working parts into the ground to the required depth. Then we slightly bring the handles together so that the “peaks” diverge a little, and lower the seed (planting material) into the recess between them. We pull the working parts of the device out of the ground and fill the hole with them.
The device can also easily replant small plants. Perhaps you will be able to find other ways to use our homemade product.
