Monday, June 06, 2011

Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days Of....Tree Swings?

Yep.
Last Fall, the Painless Tree Surgeon (we call him "Jim") left us a pair of ropes, installed on a substantial (though stubby) limb of the big old hackberry tree behind Roseholme Cottage. Over the Winter, I put together a swing seat; polyurethaned it in the last few weeks and installed it yesterday.

Those big, globby knots are actually a bowline-on-a-bight, with the free end sloppily hitched around it several times; I hate running out of rope.

More details to follow at Retrotechnologist.

13 comments:

Ed Skinner said...

Color-coded left and right, no less!

og said...

You couldn't do it with that rope, of course, but if you had some good manila or sisal you could have put a splice on the end. Dunno how? Get a copy of the "Farmer's Shop Book" by Louis M Roehl. Every geek must have this book, and they show up occasionally online. It has all the skills a home craftsman might need, from furniture repair and refinish, to building chicken coops, to welding, to sharpening saws, to electrical work (Make sure you cover the rubber tape with two turns of cloth tape!) and ropework, such as how to make a one piece spliced rope bridle. In short order you can learn to splice rope in your sleep.

Guffaw in AZ said...

What? Not a tire?

Jim said...

Not to get overly salty here, but this rig calls for a stopped tautline hitch. Since your line appears to be, as Og suggested, an obnoxious crude-oil modernity, you need three turns in the hitch, vice the two required for real line. Use marline for the stopping, if only because it smells so nice.

Not be be offensive, Og, but tape on line is lubberly.

:)

og said...

Tape on line? Reading comprehension fail. Tape on electrical work is what the comment clearly says. I probably learned to seize rope when I was seven. When you were seven, did you know what seizing was?

Lubberly. Phah. I HATE the water and know more about rope than most who consider themself 'Sailors"

Jim said...

Tape on wire is a a gateway drug to tape on line. :)

og said...

Tape on wire is how it's done, my friend. Problem is, now it's done with woosie electrical tape. Once upon a time, REAL electricians twisted wires together for 8 turns, wrapped the wire in real rubber tape, and coated the whole thing with black cloth tape.

WV: Haperagi.Not going there.

BGMiller said...

Soooooo......
Roberta and Tam are swingers....

Yeah Baby!

LOL

I am now going to go run and hide.

BGM

Drang said...

A Golden Oldie

Anonymous said...

Roberta, you don't have an email posted so...

Google Earth, select "Sky or Other Planets" -> Mars.

71°49'13.40" N 29°32'42.54" W (you can cut&paste).

Heads are gonna roll. I'm just happy as all Hell my name isn't on the roster for that cleanup.

Regards,
Ric

Roberta X said...

Ric: I don't have Google Earth. :( But I guess that's highly fixable.

My e-mail address is on my blog, right column, near the bottom, in antspambot form:
"e-mail?
roberta (daht) x (at) sbcglobal (daht) net"

That's a maildrop, which I try to check every week or two.

Anonymous said...

You should get Google Earth, if only to follow the fun.

Remember the little, ahem, "mishap" with the Tombaugh? '68 or '9, as I recall. They swore to God and all the angels that the missing clamshell from the port landing-craft bay went into Solar orbit and was lost.

Well, there it is, plain as day. Now yeah, it's on the other side of the planet, and that's not a fun place to comb for wreckage, but still, a 400-foot chunk?

This should be real interesting...

Regards,
Ric

Drang said...

I have nothing further to add, other than to observe that WV is now "voidiste".
Which seems like it belongs on "I Work On A Starship."