Well be with you, readers!
For the Maiden fans - sorry to disappoint, but this post is all about the Hills Hoist (a different type of metal classic). Apologies, I just like wordplay and puns. It’s a Dad thing…
You see, I recently acquired a Hills Hoist - free of charge (except for the GoGet van hire)! An original from, well, I don’t know, but it would be at least 50 years old. Like me. Broken. Worn out. Rusty. Creaky. Bent out of shape. In need of a grease and oil change. Strewn in pieces on the ground. Ok, enough corny old bloke analogy, on with the story.
Hills, not fills
But, ah, the beauty is threefold:
I get a project (and a story) out of it
Several kilos of steel are saved from landfill
the entire family’s clothing and undergarments will fit on it, to dry quickly in the ever-increasing heat of the Australian climate
gazing out at the aesthetic structure both pleases mine eyes, and harks me back to a childhood of simpler days, when our parents had trouble getting us back in the house, rather than out of the house. Actually, I did watch a lot of TV, and spent many hours typing BASIC code into a Commodore 64 to be able to play pong. But we also played real pong.
The more astute amongst you will have realised that I listed four points of beauty, rather than three. Not a good start for a data-driven newsletter.
Now I realise that I haven’t actually defined what a Hills Hoist is, for those of you who are not aware. The Hills Hoist is an icon of the Great Australian Suburbia. A galvanised steel rotary clothes hanger that can accommodate a huge number of items, and these days can even be folded up, pulled out of its in-ground sleeve and packed away (but really, why bother?). A swing for the kids (to my daughters, if you’re reading this, do not, I repeat, do not swing on our new second-hand clothesline, okay!?).
So having saved this clothesline from the tip, I wondered exactly how much metal gets thrown out annually in Australia. In 2018-2019, 5.6Mt of metal “waste” was generated1. Although the recycling rate is around 90%, that still leaves around half a megatonne (500,000 tonnes) of metal going to landfill every year. If we look at household generation, it’s about a million tonnes, which means about 100,000 tonnes of metal from households going to landfill every year.
Between 2006 and 2019, overall waste generation increased by about 40%, whereas the recycling rate only increased by about 4%.2
The “Metal waste by Industry” graph shows the breakdown of the different sources of metal discarded, in which household waste features heavily alongside other major industries. We can make a difference people.
Oh and I’m learning to use R and RStudio, so the privilege you have, dear readers, of witnessing the glory of my very first ever graph coded in R cannot be overstated. Well, maybe I just did overstate it. For what it’s worth, here’s the code:
# dependencies
library(ggplot2)
# create dataframe
waste <- read.csv("~/Downloads/data-driven-diy/hills/abs-waste-2018-2019.csv")
print(waste)
# plot it
print(
ggplot(waste, aes(Industry, Waste)) +
geom_bar(stat='identity') +
scale_y_continuous("Waste (tonnes)", breaks = seq(0,2000000, by = 500000)) +
coord_flip() +
ggtitle("Metal waste by industry in Australia (2018-2019)\n")
)
Do you remember that feeling of doing something for the first time though? I hope so. If not, I encourage you to do something new, anything. It actually doesn’t take much to invoke a sense of wonder at life. For example, this morning I watched this video about the circle of fifths.
As (arguably) a guitarist and (arguably) a musician, I have known about the circle of fifths for many a year, but I loved the way the practical application of it is described so simply in this presentation. It is done in such a manner way that induced my desire to pick up a guitar and play right there and then. But then I remembered, I really should be:
making lunch
writing this post
mowing the lawns
etc. etc. etc.
This is a fairly large digression, so let’s get back to the point of the article. Okay?
In my o-pinion
So I’ve found the pieces, and I want to restore them and reassemble to install in my back yard. Where to start? I thought I’d start with the top/bottom standards (the main post) and handle case. That way, I could prepare them, concrete them into the ground, then do the remaining items whilst the concrete was setting and hardening over a number of days.
The whole contraption was covered in hand-brushed silver paint, which (to me) looked quite tacky, just quietly. My plan was to clean everything, sand the whole thing back, then repaint. One coat of galvanising (zinc-based) spray paint, followed by two coats of metal paint.
I started by removing the handle and its cover, and degreasing the pinion (small wheel with “teeth”). In hindsight, I probably should have dismantled the whole mechanism including the worm, but I was in a hurry and impatient (and probably hungry, given that is the usual state of about 80% of my waking hours).
I didn’t go all out with the degreasing, but you can see in the “after and before” shot below (I can’t control the order in which Google collages assemble photos) that the after (on the left) is much cleaner. I scrubbed with citrus degreaser because its smell pleases me, and I don’t have to eat any fruit for the effect.
Following degreasing, I regreased the pinion with the only grease I could find in said garage - a tub of grease specially for bicycle bearings. I don’t know if it’s any good for the current application, but it looks great!
Too much play
After cleaning up the casing and regreasing the pinion, I noticed that the end of the handle which attaches to the rod was significantly wider than the rod, causing a fair bit of play in turning the handle. I wanted to increase the efficiency of the energy transfer from the handle to the winding mechanism. To decrease the space between the two prongs I firmly tapped each side with a hand-held sledge hammer. This worked well and now the handle fits snugly to the rod.
Improving standards
So we’re moving on to the standards now. That is to say, the solid posts that support the winding mechanism and the hanging arms and stays. Now, we have a problem - the top main standard is rather unstraight. You might even call it bent.
What to do? This is pretty hefty steel, you can’t just stick it in a vice and pull on it (not at my age anyway!). I don’t have any fancy equipment, and the garage is so full of … let’s call it “stuff” … that there would be nowhere to put it anyhow. Using the old “make do with what you have” mantra, I found some other galvanised pipes, and I lay the standard over them. By positioning the supporting pipes and standard just so, I was able to sort of “cold forge” the thing into a reasonably straight line, once again using the sledgehammer. It was a fine line between using enough force to bend the steel, but not so much that I was going to destroy the surface with lots of dents. This method actually worked pretty well. I’m glad we straightened that out.
Handy sandy
Dear readers, have you ever watched the My Mechanics channel on YouTube? Don’t start, because you will not stop. These videos have been an inspiration to me embarking on this voyage of DIY writing. But sadly, I do not own a sand blaster.
Now, since I want to repaint this clothes line, and since it has quite a bit of rust in places, parts of it had to be sanded back to the bare metal. And given the shape of the pieces, this was very much a manual job with squares of sandpaper. I think I started with 240 grit and then took it down to 320. So…once sanded, twice cleaned - with mineral turps (if you’re reading outside of Oceania, you may know this solvent as white spirit or mineral spirits - either way, it smells sensational).
My daughter gave me a hand with this. I like it when my daughters help with DIY - it’s great bonding time, even if we don’t talk much during the activity. I watch them learning and engaging with the task and a Fatherly pride stirs within. Given certain rampant sexist attitudes within our society, it’s important to me to show my children that if they want to do something and enjoy it, they damn well should. Really I’d be pleased if they wanted to become tradies. Or doctors. Or stunt drivers. Or florists. Or YouTubers (oh, I already said florists!). You get the idea.
Dig this
My daughter also gave me a hand with digging the hole for the post (and before you ask - yes, I actually did quite a bit of the digging myself, I’m not a monster). We went down to 750-800mm. I’m not converting that to imperial. Move on.
We added about 50mm of gravel to the bottom of the hole before placing, stabilising and levelling the post. I used a long level vertically at 90 degree angles to get the post completely upright, with clamps and star pickets holding it in place temporarily.
Let’s do something concrete
I’ll bet you didn’t see that coming. I know, I can be so predictable. With the standards upright and clamped in place, it was time for concreting. We used 6 x 20kg bags of quick set concrete, about half a bag at a time. After each bag was added to the hole, enough water to wet it (but just enough to mix it) was added. We mixed using the same wedged digging bar that was used to dig the hole itself (see “The strength and resilience of youth” above).
The clouds were gathering, and with each bag of concrete, the air grew cooler and damper. As we mixed the last bag, the rain came down, but posed little practical or technical problems for us. My daughter was even able to sign off on the job with her initial.
To be continued…
And with the signing off of the concrete, this weary writer shall too sign off. Stay tuned for Part 2 - check your inbox or follow me on Blabber at https://twitter.com/datadrivendiy.
Until then,
I am,
As always,
Yours,
Gary
Waste Account Australia, Experimental Estimates https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/environment/environmental-management/waste-account-australia-experimental-estimates/latest-release
National Waste Report, 2020 Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/pages/5a160ae2-d3a9-480e-9344-4eac42ef9001/files/national-waste-report-2020.pdf