frobzwiththingz

this weekend saw significant progress on a recent project, and a decent amount of progress on an ongoing one. The recent project is a hoop trapeze, aka lyra, aka circeaux. It's not an apparatus that i expect to ever be any good at, as it seems to be made for much more bendy folk than I. But we have a few of those made-of-string folk at our aerials practice group, some of whom have expressed interest in hoop, and i'd like to play around with it as well. At some point i had planned to send mail off to Jackie Tan and see if she had any hoops in stock.

but then a couple of weeks ago that rolling cheap tools outfit Cummins showed up nearby for a day. They are a company that sends trucks full of cheap Chinese tools (think Harbor Freight) around the country for one-day stops at hotel ballrooms, and hawk their wares. Most of what they sell is total garbage. Dont even think of buying power tools there, or anything you need to be sharp, or precise. But if what you want is a cheap set of welding clamps, or a hydraulic jack, or whatnot, you can outfit yourself with something that will do the job but doesn't look very pretty. Such as this hydraulic pipe bender. 12 tons of bendy goodness; came with dies for up to to 2 inch pipe. I looked at that, and it's $99 price tag, and decided to purchase it, and build my own hoop.

( Gory Project Details for the Tool Oriented. Step 1: materials and additional useful tools )
( Step 2: make two half-circles )
( Step 3: weld 'em into a circle. )
( Step 4: making hanging tabs )
( Step 5: weld tabs on )
( OK, it's done. Would i actually trust this thing? Enter 'The Machine That Breaks Things' )
( Pull Test )

Here's