...I got to help make one!
Not a real one. Boy had a class assignment to research various inventors and inventions, and he got short-strawed with finding out about the jackhammer.
You know, for something so ubiquitous, there really isn't a whole lot of good information out there about them. I did find out for him that it was invented back in the early 1890s by a bright fellow named Charles Brady King. Seems Chuck was quite the entrepreneur and inventor, and managed to beat Henry Ford to the honor of having the first automobile operating on the streets of Detroit. After a concerted bit of Googling, I did manage to find the patent number, hoping to be able to find some drawings of what the original looked like. For some reason, the pictures on the USPTO website didn't show up--I don't know if it's a browser issue or they've just got some broken links.
ANYway, the kids in class got to pick a bunch of stuff out of a junk pile, and he came home with a cardboard tube, a plastic 2 liter Sprite bottle, and a family-size Ritz cracker box. And no idea what to do.
So, of course, I had to help. Cut a couple of holes in the sides of the cracker box, slid the cardboard tube through--handles. Cut a big hole in the bottom and secured the drink bottle inside--the bit or chisel end. And the box is the body. We went to the store last night and got some silver paint that dries to look like hammered metal, painted it, and it looks pretty good for painted garbage!
Pictures to follow sometime later--it needs another coat of paint, and maybe a hose of some sort attached to it.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at September 14, 2005 04:32 PMI assume you fit it with 3 or 4 stadium speakers playing "2 Garbage Trucks Colliding" or "We Will Rock you" or some such earsplitting noise.
Posted by: vachon at September 15, 2005 09:05 AMNo--there's enough din in the house as it is, and to create more for effect just isn't what I wanted.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 15, 2005 09:18 AM