"It served us well for several seasons until we grew up and left it behind."
I think I see the problem -- that growing up part. I am agressively
working hard to postpone that part of my existence as long as possible.
--R
Dan Weeks wrote:
Someone wrote:
Hmmm, how about sticking an old alternator in a box with the chain saw
motor hooked to it, fairly light and cheap portable 12v power? Maybe a
small battery thrown on there for storage and load leveling, an
inverter
for light 110v. I guess it would need to be grounded or something, and
it would be a bit weighty, but still, that would be kinda fun. I might
have to try that to run the 12v 'rita blender at the beach. Or I could
just hook a weedwhacker motor to an old blender. Or....
Too many projects!
-----------
WHen I was a lad, my best friend and I wanted to light the pond near
his house so we could have night skating parties. We took an old
wooden wheelbarrow frame, decked it over with bits and ends of
leftover oak T&G flooring, bolted an ancient B&S 1-hp,
horizontal-shaft reel mower engine to it, the kind you had to wind
the starter cord manually every time you pulled it, along with an old
6v automotive generator we found lying around. Wired it up to charge
a 6v car battery, also mounted to the contraption, thence to a couple
of 6v headlamps, which we mounted in tree branches on opposite sides
of the small pond. We'd wheel the thing out there through the snow,
park it behind a big snowbank for noise attenuation, start the motor,
adjust the throttle to center the needle of ammeter we'd also
scrounged from somewhere when both lights were on, and would skate
with a passel of youth till the wee hours with light glinting off
skate blades and pond ice, and the bare limbs of trees casting
scrim-like shadows over all. It was magical. And the barely audible
putt-putt-putt of the engine, throttled down just about as low as it
would idle, somehow added to the low-tech wonder of it all. I bet
there wasn't a post-WWII piece of hardware involved in the whole
setup. This was in the early seventies. We were surprised at how
little power and speed the generator required to keep up with the
headlamps. It served us well for several seasons until we grew up
and left it behind.
Dan
