Bruce L. Bergman wrote:
Our rural-style curbside single mailbox got visited by the Mailbox
Fairy last night (AKA the $#%^=&%(^!! local teenagers...) First time
in about 10 years.

Finally finished off the redwood 4X4 that I set in concrete when I
was still in High School - it dried out and shattered at the cross-arm
dovetail cut. I patched the box back onto the stump of the old post
temporarily with 3/4" plywood, but it's time to Do It Once, and Do It
Right.

Anyone have a line on some cheap 4" extra heavy wall steel tubing
in Los Angeles? Nothing TOO heavy, I only have a Miller Challenger
MIG and oxy-acetylene with B and 50CF tanks, so the really big stuff
like railroad track and 4" bar stock is out. (Nuts.)

Unless I use Thermite... (Muahahahaha!!)

The wicked part being that I want to duplicate the silhouette of the
old post and cross-arm with brace, paint it wood brown with fake
graining so they think it's still an easy mark, put a plate-steel
rural mailbox at the top, and aim a camera at it - I could use sucker
rod or well casing for the post, but that would be far too obvious...

I should probably make some sort of break-away shear mount at the
base, with a chain so it doesn't go bouncing too far. And a twist
breakaway for the arm (preferably one rigged to let the arm swing all
the way around if smacked at speed...) Just so the lawyers for the
decedent can't say I was creating "an attractive hazard" - I believe
in the principle behind the Darwin Awards (letting fools self-cleanse
the gene pool) but for some unknown reason the District Attorney and
local Tort Lawyers do not.

Anyone seen one of the heavy plate steel "oversize" rural mailboxes
with a second inner locking door and drop slot? Haven't seen both
features on the same pre-made box, I might have to make an inner door.

After that, I have to find a big steel box suitable for making into
a package drop locker. But first things first.

-- Bruce --


Ah feel your pain, Bruce!

I'm the luckyest guy in the world with respect to curbside mailbox
placement as mine is located inches downroad of a telephone pole at the
end of our driveway, and only a couple of inches of box sticks out past
the pole towards the street. The swines would have to stop their vehicle
and get out of it to have much of a chance of even whacking the box
with a baseball bat.

It's been unscathed by vandals for the 20 years we've lived here. Others
on the street haven't been so lucky.

Well, it did get knocked down once about ten years ago, but that was by
SWMBO while she was backing out of the driveway and strayed too far to
one side. The "toldjaso points" I got from that one were worth my having
to splice on a new bottom section and replant the post. :-)

I probably showed you guys this one before, but I stopped and snapped a
photo of this mailbox which I spotted last year in front of the house
right next to the one we moved from 20 years ago. (A location where we
lost our mailboxes to vandals regularly.)

http://home.comcast.net/~jwisnia18/temp/mailbox2.jpg

The box is just a POS plastic one without it's door, but the "pole"
looks like it could handle a lot of malfeasance. Too bad the guy there
couldn't figure out how to plant it deeper or shorten the I beam as it's
about 15" higher than it should be.

Oh well, maybe he designed it for air mail? (Ducking for cover...)

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented."