Crushing Rocks for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCII

arc welding

Some of our DotDs make themselves known through their inability to answer a question, whether through ignoance or stupidity; others by their inability to understand the question or the reason it was asked. Of course there are those who manage to check both boxes; but we think today's nominee, unlike many of his fellow eHow.com "contributors," actually found an answer of sorts to the question. Victor Fonseca failed in two ways, however: first, he didn't understand the instructions he parroted and second, he failed to think through why someone might ask "How to Build a Rock Crusher" (now at SFGate.com).

Vic found some prospector type's instructions for building an ore crusher, and he was off to the races. First, though, he had to introduce his topic and his method. That took up most of his eHow-mandated introduction:

"Rock crushers come in many shapes and sizes, from the strictly hand-held to the complex industrial sizes, which can crush tons of rock and ore in one day. Making your own rock crusher invariably requires you or someone you know to possess some basic welding skills. Iron is the ore of choice when it comes to breaking rocks into hand-sized pieces and a skilled or even semi-skilled welder are the only people who can shape iron. This particular kind of rock crusher is perfect for homeowners or amateur prospectors."

Reading through that paragraph tipped us off to a couple of things:

• Fonseca doesn't know what welding is (it isn't "shaping" metal).
• Fonseca thinks arc welders come in a "kit."
• Fonseca thinks iron is an "ore." It isn't, it's a metal.
• Fonseca thinks his design will create "hand-sized pieces." It won't.

Briefly put, Victor says to weld a four-inch iron pipe to a 10 x 16 iron "board" (his word for a metal plate), open end up (though he doesn't actually say that). You place your big rock in there. Now you know why we said this doesn't make "hand-sized pieces": you're placing a three-inch piece of rock in there and crushing it to gravel or smaller.

The crusher is a six-inch capped iron pipe filled with cement. Vic says to "Pour... cement in [sic] a wheelbarrow" to mix it, suggesting that he didn't think through how little cement this would actually require.

According to Fonseca. you use the cement-filled pipe as a piston and pound it repeatedly on the contents of the larger pipe. The stated purpose of the original design Vic plagiarized is an ore crusher for prospectors. Heaven help the ordinary Joe or Jill who wants to break up more than one rock at a time.

That failure of logic is where Fonseca earned himself his sixth Dumbass of the Day award.

DDIY - METALWORKING