I finally got my Christmas present promised to me two Christmases ago! My papercrete mixer! I should probably title this, "THIS GIVES NEW MEANING TO "PUT A LID ON IT!"
And my sides are still hurting from laughing harder than I can remember forever. We tried the just-completed mixer first with the 100 gal. tank about 1/3 filled w/water to see if the blade would turn. By George, third time was the charm! After spending money on an electric and a gas-powered motor from Tractor Supply, after having to drop back from two lawn mower blades to just one because of the new configuration, the PTO on the tractor was the magic touch we needed. Then we added about four armloads of newspaper to see if it would still turn, the problem we had before. This brought the tank up to about half full. So basically, for our test run, we were making paper mache, not papercrete.
...And after I gave Hubby a rough time for months that the oblong tank with only one blade in the middle wouldn't circulate the paper correctly enough to allow the paper to chop up...WELL, SHUT MY MOUTH(!), we had finely chopped paper in seconds at just 30 rpm's on the tractor PTO.
We knew we would need a plywood lid on the tank to make the real papercrete, that is, when we mix in the concrete, lime, clay, etc., but this was just to see if it worked, right? So first, we're watching the blade throw an occasional wave of water over the edge of the tank. No biggy. Apparently it threw just enough water out to form a bit of a vaccuum around the blade and by then the paper was chopped up enough to fly like volcanic ash!
It all went straight up, without warning, like Mount Saint Helena. No joke. That's exactly what it looked like, a volcanic explosion or a geizer. I don't know how high it went, but it was high! High enough to cover the tractor, Hubby, our small horse trailer and even a little on the big horse trailer!
I haven't laughed so hard in years. In fact I was laughing so hard, it took me a while to shout out the words, "Turn it off!" But you would think since Hubby was in the papercrete storm himself, he would have without being told, huh? I was safe because our usual 30-35 mph Texas breeze was blowing most of it his direction.
After many minutes of trying to compose ourselves, joking that every building in Waco, Corsicana, Mexia and Hillsboro, all 30 miles away and all different counties, were now probably papercrete-grey, we then had quite a clean-up job ahead of ourselves for fear all the paper-mache would harden in all the wrong spots in the tractor's working parts and on our horse trailer. Maybe it wasn't quite so funny then. But darn(!) how I wish I'd had that on video. That one might have won a prize on World's Funniest Videos, sorta like the Absent Minded Professor's inventions gone awry.
After all the clean-up and recovery, Hubby turns to me and says, "Oh...and Merry Christmas!"
So I finally got my Christmas gift from 1 1/2 years ago. :0)
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