Repairing a Lawn Tractor Muffler - A Tale of Baling Wire and Bubble Gum

When springtime comes a not so young man's thoughts turn to lawn care. 

And so this weekend I hauled my old lawn tractor out from its winter hibernation.  After giving the battery a quick charge and adding some fresh gas to the tank, I started the old girl up for the first time this year. 

I've had this tractor for about 10 years and it always provided faithful service in keeping the grass around the house nice and trimmed. 

So I was a bit bummed out when, after starting the engine I was greeted with a metallic clang and a really loud noise coming from the engine,. 

Hopping off the tractor, I immediately found the cause. On the ground, in front of the tractor, I found a large metal box - more commonly referred to as a muffler.

Building a $5 Smart Phone Tripod Mount

In a lot of ways, your typical smartphone has merged a lot of gadgets into one small device.

Today my smartphone has replaced to need to have a calculator, digital camera, notebook, among other things.

In a recent upgrade to my smart phone's operating system, I can even now use my phone as a bubble level and tape measure.

One thing that smartphones have been excelling at recently is capturing of high definition video, which means that my old camcorder can now be put out to pasture along with my old Casio graphing calculator.

Recently I got a new toy (which I will post about in the future) and I wanted to try my hand at making an unboxing video that all the cool kids seem to be doing these days and I figured this would be a perfect thing to record with my smartphone.

The gotcha here was that in order to do an unboxing, I really needed to be able to use my 2 hands - meaning I couldn't really hold my smartphone and unbox my new toy at the same time.

Luckily I still had my old tripod from my camcorder - I just needed some way to mount my smartphone to it.

A quick Google search paraded a plethora of mounts for my tripod - all way, way above the price I would be willing to spend for what really is not much different from a smartphone holder you can get for your car (which I could easily get for less than 2 dollars down at my neighborhood dollar store).

After one such trip to my dollar store, I ended up coming home with one of those cheap car phone holders - and an idea.