Mail Box Bashers

[markb]

I've got 'em

Any ideas on a unbashable (indestructible) box and post?

[chyancarrek]

A buddy of mine used a piece of cast iron water main around the mailbox then welded fins using one quarter thick by three inch wide plate along the long length all around the circumference. He spaced them about one and a half times the width of a baseball bat apart. He got the idea from a fella who was besieged with bashers.

The fella told him the fin spacing increases the chance of the bat (or whatever) of getting hung up and wrenched out of someone's hand. It also slices pumpkins to pieces.

I don't remember what he used for a post and anchor.

Do you want to do that? Should you do that? Does it work? I dunno - but he never had any more evidence of someone taking a swing at it. Maybe just the site of that monstrosity was enough . . .

[Dragons lair]

Built two for customers. Both made out of 3/4 round bar with 3/16 plate bases. Base plate extends up to just below the flag. Six yrs on the first. Was going thru a box every mounth before that. RB was about a 3X4 grid.
Ken

[imagedude]

Just fill it with nitroglycerine. It won't get bashed twice!

[mike-hr]

A while back, some folks approached me to build an explosive-resistant mailbox. Apparently some kids had been putting M-80 type firecrackers in their boxes and watching them explode. I built a nice mailbox that looked like a model of their house, but with a hinged back wall with a loose spring catch so the back door would fly open during a sortie, and vent the explosion. My plan worked, but the huns tired of not getting it to fly apart, so they came back with hammers and beat it to shreds. Their current model is a plain mailbox with potato digger chain links welded in a half arc over the top. It's been there 6 or 7 years now, maybe the huns got married, had kids, and now have mailboxes of their own.
You could do some good re-enforcing by pouring your mailbox into a 14 inch sono-tube of concrete,and then mounting it with a good pipe post into the ground. Nothing like solid mass to promote tennis elbow in the hoodlums.

[ThomasPowers]

Watch out for liability---if you build a mailbox designed to cause harm it can cause legal problems later.

On the other hand if you just design a mailbox to be "pretty" and it accidentally causes harm---no intent shown you are usually in a much better legal place...

I had a friend in the country where they would run over your mailbox if they couldn't bash it. Well he made a base for it so if it got knocked down he could just lift it up again. Well the base also would tip up, dig into the ground and rip anything off the undercarriage of a vehicle running it over that it could. Much easier to figure out who was doing it as they were getting new brake lines, electrical work and muffler installed...

[chyancarrek]

Originally Posted by ThomasPowers

Watch out for liability---if you build a mailbox designed to cause harm it can cause legal problems later.

Exactly Thomas. That's why I put the - would you, should you - statement on my post.

I came home one day to find my mail box crushed and the 1/4" wall pipe and plate mounting-post bent in half. There was a note on the front door from a witness.

Turns out that it was a road rage incident where two fellas were combat driving and one lost control of his 70's era P/U and went off road over my mail box. The witness said the plate the box sat on caught the side of the truck over the rear wheel-well and sliced it open like it was made from tin leaving about a 4 ft gash down the side - the truck then took off without stopping - I'm thinking the guy got a surpise when he looked at what happened.

When I had put that post in a year earlier, I wasn't thinking at all about it being bash resistant - just wanted to make sure it would stay where I put it.

[HWooldridge]

We have a lot of oilfield pipe down here (or used to before the scrap wars) and we'd make both box and post out of sch 80 then set it into about a square yard of concrete. Front and back covers were usually 1/4 to 3/8 plate. It took a lot of energy to damage one so the yard gorillas would get a real workout tiring themselves out. Unfortunately, they usually took their rage out on the neighbors boxes.

[ironrosefarms]

I have been considering going and buying one of those large mailboxes (thin metal) then taking one of the many destroyed small boxes to put it into the middle of the big box. Then filling the void between the boxes with concrete. My only concern is the liability side of things...

I have become real good at taking apart a box beating it back in some reasonable shape of a mailbox then putting it back on the front line... errr I mean at the road side.

[JAFO]

I've seen folks build a 2'x2' red brick coloum and put their box in that.