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I Forge Iron

Of course you know this means war!


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Hmmm, maybe incorporate a trail cam to get a pic of the offenders.

Pretty sad when you can't build a mail box the way you want to without Gov't intervention... :angry:


I don't have a mailbox due to the fact that we don't have mail delivery out here. I have to get mine at the PO. The PO just installed a row of bollards as someone went over the curb, and into the wall for the last time. After the third one they decided to put them in.

Now If I had funds to spare I would do up one that had motion sensors, and a movement to it. Here comes the pitch, and it's a SWING and a MISS!!

The spring mounted one sounds good. Heavy enough to offer some resistance to break the bat, yet if someone runs it over it just comes back up. The long coil springs on roll up doors might work.

Ahhhh, a decoy mailbox. One made of Styrofoam, and filled with ink, or something really gooey. Whack, and SPLAT!

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I briefly considered getting the sensors and charges from a couple of car airbags and using them to rig up something involving a gallon or two of hot pink marine paint (have fun getting that off, sucker). Sadly I'm selectively lazy. While I have no problem spending some large number of hours toiling in the heat to forge something nice, anything involving a voltmeter and a soldering iron is an immediate buzzkill.

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My neighbor about half a mile south of me must be an Assistant Principal. The lengths the local MBB org have taken to smash his MB show real ingenuity.........After incasing the thing in a cage of 5/8 rebar with 4'' square holes the thought he had the punks licked........All they did to make a mockery of his work was to hurl a good sized pumpkin at it at high speed........The pumpkin squiged through the holes and destroyed the box.......
frageplz.gif?1

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Here`s what I did to solve our problem.
Went down to the local post office and picked up the federal specs for mailboxes(they have them there for just such reference and will provide you with a copy). I followed the instructions to the letter for the multiple mailboxes on single post installation and then flanked my mailbox with 2 other regulation boxes I got from the dump and straightened out after they had been bashed. I filled the flankers with concrete and anchored them by running welded steel rebar thru their base and up into the concrete inside so they cannot possibly be torn free.
Our delivery person knows the two outside ones are fakes and the center one is made from schedule 80 pipe that has been slit and fabbed to resist any "retaliatory techniques". I too found pieces of bat for the first week this rig was set up. They now leave it alone and move on.
Several local friends have commissioned copies. :)

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One thing to keep in the back of your mind if you go the reinforced route is the possibility of escalation of force from the vandals.

My dad put up a fabricated steel mailbox several years ago after having the same problem at his home in CT. The punks evidently got mad after they hit it (hopefully someone broke a wrist). My folks were awakened by bricks smashing through their living room and bedroom windows. VERY upsetting as you can imagine.

I still think all the bash-proof box ideas are great- and if you ask my dad, he'd probably say go for it, but make sure your shotgun is loaded and handy...

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Last time I dealt with an intruder trying to break into our house I used a spear. Somehow a bearded naked man thundering down the stairs and heading towards where he was trying to break in---carrying a spear---inclined him more towards taking up sprint running. (I'm cranky if awoken in the middle of the night too!)

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One thing to keep in the back of your mind if you go the reinforced route is the possibility of escalation of force from the vandals.
Some decades ago, hoodlums near a friend of mine were unable to dent the concrete surrounding a newly replaced box. They consoled themselves by trying to blow it up instead. Lots of carbon scoring inside the box, but no real damage. Waste of good fireworks, if you ask me...
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Never had the problem myself, but saw it out on a country road in south Texas. They had left the old box, which had been smashed with an overhead swing, in place and put the new box next to it. Heavy walled pipe, with a decorative "comb" cut out of thin plate on top. Any bat descending on such would immediately be destroyed.

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Got back from spending the weekend with family to find my mailbox beaten to death by what I can only assume was neighborhood kids playing mailbox baseball. Whoever got it got a really solid hit in, the door's torn half off and they managed to spin the cross arm 180 degrees on the post so the mailbox was pointing at the house.

Unfortunately, certain poorly thought out past-times during my youth pretty much kill what would otherwise be a perfect opportunity for some seriously righteous indignation. Instead I'm left with a grudging respect for the kid's aim. Guess it's true what they say, you reap what you sew.

Anyway, I figure this is the perfect opportunity to forge up a replacement mailbox. I've got a few ideas but figured I'd open it up to discussion before I commit to anything. So my question is this: if you wanted to build a mailbox that would stop a truck, how would you go about it?

i would make the body out of 1/8 in stainless steal with 2 in angle iron as corners and half way through 1/2 in square tube rib. as for the flag i wold use a rail road spike with the fat end hammered to the same thickness as the spike. you might need more ribs though. for the post i would use 2 in square tubing. i hope this gives you some ideas
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When I was a kid some teenagers in our county had an old station wagon they would run over mailboxes with and sure enough one night they got ours. My dad heard from some guys at work what was going on so he went to the maintainance shop and bought a piece of small diamter railroad track and used it as the new mailbox post. About 6 weeks later we came home from a weekend at my grandparent's and someone had run the mailbox over again... only this time the post was bent a little and there was a front bumper in our side yard. Ha Ha.

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