Post-Y2K5 Burn Rebar Notes...

[Lassen Forge]

Just because the stakes I made this year worked so remarkably well, I thought I'd share what I learned...

When I did my stakes this year, I used 1/2 inch rebar stock from Home Despot. Cut 10' sticks in 4, giving me 2 1/2 foot lengths, which everyone said was too long, but I found them about right. Then the fun began...

I took a coarse wire wheel on my grinder to then, and removed all the rust and scale. Lot of work, but they were nice to handle. Then, I ground (coarse grinding wheel on the other side) one end into a centered point. Immediately after grinding (the tips were blued hot) I quenched them in motor oil. Bent the top into either a candycane or "eyelet" config (depending on what I used them for) on the ol' vise, painted them with about 3 coats of clear acrylic paint, shot the top with orange, then recoated the whole banana with another shot of clear.

The result? I could drive them to the top using nothing more than a 4# sledge rather easily (even into the really nasty hard chunks of playa we hit). The tops barely if at all deformed. They remained visible (orange paint) and held my Monster Tent (and some of our Kamp) down solid, even during Monday's windstorm. Now, I have heard the Playa wasn't as baked hard as years before, but comparing these to other end cuts (balogna sliced and "au naturel" from the cutters) I also drove this year, it took a lot less effort to drive these pointy bastages than any of the others. When I pulled them (lost a couple due to the "bends" on removal so they apparently held tight) I noticed that the "pseudo-hardened" tip on all were just as good as when they went in. Oh, and the paint kept them rust free and smooth.

Now, I wouldn't want to trust holding something the size of Thunderdome with a cover down with these thin puppies, but for general camp stakedown stuff, I was remarkably pleased.

[geekster]

I bought some rather short (about 18 inches) rebar stakes, also brushed clean with an eye welded on one side. The welds were of good quality and held up well. Made in China and bought at South Bay Canopy in San Jose. They worked great. The eye welds were of such good quality, I used them to pull the stakes out by runing another piece of rebar through the eye and using it as a T handle to pull the stakes out. Piece of cake. They were also sharpened but not to a center point, they were cut at an angle at one end.

[EB]

I used Chai Guy's (or Stuart? Sorry...) awesome idea of wrapping the pole and the rebar with Saran wrap before applying copious amounts of duct tape. The Saran wrap keeps the gluey duct tape from hot sealing to the tent/shade structure pole.

Worked like a charm and clean up was, as they say, a snap.

EB

p.s. For the record, I am not a plant for Saran Wrap.

p.p.s. However, I do own stock options in U.S. Rebar.