I'm not sure if this'll be much of a
series, but they always start with one, right?
Here in the US, little boys like me
grow up learning that you can't really call yourself a man until you
use tools of some sort to put something together all by yourself. In
some cases, this process specifically involves power tools and/or the
simultaneous consumption of alcoholic beverages. Since I'm not
really what you'd call a power tool fan, and I don't have much of a
budget for booze at present, I had to come up with my own blend of Red Green and Tim 'The Tool Man' Taylor.
One thing I've always thought would be
handy to have around would be a little kettle grill sort of thing to
use on those days when I wanted to cook something over fire or hot
coals but didn't have the ambition to actually go to a state park or
something. After all, I've had this bag of charcoal for awhile:
So on my way home from work on a recent
Sunday evening, I stopped at my conveniently-located Lewis Drug and
picked up this lovely thing:
Ten minutes of shopping time and $15 of
tax refund money later, I was on my way.
I sort of regret not thinking of this
idea before I was halfway through building the thing, but by the time
the thought had occurred to me, I'd already succumbed to the call of
my Handy-Dandy Toolkit:
It's amazing what one could get for
filling out surveys online. Thanks, Harris Polls! Those were the
good old days. I wonder if my account is still active there...? Not
like the whole thing hasn't become suspicious by default years ago,
right?
But anyway, back to the project at
hand. The unboxing and assembly of the lid went very well. After
all, just check out how well the lid came out:
That took me all of about three
minutes. And with results like that, it was hard to feel anything
but confident about. But then it came time to put together the
bottom half of the thing:
I know the picture's a little blurry
there, but it didn't make much more sense seeing it clearly:
The trick was making this:
happen four times. Not so easy as it
might look.
Also something of a daunting task was
making two of these:
fit together like this:
putting screws like this:
through these holes:
But I did eventually get it done. At
first, I thought it was going to be a bit difficult getting the legs
onto the base of the unit:
Wasn't as hard as it looked:
Still, I got kind of excited there,
which would explain why the picture's a bit blurry there. That can
only mean one thing:
Something's about to get screwed. Not
me, of course, but it's amazing what a few quick twists of the wrist
can do:
Getting the ash tray and the grates in
was easy enough:
The carrying handle took some doing,
but wasn't so hard, either:
Which, of course, lead us to this
familiar picture:
And with all that done, all that's left
is to try 'er out. But that's a story for another time. Until then,
there's only one thing I can say:
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