Margot's Blog: Solve your problems with brass

21 February 2016

Solve your problems with brass

When my waterproof camera split along the seam it took me a while to think of a way to repair that. After due thought I settled on brass. It worked to a certain extent; the idea was good but the material too flumsy. I sorted that with bigger bits of brass! And that did the job all the way until the lens of the camera had blurred up so much it had become unusable. Moral of the story? With brass you can extend an object's lifetime to the max!

When I went walking with some of the climbing men, and my crampons wouldn't stay on, I did the usual thing of thinking how on Earth I would solve that. The answer is easy: brass! The problem with the crampons was that all the straps pull the crampons forward, and there is no strap or anything stopping them from slipping off. They just slide forward until they come off. What they needed was a sort of strap along the back, keeping shoe and crampon aligned. What to make that strap of? Not webbing or leather or anything; it might stretch. Brass, of course!

I have a little brass stock in the garage so I set to work. I made one brass strap, and then tried the construction out in the garden. No snow or ice there, but gravel and concrete does the job too. And after some minutes of stomping around I had a look. The original crampon was slipping already, while the altered specimen had remained perfectly in place! I didn't want to keep walking until it came off altogether. My back garden isn't that interesting. So I considered it a success and made a strap for the other one too. I can't wait to try them out for real!