Mailbox Post

[Dave Crabbs]

Hi All,
This is a picture of a new mailbox post I made. I guess someone did not like my old post because they ran it over one night and snapped the post off at the ground and left :mad: . The new post is made from Sassafras with a couple of coats of Sikkens teak color stain. The bracket that is holding the house number sign my Cousin made for me from some rejected steel bends they had at the shop he works at. The house number sign my Sister gave me years ago that a friend of hers at work made for her out of Aromatic Cedar.
Thanks for looking,
Dave

[Bob Noles]

Dave,

Beuatiful job..... almost too beautiful. I hope it don't make an even nicer target for those hit and run rascals. May want to put some type of blockade in front of it for protection ;)

[Bob Winkler]

Very nice. I wish you would make some for some of my neighbors:eek:!

Thanks for sharing it.

Bob

[Jim Hager]

I have an idea for your rascals. You may loose your mailbox post again but not twice by the same automobile. Drive an old roadgrader blade into the ground leaving about 12" sticking out of the ground then plant flowers around it so it doesn't just sit there and look ugly. If they run over your mailbox again they will damage their vehicle too. You will get to loan them a telephone to call home for someone to come pick them up. Happened to me.

By the way that is a very nicely done post.

[Jeff Sudmeier]

Dave that looks great!

I hope this one lasts a LONG time!

[Per Swenson]

Beautiful job,

I am with Jim on this one.

2 inch angle iron, 30" below grade 18" above.

(Younguns in my neighborhood have lifted trucks)

Per

[Wes Bischel]

Very nice Dave, i only hope they don't make a repeat performance.:(

After replacing a few posts, my Uncle moved from wood to what he knows best - steel. 6" I beam sunk 4' down with some decorative scrollwork in the recess. Box is 1/4" plate. It has only needed a few touch-ups.;) :D

Wes

[Rob Russell]

After our mailbox post was taken out (by moi, sliding down our driveway) - I moved the mailbox to the uphill side of the driveway. The replacement post was a cedar tree stump from the family farm. Last winter a local kid took it out with his dad's brand-spanky new Saturn SUV. The cedar tree stump was very badly damaged, but it didn't give up without a fight. Apparently the repair bill to the Saturn was several thousand dollars. The body shop guy said something to the effect of "this was done by a mailbox post?!?" until he found out it was a tree stump. The kid was good about sticking around, so it's not like it was a hit-and-run.

[Peter Pedisich]

That's real nice Dave, great job.

My mailbox has been beat up recently, before it got hit I was thinking of making a similar one. I'd hate to work hard on it and have some kid smash it.
I did a lot of stupid things as a teenager, but destroying other peoples property was not one of them. Except for my father's tools!!!:eek: :D :o

Pete

[Jim Dannels]

That is a beautiful post!! Far nicer than the one I had when I lived on a state highway. 5 car wheels welded together with 4 2ft 3/8 re-rods stuck in the ground. Snow plows knocked off 3 posts, 1 per year before I went to this. When they knocked it over I would just go out and set it on top of the snow pile. I would not reccomend the imobile reccomendations though, I considered it. When I inquired(on installing a railroad iron 4 ft in the ground) I was told the law in Iowa would consider it criminal intent If I put an object that close to the roadway that could cause extreme property damage or fatal injury.
So I chose a way that would move with minumal damage to my mailbox.

On a sidenote, up the road about 10 miles a guy lived right on a curve.
he mounted his mailbox on an axle driven in the ground, his box was mounted to the bearing so if hit it just spun around and turned right back in place. My brother hit it one night by accident on the icy road, He had a dent in front where he hit it and in his rear quarterpanel where it hit him back.

[Vaughn McMillan]

Great mailbox post. I'm conjuring up ideas for ours, and yours has given me some ideas.

...He had a dent in front where he hit it and in his rear quarterpanel where it hit him back.
Something about the image that invokes made me laugh out loud. Great story.

- Vaughn

[Jason Tuinstra]

Dave, way to make lemonade out of lemons. I'm sure this wasn't a high priority before the the last one was taken out. Now that it's gone, I'm sure you're glad to you got a chance to build this. It looks just great. I hope no one thinks it an appealing target, though. Great job!

[Dev Emch]

Dave... Very nice job. Looks great.

But I am with Per Et Al on this one.:rolleyes: My thought was to make the column from say 1 inch stock with lock mitre joints. Then slip a solid two inch cold rolled steel bar into the ground a few feet and fill the whole kit and kabutal up with concrete. Looks like wood on the outside. But those mongrols may likely be back and this time, there will be a nice V shape to their vehicle. Not even the cops can miss this damage!:D

[Jim Becker]

I really like it, Dave. The slight arch in the support is "just the ticket"!

[Dave Crabbs]

Thanks all for the kind words,

The post is made from 1x material that slides over a treated 4x4 post (thought of using a white oak 4x4). When I reported the broken post to the police the officer told me that I should put a steel post in the middle (hmmm wonder if this happened to him). But, with all the Sue Happy People in this world I'm sure the next one that hits it would be one of them and they would probable win so, I would be out a mailbox post + damage to their vehicle (crazy as it may be) so I did not use any metal reinforcement. My last post when they hit it they drug it half way down the street so it did not give up with out a fight ;) . My Uncle told me too bad I did not see drops of oil in the street (meaning a broken oil pan) that would of made it a fair trade :) . My only hope is that their cost was greater then mine.

Once again Thanks,
Dave

[Steve Stube]

Dave, very nice/attractive mailbox accent.

For those that would attempt to set a trap;

To add to what Jim D. said (and he is on target with respect to the liability issue) remember that in most cases you are planting the mailbox post in ground deemed "Road Right of Way". I know it is downright frustrating to loose a MB to an accident (or worse to vandals) but it would really hurt more to be responsible for injury or taking a life in "pay back" plus what it could cost you in a $$$ settlement. The next box I put up will be number 13 (replaced only 5 post so far since 1977) on the State highway out front. I have found that the brand new shinny boxes were soon smashed again so I try to make them to look old from day one - with an ugly paint job they seem to last longer. Oh, and if I can straighten the old smashed box to make it servicable, it goes back up and is not included in the count.
I woke to a knock at the door one morning to find a young man with a new MB tucked under his arm. He said his girlfriend had wrecked into the MB during the night and he was there to put in a new post and box. Wow, how nice - also not in the count.

[Dave Anderson NH]

Very nice mailbox post Dave. Around here the problem is occasionally kids, but mostly it's the clowns driving the snowplows in the winter. I lost mine last winter but was able to fix it with stainless screws and epoxy. Our neighborhood usually loses 2-4 per winter. Many of the folks around here are now fixing their boxes to the top of granite posts about 6" x 8". I don't know if any of these have been hit yet. If a plow driver hits one of those he'll really get woken up in a hurry.

[Lynn Sonier]

You may want to check with the post office and/or highway department before imbeding angle iron and stuff in the ground. The fellow around the corner had train tracks sticking up out of the ground to support his fence and they made him take it down. He lives on a corner and people had a tendency to go straight instead. Of course, you don't have to worry about the snow plows down here - you have to worry about hurricane(s).

[Alan Mikkelsen]

I've done a couple of these, now. I put a 3 1/2" square steel tube in the ground a couple feet, surrounded by cement. Then I just slide the stand over it. Looking at this picture, I better get this refinished next spring!

[Joe Pelonio]

Very nice work, makes me feel badly about my plain 4x4 post. We had to replace ours (just the box) 3 time within a year after it got blown up by tennis ball bombs, they got us at July 4th, Halloween, then New Years Eve. The next July 4th I yanked the post out of the ground and put the whole thing in the garage for the night. So far a year on the last one, maybe they moved away or outgrew the prank. Hopefully yours was just a hit/run accident rather than vandalism, it's too nice to have smashed.

[Lee Schierer]

Nice job on the mail box post. My wife has always wanted a nice looking box in front of our house, but the vandals wouldn' leave it there for long. Life expectancy on our road for a brand new mailbox is about 3-6 months. If the kids don't get them the snow plow will. A beat up box will last 10 years or more. :D

There are similar laws in PA regarding creation of intentional hazards along the side of a road. Mail boxes are cheaper than a lawyer.

[Lars Thomas]

Having just re-done my mailbox, I really like your address sign. But one question, if you were going the other way, wouldn't your address be 71??

[Dave Crabbs]

Having just re-done my mailbox, I really like your address sign. But one question, if you were going the other way, wouldn't your address be 71??
It's still 17 only the numbers are written backwards. That's my story and I'm sticking to it ;)

[Gary Herrmann]

A girl friend of a neighbor boy got drunk last year and drove through my yard for about 15 ft before hitting my mailbox. Banged her Acura up badly. Left parts. She then parked it back at the neighbor's house the next day. After work, I matched the parts in my yard to her car and called the cops.

I just wanted a replacement post and mailbox and was going to do it myself, but her father didn't want to pay for "an expensive wooden post." He suggested we meet at a local hardware store to figure out the details. This really aggravated my wife, so she took over and we wound up with a $350+ cast aluminum post and mailbox - installed.

They guy looked like he'd been pistol whipped when she finished with him.

[Jason Roehl]

Well, it would be one ugly accident if my mailbox got hit. I have to go to the local post office to pick up my mail--there's no delivery withing the thriving metropolis of Mulberry. :D Of course, my neighbors immediately to the south are on the other side of the "boundary", so they get delivery (still within town limits, though :confused: ).

[Kirk (KC) Constable]

'Round these parts, that nice piece of work woulda been in the ground a day or so...two days tops...before the friendly TxDOT boys dug it up for you and replaced it with a breakaway post.

Guy across the road (and his name really is Guy) spent one Saturday afternoon putting a couple small 'billboards' on 4x4s outside his fence...well off the road, but outside the fence nonetheless. I saw what he was doing as he was finishing up the second post on the second sign, and wondered how long it'd be before the state dug 'em back up. They were gone Monday afteroon. :(

KC