Hey thanks BH. It was one of those things where I had the ashtray laying around and one day I'm puttering around in the backyard. I kick a rock out of the way and it doesn't budge. Like an rockberg in the yard, most of it is buried. I dig it up and thing that it looks kind of cool.
It had a funky way of sitting "upright". I had an old threaded rod and I thought to myself, this would make a cool base for an ashtray stand. So I clean the rock up and take it out to the shop where I start drilling it with a 1/2 masonery bit. Well, it turns out that drilling a 1/2 hole in rock is way harder than you'd think. (I don't have a hammer drill) This rock had a kryptonite core or something...the drill wasn't making any progress after the first 2 inches. I remembered watching a show on the discovery channel where they showed miners "drilling"...one guy hold and turning the punch, the other guy on the sledgehammer. Of course, it's just me, so I'm doing both jobs. At some point during this whole event (I'm dirty from working in the yard, sweating like a pig, cussing like a sailor, sitting on the floor of the shop, smacking a punch with sledgehammer, holding this big rock between my legs..you get the picture), my lovely wife comes out, stands in the doorway and asks "WHAT are you doing?". I look up and say "Drilling a hole in this rock." We've been married 20+ years, she doesn't even ask....she just gives me that "I love you but you are kind of an idiot..." look and walks away.
After many smacks of the sledge, it finally starts to break through. I finish drilling it and then discover that my threaded rod is 3/4"...the hole is too small. I don't have a bigger masonery drill bit and there's no friggin way I'm going down that path anyway.
I ended up buying a new 1/2" threaded rod and scrounging the rest of the parts out of the shop. I covered the rod with an aluminum tube left over from a broken telescoping car washing brush handle. I did have to buy the trim piece and some paint.
After I was all done and had it put together, it didn't stand up exactly straight, so I had to grind on one of the "feet" to get it vertical. I don't have the right tools to machine rocks, so I used a wheel grinder and a belt sander. Since by then, I had screwed the nuts on and off the length of the rod about a dozen times, I was being lazy and holding the whole thing up to the grinder...it was throwing sparks and rock fragments everywhere and I couldnt' really get out of the way. Of course, it's hot here so I had shorts on and ended up giving my legs a spark and rock fragment shower.
After is was all done and my wife had mentioned that it looked pretty cool and she really liked it as an "outside" ashtray...my son asked me where I found a rock that I could mount a rod to? I told him the rod goes clear through! I drilled through a rock!
I'm thinking about having a t-shirt made..."I drilled through a rock"
:laugh: :laugh: