Mother's Down-home Country Lore

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You can help prevent your wooden sledge, maul, or axe handle from breaking when you're splitting firewood if you build a shaft protector for the tool. And how, you may ask, can one construct such a device?

"Simply wrap some baling wire and duct tape around the four inches of wood nearest the tool's head," advises Brian Tarrant of Bend, Oregon.

"Or heat an appropriate-sized length of plastic pipe in boiling water," suggests Saranac, New Yorker James Wood. "Then slip that malleable piece of hot conduit on the hardwood stem."

"Me, I like to weld a piece of angle iron onto the tool head just in irons of the handle. That's a great maul protector," adds Yeagertown, Pennsylvanian William Wilt.

"Nah," rebuts Paul Snyder (who hails from Springfield, Ohio). "Just stick a four-inch piece of galvanized pipe over the wood and either weld that conduit section to the head itself or tape the pipe securely in place."

Well, reader, all you have to do is pick the idea you like and try it out. But don't dally ... time (and probably your splitter's handle) is a-wasting!

You may remember the long list of constructive uses for household vinegar that we ran in this column back in MOTHER N0.62. Well folks, that piece prompted a whole swarm of readers to send in their own favorite uses for the versatile 5% acetic acid solution . . . and so many of the ideas are worth sharing that we're just going to have to run DOWN-HOME VINEGAR LORE: PART II.

[1] L.M. Knight — from Weymouth, Massachusetts — stopped a nasty ant invasion in her kitchen . . . by washing the room's countertops, cabinets, and floors with a half-and-half solution of water and vinegar.

[2] Several readers — one of whom was Tulsa, Oklahoman Paul Bauhaus — wrote us that they add small portions of the household condiment to their pets' drinking water when they want to rid their feline or canine companions of mange or fleas.

[3] And should one of your animals get itself into a "prickly" situation — that is, if the critter gets zapped by a porcupine — you can take a tip from Steven M. Waite of Starke, Florida and use a dash of "sour wine" to soften the embedded arrows so that they can be easily removed.

[4] A former chemist and technical bakery service director — Julian Hessel of La Belle, Florida — knows that substituting vinegar for a portion (as much as one-third) of the water in bread dough will retard the bacterial infection called rope. . . which is a bread spoiler that often infests homemade loaves in warm weather.

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