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OT - Mailbox warfare


Guest Anonymous

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Guest Anonymous

I live in a rural area. Our house and our neighbor's house are about 1000 feet from the road, and are about a mile from anybody else. Our mailbox may as well have a neon bullseye painted on it - the local hooligans take a baseball bat (and firecrackers) to it a few times a year.

We've kept our mailbox mounted to the post with only one nail for the past few years. That way, anybody driving by with a baseball bat just knocks it off its post without actually destroying the box. Every once in a while we have to replace it, but not more than once a year. The past couple of weeks have been very different. After the box was knocked off the post, the Princes of Maine got out of their cars and waltzed over to the box to pulverize it. This has happened three times in the past week.

The engineer side of me says, I should have taken care of this years ago. It's time for the Fort Knox of mailboxes. I'm thinking 3/8" to 1/2" thick steel welded in a house pattern (since there's no way in hell I could bend an arch out of 3/8" steel). I have a decent Mig welder so this is feasible. I could weld it to a 3" thick-walled pipe set into concrete, and fill the pipe with cement. The door is going to be the tricky part. How would you make a hinge that can stand up to anything a teenager would likely have on hand? I want this thing to be impervious to baseball bats, explosives, lead pipes, etc. I want to be able to go outside every morning and see the shards of baseball bat littering the ground around my small fortress.

Anybody out there have any success with an armored mailbox, or with mailbox bashing? What's likely to hold up?

BTW, a mail slot isn't an option since the house is so far from the road. We have tried various commercial "indestructible" mailboxes but none of them have been good enough.

Thanks!

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Guest Anonymous

back in my 'wilder days'...I MAY have whacked a few mailboxes. I remember one in particular. It was in the middle of the country. Nothing else around (so I'm not sure why it was even there...). I lined 'er up with my aluminum bat, and smoked that thing for all I was worth (hanging out the window of a moving car, of course). Side note; I can hold my own in terms of strength...at the time i was benching about 330lbs and squatting 450. So it was a bigass MF swing.

Anyways, turns out the box was solid plate steel, welded up, the post was about 6 inches in diamter, filled with concrete, and they also post holed it and stuck it into the ground, again, with a concrete base. Of course, I didn't see this till afterwards and I was writhing in pain in the backseat of the car because my wrists felt like they had bust into a million pieces.

That was the last one I hit. I mean..hypothetically....

Matt

'72 02/m20

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Guest Anonymous

I believe that destroying or damaging a mailbox is a federal offense ....

I would make the mailbox look as normal as possible. Drill out the center of the 4x4 post and put in a steel bar concrete into the ground. Reinforce the box itself with steel bar but keep it looking generic.

Why? When the perps (cop term) come whizzing by in their '83 Ford pickup and take a swing at it, the reinforced post/box will break their bat, their arm or their buddies face sitting next to him in the back of the pickup ... just a thought ...

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Guest Anonymous

I'd HAPPILY buy mailboxes, if i could keep from a firecracker in the mailslot at 3 in the AM(happened to my next door neighbor)

-dave

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Guest Anonymous

Before you go making an indestructable mailbox, I would suggest you think about the unintended consiquences. I had a schoolmate die after the car he was riding in hit a brick housed mailbox. While the driver was at fault for going too fast in icey weather, no mailbox and the guy would still be here.

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Guest Anonymous

Heard a report recently that a fellow, using a bat, walloped a reinforced mailbox from a moving car that contained the batter's cousin in the rear passenger seat. The bat broke, and the broken end flew through the open rear window of the car, struck the cousin in the head and killed him.

Oops.

-Dave

Colorado '71

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Guest Anonymous

DragRacingwheels_20873_image015.jpg

it's 5 years in jail and $5000 file per count on mail tempering in addition to mailbox destruction. so if you have 5 envelopes in there, that's 25 years and $25k. the longest sentence recorded in US history was for mail tempering.

steve

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Guest Anonymous

the mobsters into jail ... very rarely for murder, extortion or whatever. Technically, if send in your tax return, via US Mail, and it is fraudulently incorrect (like how do you record your money laundering profits), then they get you on tax evasion and mail fraud ... and mail fraud is a stiff penalty and easier to prove ...

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Guest Anonymous

there's no easy way to get a camera there. There's no power, and no really good place to mount it. I really don't want to see a few kids go to jail for some relatively minor mischief, federal crime or not. (I wouldn't mind them paying for a few mailboxes though)

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