Which exhibition exhibit is the most interesting? Obviously, the one with the most visitors, the one most often aimed at by camera lenses. That exhibit at the 1984 Moscow City Exhibition of Youth Scientific and Technical Creativity was the “Vyatka-1M” walk-behind tractor, built in the auto-design club of the Palace of Pioneers and Schoolchildren named Read more…
In a well-known encyclopedia of the century before last, “Industry and Technology,” in the volume on the “processing of fibrous substances,” which wood also is, it is said that “in work on dividing wood … splitting is of importance.” And further: “a wedge-shaped tool bends apart the parts of the wood being separated; here the Read more…
We named our potato digger a screw-drum digger after its two main working elements. It is intended for harvesting tubers on educational and experimental plots, as well as household plots and gardens. That is why an electric motor is used as the drive, although of course an internal combustion engine of suitable power can also Read more…
For more than a decade G. Malakhov has worked as the chief mechanic of the tool shop at one of Moscow’s aviation plants. But he has spent even more time (since the age of 13) on amateur technical creativity, without which he cannot imagine his present or his future at all. His record includes aerosleds, Read more…
Having become a pensioner, I took up breeding nutria (swamp beavers, or coypu) and became convinced how profitable this business is. With low costs for keeping these herbivorous and, moreover, very unpretentious animals, I get not only tasty meat (on average 2—3 kg from each animal), which is in no way inferior to rabbit meat Read more…
When building country cottages or garages on a homestead, you often need to screen bulk construction materials, soil, or garden earth. For this, a special fixture is used — a so-called vibrating screen (grizzly). Its classic version — a frame with a mesh set on trestles — is very bulky and low-productivity. I tried to Read more…
Soil cultivation with electric tillers is nothing new. Especially for owners of summer cottages, gardens and vegetable plots (see, for example, “M-K” 3’83, 11’90). And when prices keep rising, when using walk-behind tractors (not to mention scarce mini-tractors) sometimes becomes economically impractical, electric helpers on small land plots are, so to speak, beyond competition. Convenient Read more…
A small plot of land, where “serious” machinery has no room to work, can really only be cultivated properly with a walk-behind tractor. That is why a thrifty rural owner, having decided to get such a machine, will first choose its make and weigh its capabilities. And only then will he think about a cart, Read more…
Small cozy Latvian villages, half-hidden by the curly greenery of trees, are densely scattered across fields that are as flat as a table. They are sometimes only a few kilometers apart, like the villages of Rude and Nica in the Liepaja district, and their life is closely linked by such close neighborhood. Many schoolchildren from Read more…
I invite the magazine’s readers to get acquainted with an original design of a universal self-propelled vehicle built by my brother Alexander. As he claims (jokingly, of course), the idea of making such a machine came to him out of laziness. He really did not want to spend his whole life doing hard, low-productivity work, Read more…
