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Motorized Rack Helps Bad Back
Building a motorized stretching table did the trick for Jim Hall's bad back. Since building the rack, chiropractor bills and back pain are things of the past.
"Keeps walking upright and reasonably pain free," says the Cambridge, Ontario farmer. "Daily maintenance with the table seems to be the key. A few minu
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Motorized Rack Helps Bad Back FARM HOME Health 27-2-31 Building a motorized stretching table did the trick for Jim Hall's bad back. Since building the rack, chiropractor bills and back pain are things of the past.
"Keeps walking upright and reasonably pain free," says the Cambridge, Ontario farmer. "Daily maintenance with the table seems to be the key. A few minutes in the morning to stretch and loosen up and again at night straightens me up."
Hall thinks a similar table might benefit other farmers and heavy lifters like him. In his case, a construction accident when he was 16 crushed a couple of disks at the bottom of his back. Doctors wanted to fuse his spine, but he said no. Years of chiropractor bills afterward kept him walking, but their prices kept going up.
"I knew what they did to manipulate my back and decided a mechanized table could do the same," says Hall. "I built it 15 years ago and just wish I would have thought of it 20 or 30 years earlier. It would have saved me a lot of misery and money."
Hall's table consists of two sheets of plywood built to the length of his body. The shorter sheet, where he lays his upper torso, is supported by four 2 by 4 legs on a 2 by 4 base.
The second sheet of plywood, where his hips and legs lay, is hinged to the first sheet. A pitman crank on a sprocket driven by an electric garage door opener also supports it. As the sprocket turns, it pushes the plywood sheet up and down.
"It works on the same principle as a chiropractor's table," says Hall. "As you lay on the moving table, it stretches the spine where it meets the hip."
Hall has an elastic strap attached to the end of the second plywood panel. It serves to anchor his legs in place as the bed stretches his back. He has also added rubber straps with handles for exercising the arms while the boards stretch his back.
Hall has also devised a neck-stretching harness that is installed on the back of his easy chair.
"It relieves headaches and stiffness with no need for an aspirin," he says. "When I doze off, my head stays upright."
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Jim Hall, RR 2 Blair Rd., Cambridge, Ontario, Canada N1R 5S3 (ph 519 622-1769).
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