The Woolly Booger
The small end of the fleet and, by plan, the first one that actually gets built — a tracked mower that mows, hauls, films, and stands in as a second set of hands when nobody else is around.
The MM Stable is a work in progress on this site — read this page as a reference and a preview of what's coming, not a build guide you can follow today. This one's still at the idea stage: what it is and why, real open questions, no dimensioned spec yet.
Why the name
Named for the woolly worm — the Appalachian folk tradition of reading a caterpillar's stripe pattern to predict how hard the coming winter will be. It fits a small, low, fuzzy-tracked machine that's out working the hillside before anything bigger in the fleet is running.
The donor is a tracked remote-control hillside mower — the kind sold under a dozen different Alibaba and Temu storefronts, already tracked and already built to hold a slope. Rather than fabricate a tracked platform from scratch, the Woolly Booger starts from that donor and adds a removable mowing deck plus a bolt-on accessory plate that turns the same base into a rack, a tool stand, a saw clamp, a camera mount, or a mobile home for the ammo-can electronics box the Home Brain project already uses — whichever job the day calls for.
The Ox is the big brother
The fleet's other tracked working animal, The Ox, is a full-size Cub Cadet–class riding mower getting the same caged-track-kit treatment on its rear wheels. Woolly Booger and Ox share one idea — a tracked mowing platform with a bolt-on accessory system — at two different scales: RC and hand-tool-buildable first, then the same approach proven out on the machine you can ride.
Planned modifications
- Removable mowing deck — pull it off and the same chassis becomes a general-purpose tracked platform
- Bolt-on accessory plate — the fleet-wide universal mount concept, carrying a rack, tool stand, saw clamp, or camera mount depending on the job
- Optional winch
- Tool rack / saw stand / clamps for shop work on a slope where a stand would otherwise need its own legs
- Camera gimbal mount — a mobile camera operator for build and hunt footage
- A mount for the ammo-can electronics box already in use on the Home Brain / Buddy build
Shared fleet standards this pulls from
None of this is being designed in isolation. The fleet's Universal Build Standard sets four rules every MM build has to clear — buildable with ordinary hardware-store tools, teachable rather than gatekept, field-repairable with a small kit, and made to be fixed forever rather than replaced — and the Woolly Booger is meant to be an early proof of that standard, not an exception to it.
- Two-bolt-size hardware standard — 10mm and 13mm, chosen because they sit close enough to 3/8" and 1/2" that one small socket set covers both systems
- The universal accessory plate — proposed, not yet dimensioned, but this is one of its four named use cases (alongside the Ox, Mammoth Jack, and Shire)
- Camera mast and quick-release — still an idea, not yet designed, but the Woolly Booger is its lead use case
- Kill switch and throttle return spring — a proposed safety rule for every powered build in the fleet, this one included
Open questions
- Which specific donor unit — model and source haven't been picked yet, just the general Alibaba/Temu tracked-mower category
- Donor specs: gearbox and brakes, payload rating, and 12V power source are all still unknown until a real unit is in hand
- The two bolt sizes above are the working assumption, not yet confirmed fleet-wide
- The accessory plate's actual hole grid and mounting pattern haven't been drawn up
Status
Idea stage — the plan is real (what it is, what it's for, why the name) but nothing here has a donor in hand, a sourced part, or a fabrication step yet. It's slated to be the fleet's first fully functional build precisely because it's the small end: fewer unknowns to clear than the Ox or Mammoth Jack before something is actually on the ground mowing a hill.