Back to Normal?

I'm as shocked as you are!

During one of the recent windstorms a large tree was blown over, actually several large trees were knocked over, a few were split high up, and a couple are on the ground, and one double trunk monster was blown over and took out some fencing. So on a nice day armed with a new chain, on my chain saw, I ventured out to do battle with the downed tree. As usual, I started with clippers to get to the big branches, you gotta get the small ones out of the way first or you get really beat up, I learned this long ago on the AFD. That doesn't mean that's how we did it, it just means I learned how painful doing it wrong always was. We were always in too big a hurry to do it safely, ( not really the mantra that was preached but , well you know) gotta get to the next tree. Get it out of the street, or off the wires, or off the house, whatever needed done.

Anyway I clipped and stacked and trimmed and piled and eventually cut and stacked the majority of the smaller parts of the tree, I took frequent breaks and hardly even stumbled, rarely lifted and actually wasn't too concerned about stacking the remains, as I was going to have kids come to visit, and they could move the usable parts as a kind of 'fun time' activity. I came in for the night, pretty happy with my days production, and went to bed a little early, tired you know. The next morning, afternoon actually, I mean, about 16 hours later, I had to get up 'due to nature' or I wouldn't have even been up then. Damn, I'm a freaking invalid! It was fully two days later, I was finally able to return with the large tractor, and a couple chains, to drag the resulting logs up to the edge of the field, where they can be retrieved, if I get a sawmill available. I have a good supply of indigenous wood drying in the truck trailer and I have a couple projects in mind that will use the majority of it. So I feel I have a use for a sawmill, although it seems there is some discussion in the future about that possibility, still to be addressed.

Here is the result, of about a week of my efforts, a small pile of wood to dry, split, and burn. And two logs to dry, to cut up for planking. And it totally dulled the chain in the saw. Which it turned out, is the correct one. which is a long story about incorrect books and people who will help (Only if pressed) to do their jobs, but aren't disposed to much, 'direct comparison shopping' tactics. Again, another 'rant subject' for the future, which I see much clearer now, (Now that I have bailed from FaceBook!) it turns out, my days are hours longer now!

Ahh FaceBOOK! I tried it, I found that most of my friends, have no sense of tact or humor, and Nuance is a forgotten concept. And there are a lot of closet Communists out there. But, not to get that crap started here, I'll drop it. I am going to work toward more self sufficiency now that things are in decline. So I'll have more to write about (win win).

Onward... into the past! I have found my new hours are very useful this time of year. I still sit down at the computer first thing in the morning, but now I check the weather, quick glance at the news, to see what rights have been stripped away in the last 10 hours and then I get out and get to work on projects. (Sorry backslid into that one...)

I added a hook to the top of the rotating shelves that Russ brought down, and now that the crane is on wheels, it was easy to move the shelves back away from the door, where the bobcat placed them after removing them from the trailer. What? You mean you didn't know about the wheels? Well let me back up, You knew about the crane right? I was worried the lights would be in the way, as it is so near the metal ceiling on that side... come on, you knew about all that right? Okay, here's the pictures.

I finally got the lights mounted and hooked up so they work from a switch inside the door, you know like a house, rather than from a power strip attached to a dangling 25 foot extension cord across the entire building. Now the dangler worked fine for the last 6 years, and the power backbone has only been in place for the last 3 years, ( you can see the blue power box on the "backbone/short high wall, in this picture") so, it couldn't have happened much sooner. And last fall I mounted the crane inside the swinging doors, and created the inverted T support because there wasn't room to suspend the crossbeam like it was originally designed to function. I used it for the last few storms to load the welder into the back of the truck, to bring it up to the house. An electric hoist made it really convenient to load, particularly when the power was out.. Well, okay, I had to run the generator, to power the winch, which lifted it, sort of a "your own bootstraps" sort of thing, but it worked... It wasn't too convenient because I had to "scoot" the inverted "T" into place and it definitely wasn't moving with the weight of the welder on it, except once, when it twisted and tried to fall sideways, which it is far too precisely cut to be able to do. In fact I am going to have to clearance it a bit to make it more able to be adjusted tangentially for other uses. I'll explain that later. Meanwhile, I found that there is a limited availability of small heavy metal wheels in the area, basically it's hard plastic, hard rubber, or train wheels, and none of them cheap. THe fact remains that even "reasonable" is generally out of my reach, I need 8 wheels that will support three hundred pounds of frame and the weight I lift, which of course, is limited by design to a half ton, which means eight tons will probably be the norm. Leaving a ton per supporting wheel, as the design criteria.

I had hoped to have 3 inch wheels, but the final cleanup ended up at 2.875" but they are really brutes. I had a total of sixteen, one eighth inch thick, slugs, about 2.75" punched out of steel. I drilled a 1/2 inch hole in the center and turned them all to the same size and went looking for a pipe they fit into, I got close but ended up

 

 

cutting a section out and squeezing the pipe smaller, welding the centers in place, and turning the outside down to a single size. VOILA'. Heavy duty steel wheels! As always, I have more time than money, so the wheels cost me the welding wire, inert gas, and electric power to run the machines, probably about $10 dollars.

So here they are, in their stages of construction, below you see the rough pipe, beside us here, is the rough pipe and a "section" the size of the segment removed, the roughed, squeezed, welded, and one of the two slugs that will make up the center "rim" when they are all welded and final turned. Then they will look like the two above on the vice.

This is the pipe laying in the field before it was re purposed into these tough little wheels. The biggest issue now is inventing a system of mounting that will allow them to move up and down about an eighth of an inch I will pack them with a life time supply of grease when they are actually properly mounted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which will happen this winter, during a cold snap. Because the plasma torch is going to cut slots in the bottom "I" beam for mounting brackets that will allow the wheels to be retracted for really heavy or tipsy loads... pretty cool huh? OH yes I will get it done, because I now have many more hours in my days, no FaceBook and no TV, back to the age of accomplishment.

 

 

 

 

And finally this picture has a few pieces of information in it that might escape detection, if not pointed out. First that isn't either of the wood wagons I fixed up for Chris, (Farmpage 54) yep, it's another one. This one is for a friend at church, with a little girl who I hope will be happy with it, I've been working on it for a while. I have discovered I hate painting! Well actually, I have always known that, but I think I finally discovered why.

WAITING.

Waiting for it to be sanded, waiting for it to be sealed, waiting for it to dry , waiting for it to, be sanded and repainted and finally waiting for it to dry, so it's not tacky! I hate WAITING!

 

And next to it on the left is the crane/table combination I remounted the TIG welder on. After cutting a hole in it for the gray tank you see here, and it (the wagon) is next to the re wheeled generator I use to run the little house when the power is out. And yes I have repaired the broken exhaust pipe. But that was another page. (Farmpage 55)

Another major operation, now that I have the tractor I needed since my first week here, What you didn't hear about the tractor??? Where do you people spend your time? Watching political propaganda on T.V. ? Well it's too big a story to add at the end of this page. So Tune in tomorrow, ( or whenever) for an end of the year update, and to hear about the plans for this coming year! They are biggy's to say the least!

 

Man, are we happy out here!

 

The Chores, Fresh Air, Green Acres is for ME.