What did you do today?

Started by Adam Roby, April 15, 2017, 08:10:55 AM

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Adam Roby

This is a popular thread on another forum I am on so I thought it might be here as well.
The idea is, sometimes you want to share something you did today but it doesn't quite need it's own thread, just post it here.

Today, I created this new thread.  :)

Easter weekend, first of 3 family get together's is starting at my sister's place at 10:00 AM - Easter brunch.  Everyone basically brings something breakfast related, and we meet up and eat like... bunnies I guess.  Afternoon it's on my wife's side, more food for supper.  Next day its more family/friends. 

Hope everyone has a great weekend, plenty of food - family and friends. 

Don_P

Tightened the intake manifold on the chevy, got the rumble and the magic back ;D
Purchased some webspace and put up the first page of our latest adventure;
http://logjam.work/


Adam Roby

What year is the Chevy?  V8 I am guessing?

I like the coffee table, is that one of your creations?

MountainDon

Went to urgent care and found out what was making me feel like crap was a virus, like I thought it was.  :-[ But I wanted to be sure it wasn't strep or something.

Feeling bored and maybe well enough that I am thinking of hitting the workshop and finishing the flashlight mod that is begging for my attention ever since the driver board came in the mail.



Those are some serious slabs from some seriously sized trees. 
Just because something has been done and has not failed, doesn't mean it is good design.

NathanS

Nothing but taping. Mud everywhere.  ;D We ordered a bunch of perennial fruit and vegetable bushes, going to focus energy on the long term stuff this year.

Hardy Kiwi
Blueberry
Grapes
Asparagus

The NYS DEC also sells trees at cost, so we have 25 American Plumb, 25 Sycamore, 25 Hazlenut on the way here.


Don love the look of that Butternut. You guys have a cool operation going down there.


Don_P

#5
I need to work on the about page with smiling faces and bio's. There isn't a pic of Scott on there yet, he and Lukas, who also isn't in a pic are the shop wizards. The pics show me, the other Don and Rick doing what we do best, brute force and ignorance  ;D. The past couple of weeks Don2 have been running the mills and pulling out timber for an 1820's log barn repair/rebuild. The big oak in the forest is one from that farm, destined to be a large dining table and chairs.

Edit;
The Chevy is an '89 Silverado that a friend politely said "You bought it at the wore out price  :D". I dropped a crate longblock in it about a year ago and earlier this year the thermostat stuck on the way to work. I looked down when I passed a cop and realized I was in deep trouble but not with him, the temp gauge was pegged. It started bubbling in the radiator, usually a sure sign the head or head gasket is blown. I did a compression check and it read good compression 180-182 psi across all 8 cylinders of the 350. It was using water and I caught a whiff of antifreeze in the exhaust. With the help of friends we decided the intake was leaking. I've been mostly driving the Honda but had some time this morning to dig down to the bolts and sure enough they had loosened. I snugged everything down and it seemed to be cured. I took it for a test drive across the county and picked up a load of leftover oak from a job, about 300 bf, maybe 1,000 lbs and motored on home, she seems to be tight. I'll find out next weekend, we need to go down into Carolina and slab up a huge Kentucky coffeetree. I imagine we'll either rent a U haul box truck or borrow a dually and gooseneck to bring that home, that will be in the tons of wood. The engine is a goodwrench longblock I didn't realize it at the time but they are now made in Mexico. I was very impressed with the fit and finish, they did a nice job, better than oem.

The oak that I'm standing on is beside the courthouse. We milled that one up Thanksgiving, it had died and was becoming a danger. Most of the menfolk of the town dropped by at one point or another while getting out from underfoot. The story was that it was the old hanging tree. As we counted rings and looked at the branch sizes from that timeframe... well, it makes for a good story anyway.

Hope you feel better soon Don

akwoodchuck

worked 8.5 hrs running vertical T&G pine siding on an addition to a clients house we framed last year....missus worked 12 @ the hospital...busy busy busy.... 8)
"The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne."

MushCreek

I've been trying to get caught up on things I promised to others. Friday, I put the finishing touches on a handicap ramp for a lady from our church. I then moved on to finishing up a smoker I'm building for my son. We're driving down to FL to see him, And I'm bringing it with us. What he doesn't know is that I'm building a cart for it as well.

We took a few hours off yesterday to see the gardens at the Biltmore estate up the road in Asheville. It's peak azalea season, and there are miles of them there. It's getting HOT here, in the mid 80's already, about 15 degrees above average. It was warm all winter, too, so I'm worried about summer. Last year was a bear, hot and dry.
Jay

I'm not poor- I'm financially underpowered.

GaryT

Changed out a toilet flush unit, replaced two fluorescent ballasts and stacked half a cord of wood and tied a few flies.  I like stacking wood and tying flies anyway.
Gary


Adam Roby

I took apart the carburetor on my lawn mower again.  I can't quite figure out what's wrong with it.  I assume there is still a jet that is clogged but I can't find anything wrong or dirty for the life of me.  I changed the primer with a new one, but even with the new one the primer does nothing.  This makes me think that the fuel is simply not getting from the float bowl to the throttle body.  I assume the primer forces that same jet, and because it is not working that explains why she won't run?  A quick spray of throttle body cleaner in the air intake and she starts immediately then dies...  can't figure this thing out.

Adam Roby

Hah, it's working!

All the videos online show a screw in the main get, this one doesn't have that, in fact there are no screws at all.  I finally decided "fix or bust" and went HEAVY on the spray in all the jets... then something came out that hadn't come out before (black chunk with a bunch of powder).  Did some compressed air, more spray, more compressed air... over and over until I thought it was enough and then did it some more.

Primer still doesn't seem to work, but a quick spray inside the intake and a single crank and she started and stayed running.  Woo-hoo... that'll save me a few hundred bucks.

Don_P

A torch tip cleaner set might help.
They are leaning the jets out and making everything non adjustable. Sometimes a few thousandths more...

kenhill

Went to Gunsight Mountain for Hawkwatch near Eureka, AK.  Counted 100 hawks on Saturday; 53 of them came through in about an hour.

flyingvan

Adam---sometimes there's a tiny filter in line right where the fuel enters the carb.  Tiny rust particles pile up there--enough fuel gets through to start, then when there's more demand the flow can't keep up.  I had your exact symptoms after taking the carb apart a few times.  After blowing out through that little port backwards, it looked like a cigarette made of iron filings came out and it ran great.
That little filter didn't even show up on the manufacturer's exploded view of the carb
Find what you love and let it kill you.


John Raabe

DonP and others: Nice work on the logjam site. You are rolling out some nice slabs there. :D

John
None of us are as smart as all of us.

ChugiakTinkerer

Quote from: kenhill on April 17, 2017, 10:23:59 AM
Went to Gunsight Mountain for Hawkwatch near Eureka, AK.  Counted 100 hawks on Saturday; 53 of them came through in about an hour.

Thanks for that info.  Were you on the parking overlook near a small red SUV?  I've been driving past that crew every weekend for the last few weeks and reached the conclusion it was birders.  Saw a couple raptors this weekend that looked like peregrine falcons, to my untrained eye.  And several bald eagles.

I spent the weekend at our property trying to get a guest cabin dried in.  Didn't get as far as I hoped, but given how exhausted I was on Monday its probably just as well.  It was definitely the last trip with the snowmachine.  Here's one of several stretches of trail where the snow got up and walked away...

My cabin build thread: Alaskan remote 16x28 1.5 story

Don_P

Thanks John, they're a fun bunch to work with.

We got to work today and milled a poplar log we had on the mill when the contractor came out and asked if we could get him some more 20' white oak logs ready. So off to the woods, we spent the rest of the day felling, bucking and cleaning up, we'll skid them out tomorrow. Slow going but we directionally fall to avoid damaging the good trees we're leaving then make firewood and pile the brush... basically treat it like I would want my land treated. The owner has commented on the difference between our work in the woods and where he had a young logger come in when we got started... wish we had more lead time, it looks like a herd of elephants rampaged over there. He did bring out a lot of wood in a hurry but it sure looks rough. Hopefully he'll have us go back in there and clean up when we get done milling. It is a beautiful site to work on. Kind of neat, we've noticed over and over in the rings of the white oaks that they are very tight ringed up until about 30 years ago then there is explosive growth, very wide growth rings. These are the survivors of hurricane Hugo, it must have knocked down much of the competition and these trees survived and responded to the increased light and nutrients.

kenhill

Quote from: ChugiakTinkerer on April 18, 2017, 11:39:11 AM
Thanks for that info.  Were you on the parking overlook near a small red SUV?  I've been driving past that crew every weekend for the last few weeks and reached the conclusion it was birders.  Saw a couple raptors this weekend that looked like peregrine falcons, to my untrained eye.  And several bald eagles.

I spent the weekend at our property trying to get a guest cabin dried in.  Didn't get as far as I hoped, but given how exhausted I was on Monday its probably just as well.  It was definitely the last trip with the snowmachine.  Here's one of several stretches of trail where the snow got up and walked away...



We were at mile 118.8 with about 25-50 people.  Nice weather.  Are you also on the AK Outdoor forum?

ChugiakTinkerer

Quote from: kenhill on April 18, 2017, 08:05:21 PM
We were at mile 118.8 with about 25-50 people.  Nice weather.  Are you also on the AK Outdoor forum?

That's me, same handle.
My cabin build thread: Alaskan remote 16x28 1.5 story

Adam Roby

I brought my ladder up to the cottage in the back of a trailer last fall, and I needed it now to trim the hedges.  Jeep is too small to put it inside, so I needed to get a roof rack or some cross bars to strap down the ladder on the roof.  I checked at my local Canadian Tire, prices are insane, like $250 - $500 for 2 simple bars that go across the existing rails... and they are "universal".  I came close to just using a couple of 2x4's then I remembered I had some old square tubing from a gazebo I had torn down a couple years ago.

The gauge is quite thin...


So I decided to rip down some wood to fit as tightly as possible inside the tube.



Then I went to the store and bought the only u-bolts I could find to fit snugly around the rails.



Unfortunately they were too short to use the metal bars vertically (strongest option) so I had to lay them flat.  Still, the ladder weighs next to nothing and I could probably still stand on them without bending so I think I'm OK for my needs.





I added some shrink tubing on the metal parts that would be in direct contact with my rails.  Here they are before I ran the heat gun over them, forgot to take an after picture.



I also bought some split washers (lock washers) but they were not large enough to fit over the u-bolt diameter.  I put a drop of blue lock-tite over each bolt.  I have about 1h15m drive each way, should be fine... I hope.  :)


ChugiakTinkerer

 [cool]

I'm a hopeless packrat that hangs on to things like that tubing because "just in case".   I think that the overwhelming satisfaction of pulling a rabbit out of the hat like you just did in making your rack is much like the rush a gambler gets when they hit the jackpot on a slot machine.  For me, it just reinforces those packrat tendencies!.   d*

Looks good, hope it rides fine.
My cabin build thread: Alaskan remote 16x28 1.5 story

Adam Roby

#21
Built a garbage box for the cottage using the new brown PT lumber.  Weighed a ton, was still very wet.  Wasn't really impressed with the grade of wood, broken, twisted, knots missing, cracks...  and cutting 1" off the end exposed untreated wood.  I remember "in the old days" you could just about cut a piece in half and still see green almost through the piece, maybe missing some color in the dead center only. 


Don_P

#22
LOL, great minds think alike, I was posting to this thread when Adam was. Yup treated isn't what it used to be  :-\.

I mentioned milling up some big tulip poplar beams on another thread, thought some pics might be of interest, or, at least we thought they were pretty cool, never made any this long.
Off to the store;


The tree wasn't in a good spot to work on it, we needed to roll it uphill about 20', this is one way to parbuckle a log. First we wrapped a cable around it a number of turns and attached it to the log.


Then the cable ran uphill through a snatchblock slung to a large tree above the desired worksite. From there the cable then ran to the winch on the back of the loader which was slung to another large tree. It is just rolling up onto the forest road and some 6x6's we placed there to get it to a good working height.


Finally in a good working position we could begin milling it with the Alaskan mill. In this shot we've made 2 passes then flipped the log up on its edge to open the 3rd face


This is another log but shows the mill at work on the 3rd face, riding on top of a 24' section of scaffold that we move down the log as we go.


And finally on the way to the jobsite with a 60' beam. A car was coming up to the next intersection but when he saw that jousting pole coming he decided to wait  ;D



...And now for the rest of the story. The beam in the first 4 pics, we were two and a half days in on it, when we opened the third face there was a rotten spot inside that you could lay your arm in. An old rotten limb had let water in and had then grown over. Trees cannot heal the way we do, they can simply grow over, compartmentalize and cover damage. Big bummer! We'll make shorter floor boards out of that one.


MushCreek

I'll have a poplar story of my own coming up, once the weather cools off in the fall. In my barn, they framed a huge gable wall with 2X6's instead of the code-minimum 2X8's. It's been holding up fine, but is more flexible than I would like. I'm going to run two beams from the wall across the open space and anchor them to the loft structure. I have lots of dead-straight poplars around here, so I'm going to try my hand at hand hewing beams out of polar logs. I figured they are straight, clean, and soft, so they should be good to practice on, plus they'll look cool in the barn. Strength isn't much of an issue as they'll be in compression (when the wind blows), and I'll probably finish them about 8X8.

As for right now, I took the family 'truck' (Olds 88 with a small trailer) to pick up steel studs for framing rooms in the basement as I get ready to finish the space. I have a drywall guy lined up, as long as he doesn't disappear, as so many subs seem to do.
Jay

I'm not poor- I'm financially underpowered.

MountainDon

Quote from: Don_P on June 27, 2017, 09:02:09 PM
...And now for the rest of the story. The beam in the first 4 pics, we were two and a half days in on it, when we opened the third face there was a rotten spot inside that you could lay your arm in.

What a disappointment!  Good photos of how to move a large tree.

Curious... about how old would that tree be?
Just because something has been done and has not failed, doesn't mean it is good design.