Staying Busy and out of trouble, 2020-21?.

[WV Sawmiller]

OGH - 2 points:

  On the tree on the shed Sandy broke one fork off a big white oak on Halloween those many years ago and it fella cross my goat barn, an old cinderblock building that started like as a milking shed. I got a couple of good stout locust posts and wedged them tightly under the oak fork where it first met my shed roof then I started at the top and cut off the limb in small pieces I could handle and finally into firewood lengths over the roof till I had it removed. One good thing about oak is it is pretty forgiving and I was able to feather my chainsaw down into it till it lightly rested on the roof to hold some weight. If it had been a brittle wood like pine that would snap off I could not have done that. I got it off with really no more damage to the roof than had already been done.

   On your log arch backing - can you mount a receiver hitch on the front of your Mule and push the arch into those tight places? I used to see people do that with their trucks and they would push their boat trailers into the lake at the landing rather than backing. Its a lot easier to push one than back it if that is an option and if it would be easier than your current fix. Just a thought.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, with the shed, the entire weight of the tree was already on what was left of the roof. SO I just made a long diagonal cut on the trunk about 4' from the wall. The trunk dropped and I took off firewood length pieces right up to the wall, then I went inside, disconnected the leaders and got them off, then cut the main trunk at the crotch and flipped that out, the rest I just pulled off. I felt like I was back in emergency services again. We did a lot of trees into houses, usually I served as the engineer and ground guy because we had a couple of monkey type arborists in the department that would crawl all over. This one was easy, I didn't see the need for propping here, but every one is different.
 For the arch, yeah, I looked at that idea hard last year. The winch is on the front and any hitch would interfere so some heavy engineering would be needed because if I put a hitch on the front I would want to winch functional so that I could pull a log right into the winch. The issue though is mostly that picking your way around trees does not allow for that 3rd axle, front or back, there is no turning room at all. I don't mind backing up, I did more miles going backwards in a firetruck than forwards, but it's the short turns that are a bear. Where I was yesterday, even without the arch, I was 3 or 4 shots to get between certain trees. Its tight. That's why this simple solution works so well. The arch is solid and predictable back there now. I love it. Still thinking about a better way to rig it, but this is so simple and effective, it's hard to beat.

[Ljohnsaw]

Your bed on the mule is a dump bed, right?  So, do you raise it up (dump), attach the chain and then lower the bed to lift the arch?

[Old Greenhorn]

Well on the face of it, yeah, that's a good idea. Of course it would work. But my dump is manual, which means I have to unlatch it, raise it all the way until it hooks, then hook up the arch, lower the bed and possibly push/hold it down while I re-latch it. The current method takes less than 10 seconds, I lift one arch leg, flip the chain in a hook, lift the other leg, flip the chain in a hook, and Bob's your uncle.
 Also my bed is always full of tools, so a full raise is not a good idea. :D ;D
 Right now I am hooking a chain hook into the 1" square 'stake pocket'. I think I would like to take some 7/8 or 3/4 bar and weld a chain hook on the end. Then I can drop one of those in each pocket. It would be neater.
 I had thought about tying in two chain binders (cam type) that would not fall off when loose and I could leave connected, then just flip up each binder to lift it off the ground. But I think I would need a lot of travel in that binder to get it high enough and still leave enough slack when loose for safe steering. But again, it's hard to beat the current simplicity I have beyond cutting some chain that is the right length so that I don't have a bunch hanging loose.
 I think the only reason I mentioned it here is because I suffered with this issue for 3 years and never figured it out. I probably hand pushed that arch around for several miles in that time. It was so simple that I just laughed at my stupidity in not seeing it earlier. Levitation, who'd have thunk it? :D

[Old Greenhorn]

Well Monday today. As I was filling my first cup of coffee at 5:30 I was thinking about all the years I spent dreading and hating Monday's. Not so much anymore.
 I went out and started a small fire in the shop stove. I am kind of looking forward to finding a bed of coals in the morning I can just stir up, but it is not cold enough for that yet. So small fires in the morning, enough to make coffee, then taper it off during the day with junk chunks of oddball wood to steadily bring the temp in the shop up to around 68-70 by the evening so it holds over night. Mostly I want to keep the wood dry in the building and I have noted anything I bring inside is dropping moisture content at a fairly regular rate of about 1% every 2 days or so. And I do enjoy the coffee through the day. ;D
 So today we had the boys again and they had online schooling, which means a lot of work and frustration for Grandma trying to figure out the web pages and connections that seem to keep changing. I tried to help, but it created more stress, so I went out to cut, split, stack. Never let it be said I didn't do the least I could do. ;D
 Anyway, I cut and split all the stuff I had pulled out over the weekend and low and behold I finished my goal and completed the pile that I had figured would finish my 10 cords back a month ago. I should probably re-do my math and measurements, but I am pretty sure I am there. 10 cords for the season is a first for me and a guess as to what I will need for the first season heating the shop entirely on wood. I really have no idea. I just took a guess based on my past 30 years of burning, but you folks all know there are huge variables here, the stove, the building, the weather. We will see. I may have to augment with oil, but I am guessing less than a half hour a day is all I might need in the coldest weather. But for now, it looks good to me.


 

3 rows deep from this angle. I am fairly happy with this, it's a good start and I have the 5 cords over by the house and another small 1/2 cord on the side of my shed which is all mill slabs. I am burning that first. I filled the log hoop in the shop today also with a bunch of small branch cut-ups from clearing over the weekend. Just junk, but solid burnable wood. I am hoping that junk will take me well through October before I start on 'real wood'. I still have more of the little stuff I can pull and cut, it's amazing how much good wood you can find laying around if you just put the labor into it.
 Any wood I cut from here on is going to need another place to stack it. The piles I have now are as high as I want to go. That front row in the photo is a little higher than I am happy with for safety, but the boys are well trained and stay away from the piles. I may leave the splitter there just as a barrier for a while. I may just stage any logs I get and save them for the spring or next season depending on the weather. They say we are going to get clobbered this winter in the northeast, I am trying to have a plan B if I run out or get low.
 Anyway, today was a day and I got something done. Tomorrow is another day, I have no idea what I am doing. ;D (yet)

[Old saw fixer]

Has anyone heard from Old Greenhorn?

[doc henderson]

I put a call into him.

[A-z farmer]

Old greenhorn said he was going away for a few days .Hopefully he is enjoying all the fall colors .

[WV Sawmiller]

   And here I was thinking he'd moved his water tank to the roof for better water pressure and it fell off and killed him and I was thinking to see if I could buy his mule cheap off his widow/estate. :D

[Old Greenhorn]

  And here I was thinking he'd moved his water tank to the roof for better water pressure and it fell off and killed him and I was thinking to see if I could buy his mule cheap off his widow/estate. :D

I ain't dead yet. ;D we are 'out of town' and will be back this afternoon. Thanks for the concern. Doc I don't see any missed calls on my phone. Wonder if you have my new number since I retired? It ends in 4319.

[WV Sawmiller]

OGH,

   Okay. We are glad to hear it but still it would be a good idea to let the Missus know if you do meet with an unfortunate accident I have first dibs on your mule. :D

[Nebraska]

I Wondered why this was quiet, that explains it. ;)

[doc henderson]

glad you are good,  I have the old # if you want to pm or text the new one, just in case.  thx.  

[Walnut Beast]

  And here I was thinking he'd moved his water tank to the roof for better water pressure and it fell off and killed him and I was thinking to see if I could buy his mule cheap off his widow/estate. :D

I ain't dead yet. ;D we are 'out of town' and will be back this afternoon. Thanks for the concern. Doc I don't see any missed calls on my phone. Wonder if you have my new number since I retired? It ends in 4319.

You can post to your gang when your out of town 😂

[Old Greenhorn]

You can post to your gang when your out of town 😂

Sorry, I didn't realize I had a 'gang'. ;D I didn't get that memo.
Truth be told there were several contributing reasons I took a few days off. I use the 'most recent posts' feature here on the forum so I can read every post and learn new stuff and keep up. The stuff coming off the restricted forum was starting to get me down and I just decided to take some time off. I hate to see folks I respect on both sides of an issue going at each other trying to change minds in sometimes forceful ways. It's not what I come to this forum for. So I decided to just take a little time off.
The second reason was as we are now into about the 4th month of retirement, the finances are starting to 'smooth out' so we can see where we stand and in recent weeks it is not looking too great. The reality of just shutting off spending any money is a bitter pill. I was trying to parse that out in my head and figure some things out. I confess I was a tad depressed as I tried to figure out how to fill the gap and the possibility of having to take a job set in.
Thirdly, I wasn't really working on anything interesting and I think I throw too much nonsense up here that is no different than any of the other folks do on a daily basis and in most cases on a smaller and much less useful scale.
So let me see if I can briefly catch y'all up.
SO a few days ago I started working on a couple of slabs and a couple of those hallow cookies. One slab is bark off, and the other is not releasing it's bark, so I am going to try my first one with bark on and see what happens. (people keep asking for that, to my chagrin.) Both slabs are at 12% MC, both RO. Pretty nice, minimal cracks.


 

I did some tiny epoxy pours on each but just because I am being picky and wanted to close up some tiny openings. While that epoxy was curing I worked on the cookies. Working on end grain is new to me and this stuff is pretty tight, the rays look nice, and it sands out super smooth. I have routed the backs of these out to take a 10" diameter mirror (I have a bunch). On one I am using the bark on approach and urethaneing the whole thing except the face, which I am applying tung oil and then hand waxing with Johnson's. The other I hacked off the bark and burned off the remaining cambium, giving that black effect. It looks good with the urethane.


 
I did a test waxing and it looked really slick, then I sanded it all off to get it a little better because the first run showed up some fine saw lines left I wanted gone. SO I did another sanding round on both and finished with 320 tonight. When the tung oil set up by tomorrow, I will start waxing and I have to pick up the mirror clips I found. Anyway, starting to work on projects and focus on finishing them to start adding inventory so I can figure a way to start selling them.

Saturday we drove over to southern VT. We always visit one of my cousins on this weekend for the last 8 years or so. As we had no vacation travel or even a weekend away all year, we didn't want to let this one slide by. We needed 'something'. SO we bent a rule or two to make it happen. We drove straight through, only stopped at an outdoor flea market we never miss (great stuff, old and new). Given the finances, I only spent 15 bucks on little cheap odds and ends. Still it was nice to have a tiny slice of normalcy. Then we got to my cousins house and when you pull into a place like this, who needs to go anywhere else?


 
Their house is on the right, over 150 years old and my cousins husband has been repairing and improving it regularly for many decades. Impressive maples out front and back. We usually fill up a load of apples from their trees, but the last 2 years, no apples. That building on the left by my truck was built in the 50's and housed a 'candy factory' which employed a handful of folks making maple candy from the families sugaring operation. There is a warehouse building across the road in the left and out of the photo for syrup storage and 'other stuff'. That building and property was sold to a feisty older artist couple who use it as a studio and workshop. The husband had serious medical issues and passed this summer, but we have befriended the wife and enjoy her company when we come up. Quite a pistol, that gal. We had her over for dinner both night we were there.
SO Just sitting around, doing a few chores, catching up, visiting with my 90 year old first cousin (still driving it like he stole it) and we never saw a reason to leave the property. We played with tractors, sat on the porch and shared stories etc. We left this morning around 9, had lunch on the way home and we fell refreshed. Pretty simple weekend, I might feel like I cheated a little bit, but we needed it. Given the fact that as I was driving down one road I counted 20 out of state cars (MA, CT, NJ, NY, etc) to each VT plate. I figure we were probably closer to following the intent of the rules than a lot of these other folks.
SO back to the routine and tomorrow is another day.

[Walnut Beast]

Sounds like a fun trip. And one you needed 👍

[WV Sawmiller]

OGH,

   Okay, I will have to wait on the mule. Go ahead and stay healthy a while longer. :(  :D

   Glad you had a good time with the family. The bad thing about retirement is "When working you have income but no time to enjoy it. When retired you have lots of time but no additional income coming in to buy the things you now have time to look for, find and projects you have been wanting to do for years." Bummer, Dude! You just have to come up with a compromise which seems to be where you are now. 

    We went down to Ala a week ago to a memorial service for my oldest BIL and I got to see his wife, and other 2 BILs and spend a little family time with them. The hard part was not swinging down to Charlotte to see my lone grandson and 18 month of granddaughter we have not seen since the pandemic started. The grandkids call and both are talking more and more each time, even the little one, and I need to see them here. My grandson is the perfect size to help me pick up walnuts and kindling and such right now. Oh well, we all want to stay safe. Glad to have you back. Don't leave us hanging - we miss you. ;D

[farmfromkansas]

Not having much trouble staying busy right now, bean harvest is happening now, beans are not so great thanks to dry August,  but that is the way it goes.  Have wheat cleaned and waiting for the harvesting to be over, then have to get the cows moved home.  The pastures are eaten down, and not so great so feeding protein tubs to keep the cows happy. Made a trip to NE Colorado a couple weeks ago, near Hereford, and picked up a new to me 05 F-450.  Didn't realize what dry country eastern Colorado is, looks like the pastures will support maybe 2 cows to 80 acres.  Great thing is, the truck is rust free! The guy told me you can see 100 miles there, and if you look around, you can see every tree.  

[Old Greenhorn]

Howard, I have not given your message to my wife, but I will at some point. There are others here who think they also want a shot at it, my son is likely one of those. SO you will be on the list at some point, just not sure where.
 Staying busy surely isn't an issue, I can find stuff that needs to be done which could keep my bust around the clock if I wanted. Making some money on the side, still seems elusive.
 Now that the weather is 'declining' I am trying to organize my day around shop work with a focus on projects. I am trying to keep as many of them in the air and moving along as I can at a single time. I have 4 pieces on the bench now and bring each one to a point where it needs to sit, or dry, or whatever, then move on to the next one. The shop floor is full of truck right now, so I can't do more until that is gone. I figure I just has to start cranking out 'work' of some sort instead of working on the infrastructure for now. Hopefully it will add up to something.
 Today was rainy and cool all day. The rain collectors are all full for sure. Never did get any sun and the attic temp never got over 60, been watching it. Tomorrow should be all sun and I'll be interested to see the difference. No problem so far keeping the shop warm, even opening the bay door to bring a truck in. Just burning junk wood and branches at this point. I don't stuff it for overnight, but I do put in a couple of larger pieces and most days I have to start a new fire in the morning, but the building is holding pretty steady...so far, and the nice thing is my finishes seem to be drying or curing on a good schedule, whereas last winter with the temp up and down all the time it was a real problem. The wood was cold, the air was damp it was really tough. Now it seems a whole lot better which also gives me a hint that this stuff I have been doing is making a difference. I know the boys working on that truck today didn't object to the heat in shop and working in t-shirts instead of sweatshirts.
 I just have to buckle down and crank out a bunch of finished product, whatever that is. I am trying to figure out what else I can do with those cookies with the open center, I have a bunch of them and they finish up nice but none of the ideas I have really don't excite me.
 Ah well, tomorrow is another day.

[doc henderson]

charcuterie boards are all the rage with the fru-fru crowd from "the city"  meat and cheese board, not so much (same thing).  put a dip bowl or something in the middle, or nothing and call it rustic.  anyone under 30 knows what it is and love them... and I am from Ks.  I have made little ones from 5 x 12 x 1 inch boards, oak, walnut, ash ect.  they luv, luv, luv um!.

[Old Greenhorn]

That's a pretty good idea Doc, as usual. I will have to take a look at it with that eye in the morning. For that purpose I would have to remove all the bug eaten material in the center to make it clean wood and also remove the bark, but that burn method seems to work well for a finish covered by urethane. I would have to make a routing template or two to clean out the center and fit a bowl, but I should be able to find bowls someplace.
 Yeah, I am certainly going to follow up on that. These are mostly 2" think or more, but that still might have some appeal. I am trying to work up the courage to send one through the planer, that would make things easier if I could pull it off, or exciting if I can't. ;D :D

[nybhh]

Glad you had a nice trip.  I'm looking forward to mine here in a couple of weeks also!  Let's plan to get together in mid-November after my quarantine is over.  I'll have a bit more cargo space for hauling stuff back and forth then and we should probably revisit that trailer discussion from a few weeks back.  I also have a few other ideas bouncing around we can discuss then too.

[WDH]

You fill the hole with resin, not fit a bowl. 

[Old Greenhorn]

You fill the hole with resin, not fit a bowl.

Yeah I had thought I might try something like that but it's a lot of resin for what I might be able to sell them for. Not sure it's worth it for how it would look. Most likely I will try one though.

[Old Greenhorn]

Glad you had a nice trip.  I'm looking forward to mine here in a couple of weeks also!  Let's plan to get together in mid-November after my quarantine is over.  I'll have a bit more cargo space for hauling stuff back and forth then and we should probably revisit that trailer discussion from a few weeks back.  I also have a few other ideas bouncing around we can discuss then too.

Just a weekend of sitting around and chatting, good for the soul.
Yeah, feels like a long time before we can meet up again. The weather is telling me it's time to get some wood loaded up for you. Mid-november can bring us some surprises in these parts and I would hate to get caught short when the white crap arrives. You know it just occurred to me I might know a full sized equipment trailer that's available about 3 miles from your house. I'll check into it just for fun when I get a chance. It might be too much for that truck though but would handle your tractor plus implements easy.