Daily Fabrication Thread

[moodnacreek]

Too complicated but I like the cartoon.  Another idea was to weld teeth in the grapple jaws and grab the log loosely and twist.  Problem there is that I don't like to puncture the bark on good fresh pine or cedar, it lets in the blue stain and scars what might be live edge.  If I had not started this fummins project [spent the day needle scaling] I would start a tooth bar, thanks Mike, Doug

[mike_belben]

Mail me your fummims and i will mail you back a remote control hydraulic debarker! 

[Firewoodjoe]

Well the flue bug hit my house. So I was home with the kids. Went out and welded this old bucket up. It's actually in good shape has two bushings that need replaced but it's broken over the years. I think it's the standard duty version. But it's makes a good spare. Two hose and a few bolts and it's on the machine and can fix the other one up. ☝️The entire jaw broke off and has held up well after a years worth of work so I guess it's still worth my time to fix it. It really doesn't take long to weld these up. The steel is very good material in these. and I haven't welded one spot twice that's usually when the steel started getting really stressed and won't repair well. I should take the time to plate these jaws. Repairs will prolly almost stop.

[barbender]

I'm pretty sure that is an SG-S, which is the heavy duty version. Yes, they are a good steel. Be careful welding around the pins, they have nylon bushings that you can melt.

[caveman]

I brought the trailer that we have been building home yesterday so that JMoore can paint it and we can add a deck.  I may haul it back to school to wire it.  The students could benefit from learning how to solder and run trailer lights.  I was using a ball mounted on a tractor fork to roll the trailer up onto my trailer.  It almost fit between my fenders, and I bent one of the new trailer's fenders a bit.  I was able to get it mostly straightened out.  Unloading it was quite a bit easier.

We will use 1" live oak to deck it with.  Bigger wheels and tires are coming.  These were some I had that we used to move it around on.  A good portion of this trailer was made from scrap, but we did use a new coupler, jack and fenders. 

[trimguy]

I had to build a new box for my dump trailer, among other things on it.

I still have to add wood sides, I guess they'll be rough sawn 😂.
First Time adding pictures to the new system, it seems I figured it out, now if I can remember how to do it next time. 

[thecfarm]

Well, don't that look nice!!!

[Crusarius]

I am either in the market for a dump trailer or going to build one. that looks nice.

[caveman]

Our most recent shop project has been a relatively easy but useful one.  A lot of students got involved.  Even some of the laziest ones did some work.  We had an old GN stock trailer that I've used for years to haul cattle and hogs.  The metal top was rusting pretty bad.  It was covered with a vinyl billboard cover many years ago.  I used the tractor forks like big cold chisels and peeled the top off a few weeks ago.  After a day or so of grinding welds and sharp edges, the trailer was ready to be repaired.

I called a trailer top place in Texas and the owner suggested we build the framework and then he'd make us a top.  I ordered the top yesterday.  

My county supervisor suggested that I just order a new trailer or take it to a local place that would cover it for $1700.  Realizing that they were not going to replace any metal, just cover a rusty top with new vinyl, I opted to repair it more properly.  

Sometimes it is important for students to learn how to do things other than just write a check.  So far on this project, they have cut pipe (and miscut pipe), grinded, welded, wired, soldered, measured for a new top and repaired a few other items.  We will repair the jack and paint it while awaiting the new top.  The new top is less than 1/3 of the cost of the local estimate.

[Ljohnsaw]

It helps to have free child labor.😂

[chet]

Good on you Caveman. Da world needs more hands on type teachers like you.   

[barbender]

Yes. What better project for them to learn on? Since the school is in the teachin' business, it makes sense to me to have the students do all of that hands on work, even if it cost as much as hiring it out 

[Hilltop366]

It helps to have free child labor.😂

I'm sure he pays for in mental anguish at times.

[caveman]

It takes at least three times as long to do much of anything with students helping as it would to do it alone.  We had nail bending class a couple of days ago. I bought a 30 lb. box of nails and had planned on having a timed competition.  It was absolutely eye opening.  Most could not drive a 16d nail into pine even after 59 or more strikes or near misses.  

I told them all to pay special attention in all of their academic classes as there was not a long line of employers waiting to pay them to bend nails.  It made me appreciate the life experiences I had as a child.  

[Old Greenhorn]

Oh My Goodness! This brought such a hard smile to my face that tears squeezed out of my eyes. When I was a kid we had a 50 pound keg of 10d nails in our shed that my Dad declared I had free access to for whatever I wanted to do with them, whether it was to build or just practicing driving nails in a 2x4. I had watched him and his buddies drive thousands those 10d nails with 3 whacks or less.  That was long before the days of these nice framing hammers with serrated faces weighing a fair amount, just plain old claw hammers that they had. Boy I drove (and bent) a LOT of nails and I thought he would be really mad when he saw the mess I made and the nails I wasted trying to get it right, but he just laughed and told me I was getting better.  He started calling me 'Lightening' because he said I "never struck twice in the same place". He told me that as simple as it may look driving a nail takes a lot of practice, coordination, skill, and an understanding of physics (which was my first exposure to that particular word as a ten year old). 
 Yes, teaching youth provides a certain amount of amusement at times. Often it can be either frightening, alarming, or a wake up call for us a society.
 I had a long time in Scouting and I had a young Scout here one day working on a merit badge and we were working on fire making without matches in the gravel driveway in front of my shop (flint and steel, bow and spindle, etc). When we were done he asked if he could use my phone to call his Mom for a pickup. I said "sure, there's a phone on the wall in the shop, help yourself" and I began cleaning up all the stuff we had out. He was in there a while but I just thought he was chatting with Mom. (Great kid, I knew the whole family, he is some kind of a Biometric Scientist now.) Finally he comes out and (looking at the ground) he says "could you show me how that phone works? it doesn't have buttons on it." It was a rotary dial phone, he never had seen one before. Just another teaching opportunity.  Teaching kids is something I miss a great deal because we learn so much in the process.

[TimW]

Dad didn't have money to buy new nails.  We reused them.  My job was straightening the nails.  Sad thing today, nails are a pain to straighten.  Almost impossible with the cheap metal in them now.

[barbender]

On occasion when I was visiting family out in Wyoming, my Grandma would need a quick carpentry repair of some sort or another. If the job took me 2 hours, 1.5 hours was spent straightening nails out of her can of old nails. I went and bought a box one time to speed the process, and was corrected for it😁

[thecfarm]

Teaching kids is a good thing to do.
I worked in hardware store and I was shocked that most did not know the difference between a 1/4 inch rachet and a 3/4 inch one.
Just the way things are now.

[Peter Drouin]

nice job guys.

[Peter Drouin]

I was shocked that most did not know the difference between a 1/4 inch rachet and a 3/4 inch one.
Just the way things are now.

In 20 years they won't know what a rachet is.

[Don P]

Kids hit nails, it takes awhile to figure out what "drive" means, most never get it. With uncle arthur in about every joint, it seems I now tap on nails, sometimes about fiftyleven times before they go away  .  Most people have never used hand tools, my generation as well.

[Wlmedley]

By the time my son was born I had already built my house and barn and I built my garage before he was old enough to help me much.He went to a two year college and got a degree in Power Plant Technology but no good job offers and was working at Krogers stocking shelves at night.My nieces husband was a trainer at the Carpenters Union training center and told him he should come down and apply to get in the apprenticeship program and told him what the test consisted of.One thing was driving nails overhead. I nailed a 2x6 overhead in the barn on the ceiling joist and told him to have at it.That was 10 years ago and that board full of nails is still there and I have no plans to take it down.He got in the apprenticeship program and is now a journeyman and getting Forman pay on his current job. I'm very proud of him and that board full of nails reminds me of how it started.

[g_man]

Nail stories. This would be in the early 50"s. I remember when I was just a little kid my Dad and Grandfather were shingling the roof. I was sitting in the driveway watching or more listening to the tap-thump, tap-thump, tap-thump and was totally intrigued by it. There were bundles of asphalt shingles, a big box of roofing nails, and a pile of scrap cut-offs sitting there. Next time Dad came down the ladder I asked him if I could nail some scraps into a board. He says sure. I was trying for the tap-thump but all I could do was tap-tap-tap-tap-tapity-tap. Then somehow, don't know how, I discovered that if I forgot the board and just drove the nails into the asphalt I could do the tap-thump just fine. I got a good bit of the driveway shingled with with those scraps before he came down again. And he went about as wild as I have ever seen him. My Grandfather had to come down to save me. His laughing cooled old Dad off.

gg

[TimW]

Nail stories. This would be in the early 50"s. I remember when I was just a little kid my Dad and Grandfather were shingling the roof. I was sitting in the driveway watching or more listening to the tap-thump, tap-thump, tap-thump and was totally intrigued by it. There were bundles of asphalt shingles, a big box of roofing nails, and a pile of scrap cut-offs sitting there. Next time Dad came down the ladder I asked him if I could nail some scraps into a board. He says sure. I was trying for the tap-thump but all I could do was tap-tap-tap-tap-tapity-tap. Then somehow, don't know how, I discovered that if I forgot the board and just drove the nails into the asphalt I could do the tap-thump just fine. I got a good bit of the driveway shingled with with those scraps before he came down again. And he went about as wild as I have ever seen him. My Grandfather had to come down to save me. His laughing cooled old Dad off.

gg

That gave me a smile.  Dad was digging a ditch from a faucet.  I thought I was helping by turning on the faucet, filling up the ditch, and putting my boat in the water.  Boy was I wrong.

[beenthere]

g_man
Laughed at that story, as it reminded me of my two boys. After I planted about 600 white and red pine seedlings when they were 4-5 years old, they proudly came back to the house one day with their little red wagon loaded plumb full with those new trees. They were "logging" like Dad. I could only laugh. 
I do bring up that story on occasion when we are sitting around together these days.