Making it thrugh another year, '24-'25

[Old Greenhorn]

Well you're a better man than me Bob! I an glad he go you to look at some of them, carcasses' everywhere.  I can get him going wioth the simple mechanical stuff that he doesn't have the patients for, but you know all the correct specs, can tune, and will put things back the right way. I just get him going. I'll see if I can stop by when you are there, since you have to drive past my place anyway.  Yes, bring the truck, and some cardboard.

 Yesterday morning I went down and found that 372 and even all the parts for it, still couldn't find the pin from the 394 and didn't have a 3mm pin in my shop. SO I brought that home and found that the OEM throttle plate return spring on the Walbro carb had the end snapped off so it was free spinning. SO I had to remove the carb, take it all apart to get the spring off, reshape the spring to make a new stop tang and after a few fit tests, got it right.  I cleaned everything I could get at as long as it was opened up, but there is a limit. Put it all back together, tested it and all was good. I don't think you can buy just that spring. If it breaks again, gonna need a donor carb I guess.
 Since I had to go to town for errands, I thought I would be a nice guy and drop it off at their job site which was 'sorta' on my way. I mentioned a few other issues I saw, such as the chain tensioner not working (turned out they had grabbed a wrong chain that was too long and the tensioner was at end of stroke). But it's running well for now. Mike was happy to get his baby back and Bill wished I had dropped it off an hour earlier when he blew out the tip on his working saw. But, as I explained, an hour earlier the saw was in pieces on my bench. I can't win sometimes.

 So yeah, I am sure he will have 'a few' saws for you to look at.  He always does.

[Old Greenhorn]

I was just thinking about this some more and it occurred to me that when he finally gets stairs up to the second floor where the saw shop is and collects all the saw carcasses on a set of shelves up there it will be quite a collection of spares, donor saws, and such like. I was up there last month and it's still all cleaned and just built. There was only one lonely saw sitting on a lonely bench.
 That will change.

[aigheadish]

Sounds like a saw museum to me...

[Old Greenhorn]

No, not really, That would have to be Bob's shed/cave by far. BTW Bob, can you look around and see if you have one of those pins for the pivot point on the presence sensing lever on the 394? I believe Bill has mis-placed it. I think it's just a 3mm (.118")  diameter pin by about 3/4" long.
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 Austin, You asked a question about green wood in my attic kiln a few weeks back. Got me to thinking. I don't have anything truly green, but I brought home a slab from the mill today and thought I would try an experiment, crude though it might be. It's a chunk of hemlock 1st cut slab about 40" long and roughly 2-3" thick. It has bark on, still pretty tight. The MC measures 21.7% in eh end grain and about 17-20% in the face grain (cut a week or so ago). It weighed 43.7 pounds. I wrote it all down and stuck the slab up there. It's been solid overcast and cool for the past 24 hours. It never broke 65 yesterday and barely hot 70 today, but it's 95° in the attic right now.
 So we'll give this a few weeks and see what happens.

[aigheadish]

I'm interested in your results, Tom, but I think it may have been someone else asking about green wood, I don't remember mentioning it, though I forget many things a day, so maybe I did! 

Did you weigh it just standing it up on a scale? I'm interested in the weight of the shed doors I built for the neighbor but we only have one of those glass people scales, that I don't really want to drop a door on. 

[Old Greenhorn]

You're right Austin, my bad, it was Howard who asked and Doc too. No matter, we will all see how this progresses, headed into some serious drying days in the next week as the temps rise. 

 I have an old Deli/butchers/hardware scale that I use with a big dial on the face. Very handy when I need it, but only goes to about 60 pounds. I just laid the slab across the top. For your door, you could stand on the scale, record your weight, then pick up the door and do the math. It should get you close.

[Spike60]

Tom, I'll be at Bill's between 6 and 630. Have the pin you need. 394/395 uses the same trigger, spring, latch, and pins as a 372 BTW.

Looking forward to stopping down there this evening. I'll be pretty out of it due to ZERO sleep from yesterday's heavy drugs. Couple beers and ill be even more entertaining. 

I'm all caught up on saw work, so Billy can give me several saws before I start rolling my eyes.    I do keep a tight lid on this. Just take care of friends and neighbors. Not like im looking for work. Don't want to deal with folks I don't know. Did that for 30 years. Anybody on the list gives my number out to someone else, gets crossed off the list. 

[Old Greenhorn]

Good 'business' plan.
 Yeah, I'll try to come down around that time, usually when we have dinner about then. I'll bring that 394 and be done with it. I think I will be milling a bit for him this morning. He has needs.

[Spike60]

Wait a second. Your gonna do a hand off on the 394? What's the deal with that? 

[Old Greenhorn]

Nope, I'll bring it down and stick the pin in it and it's done.
 Now that 372 that I fixed, Bill has it sitting there for you because he perceives some other issues with it I guess and I am not worthy.   It was running fine when I handed it over, but had a loose chain I could not tighten because of a bar/chain mismatch. I don't do 'operator error issues'.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well just to keep the record straight, I did not 'hand off' that 394 to Bob. He produced the pin in question when I walked in with it and I stuck it in and the job was done. So I'm clean. Now that 372 I fixed, did get turned over to him for other reasons. I fixed the carb spring and got it back in running shape, but that chain tightening issue turned into something else. He pulled the clutch cover and noticed that there was a huge amount of play in the drum on the shaft, it was beyond shot. The chain was the right size, drive link wise, but it has a lot of stretch in it. We didn't have a new one handy to compare it to, but it was the right size chain. With the slop in the drum of at least 1/8" and some chain stretch it was 'messed up'. Bob took that one home to put a new drum on it.
So we had a nice visit, Bob left some saws behind and brought a couple out to repair and my take away was, I'm in the wrong business. I haven't seen Bob in several months so it was nice to hang out and BS a bit. As we were leaving Bob posed a question to Bill wondering if he knew how many vehicles he has laying around on the property. That had never occurred to me before and I am sure I don't know, pretty sure Bill doesn't know either. It might be a fun project to bring a grandson or two down and try to count them all. Surely we would have conflicting numbers, but we could get pretty close, I think. But you would miss all the stock that is out on jobs here and there, which will really confuse things.
Anyway, we had a few beers and had a nice visit, a very nice evening all around.
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The last couple of days I have been having motivational issues. I just feel tired and the weather has been very cool and damp and overcast. I did not make it to the mill again today, I don't know why, probably tomorrow, I hope. I have a show on Sunday, so I pulled the trailer around and washed it to get the tree junk and pine needles off of it. An hour later, we got a downpour, but it still looks pretty clean. I did some other chores to get ready for Sunday and get my head in the game. We will se how it goes...roll the dice again. I sure would like to see some return on this trailer.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

[Nebraska]

I understand the motivation thing..... Worked too long yesterday and drove  too late last night, today it's pretty slow moving.   

[Old Greenhorn]

Well yeah, after working like that it makes a lot of sense. That would whip anyone down. For me it just seems I get a lot of days like that for little reason. Maybe it's long covid, maybe its the beginning of CHF I am bound to get, I dunno, maybe it's mild depression. The latter being the best candidate, I think.
 Sometimes I just need to sit down, have a talk with myself, and kick my butt in gear. Such was today. I have a small order of 2x12x12 hemlock to get finished. Those suckers are heavy! But before I could do that I still had a bunch of slabs to cut up and clear away onto the OWB feeder rack. Knowing it was going to be warm today I got myself down there and got that all done, but my back is still hurting from that last session wrestling those beams. At least I got it done before noon. Came home and got ready for tomorrow.
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Interesting thing: On a lark I decided to check on the progress of that green hemlock slab I stuck up in the attic a few days ago. It was 123° up there today. When I put that slab in, I got something like 21.7% MC in the end grain and 17-20 in the face grain. Now today, I shoved my meter pins in their and it read 45%! I got about 38% in the face grain. This tells me we have a lot of moisture movement from the inside to the outside. It's only been about 3 days and I find this really interesting as well as promising. I think it indicates I have some true drying going on, not just surface attrition. A bright spot in my day for sure. Can't wait to see what happens next week when the ambient temps hit the mid 90's. I am going to have to watch this closer and see how long it takes. Fascinating stuff this.

[aigheadish]

Tom- Is that saying moisture is moving from the inside to the outside? I didn't realize it worked like that, if so... 

[Old Greenhorn]

Well yeah, I am thinking that's how it works.  Hemlock surface dries pretty quick which causes face cracks and this slab has a bunch of little ones. It also explains why I had pretty low numbers when I first put it up. My probes only go 1/2" deep. When I checked it the other day, it was late in the day at full heat. I checked again this morning when it was only 90 up there and the numbers were again lower. I believe it gets warm up, the water expands and moves to the drier wood, and then cooks out of it. At least I hope that is what is happening, that's why I weighed it, that will tell me how much water weight it lost when I think it's done. This is my simple way of understanding the process and learning my way through. Many of the drying threads I read here are above my head and I am still too ignorant to ask good questions. I continue to learn as I go, slowly. I pulled down a 2" RO slab from there this morning, I can't get any MC on it anywhere with my meter. It's been up there since the fall after 3 years of air drying.
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 I had another show yesterday, same place as last month. The crowd was more engaged, I picked up some possible future call backs for special orders and talked with a lot more folks than last month. But the location continues to perplex me. It is a super location, right on the state road and all the weekend renters, second home owners and B&B tourists have to drive past there to get to the interstate and home. More stopped this month than last and I certainly had a lot more 'near sales'.
 I sold 2 device stands and one rustic bench just 6 minutes before closing. Management allowed any vendors that wanted, to stay open an extra hour (until 4pm) and I ran until; about 3:30 when the small amount of traffic finally thinned out to almost nothing. Then I slowly started packing in a more specific pattern. I've finally realized there is no reason for me to try and rush to get out. It was hot (mid 80's) and full sun.  Turns out, taking my time and packing in a logical order is just as fast, maybe faster than rushing and having to re-do parts of it. 
 I was still pretty wet when I was done, but not as out of breath as before. I even got things packed tighter with a little more room to spare. I am beginning  to get a handle on this thing.  OTOH, I sat there during the day assessing what I have on the booth and have come to the conclusion that I have too much stuff for a 10x20 booth. The conundrum is what to leave out (or in the trailer)? I can't predict who will be walking through on a given day. I'll keep thinking on that part for a while.
 The next issue is which shows and do I continue with this one. I can't do July, not available. Everyone is telling me that July and August are the best months for this one. I could do August IF I blow off going to Boonville and I am thinking about it. I believe I will wait until the July show and call the folks that have a spot next to me and see how that one went, if traffic and sales are up, I may doe August. Otherwise I will have no shows for all of July and August. In September I have two of my better shows and this monthly one lands in the middle of those two, so I could do 3 shows, 3 weeks in a row. The only thing I know is that I don't have to make anything for a while. I might make another low end rustic bench to replace the one I sold, but I already have a twin to it in the trailer.
 But I have a bunch of thinking to do on these upcoming shows.
 I got home around 5:30 last night and was pretty tired, but I don't know why, today I finished off my notes from the show and am just piddling along. Gonna be a hot one this week and I have orders at the mill, I did finish one off on Saturday, then a new one came is for a boat load of long 1x10 pine, up to 20'+.
 Tomorrow is another day.

[aigheadish]

Maybe as simple as a book with pictures "These are in stock, if you'd like to see them?"

My wife used to do a lot of shows selling her bags and her analytical mind was quite good at seeing and understanding trends. She's got some formula (not really, but kind of) that taught her how much stuff should be sitting out and it wasn't always best to have it all out. I don't remember exactly how it worked but basically too little product on display people walk right past, too much on display and people get overwhelmed. I think she had a similar formula for pricing or average pricing too.