Good morning!!!!

[Ed of all trades]

Good morning all 65 here this morning going to 79 and no chance of rain. Hope to work on unloading a trailer today. Still has a bunch of stuff in it from the move. A lot of it has to go down a flight of steps into the basement so it may take a while. Have a great day. Ed

 

[wngsprd]

68 and heavy clouds...heading to 82. Got 2.07 inches of rain from last night's storm.

Very wet - if we got 7-8" like Drew, we'd be in bad shape. Really bad news about the WVA deaths and floods.

I seated the bead on my lawn tractor tire the old fashioned way yesterday, but learned that a washer and axle clip are missing and I have no more spares, so another trip to the store - too wet to use anyway.

 

[farmer2009]

70 this morning and headed to 97 today.

Will be hanging metal until it gets hot today. Then have a window unit A/C to put in for the wife. Today we will be 10* above average. This heat is getting hard on her. But only 5 1/2 more weeks. Need to work some more on the bathroom demo. Batteries died the other night and I just quit waiting on them to recharge.

Flooding in WVA isn't good.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Good Morning! 72F @ 6:15AM. Sunny. High near 100F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.

Looks like temps will be in the 100+ range (also almost 10F above average for this time of year) for at least the next week, so maybe I'll start catching up on the inside jobs during the afternoons. Probably need to start the sprinkler system back up for the shrubs, too. They're all very low consumption plants, but that kind of heat does require a drink now and then.

I may have found the cause for the hummingbird feeder that is not being drained. It seems one bird has taken to driving all the others off, trying to keep the whole thing for itself. As I write this the gang is polishing off the last of the nectar in the feeder outside the bedroom, the one outside the office is already empty, and the "guarded" one is full to the brim. I'm going to try leaving the first two empty today to see if the gang can overwhelm the pig. Might make for a lively time around that feeder. :shocked:

I did manage to finish grinding the welds around the windshield yesterday, but with a new zircon flapper wheel. It turns out that the reason the Harbor Freight grinding wheels weren't cutting is that I wasn't pressing hard enough to get through the resin impregnated cloth that holds the wheel together. As a result the wheel was just skidding along on the cloth and wasn't cutting. But I can't press hard on the light gauge sheet metal because when the wheel does start to cut it gouges. So these things are OK for working on heavy structural steel, but the flapper wheel is much easier to use and gives a better result on the sheet metal. But here's the thing: I ran out of shielding gas yesterday afternoon and made a special trip to town for a refill. While at the welding distributor I saw a wall full of grinding discs. When I asked about them I was told that the Airgas house brand was made by Norton, a very well respected abrasives company. The price? Only a dollar or two more than at HF. So I brought one home to try out, as I still have the welds around the upper bunk bed rail to do this morning.

Hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

 

[rswyan]

72F and very sunny @ 09:30 ... high today predicted to be 88F.

Got log dog installed on the 026. Also trimmed back the jungle on the property line between Jeff and Pam's place and ours so that the sheep guy's fence can be been seen from the south corner.

Had just finished dinner last night when there was a knock on the door. It was my neighbor Juan, who is originally from Peru. Nice guy. Family man.

He was having some issues with one of his vehicles - an older Dodge Stratos I think - and wondered if I could take a look at it. Offered to pay me (No, but thanks anyways) Told him to give me 10 minutes and I'd be up.

(About a year ago I had fallen behind on the mowing and he walked down on his own initiative and asked if I was ok and did I need any help with the mowing ? Told him no, but thanks I had it covered.)

Evidently, he's got a guy from work that does mechanical work on his vehicles ... but the guy is often too busy with other stuff to get around to him. Sounded kinda flakey.

Bit of a challenge working with Juan, as his English ain't so great ... and my Spanish is far worse than his English. Anyways, he's wanting to know about getting a rear wheel cylinder replaced, which he thinks is leaking. Apparently, he and his son had the brake drum off and his son told him to push on the brake pedal (bad idea without the brake drum on to hold the pistons in the wheel cylinder from expanding too far) and it squirted brake fluid out on the kid.

I scope it out and the dust boot on the cylinder sure enough has a small hole/tear in it ... but with the brake drum back on, there's no leak of fluid.

So I ask him why they tore into the brakes on this thing in the first place. After some back and forth and a quick test drive I find out that it's making a noise (tick, tick, tick) ... on the other rear wheel. After hearing it, I'm guessing that it's mebbe just an issue with the drum rubbing on something ... possibly the backing plate. So we pull the drum on that rear wheel and sure enough the drum is pretty crusted up with rust where it fits into the backing plate.

Grab him and the drum and head over to the shop and hit it real good with the needle scaler to knock the heavy crust off. Problem solved ... no more tick, tick, tick. Topped off the master cylinder to make up for whatever fluid was when he pushed the pedal with the drum off. Pedal seemed good.

Today when he gets off work in a couple of hours, I'm going to have a look at his mini-van and see what I can see. It has a ticking/knocking/thumping sound on the front right side when it's rollin' ... possibly a CV joint, wheel bearing, suspension/steering parts.

After that might try and get something done on the soil screen frame so I can get it moved out of the shop and get the tractor moved in to work on it.

 

[rswyan]

RNG,

Had similar experiences with the new HF grinding discs ... the old ones were great: very aggressive with very little pressure.

Take those any day over something I have to hog to get anything done with.

How are those HF zirconia flap discs ?

Saw them last time I was in but haven't tried them yet, still using the old "regular" ones.

Do they last any longer than the "regular" ones ?

I finally got the humming bird feeder put up here yesterday or the day before ... but haven't seen anybody visiting to put on the feed bag yet.

Blue birds have reoccupied the one blue bird house tho' ...

 

[daugen]

RS, you're a good man Charley Brown...

Delighted to finish interviewing a new teenage helper. Tall nice kid, father came too, has two years of experience with lawns and weedeating, and nothing I showed him fazed him. Hired. Made him (and his parents)sign a hold harmless agreement so I was not liable if he got hurt here. Might not hold up but good to have. He's still a few weeks into being a minor...though he acts much older.
He's coming to work Sunday afternoon, and wants as many hours as I can give him. Lot of backed up work here, job security for him. As it is for me...

rain about to start here. Lawn is way overgrown, I'll be mowing while the "kid" is weedeating tomorrow for sure. It would be really nice to get to the point where I can email him a list of to-do's and he can come when he wants and I don't have to be here. A test of his maturity for sure, but he seemed pretty good about that.
Time will tell. He's number four, maybe the winner.

 

[toppop52]

Had a tornado warning from a small storm yesterday, actually missed us about 2 miles to the east, a lot of hail and wind. Low 70's, going to low 80's with lower humidity.

 

[daugen]

Had a tornado warning from a small storm yesterday, actually missed us about 2 miles to the east, a lot of hail and wind. Low 70's, going to low 80's with lower humidity.

Where would you hide at home Randy? I don't have a basement and it concerns me...
perhaps I'm imagining things but there seems to be more tornadoes happening and nastier storms in general.
Or as a neighbor told me today, frog drowners. Those five inch to ten inch rain systems are real killers.
I'm not worried about rain, my house is jacked up three feet, but tornadoes will tear anything down. Have a big chimney; wonder if crawling into the fireplace
opening would be the safest spot. With a helmet on...

I've seen guys build underground shelters but that doesn't work here due to the water issues. I'm 32 feet above sea level, not going to be wave flooded but a hurricane is something else. Was told there were water marks on my home's pillars two feet up. Yikes. The whole place under two feet of water. Folks who live near rivers and streams have it much worse. I grew up along the Delaware River in PA and witnessed many damaging floods. When I picked a place to retire, being near running water or the ocean was out. Reasonably close to, ok. I want to be near the water, not in the water.
But those tornadoes are scary; my truck goes nuts with warnings and flashing messages on the big nav screen if a tornado is reported in this area. But I don't have that at home. I'm usually not far away from a laptop and Wunderground though. But where to hide? This is a frame house, not going to last.

 

[toppop52]

I don't have a shelter either, normally tornadoes here are EF0-1 at most, but they can do a lot of damage. The Chesapeake bay keeps the supercells from staying together usually. But several years ago an F5 crossed the bay and struck just west of here and did a lot of damage, it had killed 2 students at The University of Maryland before crossing the bay.