Good morning!!!!

[daugen]

Irv, best wishes for a good outcome there.

 

[brin]

Goodbye all.....starting a new chapter in my life... Thanks to everyone.....you are a great group of guys and I have learned much from all of you. After close to 8,000 posts (many of them by postwhoring) I have decided it's time to depart TBN before I get banned....sorry it has to end.

THANKS TO ALL !!!!!!

Well JD.....Here we go again....Adios...again but really more like Dasvadanya....( spelling may be off ..but it is Russian for...Until we meet again ) You should maybe try to sell your 8,000 posts to one of the new guys...might get rich....

You know you could....come back to TBN as JDredux....give that some thought. ...I would not tell anyone...promise...

 

[mostly_gas]

Good morning all. 77F this morning, forecast for 97F (hi 107F) Hit the Dr. this morning good checkup, get the blood work Monday. Leave soon for this afternoon's golf, with check out the rear derailleur on the Trek, it is not moving by shifter

 

[sodamo]

69F and .23 inches rain last 24 hours.

Got my tall fence posts drilled and anchored in yesterday, look pretty good.
Off to town this AM for errands and wife's annual oncologist followup.
Hopefully back in time to start on the panels.

Be safe
Have a great day.

David Sent from my iPad Air using TractorByNet

 

[mostly_gas]

Irv good luck with your sister, just put a family member in rehab Monday. Prayers sent.

Roy, good luck with the new job, has to be a bummer changing constantly. Need to move?

Bill good knowing you I do miss you when you are not here.

Full disclosure: I am a HOA trustee. 400+ in HOA 25 people show up to meetings when trustees are elected. Also can tell you that in my HOA it has been easier to work with if homeowner does mea-culpa instead of hoping not to get caught. I do wish you well with Drew, being on this end of the deal is no picnic either.

 

[txdon]

Goodbye all.....starting a new chapter in my life... Thanks to everyone.....you are a great group of guys and I have learned much from all of you. After close to 8,000 posts (many of them by postwhoring) I have decided it's time to depart TBN before I get banned....sorry it has to end.

THANKS TO ALL !!!!!!

What is all that noise?

Oh, it's just the Moderators throwing a party.

Remember JD - Hands up. Don't type!

 

[300UGUY]

What is all that noise?

Oh, it's just the Moderators throwing a party.

Remember JD - Hands up. Don't type!

"Hands up, don't type" - Great post, all time favorites list!!

 

[300UGUY]

Thanks for the good thoughts, I think we are on a good path.

 

[daugen]

I hope you are Irv, and well, my path just improved.
Got an acceptance on the home today after much back and forth; separate from the HOA stuff.
That I have pretty much done for my two submission packages.
So the Fat Lady is warming up. Have the HOA package signoff and the financing signoff and
it should be smooth sailing. Should be...

My younger sister is coming over for dinner tonight with some healthy food I'm sure, and basically to say goodbye for awhile.
am looking forward to that.

and tomorrow the buyer comes over for a little chat, which I told him was not going to happen until he accepted the house.
Russian doctor, some pharma connection, probably biotech. Bringing his family up from Atlanta.
Guess I should buy a bottle of Stoli to put in the fridge along with the champagne...

 

[rswyan]

Cloudy and 82 humid degrees @ 16:00 ... and "Locations nearby are reporting heavy rain ..."

On my first cup, trying to make it out of the fog ...

Have had a couple of pretty productive days ... night before last went over the drill press/milling table and cleaned up and de-rusted them. Although both of them looked terrible, neither one were really all that bad ... neither had ever had the cosmoline cleaned off them and it appears that a lot of what was rusted was metal dust/filings/millings ... and not the tools themselves. Some of it just wiped off with a rag and mineral spirits. There was some actual rusting of the tools however ... for the milling table I used some 500 grit and cleaned it all up save for a little light discoloration on the table surface.

For the drill press I used some 150 grit and a sanding block on the table and the work piece mount on the floor stand. For the column I used some fine steel wool. Painted surfaces were wiped down with a rag and Murphy's Oil Soap and water solution.

Knowing that I was going to need to confront and handle all the stuff that was piled up to be degreased in the parts washer, I decided to dive into that ... by first cleaning out the parts washer itself ...

It's been a while since it's been done, so I knew there would be a load of crap in the bottom that had settled out ... and once I got it drained, sure enough, there was probably 1/2" of crud that resembled something like tar covering the bottom. Scooped all the loose stuff out with a plastic spreader and then scrubbed the bottom with a Scotch-Brite pad to loosen up the stubborn stuff. The sludge made for an interesting burn in our "incinerator" ... much of the volatiles burned off forming a crust ... kinda like shortbread ... but there was still plenty left inside ... I was able to easily relight it after breaking it into small chunks.

The parts washer is one I picked up from the Tool Gypsies ... but it's the same one that Harbor Freight sells. The filter material on the pump (or the parts washer itself) apparently isn't designed for use with petroleum-based solvents ... when I pulled the filter cover off the pump housing the "filter" dropped out as a pile of mushy mud ...

I decided this might be a good time to consider a some upgrades to the system.

I can pick up a 12" x 12" square of very fine woven stainless steel mesh from McMaster for about $5, so that seems like it might be an intelligent thing to do ...

I have a couple of old electric fuel pumps lying around that I inherited and two Motor Guard filters that I got from Ralph Woods that were modified to be used as bypass oil filters on vehicles and use a roll of toilet paper for the filter media. Decided I'd donate one of those to the cause. Checked the electric fuel pumps and the Facet pump seemed to work when I feed it some juice from my little 6A battery charger. Looks like it will flow around 35 gallons per hour ... which equates to filtering the fluid 3x per hour.

First thing that needed to be addressed was the supply for the filter and pump. One of the things I've disliked about this parts washer is that there is no drain valve for emptying it ... just a drainplug. So the first task for the newly cleaned up drill press was drill out the drain plug so it could be tapped with NPT threads in order to mount one of the spare ball valves I have laying around. That didn't go all that well, as I didn't have the drain plug clamped down in the vise securely and the hole ended up not being exactly vertical (centered on the bottom, but off on the side that's inside the parts washer tub) To handle that and open up the hole for better flow I used a 1/4" 4 tooth end mill to bore the plug from the side where the hole was not centered. Using a light feed on the drill press, it worked like a charm.

I then started to try and tap the plug with an 1/8" NPT tap ... getting taps started has always been a bit frustrating for me, so after futzing around for a while and working up a sweat with no joy I had a bright idea.

The only operational vise I have at the moment is the drill press vise, so that's where I was doing this (tapping the plug) ... the problem is largely being able to put enough down pressure on the tap to get it to bite while turning it ... something like a small arbor press would be really handy to help with accomplishing this ... but I don't have one ...

Oh ... wait ...

Using the milling table I moved the drain plug directly under the drill press chuck and spun the chuck all the way closed. Voila ... instant arbor press. I was cutting actual threads less than 30 seconds later.

After I got the threads cut I cobbled together a drop pipe that included a 1/4" NPT tee, one leg of which will be the feed to the filter pump. Needed another fitting I didn't have for mounting the 1/2" ball valve ... but I had one that was close, so I tapped that and made it.

One the issues of using the Facet pump was that the bottom cover had been removed from it at some point and the rubber gasket was MIA ... fortunately, due to my organizing project, I was able to locate the actual correct rubber gasket pretty easily in the drawer that I threw all the miscellaneous rubber pieces into. Cleaned it up with a little acetone and cleaned the bottom cover up with some steel wool ... hopefully it will seal.

Next up is a suitable power supply ... Facet recommends 5A ... my little Schumacher battery charger is 2A/6A so that mebbe could work ... but I may be able to scrounge up something around here that is no longer being used and is suitable. If not, 120v to 12v power supplies are pretty widely available for relatively cheap.

Picked up about 5' of 5/16" neoprene fuel hose @ Autozone to plumb this Rube Goldberg contraption up.

The other upgrade I'm doing is installing an agitator to move the kero around in the tank for some added (handsfree) cleaning action. I now have a regulated air supply close to the tank, so I took three pieces of old 1/2" CPVC pipe from up in the attic and drilled them with a series of small holes (.081") ... these will lay in the bottom of the tank. The actual air pressure in the pipes should be pretty low to essentially non-existent - the total surface area of the pin holes in the three tubes exceeds the surface area of the restriction in the air supply by a factor of two (over .6 square inches vs .25 square inches) ... and it will be contained in a steel tank. Only question I have is how well the glue for the PVC will hold up to being immersed in solvent. I've got some 1/2" copper I could use as an alternative, if the CPVC suffers an early demise ... but given how pricey copper is, I'm holding off on doing that.

Placement and mounting of the Motor Guard filter is critical ... at least the top half needs to be above the fluid level in the tank ... so that it will drain and the top can be removed to change the filter media without creating a huge mess.

I'm short a 5/16" x 1/4" NPT hose barb and 1/2" CPVC 90 elbow ... so I need to run out and pick those up here in a bit.

I think I have about two more days worth of work and I'll have the clean up/organization of the shop pretty much done.

 

[txdon]

Rswyan do you take notes or is all total recall?

 

[rswyan]

Rswyan do you take notes or is all total recall?

Don,

It's pretty much all recall ...

My memory is still fairly decent, although it's gotten a little more fuzzy around the edges in the past few years ...

The one or two areas that I do make notes on are:

1. Shopping lists

2. Stuff (projects) that needs to be done

Half the time I forget to take the shopping lists when I go to the store ... and the project lists seem to accumulate and fall by the wayside before I get everything on them completed ...

I was just looking at some old project lists from a couple of years ago about a week ago ...

There were a number of "Oh yeah ... I forgot about that ..." moments ...

 

[deerseeker001]

forget the shopping list now that sounds like me.

Don,

It's pretty much all recall ...

My memory is still fairly decent, although it's gotten a little more fuzzy around the edges in the past few years ...

The one or two areas that I do make notes on are:

1. Shopping lists

2. Stuff (projects) that needs to be done

Half the time I forget to take the shopping lists when I go to the store ... and the project lists seem to accumulate and fall by the wayside before I get everything on them completed ...

I was just looking at some old project lists from a couple of years ago about a week ago ...

There were a number of "Oh yeah ... I forgot about that ..." moments ...

 

[deerseeker001]

congrats on the acceptance on the home.

I hope you are Irv, and well, my path just improved.
Got an acceptance on the home today after much back and forth; separate from the HOA stuff.
That I have pretty much done for my two submission packages.
So the Fat Lady is warming up. Have the HOA package signoff and the financing signoff and
it should be smooth sailing. Should be...

My younger sister is coming over for dinner tonight with some healthy food I'm sure, and basically to say goodbye for awhile.
am looking forward to that.

and tomorrow the buyer comes over for a little chat, which I told him was not going to happen until he accepted the house.
Russian doctor, some pharma connection, probably biotech. Bringing his family up from Atlanta.
Guess I should buy a bottle of Stoli to put in the fridge along with the champagne...

 

[dave1949]

The house sale is looking good Drew.

rswyan keeps trimming his list of projects. There is something therapeutic about getting the garage and tools in order.

Good luck with your sister, Irv.

I stepped off the tractor today on one of my 100 ons and offs and managed to turn my ankle. Should have been wearing my work boots but I find that's a huge commitment. Have to see how feels in the morning. Tomorrow may be an I-beam dragging day.

Mid 70's today but still humid. Warm spell (mid-80's) and no rain in the forecast for next week.

 

[sodamo]

Making a list is a good thing. My problem is the list is on my iPhone and I forget to check it.

David Sent from my iPad Air using TractorByNet

 

[Buppies]

73 this morning high of 83 later today and more rain or drizzle, sounds like a broken record. There is some talk of a hurricane hitting the east coast but in my readings last night this one will go in the slot up the coast and only bring some big waves. Irv patience but firm with your sister. Good morning

 

[dave1949]

57F headed to mid-70's today.

What's really a show stopper is forgetting my wallet. I've driven most of the way into town a couple times before realizing I don't have it.

Thinking about today's plan while waking up, I might clean the chimney and change the water filter and do a couple hours in the field.

Have a good one.

 

[daugen]

65 degrees going up to low 80's with rain coming in from the North it appears.
I went out early and turned on the sprinkler system; can't think of a better way to make it rain...
will go turn it off on my second cuppa trip.

going to be emptying my desks this morning and trying to get everything organized so I can find it. Bought a nice clear plastic bin for the important stuff, checks, etc, so I can see what's in there....
also starting to fill my duffel bags with clothes, a few dishes and cutlery items, and whatever I would need until perhaps a week later I can find the right box for things.

buyer is coming at 9:30am for a chat, then the packers come at 10:30.
going to enjoy my piece and quiet and coffee for a little while longer

thanks for the well wishes. One week from now I will be sleeping in my bed in my new home, and boy is it going to be a long week getting there. But the prize is sure worth the work.

 

[WayneB]

58 right now and I think I see a little blue in the sky!
I am hoping for a nice day and zero rain!!!