Chimney cap

 The coolie hat chimney cap I built for my PROPANE TANK WOOD STOVE lasted all of two years.

 

Galvanized sheet metal . . . yea POS . . Time to solve that problem .

 

A scrap piece of expanded stainless steel sheet I had left over from another project gets rolled into a cylinder .

An old aluminum non stick wok that lost its non-stikedness minus its handle

 

Three bent up L's pop riveted to the pan and bolted to the expanded SS sheet cylinder

 

There , that should last a bit longer than a couple years .

 

Hows that for rolling in dough Mr Filthie-cus?

Wire clamp tool

 Yea you can use hose clamps but that means you have to have the right size at hand. And those are quite bulky so they snag on stuff. There is a slicker way to do the job .

 

Wire will work but it has to be tight.

  

To accomplish that you use a tool like this one that runs about $70 on line. . .  yea a bit steep I say.

 

This is the general idea on how it is used.... I figure I can build something like that

 

 

Find a scrap  five inch length of 1/16th wall half inch aluminum pipe and jamb a thinner piece of copper tube inside it to take up some slack .

 

 

A scrap piece of 1/4 SS dowel cut to about inch and a half . Make a slot in one end  and it will become the tip of the tool.

 

 

Drill and pin the SS tip with a roll pin . Then mill out a slot about two inches long in the tube .

 

 

The Harbor-Fright mini-mill comes in handy occasionally .

 

 

A five inch length of quarter inch threaded rod drilled and pinned with another roll pin and a wing nut completes the job .

 

 

A 24 inch piece of SS safety wire bent into a U and double wrapped around the joint , then the slotted tip of the tool goes in the U of the wire, and the two wire tabs are wrapped over the first roll pin , around the second one and twisted together . Then wind up on the butterfly nut to draw it tight while being careful to line up the wires correctly on the joint .

 

 

When it is good and tight, flip it over to set the clamp , trim the wire tabs off and press the ends down into the hose .

 

 

Et voila !!

 

 

Except when you are a hack like me and your cross hole on the threaded rod is not quite centered so the end sheers off after a couple uses .

 

 

No problem , a carriage bolt with the head cut off and a properly centered hole works better anyhow .

 

A nylon washer makes the wingnut turn easier . Grind the SS tip on a bevel so it can get closer to the hose .

There, now I can mend the splits in my garden hoses. And I was even with it enough to remember to slip on a piece of heat shrink tube before clamping the joint together . Does make for a slick repair job .

 

Here is a video showing how to use the tool

 

 

Giant Puffball mushroom

 Found in my front yard yesterday

From Wikipedia:

All true puffballs are considered edible when immature, but can cause digestive upset if the spores have begun to form, as indicated by the color of the flesh being not pure white (first yellow, then brown). Immature gilled species still contained within their universal veil can be look alikes for puffballs. To distinguish puffballs from poisonous fungi, they must be cut open; edible puffballs will have a solid white interior. Some similar mushrooms have the white interior (or yellowish) but also have the silhouette of a cap-type mushroom on the interior when cut open. These are young cap-type mushrooms and may be poisonous.