Another Chimney Cap

 For the house this time , as the one that has been on it for the last ten years was only a quick and dirty makeshift aluminum sheet job that got forgotten for too long and was beginning to rattle in the wind a bit too much .

So I scrounged through my stock of scrap steel to see what I could come up with and found some gray two inch wide channel iron I must have dumpster dove for at some point long enough ago to have forgotten about .

After some measuring and cutting , some beating with the two pound hammer to fold one flange over

I tack together a roughly sixteen by twenty inch frame with my chinesium stick welder so it fits over the top of the chimney .

And after some more fiddling come up with this rig . The sharp eyed among you will recognize the ridge as part of an old box spring bed .

A quick test fit

And a quick blast of Rustoleum hides most of my chicken-shit welding

If you don't stand too close it looks OK , yea the front of the frame has a curve to it to fit the corresponding curve in the bricks on the chimney .

Cut , score and fold some 20 ga stainless steel sheeting I rescued from a dumpster a few years ago .

120 grit in the random orbital sander buffs out most of the scratches and gives it the brushed look .

Some polyurethane caulking 

And clamp the crap out of it overnight

Next morning set it out in the sun for a couple of days to cook-off the polyurethane a bit .

Built like a brick out-house, not bad for a hack , almost looks like we knew what we was doing .

And it even fits the chimney

See that's the curvy side where back in 1937 the brick layer was polishing of the last six-pack , fits perfect .

And the gratuitous shot showing my two-toned roof job on the barn .

I love it when a plan comes together , no more rattling in the wind , and it will likely outlive me .

Origo 1500

 Or spending money I don't need to .

 But you see , I have a thing for Bunsen burners . . . and this critter is made of unobtanium cause they stopped making them a few years ago . As he was ten minutes from my house , contact was made with the seller , a time and place was agreed upon . The transaction , having a bit of the sketchiness of a drug deal , went down at lunch time at the Amato's parking lot  . . . . 

BECAUSE . . .

 . . . . Folks are asking crazy money for them

Actual current price point for used ones seems to be around 450 U$ . . . yea still stupid money .

It was a bit grungy from years of neglect and storage

Nothing a bit of spit and elbow grease couldn't fix in about a half hour

A bit of Twinkle and Meguiar's Mirror Glaze to be more precise

Looks like a million bucks now . Even the "land mine" canister reeks of Sparkle. 

And a quick test shows it to boil two cups of water in under five minutes .

Back By Popular Demand. . .

 Yea so I've been slacking for a bit and my devoted followers , all three of them , have been complaining about my absence . . . . . . sheesh the things I have to do ! ! ! ! !

OK guys . . . I'll throw you a bone . . .

So there I was on a sunny Sunday a week ago making space in my tool shed to put away my snow blower . This involves chucking out most of the crap from the shed , evicting the mice that have taken up residence and rearranging all my junk to make space for the snow blower . Thrilling stuff eh ?

  When I got the call to go play with the Bonanza . . .  Well yea  !  

So I chuck all that crap back in the shed real quick and meet Clint at the airport thirty minutes later .

 Seems the autopilot had developed a mind of its own and it had been in the shop to have the servos replaced , so we needed to test it . We also needed to update the software for the Garmin radios. 

So we moved the plane out of the hangar so the radios could see the satellites and locate itself . 

Loaded the updates in the radios , fired up the engine and got our clearance from the tower .

A quick takeoff on runway 18 puts us over Rigby Yard in South Portland .

And soon over Scarborough . . . the red arrow points at my house .

When we engage the autopilot it quickly proves it is still on the fritz .  As soon as we switch it on the plane initiates a steep climb and wants to do its own aerobatic sequence . . . . Yikes that's not good . . . Switch it off . . . Electric trim is also doing what ever it wants now . . . . OK that's enough of that .

We did get the Garmin to talk to the I-pad so we have real time image on the approach plates as we set up to do a practice approach into runway 11 .

 

This is what it looks like once we are on short final and initiate the missed approach .

 

And as we turn downwind for runway 18 over Portland

and turning base to final for landing on runway 18

Just a short figure eight around the patch .

Building a Gantry crane

 This week's mission was to get 400 lbs of thickness planer into a basement workshop .

After a run to the lumberyard we started making sawdust

Took most of the morning to build a pair of these

 

and one of these .  .  .

Rolled the planer in place in front of the basement bulkhead and assembled our home built gantry crane

After a quick run to the hardware store for some shackles . . .

The Chineseum chain hoist from Harbor-Fright picks up the weight nicely. . .

and delivers it . . .

. . .  nicely onto its base at floor level in the cellar .

One happy customer

And other than today's very sore back , no major blood letting injuries .

Now about those swamp rats in DC . . . We built this rig so it is modular and highly portable . It can be set up and broken down in a matter of about five minutes in any public square .

Moving Rocks

 In this week's fascinating episode on how to wreck the human body . . . . granite stair treads .

August last year I removed mom's front steps in preparation for rebuilding the driveway .

The photo does not show it well , but after forty years the granite slabs had tilted and sunk due to the weight of the right hand side wall sitting on them and they were no longer level . They were so out of kilter that they collected ponds of water and ice in the corners which made them unusable in winter . The elevation of the driveway would be changing anyhow so they needed to be reset and leveled to the new grade. I got estimates for the work that ran over ten thousand dollars . 

Nope , that's not happening while I am around here .

Having consulted with Mr Google I calculated the weight on those slabs to be about six hundred and fifty pounds each , and the rating on that glorified pooper-scooper bucket was about seven hundred pounds when it was new . No telling what it is now seventy years after it left the factory . As there was no way to really pick up the granite slabs with the bucket and still have traction on the rear wheels , I lifted them with my Home Built Skidder Post on the three point hitch . 

The contractor got to us in October last year and dug up the muddy old driveway down about a foot and laid in a liner and new crushed rock .

And beautifully pitched and compacted new gravel . 

And we let it be for a year . 

Then in early September this year the pavers showed up .

And put in the nice hot top pavement . 

 

Beautiful smooth bitumen .

 

We no longer need to go four-wheeling to make it around that bend .

 

 

I can relate to that cat .

 

So last week while we enjoyed a spell of Indian Summer it was my turn to put my best "ugly stripper"  back into it . I went up to Mom's on Tuesday just hoping to shovel out the soil enough while it was still soft and dry and then wait for freeze-up to lay the granite back in place .
 

 

 But I got inspired and figured I'd try my new Flea-bay chineseum $98 forklift tines and see if I could even pick up the slabs .

 

And with the hydraulic oil in the system still relatively cold and the barrel full of rocks in the back as a counterweight , I actually had enough traction to pick up those six hundred and fifty pound granite slabs.

 

And after about two hours of digging dirt and levering the slabs , I had two of them in place . . . 

Three was  a charm .  The fourth one . . . not so much .  Took about five hours work to get this far .

That fourth slab had a big belly on the underside and was considerably heavier than the first three . The worn out and by now hot hydraulics on the tractor had all they could do to lift it six inches off the ground . It's three thirty pm and I'm beat anyhow , how about I call it good for today . I'll sleep on this one and see what I can do about it in the morning .

 

 

Wednesday morning with fresh eyes I figured I got to make it lighter somehow . So after some levering with the six foot bar to stand it up on edge  I set about trying my hand at being Michelangelo . 

Got several decent sized flakes off it and got a larger one started . . . . a minor gain .

Working the seam

So satisfying after beating on it for an hour to see it finally start to give . 

 

Aha . I'll beat you yet you bastard . That had to be fifty pounds right there . See that nice curved shelf there ? I worked that one with the chisel and maul for another forty minutes . . .

 

Got ya now . . . That had to be at least a hundred pounds in one flake . 

I probably took two hundred pounds off it by now .

With the still relatively cold hydraulics , the tractor made easy work of lifting it four feet up this time . 

 

Between getting them in place and actually having them level where I wanted , there was a lot of huffing and puffing levering with the six foot breaker-bar to dig out under them and shim in other places that never made it on camera . 

 

And the last one goes in place .

 

OK its two pm and I have not had lunch yet .  If I could only have one more slab it would get me to the level of the wooden landing . 

While chuffing down a sandwich I contemplate my handiwork . Look at that corner of the wall !  Between the chipmunks tunneling , and last winter's ice it's collapsing on us . Best to do something about that now or we'll soon have a mess on the new pavement .

 

Honestly I was going to leave that wall for the spring . . . but if I could only reset these three rocks . . .

Two hours later . . . not bad for a hack if I do say so myself .  The other corner of the retaining wall also needs a bit of mending but it can wait till next spring . The wooden stairs are in bad shape and need to be replaced , so I'll see what I can do to make it all an even run at that point too . But that's enough for this season . I really did not think I'd get this job done this year at all .