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.

Gedore Tools

Mr G found a neat cantilever toolbox by the side of the road .

http://progress-is-fine.blogspot.com/2020/08/expanding-toolbox-find.html

As soon as I saw it , I recognized the distinctive blue German made Gedore brand , as we have had the two tray version for over fifty years .  All Gedore tool boxes and tool cases were once finished in that distinctive light metallic blue . The tool box is still up at mom's full of old bolts and nuts , so I don't have it at hand right now to take a photo .

But here is the matching socket set that came with it .

 Dad acquired both when we lived in Caracas circa 1973

Addendum... 9/8/2020

Got up to mom's last week and got some pics of the toolbox 

Serves as a catchall for old hardware

 

 

Pimping up the Volvo shed .

Friday morning I scored some salvaged rough cut hemlock barn boards we had set aside from a remodel project I had done for a neighbor a couple years ago . And it was just what I needed to dress up the Volvo shed .

Made for a fun Friday afternoon project .

 A couple years back when I enclosed my wood shed to keep the old Volvo out of the weather I used some salvaged glass doors from another project , but quickly found they let in way too much sunshine . So I have always had to cover the glass with something to keep the sun from burning up the paint on the car .

There that's much better and softens the harsh look a bit too .

Got it done just in time cause on Saturday morning the weather turned foul again .

Glass doors are still there to keep the weather out , but the bulk of the sunshine has been blocked .

Hobo Barrel Cooking

Well old Glenn Filthie-cus was going on the other day about him and his fun-employed friends up in the People's Republik of Canukiestan , hanging out around the burn barrel chugging Thunderbird and hating on all the libtards , and since he did not invite me to the party I figured I had to come up my own hobo barrel .

 

 But not being satisfied with the classic open top bum rig I had to mix it up a little bit

I'll spare you the details , but all I did was cut off the lower third of the barrel at the middle of the roll ridge with my angle grinder .  By cutting it at the middle of the ridge , the lid can be fitted tightly on the cut , so we end up with about a twelve inch high barrel with top and bottom . Then I cut in a door and attached it with a scrap piece of piano hinge and some rivets . The whole thing is sitting on top of the remainder of the barrel with an old concrete propane bottle pad as a base .

It needs some sort of chimney so an empty Coleman propane fuel cylinder . . .

. . . pop riveted onto the bent up tabs of a 4 inch pie cut hole in the lid does the job .

There ya go , something like that

A couple lengths of scrap four inch flu pipe fit right over it real slick

Made a sliding door latch out of an old bench grinder rest I found in my scrap iron bin .

Load it up with some winter dead fall from the maple trees in the back yard , touch it off and smoke out the neighbors .

Took about five minutes to heat up enough to burn clean .

Here's the proof on Oy-tube for all to see . Took about 8 minutes to boil a gallon of water in that old wok .

There, our new out-door TV and Filthie can keep his rot-gut Thunderbird wine .

Load it up with some real wood and build up some coals

Just in the right place to keep an eye on it from the kitchen window while . . . .

. . .  I load up the dutch oven with some fixings for supper

Pop the lid off the rig , move the coals aside and set the dutch oven in the hobo barrel .

Pile some coals on top and let her rip for about an hour .

I did put the lid back on the barrel to keep the heat in as the coals burned down .

Behold the masterpiece .

Rake up the coals and chuck a few more sticks on it after supper .