Putting the final piece of tin on the roof sort of feels like the last
piece of a marathon jig saw puzzle.
We recently upgraded the
WaldenEffect blog camera from the Fuji
Finepix S1000fd to a
beefier Canon Power
Shot SX20. I can already
tell a difference, but will wait for more experimentation before I give
a full report on how awesome it is.
Roland made a good safety point on my post yesterday that sent me back 25 years to Mr Beaver's woodshop class in
High School. Yes...that was his real name.
The Pro-Tech
10" bench saw was a
hand-me-down and already had the splitter removed. I think I've got it in the barn somewhere.
I decided to take Roland's
advice and look into what it might take to replace the splitter, which
is a piece of metal that prevents the cut wood from drifting back to
the blade.
The above picture is from The
Woodshop.com, a great
website that has encountered this problem due to the original
splitter/guard being too flimsy. They came up with a strudy do it
yourself version that looks easy to replicate. The guard only functions
to prevent scraps from being dropped onto the blade, but the splitter
seems like it should work better than the original.
This 10 inch Pro-Tech bench saw has made some of the really hard cuts
for our latest building project a breeze.
I would say it's a must have
if you want to get clean and crisp cuts without wearing out your arms
using a hand saw.
You can use a reciprocating saw
to do most of these applications with a lot less accuracy and neatness.
Once you get a taste of the table saw you'll feel like you can't live
without one if you want to make the occasional building project
painless and fun.
Have you ever wondered how far out your pet roams during the day and at
night?
Thanks to a cat named Mr Lee it is
now possible to track your animal on a plug and play level.
The low end gizmo records up
to 30 hours of prowling and needs to be downloaded via USB cable. 44
dollars.
The high end version transmits live data through GMS cel phone
technology.
125 dollars.
Both interface with Google
maps and claim to be easy to use.
I could see this being handy
for goats and sheep or just about any level of livestock bigger than a
chicken.
It would be interesting to
see where Lucy spends her time, but I predict Huckleberry's map would
only consist of him going from the couch to the chair to his basket
with multiple trips to his food dish.
The BFR
Mulch guy called this
morning saying he could only deliver us 6 scoops of
compost instead of the 9
that was mentioned last week due to the dump mechanism not being able
to handle the extra weight.
I was thinking it was still a
good deal that would save me from making 3 round trips to Norton. Add
the travel time with the time to unload each load and it equals up to
somewhere over a day's worth of labor. The delivery charge was going to
be 75 dollars.
I was very clear on the phone
that I needed them to cross a creek and requested the 4 wheel drive
Mitsubishi Fuso dump truck by name.
They made it as far as our
ford when they had to
stop and give up. It seems like someone decided to add a snow plow
attachment that shrinks the clearance down to a paltry 8 or 10 inchs!
I can see how they would want
to take advantage of this 4 wheel drive beast in the winter by pushing
snow, but why not install it so that you could unbolt it for the
summer? It was welded on and the only obstacle to getting the load back
to our garden.
I almost had them dump the
load out by our parking area, but decided that would be even more work
loading back on the truck and then unloading it at the garden.
The driver was a nice guy and
apologetic about the handicapped truck.
"I guess most people don't
live this far back in the woods anymore these days?" I asked the guy
while we puzzled over the problem at the creek.
I felt bad about sending him
back with the full load, but even felt worse over the wasted morning
with nothing to show for it. This still seems to be a good option for
mulch and compost delivery, just don't expect them to go up any sort of
hill or over a big bump.
When we first started off
clearing away the driveway we were using a very small pruning chainsaw
because we didn't know any better and funds were limited.
We finally realized the
limitations and decided to splurge for a bigger saw. We found a good
deal on a much bigger chainsaw through E-bay, and used it to finish
clearing the path.
It's a Stihl 039, or what they call a 390 these
days. A fine machine, but after it's all said and done I think we would
have been better off with a smaller one. It gets real heavy real fast,
especially after you've been cutting for a while.
It was easy to move the laser
dot to a desired location with just 2 adjustment screws.
The hard part will be
learning how to work within the limitations of the laser. I can already
tell you need to be lined up pretty straight otherwise the laser tends
to drift the further you tilt the angle up or down. There's also an 8mm
difference in the point of impact at 20 yards when you switch from
green to red, with the difference increasing as you increase the
distance. I think that can be solved by just using the green all the
time.
With a little practice I
think this laser aid can help to improve our accuracy under certain
conditions, but I think we should also be ready to take a shot without
the laser when the angle needs to be tilted beyond its range of
effective use.
The handle is obviously made
to tuck into another bucket to prevent stickage.
I need to take more time and
listen to my tools more often...I wonder what other obvious secrets
will be imparted my way if I can just listen a little harder?
The next error was to use a
drinking container spigot as a drain valve. It needs to be bigger with
the ability to be turned on and left on as opposed to the push button
mechansim of the spigot.
The good news is that the
worms did great! Which goes to show you how easy it is to grow your own
worms. Once the kinks are worked out I think this garden cart will make
a fine over sized worm bin. One that will provide buckets and buckets
of compost tea in the future.
When we first moved to the farm here one of the chores was to haul
water from the creek in 5 gallon buckets to a small raised bed of baby
apple trees.
This
was before we were living here full time and pre-electricity. I
remember trying to run a small pump off the power of the truck in
desperation. This produced a small trickle and seemed to strain the
engine to the point where I figured it wasn't worth the risk of blowing
a fuse or worse.
Pictured here is the Q-Drum,
invented by Hans Hendrikse in 1996. It can carry 20 gallons with ease
thanks to the rolling nature of it's design. From what I can gather
it's only available in South Africa and cost around 500 Rands. This
invention might have been enough to hydrate those poor little apple
trees. The unusaully dry summer was a problem, but the real mistake was
not mulching. A couple of Q-Drums might have saved the day.
I've often tried to imagine what would be the ultimate water storage
container for a possible future where energy is scarce. This might be
it.
I wonder how much it would
take to make the inner walls glass or copper?
When we first got our used tiller
it worked fine for the first season, but when I went to get it going
the next year it wouldn't seem to start, so I used a couple squirts of
Starting Fluid spray and off it went. I only did this a few times, but
that was enough to get our innocent Statesman tiller addicted to Ether,
which is the main ingredient in this wicked spray. Now it won't start
without this high end boost.
Don't get me wrong...in the
hands of a qualified expert a short spray of Starting Fluid can be used
to safely troubleshoot several specific problems.
The trouble happens when a
back yard mechanic like myself was never told in Health class how
repeated use of Starting Fluid begins to wear off the oil that usually
coats the inner walls of each cylinder, which leads to accelerated wear
on the rings, piston, and the cylinder itself. This creates a decrease
in compression and explains the increased difficulty in starting.
Is there any kind of rehab
center I can send my tiller to? I would assume a complete engine
rebuild would be in order to get the compression back where it once
was. Maybe one of those expensive oil additives might rejuvinate
things back to normal? It's been a couple of years since I've had to
till up new ground due to our no-till
method of growing and the
tiller repair is way at the bottom of the "fix me now" list.
After much trial and error
I've concluded that the water we
pump from the creek is
too rich in particles for these little screen filters to handle.
Anna started experimenting
with deleting the filters back in the spring. So far the results
suggest we don't need them for this application. I suspect the high
pressure is enough to push any stray particles out through the
sprinkler nozzle.
Tuesday rolled around and I
made a big mistake by topping it off with some old gas. I thought the
fuel was fine due to just using some in the lawnmower, but I guess this
generator is more sensitive.
My first solution was limited
by our local hardware store and the Dollar shop. They only had STP and
Gumout, which I think is the same thing. I added both with very little
results to show for it. It would start up...but putter and stall due to
what I assume was the bad gas or water in there somewhere? My second
mistake was not deleting as much of the old gas as I could before
adding the supplements. The next round of repairs
involved a longer trip where one can find a proper auto parts store. I
went right for the Seafoam and after a short consult with
one of the clerks was off to the gas station for some premium grade
petrol.
Dumping out the old gas and
adding the Seafoam helped, but it continued to putter and eventually
stalled due to what I'm guessing is some sort of blockage. I think it's
going to take running it a while for it to smooth out.
Luckily the electric guy
showed up with a chainsaw and a smile and cut down the offending tree
that was hanging on one of our power lines. It was touch and go for a
while as I watched the line hold the entire weight of the tree and
finally allow it to fall without breaking. I let out a loud
enough cheer so he could hear me and we had power restored within the
hour.
Yes, It's one of the few
tools I still have from my copier repair days of the 1990s.
The handle is hollow and can
be used to store spare bits, but what I like most is the magnetic tip
and long reach. The additional leverage combined with the ratcheting
feature make this screwdriver in my opinion the best money can buy.
It's got a steep price of 67
bucks, but somehow I justified it by using it 5 days a week as the main
tool that began each copier operation.Could I have gotten by with a
cheaper one? Sure, but one stripped screw in a hard to reach place can
really ruin your day and once I started applying the added leverage the
days of stripped screws were long gone.
I've decided these plastic hose repair kits are better than the metal
ones.
It's easier to install, and
most importantly won't snag on every other thing that comes by.
I know the metal might stand
the test of time better, but this is some hard plastic, and I'll do
almost anything to prevent any more entanglement with the mower.
The
Jackson Titanium Xtra is hands down the best shovel I've ever moved
dirt with.
The soft rubberized grip makes it easy to hold, but what sold me was
the power step feature, which increases leverage by allowing your foot
and legs to do more of the work.
It costs over twice what a cheaper shovel goes for, but well worth it
in my opinion.
I was all set to get a
Craftsman 24 inch pry bar/flywheel remover when I found this one for
only 4.99
at Harbor Freight.
Usually the Craftsman no
questions lifetime warranty is enough to push me into spending more for
a tool, but in this case I think I'll be okay with the cheaper
model....especially when it also has a lifetime warranty at a third of
the price.
It says Pittsburgh, but it's
made in Taiwan and it feels heavy duty.Stay tuned to see how it handles
some real world pressure when I replace my first flywheel
shaft key in hopefully what will be far in the future.
I only made it 2 weeks before
I hit another fatal stump with the mower which took out the new
flywheel shaft key that
was installed recently.
This time I used a different
guy who was a lot closer and 3 bucks cheaper. I was all ready with a
long screw driver/pry bar and mini-sledge to try to do the operation
myself, but once I started taking it all apart I realized the first guy
tightened down some of the nuts too tight. I remember him using an air
wrench, and not seeing a torque wrench being applied. Most experts
think they can gauge it by feel, but this nut was on so tight I broke
2 sockets trying to get it off.
The moral of this story is to
make sure your nuts don't get over tightened.
Yes...the Trake is one of
those garden instruments that when backed up with a twin can become
twice the tool if you've got the extra hands to wield them.
When we first started this irrigation
project the budget was a bit limited.
I'm sure it breaks every law
of proper electric wiring, but sometimes you've got to do what you've
got to do.
It's basically four 100 foot extension cords cobbled together and wired
so each pole is carrying 110 volts. I'm pretty sure this is close to
the maximum distance you should think about stretching these cords.
Electrical tape works well for sealing up the junctions where each cord
is plugged into.
We're going on the third year
of this setup. There was a problem in the
beginning with the pump connections, but I solved that by figuring out
how to make the contact points waterproof.
If you feel like you're
testing the limits of safety try picking up the
cord in question to see if it's giving off much heat while you have
your pump working. It's this heat
that can be dangerous and must be dealt with by making the distance
shorter or the electrical cord thicker.
When we first started using
the large
well pump to supply water to the irrigation sprinklers I was timid
about how long it should be used at one time.
I was concerned that too much
continued pumping might damage the motor, but little by little we kept
using it for longer episodes. Now it's not uncommon to see them going
for hours at a time.
Every now and then a
sprinkler head will get clogged with some creek debris, but it only
takes a minute to unscrew the hose and remove any offending algae or
sand.
What's most challenging is
getting 220 volts from the trailer to the creek. More on that in part 2
of this creek pumping series.
If you had chickens 100 years
ago in America you would've most likely used a hand cranked corn sheller every day to keep your flock fed.
Thanks to Global Cycle Solutions
now you can give your hand a rest and get all your corn shelling done
with pedal power.
The device can be unattatched
so you can operate the bike for transportation or hook up another
clever gadget to charge your mobile phone or flashlight or whatever
else you can imagine that needs a little power.
The cost is 60 dollars plus shipping which seems like a bargain.
My brother in-law was smart
enough to buy a Little Giant
type ladder years ago and I'm glad he did. It helped this small home
improvement project be a bit safer and smoother than a neighbor's older
ladder which wasn't quite long enough. I've always thought the old
standard extension ladder was overdue for a make over and this is one
of those times when the engineers got it right.
You can find them in a wide
variety of sizes and shapes. The big plus is how compact this thing
folds down to.
Harold Ray Wing discovered
the first prototype in Germany back in the 1970s. He came back home to
Utah, got a U.S. patent, started building them in his garage and
selling them at trade shows and the rest is what they call ladder
history.
Photo credit goes to Maggie Hess for
capturing this Little Giant Chinese knockoff in all its long and sturdy
glory.I wonder how
much of a percentage Harold got from this big box store deal as the
original patent holder?
Working on a tip I got from
the local hardware store last week I went out this morning in search of
the Flywheel Wizard. I was not only lucky enough to see him without an
appointment but was able to record the short sequence of events that
needs to transpire before the flywheel will finally yield its secrets.
It was a father and son team,
and I asked them about flywheel puller tools. It seems they both agree
that a special tool is needed if you're an amateur, but if you perform
each step with care the old pry bar and hammer trick
will work without doing any damage.
What you need is:
long, hard
screwdriver/prybar. (20 dollars)
heavy mini sledge
hammer. (20
dollars)
replacement flywheel
nut.(?)
someone to help apply
pressure to opposite side.
flywheel shaft key
The flywheel nut should be positioned at the very top of the flywheel shaft so it will receive the
brunt of the hammer pounding which helps to protect the flywheel shaft
threads.
What you don't see in the
short video is the flywheel nut being replaced due to something going
wrong. I suspect he should have had his Dad pulling since the first
hammer hit.
The Wizard only charged 18
bucks and had me on my way within minutes.
He reports the wood
breaking before the flywheel came free, which is a bummer. The way he
finally solved the problem was to take it to a local shop where they
used the crude but effective hammer and screwdriver approach to pop it
off.
I'm starting to wonder if
anybody out there uses these flywheel puller tools for the basic small
to medium lawn mower engine?
Each bag of
insulators comes
with enough nails, but I prefer using drywall screws because it makes
adjustments easier after you've got it all together.
I think we've finally found a product that will help Lucy figure out
that she's not allowed to steal food scraps from the chicken pasture.
Just minutes after the new
chick made it back to mamma Lucy went sniffing around the fresh
chick trail. It didn't take her long to follow it to the chicken
pasture. I just happen to be watching when she got too close to the Zereba K9 lawn and garden
electric fence controller. The backward leap she made seemed to
break a few laws of doggie physics.
It's easy to set up. Just wrap each end of the perimeter wire onto the
wing nut at the bottom. It uses something called direct discharge
technology which eliminates the need for a grounding rod. With a
maximum range of 1500 feet the K9
electric charger makes an excellent solution to keeping unwanted
pets out of sensitive areas. Expect to pay about 25 bucks for the unit
and maybe another 20 to 200 depending on how long of a perimeter you're
protecting and the quality and quantity of the fence posts used.
The
drink dispenser I salvaged the spigot from for the garden
cart worm bin is now doing duty as a waterproof enclosure for the
new K9 electric fence charger.
These units somehow get their
grounding from the electric line, which is a change from other chargers.
It took less than an hour to
scrounge around for the parts and put it all together. The spigot was salvaged from
a thrift store drink dispenser. (Thanks
Mom)
I used a couple of 2x2's cut
to 30.5 inches for the bottom support and modified a portion of the willow wall to function as the floor. A small
gap at the bottom helps to prevent the spigot from clogging and worms
from drowning in their own tea.
Being on heavy wheels makes
it easy to manuever and tilt for the most effecient drainage
How dare you talk about extreme
wheelbarrows without mentioning the Honda HP450 power carrier!
Norman, Phoenix Arizona
I stand corrected.
Norman is right, this Honda HP450 is one tough cookie.
I wonder if you could modify
it to accept some sort of seat where you could sit and steer the thing
to your jobsite, get out and put the seat aside till the work gets
done, and then drive it back to the truck?
Photo credit goes to the good
folks at IMBA for this great shot of the HP450 in action during a
trail building day.
After almost 3 weeks of
waiting, the new Briggs
and Stratton flywheel puller arrived in the mail and today was
the day to put it into action.
I was planning on having
pictures of the operation and maybe a short video, but all that went
out the window when I realized my mistake in ordering the wrong
flywheel puller.
At least I know which one we
don't need. Hopefully with a bit more homework I can determine exactly
which flywheel puller is needed for this particular Craftsman.
How do large logs get moved
on a remote log cabin construction site that has no power or heavy
machinary?
Gas powered winch of course.
The one on the right will cost you about 800 bucks and hooks up to most
chainsaws. The bigger one comes with it's own engine and will run you
over 1300 dollars.
A good equipment rental store
might rent these out for around 50 bucks a day, which would be well
worth it if you're trying to carve out a log cabin structure in the
middle of nowhere.
That style of building would
qualify as extreme homesteading in most people's book.
Sometimes an old fashioned
shovel beats out a fancy roto tiller.
Big, thick, Poke root extraction is a task that
needs someone to invent a solution for in the form of a tiller like
machine. Maybe it will somehow use a small, flexible auger to chase
down and grind up any unwanted roots within a 4 foot deep perimeter?
Hopefully it'll be easier
to start up than our tiller was last year.
I placed another section of
2x2 on the other side with a pilot hole only half drilled to give the
new screws something to bite onto without splitting anyone's grain.
I was waiting in line today
at Tractor Supply with a 50 pound bag of chick feed on
my shoulder when I noticed for the first time how they sell disposable
hand warmers that last 10 hours. That got me to thinking about how much
heat might be captured from something like that with a 5 gallon bucket
covering it?
We don't need that level of
protection tonight, but it might come in handy if a sudden ice age
reared its cold shoulders.
I guess the only way to know
would be to test and measure the temperature, but it might work as a
last ditch effort to save an outdoor plant if it got more than 10
degrees lower than freezing.
We used a U-Haul car trailer
to tow the new parts Festiva from South Carolina to home this past
weekend. (Thanks, Errol.)
The rental price was just
over 80 bucks, and I'm happy to report on how smooth the whole
operation went even on the large North Carolina hills.
If I ever do it again I'll
insist on being the one to ratchet down the front wheel straps. The guy
who did ours was in a rush and bunched up part of the fabric causing a
small delay in unhooking everything when we got home.
The new goat gloves
are breaking in better than the competition.
I suspect the smooth molding process is thanks to the elastic like
black fabric between each finger.
Big
thanks to Vester for pointing me in the flywheel key direction in the
comments section of yesterday's post.
I had to replace the
blade twice last summer, and it stands to reason that the flywheel
key is now the problem with the uneven timing and toughness to start.
Here's a good 5 minute video
on exactly how to replace this part, but in the comments section of
the video someone pointed out how the guy used a hammer and a large
screw driver to get the flywheel off, which can result in damage to the
flywheel if you're not careful.
The fear of fly wheel damage prompted me to order a special
flywheel puller tool which is pictured above. This type works on most
of the Briggs and Stratton flywheels, but you'll need to check your
engine number to see if it's a proper match.
The lesson for today is to
check out the comments. You might just learn something new about the
wonderful world of small engine repair.
Our new Craftsman lawnmower is a lot easier to work on than
its older cousins.
It only took a bit over an
hour to take it apart, clean the points, and put it all back
together with no parts left over.
It's still a little rough to
start, which I suspect is due to a slight warp in the blade. These
blades have a more complex twist to them so they can work as a mulcher
and throw the grass cuttings back towards the bag. It's this complexity
that seems to make it more sensitive than most mowers and I would have
to say gives it a disadvantage for folks like us who have the
occasional stump to work around.
Of course this problem should
work itself through as we continue to delete the stumps and level out
the mowing area.
One detail to note is the
placement of an Avian Aqua
Miser in respect to new chicks.
I started off with one in
each corner on the starboard side of the box. The height turned out to
be a problem when all 24 chicks decided to crowd into that corner
during a brief
fire episode. The chicks
who were bunched up close to the nipple were activating the valve and
dumping water on themselves and their immediate neighbors. I'm no
expert, but wet chicks on a cold night sounds a bit too close to a
country western song for my comfort level.
The lesson is to avoid corner
placements of your automatic
chicken waterer for the first couple of weeks. After that you
should be able to raise the waterer to avoid any such issues in the
future.
These new goat gloves claim
to be 67 percent better than cow leather, which will be worth the
additional 50 percent to the price if they actually last that much
longer.
The design and construction
indicate an improvement, but time will tell if a goat really is
tougher than a cow.
The bigest downside to using 5
gallon buckets for
hauling mulch is when two buckets get stuck together.
One easy way to avoid this is
to carry a bundle of twigs to use as spacers.
I can remember being on a
construction job site and needing to separate two buckets that were
hopelessly married to each other. A co-worker held one end while I
pulled on the other. After about 5 minutes of struggle we decided to
stop trying to recreate a scene from the 3 stooges and threw the
buckets in a dumpster.
Today I discovered that 7
buckets of manure in the back with 3 buckets riding shotgun and 2
buckets of gravel on the floor board is about the load limit for the
new home
made golf cart dump box.
I can't believe it took us
this long to make such an obvious improvement in carrying capacity.
This short video provides an
accurate yet boring picture of how the
rental chipper cuts a rug.
Our share ended up being 1/3
of the weekend time which worked out to be
65 dollars.
It was a great opportunity
that would not have been possible without
our neighbors' suggestion of sharing the time and the aid of their
tractor to pull the thing all the way back here. Well worth waking up
early tomorrow morning to drive it back to it's home in the big city.
I imagine this might be the
closest thing we have to participating in
an old fashioned barn raising which is too bad because this neighborly
cooperation thing is a pretty darn good feeling at the end of the day.
I got this cedar tree notched
and ready to come down when a feeling came over me that it might
still fall the other way, which would take down one of the power lines
and leave us in the dark.
Nothing our little 4
ton hand winch can't
handle. We just used the ladder to secure a cable high up on the tree
in question, secured the other end to another tree and cranked it in a
way that left it no choice but to fall away from the electricity.
I upgraded the beer can from last
year's wax melting kit
with this bigger and stronger tin can. I also improved the heating
process by using a hot water bath as seen in the photo. This allowed
for much better control and a safer place to rest the can while we
drilled the next round of holes for the new oyster mushroom logs.
The
couple that works together, stays together...or pitches a huge hissy
fit and gets a divorce. Mark and I don't celebrate Valentine's
Day, but we do spend every day living in each others' pockets, usually
very amicably. In fact, one of my favorite parts of the day is
the time I spend working on a project with Mark.
Even though I grew up
with a handy father, I somehow missed most of the lessons on basic
tool-use. So Mark has taught me how to use a power drill, a miter
saw, and so forth. Monday, I was putting up the last bit of wall
paneling, this time around the newly re-wired electric outlets.
How, I wondered, does one cut a small rectangle out of a piece of
plywood with a jig saw? I know this is old hat
to those of you who dabble (or work) in construction, but I found this
technique elegant and captivating. First, Mark used a drill to
start a hole in the plywood. Then he cut along the line, curving
around each corner so that he could keep cutting until an oval section
fell out. Third, he went back and cut the corners out --- the
pictures hopefully make this process clearer than my description.
It's always a good day when I learn something new!
We forgot to use a level when
we were setting up the outer door frame of the storage
building and because of
that a small gap needed to be added towards the top to level it out.
We ended up with several small gaps
once everything went together with the salvaged wood for the storage
building project. I was a
little apprehensive about using liquid
nails yesterday because I
knew it was predicted to get colder today, but it looks to be setting
up just fine.
Note to any future
homesteading men out there. If you find a woman that
will do your roofing without too much complaining then you've found a
mate. Treat her well and don't work her too hard.
This post is part of our Building a Storage Building from Scratch
series.
Read all of the entries:
Today we installed some hard wood beams from the old house on the top
of our walls to form a solid box for the storage
buiding. We decided to extend each side out by a foot to provide
some additional cover for the outer walls.
This post is part of our Building a Storage Building from Scratch
series.
Read all of the entries:
I've only just started using it, but I can already say I like it a lot.
It feels like I'm getting more splitting action for less energy input,
which is a very good thing. What I like most so far is the feeling of
increased safety. When there's not enough power to split the log
the Chopper 1 just sort of bounces as opposed to grazing off out of
control like the Super
Splitter has been known to do if your aim is a little off.
Credit goes to Anna for capturing the exact moment when the Chopper 1 is
completing a split.
Blue skies and above freezing temperatures helped us to breeze through
two and a half more wall sections of our home
made storage building project today.
This post is part of our Building a Storage Building from Scratch
series.
Read all of the entries:
The team at KMS
woodworks has made some interesting progress in bringing together a compact solar charger that can be used for several low
end power needs like a lap top. They are still in the testing stage,
but it looks like they might make them available for sale in the 300 to
350 dollar range in the not too distant future.
It would be worth that much to me if it could power our modem and both
lap tops for a few hours per day, especially during a power outage.
I really like the idea of having a portable off the grid option,
especially one that can be taken on a back pack to provide the power
for blog posts in some random ancient megalith site or more Mayan ruins.
Using this utility pump to fill a proper water container feels like a
huge improvement over last
year's 5 gallon bucket method. The biggest downside was lifting the
bucket back out once you filled it as full as you dared.
I had my 2nd flat tire of the week just as I got yesterday's fixed.
The first one was due to a sharp tree root jutting out of the frozen
ground and jabbing itself into the side wall, but today's deflation could
have been avoided if I'd had an inner tube in the tire, which it now
has.
At least we got all the 2x4s shuttled back to our storage
building project before this next storm sets in.
Cutting through difficult nails within a tight space like this is where
these reciprocating
saws really shine. The medium sized metal blade allows you to bend
it at an angle, just don't bend it too much or it will kick like a mule.
This post is part of our Building a Storage Building from Scratch
series.
Read all of the entries:
Mark, if you had to
pick a single tool to take with you to another farm
like the one you have, what would you choose?
--- Errol, South Carolina
Thanks for the question.
It didn't take me long to come up with an answer to this one. The Stihl
chainsaw would be my choice. You can get an attachment these days
that can turn any chainsaw into a heavy duty hedge trimmer, which would
be handy for clearing a new place. Firewood production would be my main motivation.
If you've got the time and talent a good chainsaw can also be used to make some impressive wood sculptures.
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