The life of bill, part 2.
Yesterday was an odd mix of productivity and frustration. Many days, my life reminds me of the old song "dear Liza".
https://youtu.be/MAfCQ-t7xY0
Except that I am both henry and Liza... And there are 5 other Henrys.
So, Trey comes to work. I want him to be working on cord-wood for next winter (It's what I always put young strong helpers doing, for reasons that must be totally obvious). This means getting the chainsaws up and running.
Chainsaws are... Persnickady, they need to be talked to in certain ways or they'll do any number of bad things ranging from merely not cutting properly to catastrophically exploding. Although that last result is rare. In this case, however, all 3 of them come up promptly and without difficulty. YAY!
The firewood is delivered by logging truck, and basically thrown into a pile, so there is some work that can be done in the pile without risk. I put trey to doing that work while I work on arranging the next operation he's going to be undertaking.
At the end of my last post, the skidsteer was left stuck. It's springtime in upstate NY, and when machines are stuck, it's often the best idea to simply leave them there until A) they are needed, or B) the ground sets up enough that they are suddenly, without effort or mess, no longer stuck. So... Yeah... Means the skid steer is stuck in the field, the ground is still toothpaste, and now we need it. I go bucket myself out (works, downside is I make a terrible mess of the ground, which will involve stone and time to fix.... later). However, upon getting the machine to the log pile, I notice that I have a flat tire... and Trey is running out of pile work. Okay, Nothing for it but to bring in the machine and pull the tire.
We're not talking about a car tire here... Well, I suppose it's not too dissimilar to the tires you sometimes see on the big 4x4s that assholes drive. Like the ones on the truck Carrie Underwood slashed in the video for "before he cheats". Generally, up to now, we've just taken them to the nearest tire shop and had him do whatever to them. However, I decide to try it, and it turns out my tire machine will do the job on them. Yay! I still have to go to the tire shop, because the inner tube is shot, but now I get 2 of them, so that I can minimize downtime next time it gets a flat. Anyway, 2 hours later, the machine is back up and running.
I instruct trey in how we move logs around, how to take the centercut plank (a decently desireable piece of lumber) out of the firewood logs on the sawmill.
Promptly, we run into every probable problem in sawmill cutting. These are firewood logs, not lumber grade. That means they are not straight, have knots, and are sometimes rotten at the core. So, why use the sawmill? Why not just split them?
Glad you asked. First, we have a use for planks. Our animal barn was actually designed as a hay-barn. It has no inner walls. That means that the sheep are prone to knocking the siding off of it. With plank interior walls, that would stop happening. Second, splitting the wood on the splitter involves handling every piece of firewood an extra 2 or 3 times, versus cutting the log into quarters on the sawmill, and then cutting those quarters to burning length while the log is still on the mill.
Anyway, while this is happening, mom is dealing with a minor crisis also. Several of the sheep are trying to die. 1 by prolapse (I would advise against googling that word, lets just say it's bad), and 4 others by unknown malady. Mom suspects Thiamine deficiency, but whatever, one's already dead.
Which brings us to the backhoe.
The backhoe serves 2 purposes in this thread. First, it's needed to bury dead animals. Second, it has external hydraulic connectors that operate the splitter. So, that's needed for 2 separate tasks soonest.
2 problems there. First, over the winter, it had a fuel delivery issue, which turned out to be a clogged screen at the carburettor. It's not like that part is available, so I worked around it by installing an inline filter immediately before the carb. That filter has been accumulating an unsettling amount of gack since then, and is downstream of another filter. So I concluded that the next time it runs empty, I would bypass the factory mechanical fuel pump with an electrical one. It's empty. So I get started on that. No major problems, and now it's running again.
The second problem with the backhoe is: Over the winter, we had a different hired man. One of the "outriggers" (kind of like a foot that you put down when using the backhoe part of the machine) has an annoying hydraulic leak. We tried to have the hired man remove said outrigger to take it to the hydraulic ram rebuilding shop. He did not succeed. He got one of the hydraulic lines off, and in the process, wrecked the threads so that it cannot be reassembled. What with one thing and another, that didn't return to the top of my list until... well, yesterday. If I have to bury several sheep, then I need to be able to operate the backhoe stably. So, there endeth yesterday.
Today, I got a new hose, and set about getting that back together. It may come as no surprise that, having wrecked the threads on the hose, the threads were also wrecked on the receptacle. so I had to go shopping for a tap. Which I found without undue difficulty. Retap the hole, install the line, and go set about digging my first mass grave.
4 corpses interred later, Trey has gone home, and I am off emergency detail! It's always nice when emergency detail ends. Kinda like when you stop hitting yourself on the head with a nightstick.
I putter around with the pressure washer I bought at the last auction. Turns out it works, so there's a win! Unfortunately, during the process, I discover that the barn water system has frozen and broken under the concrete floor. So, boo. I guess I know what Trey is doing for the next several days. :/
Anyway, tomorrow, I am hitting an auction at a former tractor repair shop, so that's cool!
https://youtu.be/MAfCQ-t7xY0
Except that I am both henry and Liza... And there are 5 other Henrys.
So, Trey comes to work. I want him to be working on cord-wood for next winter (It's what I always put young strong helpers doing, for reasons that must be totally obvious). This means getting the chainsaws up and running.
Chainsaws are... Persnickady, they need to be talked to in certain ways or they'll do any number of bad things ranging from merely not cutting properly to catastrophically exploding. Although that last result is rare. In this case, however, all 3 of them come up promptly and without difficulty. YAY!
The firewood is delivered by logging truck, and basically thrown into a pile, so there is some work that can be done in the pile without risk. I put trey to doing that work while I work on arranging the next operation he's going to be undertaking.
At the end of my last post, the skidsteer was left stuck. It's springtime in upstate NY, and when machines are stuck, it's often the best idea to simply leave them there until A) they are needed, or B) the ground sets up enough that they are suddenly, without effort or mess, no longer stuck. So... Yeah... Means the skid steer is stuck in the field, the ground is still toothpaste, and now we need it. I go bucket myself out (works, downside is I make a terrible mess of the ground, which will involve stone and time to fix.... later). However, upon getting the machine to the log pile, I notice that I have a flat tire... and Trey is running out of pile work. Okay, Nothing for it but to bring in the machine and pull the tire.
We're not talking about a car tire here... Well, I suppose it's not too dissimilar to the tires you sometimes see on the big 4x4s that assholes drive. Like the ones on the truck Carrie Underwood slashed in the video for "before he cheats". Generally, up to now, we've just taken them to the nearest tire shop and had him do whatever to them. However, I decide to try it, and it turns out my tire machine will do the job on them. Yay! I still have to go to the tire shop, because the inner tube is shot, but now I get 2 of them, so that I can minimize downtime next time it gets a flat. Anyway, 2 hours later, the machine is back up and running.
I instruct trey in how we move logs around, how to take the centercut plank (a decently desireable piece of lumber) out of the firewood logs on the sawmill.
Promptly, we run into every probable problem in sawmill cutting. These are firewood logs, not lumber grade. That means they are not straight, have knots, and are sometimes rotten at the core. So, why use the sawmill? Why not just split them?
Glad you asked. First, we have a use for planks. Our animal barn was actually designed as a hay-barn. It has no inner walls. That means that the sheep are prone to knocking the siding off of it. With plank interior walls, that would stop happening. Second, splitting the wood on the splitter involves handling every piece of firewood an extra 2 or 3 times, versus cutting the log into quarters on the sawmill, and then cutting those quarters to burning length while the log is still on the mill.
Anyway, while this is happening, mom is dealing with a minor crisis also. Several of the sheep are trying to die. 1 by prolapse (I would advise against googling that word, lets just say it's bad), and 4 others by unknown malady. Mom suspects Thiamine deficiency, but whatever, one's already dead.
Which brings us to the backhoe.
The backhoe serves 2 purposes in this thread. First, it's needed to bury dead animals. Second, it has external hydraulic connectors that operate the splitter. So, that's needed for 2 separate tasks soonest.
2 problems there. First, over the winter, it had a fuel delivery issue, which turned out to be a clogged screen at the carburettor. It's not like that part is available, so I worked around it by installing an inline filter immediately before the carb. That filter has been accumulating an unsettling amount of gack since then, and is downstream of another filter. So I concluded that the next time it runs empty, I would bypass the factory mechanical fuel pump with an electrical one. It's empty. So I get started on that. No major problems, and now it's running again.
The second problem with the backhoe is: Over the winter, we had a different hired man. One of the "outriggers" (kind of like a foot that you put down when using the backhoe part of the machine) has an annoying hydraulic leak. We tried to have the hired man remove said outrigger to take it to the hydraulic ram rebuilding shop. He did not succeed. He got one of the hydraulic lines off, and in the process, wrecked the threads so that it cannot be reassembled. What with one thing and another, that didn't return to the top of my list until... well, yesterday. If I have to bury several sheep, then I need to be able to operate the backhoe stably. So, there endeth yesterday.
Today, I got a new hose, and set about getting that back together. It may come as no surprise that, having wrecked the threads on the hose, the threads were also wrecked on the receptacle. so I had to go shopping for a tap. Which I found without undue difficulty. Retap the hole, install the line, and go set about digging my first mass grave.
4 corpses interred later, Trey has gone home, and I am off emergency detail! It's always nice when emergency detail ends. Kinda like when you stop hitting yourself on the head with a nightstick.
I putter around with the pressure washer I bought at the last auction. Turns out it works, so there's a win! Unfortunately, during the process, I discover that the barn water system has frozen and broken under the concrete floor. So, boo. I guess I know what Trey is doing for the next several days. :/
Anyway, tomorrow, I am hitting an auction at a former tractor repair shop, so that's cool!