Thursday, October 1, 2020

I accomplished amazingly little today. When I tried to mount that caster tire I found that I've become so clumsy that I kept poking holes in the new tube. After patching it five times I finally gave up and took it to the tire shop for somebody younger to deal with it. I'll pick it up tomorrow and hope to get more mowing done. I also took another photo of my "new" tire pump. I'm not fully satisfied with it, but I'm calling it good enough to use until I can do a better one. In the health department, I maintain a Body Mass Index of 18 to 19, which is at the skinny end of normal. In pounds that's a range of 140 to 150, but I keep it to 140 to 145. This morning I weighed in at exactly 140, so I could live it up and have a tasty treat tonight. I went with brussels sprouts fried in olive oil with garlic and onions. Yum.


Friday, October 2, 2020

No freezing weather yet, but last night I slept with the electric blanket turned on (only at 2). When I got up the thermometer outside the shop read 42º. Although freezing weather isn't here yet, I expect the first frost isn't far off, and a hard freeze won't be long after that. So today I drained the mowing tractor's radiator, ran it with vinegar, gave it a good flushing, and installed new antifreeze. Then I did the same with the truck. When I went to town for the vinegar and antifreeze I picked up that caster wheel with its new tire for the Dixon, installed it, and did some mowing. There's more to do, so maybe I can get some of it done tomorrow.


Saturday, October 3, 2020

Oops! I forgot to buy mayo. So what could I use for a binder when I mash up tuna to make tostadas? Butter. It works OK, and doesn't taste bad. My morning job today was straightening more magneto coil ribbons. The only mishap in that operation was when one ribbon broke and I had to solder it back together. There's another that's about an inch too short to fit my stretcher, so I'll have to make another equipment modification. I'm now about halfway through that job, and should have it done within a week. My afternoon job today was attacking more inconvenient vegetation with the clippers and Tordon. With that I didn't have time for more mowing, so I hope to get back to that tomorrow.


Sunday, October 4, 2020

The thermometer outside my shop read 40º this morning. The one outside the kitchen window said 45º, and the one on the front porch said 54º. It felt pretty chilly, so I'll go with the lower numbers. In the shop I straightened a few more mag coil ribbons. I made a run to town for silicone caulk, and did a couple of jobs with it. The first was fixing a leak where the new shop porch joins the old roof. It's been dripping inconveniently in front of the shop door during storms. The second caulk job was on the house. During storms some of the water has been dripping between the front porch roof and the gutters instead of all going into the gutters. I hope I fixed that today. While I was up there I threw down some old boards that have been lying on the porch roof since I rebuilt the upstairs walls several years ago. Most of them are rotten or badly split, and they will be firewood this winter. For my last job of the day I started preparing winter kindling. Until now I've always gone out and gathered kindling in the yard as needed. But sometimes everything outside is wet from rain or snow, so this year I plan to use kindling bags. I put enough small twigs and branches to start a fire in a paper grocery bag. When I need a fire I'll crumple some newspaper in the stove, put in a kindling bag, stack the wood on it, and light the fire. I aim to have a large box filled with kindling bags in the garage ready for action.


Monday, October 5, 2020

Today I put all other work aside and devoted my attention to straightening mag coil ribbons.  I wanted to get that job done and move on to the next part of the project.

The outlay for my straightener was under $20. I paid $5 each for the two locking pliers, and $7.77 for the square tubing. All the other parts are stuff I had on hand.

Some of the ribbons had a few rough spots that needed filing.

The final step is wire brushing to remove any little bits of old insulation that may have survived the cleaning.

All 32 ribbons straightened and ready for new insulation and rewinding into new coils.

                                                                                                              

Tuesday, October 6, 2020 Today I worked on photography. The idea was to get a background, or a set of backgrounds, for photos of objects too large for a close-up shot. Colored poster board works for small items, but it's too small for things like this Ford tire pump. So I bought cloth of various colors and tried that. Even after steam ironing, most of it wasn't quite right and one wasn't close to right. The red was best at not showing wrinkles. Blue shows off the pump OK, but the crease and wrinkles are pretty glaring too. The black shows off the pump nicely, but the crease and wrinkles are apparent there also. The green is the worst of the bunch, with the wrinkles achieving sore thumb status. Tomorrow I'll get some spray adhesive and try sticking a cloth onto a big sheet of index paper. Maybe that will keep it smooth.

Wednesday, October 7, 2020 Back to mowing. I mowed the lane to the wood lot, the south side of the road all the way east to the property line, and most of the lawn around the house. I also harvested about 3½ pounds of persimmons. I don't know if the persimmon tree is one of the original trees planted 150 or so years ago, but it's been there for as long as I can remember.  In the 35 years I've lived here I've never used any fruit off the tree, but I've decided this year I'll try a pie. If it turns out OK I can make another one, as there's a lot more fruit left on the tree.

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Wasted motion? The other day my mowing tractor got boiling, steam-spewing, furiously hot. So I cleaned out the radiator with vinegar and a flush and installed fresh antifreeze. The tractor still got boiling, steam-spewing, furiously hot. I noticed that there was a lot of chaff and dirt collected on the front of the radiator, so I got busy with a shop vac and a bit of wire and spent a couple of hours cleaning all the debris out of the passages and straightening bent fins. I started mowing again and in a few minutes the tractor got boiling, steam-spewing, furiously hot. And this time it died. So now it's sitting dead in the yard, and when the starter turns the engine there's an alarming clanging sound inside. I suspect some kind of serious internal damage. I guess it's a good thing the mowing season will soon be over. Luckily the Dixon riding mower and the push mower still work.


Friday, October 9, 2020

Today's work-type activity was sawing up all that old scrap lumber I tossed off the porch roof last Sunday. Some of it was pretty soggy, but has dried considerably. Some of it is still damp, but it should be good and dry by the time I need to start using firewood. When I made a grocery run to town I stopped at the lumber yard and bought a few boards for a new scaffold. I need one for a couple of small shingling jobs I still need to do on the house, and then I'll apply water seal. That's supposed to be done every two years, and I'm a year late.


Saturday, October 10, 2020

First up today was gluing cloth on heavy cardboard to make a photographic background. It's better than what I did before, but still needs work. I spent most of the day multitasking, or I should say bi-tasking. One task was scanning slides, and the other was building that new scaffold. I'm scanning the slides in a large screen-filling size, so each one takes several minutes. While each slide was scanning I would go work on  the scaffold, then  come back in a few minutes to start the next slide. When my usual 5 PM quitting time arrived I had the platform part of the scaffold almost finished, so I went in and put dinner on the stove to cook, then came back and finished up in about ten minutes. Next will be making the legs and braces.

Taking a rest with one scaffold top frame and two new sawhorses done.

Sunday, October 11, 2020 The plan was to make legs and braces for the scaffold today. But my old sawhorses were falling apart, so I spent most of the day making a couple of new ones. The old ones are in such bad shape they will be firewood this winter.  I'll get back to the scaffold project tomorrow. Monday, October 12, 2020 And so I did. Except for a half-hour run to town for nuts, bolts, and washers, I worked on it all day. I expect to finish it up tomorrow. Why is it taking so long? Because I'm not just making it up as I go along and nailing boards together. This time I'm being more careful with the design and making it to bolt together so I can take it down and store it out of the weather between uses. The scaffold I used when I rebuilt the upstairs west wall of the house sat in the weather for several years and this spring was in such bad shape that I dismantled it and cut it up for firewood. This new one should be the last I need to make, and I'm designing the legs to be adjustable for different heights. Tuesday, October 13, 2020 Done. I finished the scaffold a little before 2 PM and went to town for groceries, medicine, and other supplies. When I got home and put away the goods, I moved the scaffold around to the east side of the house and set it in place ready to go to work tomorrow. I made it light enough that I can easily roll it around on a dolly. It's too unwieldy to carry. It turned out to be just the right height for the job I have to do there, so I don't have to install the leg extensions. I'll need them later when I treat the upstairs walls with water seal. Wednesday, October 14, 2020 The township road guys came and saved me a lot of work, taking out some trees between the road and the lane to the wood lot. I had plastic bags tied to the ones I wanted to save, all red buds except one hedge tree I'm keeping for lumber. The lane lined with booming red buds will be a pretty April display. I got up on my new scaffold and got to work on the house. This is a job that wasn't done when  I mostly finished the outside of the house  a few years ago, shingling the wall above the east living room windows.

Thursday, October 15, 2020

Today I began shingling that east wall. It's remarkable how little I got done. Part of that is on account of two trips to town. The first was for a tube of caulk and a new caulk gun to replace the one that no longer works. The second was for the last three tubes of caulk in the store. This job is taking a lot more than I expected, and I'll have to drive to Winfield if I run out again. The other reason I got so little done is that cutting shingles to fit one at a time is just plain slow work.


Friday, October 16, 2020

It was another day of bi-tasking. I did laundry and nailed up shingles. I finished the laundry but not the shingling. By quitting time I had about the first third of the wall shingled. I have a little more to do on that, then I'll move the scaffold over and start on the middle third. Will I finish that tomorrow, and the last third Sunday? We'll see.


Saturday, October 17, 2020

Nope. I didn't get to nail up one shingle on that second section. Finishing up the first third didn't take long at all, less than an hour. I moved the scaffold over to the middle third, pulled down the few remaining dead vines, and cleaned up. That means removing loose broken mortar and vacuuming off all the dirt and spider webs. There was  a gap I had to cover with aluminum flashing, then I could caulk. That's where progress ended. I used up the last of the caulk I had on hand and needed more. Since I had bought the last three tubes at the local store, I drove to the Walmart in Winfield where I often buy things I can't get locally. And there was not one tube. I bought a tarp large enough to cover the scaffold with all the tools on it, as the forecast showed a good chance of rain in the morning, and came home and covered up. After dinner I phoned the Walmart in Ponca City and was told yes, they had the caulk I wanted. The guy I reached was at the service desk and couldn't go look at the shelf, but he was sure they had plenty. So I drove to the Ponca City Walmart. The guy on the phone was right. They had the caulk I wanted. One tube. Fortunately Ponca City also has a Lowe's store. There I found plenty of the right stuff. The price per tube was almost a dollar more than at Walmart, but at that point I was just glad to be able to buy the stuff at all. I ended up with five tubes, which I hope will be enough to finish the whole project. If it turns out that I need more maybe the local store will be restocked by then.


Sunday, October 18, 2020

Brrrrr... The day began with a heavy mist and by noon the thermometer had climbed to only 45º. Being a devout cold weather sissy, I spent the day indoors except when I had to go to town for groceries and medicine, and when I had to bring in firewood. Fortunately October has some warm days mixed in with the cold ones, including a couple of 80º+ coming later this week. That will let me finish my work on the outside of the house before the decent weather goes south. This evening when I lit the fire in the kitchen I moved the fan. During the summer it sits by the window to blow cooler air on me while I eat. In the winter it sits on a chair behind the stove to circulate warm air around the room. I believe one of my projects this winter will be to install a new outlet in the southeast corner of the kitchen so the fan doesn't need an extension cord when it's in its winter position.


Monday, October 19, 2020

Why wait? I decided I might as well install that new outlet in the kitchen now and not have to step over the extension cord to the fan every time I cross the room. I made a pretty good guess on where to make the hole in the wall. I cut out about a half inch of the center stud, but that's OK. The stud will be a solid anchor for the box. I was thinking I would have to run a length of Romex up from the cellar, but I may be able to hook it up to the living room outlet about a foot away. When I go to town for groceries tomorrow I'll buy the box and the outlet, and should have everything installed and working before quitting time.

Tuesday, October 20, 2020 Made it. I finished up about 4:30, leaving me time to bring in kindling and lay the evening fires before feeding the cats and chowing down about five. My original plan was to drill down into the cellar and connect the Romex into the wiring down there. But then I realized that there was another outlet in the living room, only about a foot from the one I was installing in the kitchen. So I pulled the living room outlet out of its box, drilled through the stud behind it, and ran the wire directly across to the hole in the kitchen wall. All of this was with the power turned off, of course. I used a couple of hundred foot extension cords to bring power from my shop into the house for the drill, saw, vacuum, and lights. When I went to town for an outlet and box and to stock up on groceries, I wanted to buy a couple of ice picks. Those are sometimes a handy tool for jobs other than breaking up ice. I looked at the kitchen tools at the Walmart, the hardware store, both dollar stores, and the market. How many ice picks did I find? Zero. Incredible.

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Never went off the place today. The weather warmed up enough for comfortable outside work, and I got back to my shingling project. At quitting time I had most of the first row nailed up. I expect to finish the center section tomorrow, move the scaffold, and get a start on the north section. I hope to finish by the weekend. After a warm day tomorrow, the forecast shows another cool-down, with freezing temps and maybe snow by Monday. I'm not ready.


Thursday, October 22, 2020

Well, I did finish the center section. I was done with it about 3:30, then spent most of an hour putting the tools in the house and moving the scaffold over to the north section. The ground there is uneven, and I had to install the leg extensions on the north end where the ground is lower. The last thing was putting a tarp over the scaffold to keep the predicted overnight rain off of it.


Friday, October 23, 2020

A temperature in the low forties isn't brutally cold, but a strong north wind makes it unpleasant enough to drive me indoors. When I sat down for chow at a quarter after five yesterday the thermometer outside the kitchen window said it was 84º. When I got up this morning it was 42º and I don't think it got above 45º all day. The overnight rain failed to show up. Welcome to Kansas. I got back to work on the runabout magneto project, rewinding coils. In theory that should be a simple operation, but with no experience I found it trickier than I expected. No doubt as I figure out how to do it and get some practice it will be easier and faster, but I sure didn't get much of it done today. I got the two halves of a double coil rewound, but I still have to solder the halves together and wrap the insulating tape around them. Keeping them tightly wound while doing all that is the tricky part.


Saturday, October 24, 2020

Arising late after nearly nine lovely hours of sack time, after breakfast I loaded up the car with five boxes of cans, plastic containers, and glass jars and bottles, and took them to the recycling center. The place is open only on Friday and Saturday from eight to noon, so I wanted to get it out of the way today and not have stuff pile up for another week. I spent the afternoon on kindling. During dry weather I just go out in the yard and gather it off the ground. But after a rain or a snow when everything outside is wet, I need a dry supply in the garage. So this afternoon I did what I described back on October 4, putting twigs and small branches into paper grocery bags. I ended up with a large box of them. I lost count, but there are either sixteen or twenty of them. As I will use them only during wet weather, they should last awhile.


Sunday, October 25, 2020

Got up late again and spent a typical Sunday morning fooling around on the interweb. In the afternoon I made sure I had things  outside that I wanted to keep dry moved inside, as the forecast claims we're likely to get some falling weather for the next couple of days. In the shop I got back to photography, shooting a better picture of my Ford tire pump. This one turned out much better than previous attempts. I think it's good enough to use on my website.


Monday, October 26, 2020

Winter is eight weeks away, but winter weather is here now. Snow started in the wee hours of the morning, and kept up a very little bit into the afternoon. In the end it didn't amount to more than an inch or two. I spent the day making a new page for the Model T section of the website. It includes that tire pump photo and several others.


Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Early winter entertainment in the form of an ice storm put me to work today. I had to cut up and drag away fallen branches that were blocking the drive behind the house and the path to the shop. An afternoon/evening power outage had me dining by lamp light and lasted until 10:30 PM. Pictures are here.


Wednesday, October 28, 2020

It is an aggravation to "update" software. The iMovie video editor I have used for years will not work on this new operating system, so I wasted my morning trying to find a replacement to download.  I finally gave up and used iMovie on my old laptop to edit yesterday's ice storm video. I added it to the Facebook album in yesterday's link above. Meanwhile,  rain fell most of the day and melted the ice. I think the snow, ice, and rain of the last three days will add up to a pretty good soaker.


Thursday, October 29, 2020    

It was more of a soaker than I thought. Monday's snow, Tuesday's ice, and yesterday's rain left 4.35" in the gauge. I did more clearing of fallen branches, using the chain saw on the big mulberry limbs that were sticking out into the driveway east of the shop. But when I was ready to trim some high branches with the electric pole saw it wasn't in the carport north of the shop where it belongs.   I looked everywhere that makes any sense, and came up empty. Where in the hell did I leave it? This kind of thing absolutely drives me nuts. Of course, if I take the time and trouble and spend the dough to put together another one, then I'll find it.


Friday, October 30, 2020

Still no luck finding that saw. I have absolutely no recollection of where and when I used it last. I suppose I'll find it wrecked by lying out in the weather for weeks or months. Episodes like this are absolutely maddening. When my ship comes in and I'm rolling in dough the first thing I'm going to do is hire somebody to follow me around and keep track of where I leave things.


Saturday, October 31, 2020

The old vinyl tablecloth on my kitchen table is worn out, so this morning I looked online for a replacement. Gone are the days when I could have bought it in a local store. Everything I saw was in a pattern I didn't want, was high priced, or entailed a shipping charge that would nearly double the cost. I think I may have a spare I put away when they were still sold locally. With nicer weather returned, I got back to work on shingling the east wall above the living room windows. I caulked cracks, painted eaves, nailed on felt, and started nailing on shingles. By the time I quit at 4:30 to put the tools inside and build the evening fire, I had over half the shingling done. The worrisome thing is getting down to the bottom of the shingle supply. I'm afraid I may not have enough shingles to finish the job.
  

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