Two big dings in the door thanks to the window installation.
March 15th. Final check. The glass man, while installing the glass, was kind enough to ding my door for two big paint chips. I can’t worry about it now, nobody will see it so I’ll have to get it fixed after the wedding.
Bumpers are not cleaned nor polished. Too late to do anything about it now.
I didn’t have time to wash and detail the truck after we were done. I had to go out-of-town for business so I had a friend who manages a car wash come and detail the truck for me. I asked him to just knock the dust off of the brand new paint and to detail everything else. The guy shows up and POWER WASHES the truck and doesn’t detail anything. Sigh. Nobody will see the scratches he put in the paint nor notice the bumpers have bug marks on them. Too late now to do anything about it anyway.
Sitting in the parking lot at loop road. We got a few compliments from the locals.
Last trip to Loop Road for parts to fix the few things that weren’t right. It’s time to go to a wedding!
One of the things the kids enjoy, at least for now, is to go and feed the cows vegetables and fruit. They like to hand feed the cows but their favorite thing is to stand in the back of the truck or the trailer and hurl things to the cows. It’s a big game and they are improving their aim constantly. They especially enjoy trying to kill bugs that are bothering the cows by biting them on their backs where they cannot reach. The kids are getting pretty good arms on them, and I really feel for any band that performs poorly in my kids future as I’m sure the tomatoes being hurled onstage will be accurate and forceful.
Ok, I actually had to spend a few minutes on Craigslist looking at the personals to try and figure out something witty for this. It occured to me that I have no idea what half the acronyms stand for. In looking through the personals, it also occurred tome that I’m VERY happy to be married and have a great home vs. being out on Craigslist looking for whatever is actually on there. So insert snarky joke about liking walks on the beach and slop by candlelight. I didn’t have the heart to look at the personals anymore. A farmer I am, an comedy writer, I’m not.
We received about 7 inches of rain in a short amount of time last week. I took the occasion to go down to the back pasture and see if there was any water coming onto our land. In all my years on the farm, which include multiple hurricanes, I’ve probably seen the pasture flooded 8-10 times in any way. I’ve seen it flooded till it covered the pond once, after a hurricane. I’ve never seen the water flowing like a river and I’ve never seen what we saw last week.
I was at the Wake County Agri-Business Council meeting yesterday along with about 60 other folks involved with the council. We met at Adam’s Vineyards in Willow Springs for our monthly breakfast and a tour of the vineyard. While there, I met an extension agent who learned our farm name when it was announced we had contributed pork sausage to the breakfast for everyone. He loved the name and asked if I’d seen Kung Pow before. Why no, I had not. Turns out there is a scene in the movie where the protagonist fights a dairy cow, black belt theater style.
Of course this is silly comedy. And obviously Kung Pow would have lost this fight against the actual ninja cow vs. this Hollywood stunt cow.
No update yesterday, which is a shame because we have lots to report. However computer issues are preventing an upload so I will share this quick post on this study about consumers and buying local. We will have plenty of good farming stuff coming in the next few days.
The bed is on, the wood hasn’t been started yet, and there is a huge pile of parts still in boxes.
Today we continue the series on our truck restoration. These pictures were taken on March 10th. The truck is mostly together, at least the big pieces. 5 days till the wedding. No pressure.
No interior yet. The seat belts haven’t been replaced with shoulder belts yet. At least the stereo is in.
It’s definitely getting more tuck like. The scary part is I’ve heard putting the wood in takes forever and who knows what part won’t go back on, or will break on install.
Part way through installing the floor in the truck.
Installing the planking is a two-man job. Fortunately we have a car lift so between that and having air tools it only took Miguel and I a few hours and some limited foul language.
The finished product. Beautiful.
The finished bed. It did take a while, and it was a pain, but it sure was worth it when you see the result.
Every year SWMBO takes Cotton and has her shaved down for summer. After seeing her so shaggy and furry for so long it’s always a little shocking and quite funny to see the dog underneath all the fur.
Upgraded porta band bandsaw with Swag off-road bandsaw table
I was able to get some time in the shop to finish the apple press and some other projects that were in pieces on my work bench. Knowing everything was going to sit in pieces all summer was eating at me so I started about 4:30am and worked till about 6pm and knocked out everything on the list. The apple press was only part of what I worked on that day. Now I have a perfectly clean work bench and I can go in good conscience to the lake and have fun with the kids.
Pictured above is a conversion kit from Swag Offroad mounted to my Porter-Cable portaband bandsaw. This allows me to use my portable bandsaw as a bench mount saw. I have a big cut-off saw that I never use as the portaband does everything so well I always grab it first. The only thing lacking was a mounted option. I’ve had this kit in the box most of the winter. Doing the final work on the apple press knives caused me to finally pull it out and put it to work. It worked perfectly.
Home made sawing jig for sawing the slots in the apple press macerator drum.
Sawing the slots in the drum was tricky. They had to be at the correct place on the drum so it stays balanced. They also had to fit closely to hold the knives in place. Plus they had to be at the correct depth, straight, etc. All that precision required a 15 minute jig made of scrap lumber lying around the shop. Here you can see the drum marked up for where each slot will be. A hold down vice grip was borrowed from the drill press and we had all the slots cut in another 15 minutes.
Drilling retention holes in drum for holding knives.
You can see the other holes marked on the drum. This was Miguel’s idea I tried to describe in a previous post. The idea was to have a positive retention system for the knives utilizing this hole. The idea worked, but it didn’t hold the knives in place well enough to be the primary retention system and the work to make the knives in this shape was too much to justify the time and tooling.
The finished apple press macerator drum beside the old drum.
What all this work was for. A new drum, made from laminated red oak which should last past my lifetime and maybe my kids. New knives made from 304 stainless steel, twice as thick as the previous knives. Again, these should last well beyond my need.
The part we’ve been waiting for. Reassembly of the moving parts of this apple press.
We had to use our press again, this time to put things back together. The drive gear went on my hand but the macerator and the flywheel both had to be pressed back onto the shaft. I didn’t clean the shaft before putting it back together because the marks where everything was seated originally were still plain. This made it easy to put everything back together.
Here you can see everything back in place on the shaft.
It was interesting putting it back together at this point. When we gave it a test run the drive gear sloughed off a bunch of gunk because the drive teeth were properly engaging for the first time in many years. We’re back to metal on metal the way it was intended.
The picture I’ve been waiting to see. The fully restored and reassembled antique apple press, ready for apples.
And here it is. Six posts and many man hours later, all finished and waiting on apples. I told Miguel I think we used every tool in the shop on this restoration. We even ended up using the new (to us, very used otherwise) Piranha ironworker to finish making the knives. Now we just need some apples!
New macerator drum, inside the hopped, all geared up and waiting for apples.
It appears that everything works correctly and all this thing needs is a few bushels of apples. Before we use it, everything will get a good bath and a wash down with bleach. No sense in being too fussy at this point since it’s just going to sit in the barn till fall apple season anyway.
Miguel and I took Alice (not his real name) to the market with us the other day. I’m not sure why he says yes to invites to things like this. He’s smart, thinks ahead, and generally is one of the more intelligent people I know. By now I’d think he’d have learned to avoid me when I’m dressed for work. Anyway, we put him to work helping us load about 2 1/2 pallets of tomatoes all by hand onto our little tag trailer we use to haul vegetables each day. Being the observant and careful person I know him to be, Alice pointed out that the tires looked awfully squished and the trailer seemed a tad overloaded. Didn’t we want to take a bit less and be safe? Safety 3rd is our motto, and we do this every day, so the trailer will be fine. Shut up and get in the truck.
The trailer, flipped upside down. Here you see the worn tires and bent axle.
Um actually, the trailer isn’t fine. It hasn’t been fine for some time. The axle was bent at some point in the past. There is no telling what bent it, but hauling the Bridgeport mill probably had something to do with it. Miguel had noticed that the tires were wearing badly on the inside so this past weekend, just after Alice had informed me we had too much weight on the trailer, we flipped the trailer over to find out what was going on. Sure enough the axle was bent and now I have to admit once again that Alice was correct. Please nobody tell him. He’s already impossible to deal with. The bend wasn’t bad, but it was bad enough. I could replace the tires but they would cup again shortly. The axle could be straightened or replaced. Since we use this trailer every day, I elected to replace the axle. Off to Agri-Supply we go.
We determined that we had a 3500 pound axle under the trailer currently. I knew Agri-Supply carried everything to make a trailer from scratch so I thought a nice 5000 lb or so axle would be a nice upgrade for this little trailer. After consulting with the nice man from trailer accessories for about 20 minutes, we determined that there was no such option as a 5000 lb axle. The axles he had in stock were 3500 lb and 7000 lb! Yikes. That’s certainly enough to carry the weight, but that sized axle required new spindles, which were 6 bolt instead of the five bolt we had.
Old tires and wheels, 5 bolt 205/75 R15
The new spindles also required a 16″ tire vs. the 15″ we had on the old axle. Sigh. That means that our fenders were an issue because of lack of clearance. This trailer had to roll at 3pm that day to make the run so cutting off and installing new fenders just wasn’t an option. Keeping the fenders meant that the tires at Agri-Supply were going to be too tall. So off to Universal Tire we go to have 225/65 R16 truck tires mounted.
New axle, mocked up on one side. The new, larger tire and wheel is shown as well.
Did I mention that the 7000 pound axle wasn’t an axle assembly? It was a base metal project. An axle, cut over length, spindles, bearings, etc. all needing to be cut, welded, etc. and all needing to be properly done both in fit and strength. And all done TODAY because we have people and animals waiting on us. Here we have one side tacked up. We’re checking the clearance of the tires, once we mount the tire.
Bolting the axle into place for mock-up
I know it looks like Miguel does all the work because he’s always the one in the picture doing the work. There’s two reasons for that.
One. Miguel actually does most of the work.
Two, I’m always behind the camera. It’s like how the children will have never had a mom if you only look at our photo album. She’s always behind the camera. That’s why her other nickname, besides SWMBO and Darling Wifey is Crazy Picture Lady.
All put back together, flipping the trailer back over
Everything put back together. We are flipping the trailer back onto its tires. Have I mentioned how amazingly handy it is to have a crane hanging around? We don’t use the bucket truck that often, but when we do it’s awfully handy and worth the money I spent on it, very used of course.
Ready to go to work.
We started on this project about 9:30. We had to go to Agri-Supply, Universal Tire, Agri-Supply again, remove the old axle, and weld up a new axle, and get lunch. We were on the road at 3pm. Overall I think we did a pretty good job. Now the trailer has the capacity to carry about 6000 pounds of weight (the tires are the limit now) and should be what we need for a long time. I debated on getting a larger trailer instead but decided that having a maneuverable little trailer was too beneficial considering the places we go with it.
The old axle is bent but serviceable. It’ll probably become a hay wagon or something similar at some point in the future. Who knows, you might ride on it when you come for a tour. Don’t worry though, I’ll straighten the axle before I use it.
