so waht ya doin today?

One kid sick, grounded the other one for sheer stupidity. Ended up working on the bracing on my David Brown 990 loader. Previous owner apparently thought there was a lot more steel in it than it really needed. Starting to get the hang of this MIG welding. It's just a different process than arc and it takes a lot of getting used to, for me anyway. After I got the bracing done I cut one of my larger fields, including some areas that never got touched last year due to the constant rain. Amazing how fast saplings and briars will invade a field. Sick kid felt better than night, but she's got to get an ultra sound for her gall bladder. Grounded boy hauled 6 or 7 loads or bedding from barn, all loaded by hand!

MiG needs clean metal and no wind blowing to work right. Other than that it's like cheating. Unless you're doing deep, multi-pass structural welding on thick metal or special stuff like SS, cast iron, etc., MiG will do most anything you need once you figure out your wire speed, gas flow, and amperage settings. I do a lot of stick welding because of dirty metal, needing deep burns, and needing to reach way down into a tight spot with the rod to burn in a bead.

I still don't think I can mig weld.
I finally come to the conclusion if I just pointed and drug the thing along without trying to actually weld, it done a passable job.

I can do better with my 50 year old 110 buzz box and unidentifiable rods though.

Had a great day! Got copies of final stamped plans for new building, contractor for Morton Buildings is driving to Indianapolis today to submit plans for State approval in person. Spent morning dropping off plans to my subs, HVAC, electrical, and plumbing. Morton has scheduled drop off of building components for late August. Maybe we can be in new building by late September of October.

Now I have to work up a bid estimate for parts for one of our clients, then write some CNC code for a new product for another client (a 2 piece pneumatic tail wheel hub for light aircraft), then when my apprentice knocks off for day I will take over feeding parts into the CNC mill for about three hours to keep up with the production schedule for yet a third client.

Haven't posted here much lately 'cause I'm as busy as I ever want to be.

Not even gonna touch the current welding discussion.

KeithB said:

Had a great day! Got copies of final stamped plans for new building, contractor for Morton Buildings is driving to Indianapolis today to submit plans for State approval in person. Spent morning dropping off plans to my subs, HVAC, electrical, and plumbing. Morton has scheduled drop off of building components for late August. Maybe we can be in new building by late September of October.

Click to expand...

Gotta love a story with a happy ending. I've been wondering about the shop.

September means late March to metal building contractors, but good to hear of the progress!

I've had several Morton buildings put up over the years. It will take less than 2 weeks to have the building up and ready for the utilities once they start. We have all our moving plans ready. We won't stop operations where we are until the new building is ready, and it will only take one day to move everything heavy, Once the equipment is moved we can move everything else while they hook up the electrical. I plan to hire some high school or college age students to help move all the light stuff. I have the floor plan all laid out so it will be easy to put stuff in the right place the first time. Plan to buy more storage shelves and racks. So much to do, but I'm really glad to get this project rolling.

Keith,

Great to hear of your commercial success, and new building coming along. I have always
thought that a hard working, intelligent person could start a business of many different types
and with steady effort and commitment to satisfying the customers make a success in life, no
matter what the chosen business.

I hope you and your apprentice are having a lot of fun, and making a good living at it.

I am just trying to get back on US time, just got back from a trip to France. My college roommate
and his wife met me and my wife at a small chateau B&B in France to attend the 24hr endurance
race at LeMans. We went to the Daytona 24 sports car endurance race and the Sebring 12 hr race
many times when in college, decided to go for the big one in France since we are both retired and can
afford the time and travel now, unlike when we were college students. Then driving 70 miles to Daytona
was a trip, affording the tickets was difficult and we camped in the infield.

Toyota won overall in a prototype pure racing car, and Porsche got 1-2 in the modified street car
class, with a pair of Ford GTs taking 3rd and 4th in the GTE (modified street cars) class, with a
Corvette getting 5th in the class.

After the race, I drove about a third of the course which is public roads when not running the race.
Unfortunately, a Peugeot 308 rental car is NOT a Porsche Cayman. The week before the race we
visited WW1 and WW2 battle sites, and The Cupola, a huge WW2 German underground, heavily fortified final assembly
and launch site for V2 rockets. The Brits managed to seriously damage parts of the concrete structure with one
of their 12,000 lb supersonice Tallboy "earthquake bombs" and it never became operational. Plans were for
launching many rockets per day into England. Many other interesting WW1 and 2 sites in the NE France
area.

A good time was had by all.

Bill

Sounds great Bill. I have read before about your interest in things that go fast. And I can imagine how much could be learned by visiting WWI/WWII sites, both battle and industrial. Carry on!

It was very interesting to see the huge industrial plant that the Germans were building, literally
a V2 assembly line for final assembly, fueling and launching. Pieces would come from other
factories, fuel and oxidizer tanks, then put into the airframe, fins and rocket motor added, rotated
from laying flat to standing on the fins, warhead and guidance systems on the front, then
fuel and oxidizer filled. They would have been in a continuous assembly line, at the end, a tall
steel door would open, the ready to fire missile would roll out about 100yds to a launch pad
and be launched. Half an hour later the next one would go up. Thank goodness it never became
operational.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Coupole

The WW1 stuff in incredibly sad. It is so hard to actually grasp battles where 30,000 are killed on
a single day, and 240,000 in a month. We visited the Lochnagar Crater, created by a huge explosion
under German lines.
http://www.greatwar.co.uk/somme/memorial-lochnagar-crater.htm

Amazing history in France, from the Romans to WW2. When I was living in Italy in the 60s and
early 70s, I often found French men and women who went out of their way to be intentionally
rude to Americans. Not so today, frequently have just wonderful interactions with French people.
Some of it might be that I am not a high school to college aged young person, now an old
guy, but I think that the French have changed their attitude towards Americans, too.
A guy let me use an extra stepladder that he had brought to one corner at LeMans. I got higher,
above the crowd and fence, got some really nice shots. We had a really nice chat afterwards,
and I did what I always do to Frenchmen when I get to talk to them more than a few words.
I thanked him for Marquis de Lafayette, Compte Rochambeau and Compte De Grass. Without
them we wouldn't have defeated the British. The ladder guy thanked me for Americans saving
France in WW2. They still do remember.

Night racing.



The GTE class winning Porsche, a 911 deriviative in a pit stop. They only manage between 11 and 14 laps between refueling. Running
in the over 200mph range on the Mulsanne Straight (although now it has two chicanes ) uses immense HP and that burns a LOT
of fuel.



Lots of fun.

Bill

Ian said:

MiG needs clean metal and no wind blowing to work right. Other than that it's like cheating. Unless you're doing deep, multi-pass structural welding on thick metal or special stuff like SS, cast iron, etc., MiG will do most anything you need once you figure out your wire speed, gas flow, and amperage settings. I do a lot of stick welding because of dirty metal, needing deep burns, and needing to reach way down into a tight spot with the rod to burn in a bead.

Click to expand...

I just watched a really good video last night, one recommended by a guy I respect on a tractor site. The light finally started to glow dimly in the deep recesses of my head when guy on the video explained that MIG is a completely different process than arc. I was used to upping the amps to get penetration through 40-60 years worth of layers of grease, paint, manure, mud and rust. With MIG, like you said, it HAS to be clean to start with because the juice just isn't there to burn through anything. I'm not saying I "get it" quite yet, but it's a start. His explanation of why I couldn't just hold the gun 2-3" or more back and let the wire down into a hole or crevice and expect it to do good work made sense. The "short circuit" mechanism of getting the weld done definitely clicked for me. I'm still having a bit of trouble getting the idea of speed, wire feed and volts (??? I think) straight, but it's coming. (I'm starting to consider wire feed speed sort of like rod size- faster wire feed is sort of like larger rod size...kinda...I think...maybe.) Hardest thing for me is that I can't see what I'm welding. I've got my shade turned down to about 8.5 but there just isn't enough light from the arc to see the area I'm trying to weld. I can see the puddle fine, but not the joint. Kinda like welding blind, especially since they want you to weld in a dragging motion instead of feeding it forward as I usually do with stick.

MIG surely shines with sheet goods and thin stock. I welded up the exhaust on my Escape this AM where before I'd have used clamps and wire and heavens knows what else to hold it together. Cleaned both sides off with a wire brush in a die grinder and sizzled it together in under a minute. Put several patches on a Cockshutt 30 exhaust manifold (I think it's cast steel, not cast iron) after cleaning down through the rust and laying a base bead. Fit the patch and tacked it all together just fine. $250.00 for a new manifold or 3/4 hour of my time and some 14ga sheet. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. I'm a happy camper. I did do a lot of multi pass welding on the loader frame. Still not getting the penetration I'd like to see, but I suppose I can go back with some 6011 and get a good bite later if I have to. My vertical arc welding is crude at best and my overhead welding simply sucks. A fair amount of both required on that loader frame unless I want to dismount the whole freakin' mess. MIG is dead easy on over head and vertical.

hey now, driving a slow car fast is a LOT more fun than driving a fast car slow.


the Franken-mower is ALIVE.
between the two mowers I had enough parts to fix everything except the priming bulb,
not a big deal it just takes a second to fill the carb before starting the mower, then it runs fine.
I had to do a little filing and fitting on a couple of spots to get the Briggs and Stratton to fit where the Kohler had been, but it was more of a look and file and look and file thing more than removing a ton of metal.
spent about 2 hours sharpening the blade and balancing it, now the thing runs a ton smoother and cuts like [probably better than] a new mower.

Brad said:

I get the photos to come up fine Rally. Have you tried saving a copy at a lower resolution, like maybe 72 dpi?

What is the preferred method of removing a beaver damn like that? I'm sure it involves lots of hard work and sweat no matter what else is used.

Click to expand...

Brad,
I can download some pictures just fine, then the next one , taken in the same day/series, says OOps the file is too large for the server to process? Not sure why.
Some dams, I don't have to take out, if they can be reached by a hoe. Some of my contracts require I take them all out, because they can't be reached by much else but canoe, like those pictured above. When that happens it's one stick at a time, and your gonna get wet. The only real trick is to take out the downstream sticks first, so that when it does get going, those sticks downstream don't catch all the smaller sticks, milfoil, or floating sage mats, that are always in the water column. I've got oversized potato forks I've made, that really move/ chop large chunks of mud and silt off the up stream sides of the dams. Once a good flow is established I just have to pull the mud into the current and let it ride the wave. It's a good idea to be upstream of large chunks of floating sage matts when they enter the current!
I just won the bid on six rice restoration project lakes. Those contracts require I remove the beaver and dams to establish/ maintain normal water depth so the wild rice will grow. If the water is too deep, wild rice will not germinate due to lack of sunlight in deeper water. The rice will recede to look like a ring around the shallow waters near shore. Keep the beaver from damming the outlets and the whole lake/rice bed will grow a full crop throughout the flowage. I have to maintain the water level until Oct. 15 th. If I do my job right and remove the beaver and dams fast, I only have to check them about every two weeks to make sure they don't establish a new colony or rebuild the dams. Bad part is that the bugs are bad now, when I need to get the work done. I'm trapping beaver in 13 spots now between these rice contracts and county highway work. When it rains folks realize where the beaver are, and roads and trails get flooded. County highway foreman tries to give me locations in groups of three as close together as possible. I try to run them in loops to cut down on their mileage expenses. Beaver don't always read the playbook! LOL

Ian said:

I'm talking T-posts, about 22" deep x 1-5/8" diameter x 24". I use a horrible freight SDS MAX (NOTthe regular sds) hammer drill and a little bitty 3.5 horse B&S 2KW genset with handle/tires, about like dragging a push mower.

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Hey Ian, which hammer are you using? https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/demo-hammers.html

Sore subject, actually, Bret. That's the hammer I ordered and paid for from the flyer but as it turned out at the time, it wasn't even in production yet much less actually available. They were shipping the old, blue version which has a smaller motor (7.5 amps IIRC) and no matter the bitch I pitched with them they wouldn't give me a break on it for the false advertising. Anyway, yeah, the one you linked is the one to buy. Mine is ok, I did my best to burn it up during the 90-day warranty period but it's still working fine. Don't waste your money on the HF bits.

If you think of MiG welding as nothing more than self-feeding TiG welding, it might help.

Bill.....sounds like an amazing trip. It would take me a month in a dark hole to recover from that much excitement and powerful history.

My link shows several hammers, which one are you liking?

I have to agree with you, Fiver. Taking my old Karmann Ghia "screaming" through corners
at the limit was more of a challenge than going through the same corners in a Cayman 50 years later,
at the same speed - because the Cayman isn't anywhere near it's limit, and the poor old Ghia was giving
everything it had. Same speeds, but way different experience. Driving the Cayman at the limit in
that area would mean running perhaps 80 mph instead of the 50 mph I did back in the day in the old car. Not
something I will actually try on public roads, not that crazy.

So - you are right.

Bill

Bret4207 said:

My link shows several hammers, which one are you liking?

Click to expand...

63441, the SDS Max rotary hammer. All the others on that page are hammers only, not for drilling holes.

OK, I give up. I tried to go back and find out what you are drilling, Ian. That looks like a
hell of an hammer drill. Must be doing some huge number of holes in rock or concrete.

Bill

rock that might as well be concrete.


I have to swap out some posts on Littlegirls back porch sometime this summer, she also wants to put in a couple of chunks of rain gutter.
only issue is her roof overhangs about a foot so i'll need to figure out a way to hang the gutter.
both so that it catches the run off and so that the snow doesn't tear it off in the winter.
the posts are going to be a pain too.
the one that needs replaced the most is a 4x4, but it holds up weight from 3 different directions.
[I don't know who designed this porch, but it must have been quite the JR. High shop project]
I'm going to put a 4x6 where the 4x4 was, and cut the doubled up 2x10's flat with the 2x6 runner across the front and lay a piece of 2x6 flat so it sits under the 2x10's, the 2x6 cross piece, as well as the 2x6 runner on the front.
the 2x10's are held in place with a couple of nails now.

so today I built some [molds as Littlegirl called them] so I can drill the cement and drop in a metal footer.
the 16x16x4" forms have a cross brace to hold the metal piece in place and I will fill them with cement to lock everything together.

it looks like I will have to jack part of the porch up, pull each post independently then put the forms down and set everything.
I'll have to come back and put one post in, let the whole thing down, then move over to the next one and do the whole process over again.