What did you do today?

[Galaxie]

Thank you, 140mower!

[flathead4]

Over the last couple days:
1. Attended a "senior's hours" at the local BJ's. Older crowd so most everyone was quiet and polite, and kept their distance, I did not see anyone that looked like they we buying more than they needed. There was limit of 2 of any one meat but everyone I saw took one. Don't want to be part of the problem.
2. Cleaned the mower deck and put on a fresh coat of paint. Sharpened the blades. The grass here in VA already needs to be cut.
3. Pruned my grapes and admired the buds. Future jelly and wine if all goes well.
4. Stained and polyurethane'd an unfinished wine rack my wife bought for my latest hobby.
5. Got a snooze with Niko the dog.

[mattthemuppet]

You and the dog are living the life! Last place we lived at had a large Concord grape arbor. Usually made ten or twelve gallons of juice every summer from it.

[J Tiers]

Neighbor dropped off a lawn mower that "doesn't work".

I just bet it does not...... It DOES turn over, and has both oil in it and also gas that smells like new gas.... BUT.....

The air filter had 1/4" of dry clippings packed on the outside of it. That's all that will fit inside the plastic housing, so it was "full". Cleaned it off, and washed out the oil that was on part of it (oval paper Tecumseh filter) with gas (did that outside, for the SNs).

Then the spark plug had oily goo all over it, over carbon. So I washed it and cleaned it up until it looks like it will at least spark.

Everything is drying off at the moment. I'll have to pick the crud out of the cooling fins eventually, but tomorrow I will have a go at starting it. Don't feel up to taking apart and cleaning a carb today, I have go into the shed and clean a workbench off and move a tool rollaround first., and I don't want to mess with that right now. There are still skis and snowshoes in there clogging up the place. I need to re-varnish the snowshoes, so I can't put them away yet.

[Tungsten dipper]

Neighbor dropped off a lawn mower that "doesn't work".

I just bet it does not...... It DOES turn over, and has both oil in it and also gas that smells like new gas.... BUT.....

The air filter had 1/4" of dry clippings packed on the outside of it. That's all that will fit inside the plastic housing, so it was "full". Cleaned it off, and washed out the oil that was on part of it (oval paper Tecumseh filter) with gas (did that outside, for the SNs).

Then the spark plug had oily goo all over it, over carbon. So I washed it and cleaned it up until it looks like it will at least spark.

Everything is drying off at the moment. I'll have to pick the crud out of the cooling fins eventually, but tomorrow I will have a go at starting it. Don't feel up to taking apart and cleaning a carb today, I have go into the shed and clean a workbench off and move a tool rollaround first., and I don't want to mess with that right now. There are still skis and snowshoes in there clogging up the place. I need to re-varnish the snowshoes, so I can't put them away yet.

Give your neighbor your snowshoes to re-varnish for fixing his lawnmower.

[Leadfootin]

Fresh gas but what was left in the carb from last year? I part-time at a small engine shop and the usual in this case is plug, air filter, drain fuel system including carb and primer circuit, fresh fuel and it usually starts right up.

[J Tiers]

Fresh gas but what was left in the carb from last year? I part-time at a small engine shop and the usual in this case is plug, air filter, drain fuel system including carb and primer circuit, fresh fuel and it usually starts right up.

Oh, I'll be finding out, I'm not worried about getting it running.

Have not even tried to start it, figured I'd do all the usual checks first, and go from there, I know about the things folks fail to do. I'm happy it has oil and good gas in it. The last one had gas from the early Ordovician period, and a plugged carb as a result.

I thought it would be amusing to mention the packed air filter and filthy oily plug. I expect those two could be related, the high vacuum may have pulled oil past the rings for quite some time, given the amount of blockage on the filter. Oil level may be a tad high as well, I need to recheck after things have drained down from being brought over here.

[mattthemuppet]

finally got off my ar$e and trammed my mill. Tilt was a pain as tightening the bolts on my Grizzly 6x26 knee mill shifted the tilt. Got it within 0.02-0.03mm over about 5", that was good enough for me. Nod was a lot harder. Ended up slipping a piece of 7up diet cherry can under the turret, which got me dead nuts over 5". Couldn't get that good if I tried





got a really nice cross hatching with both a 1/2" end mill and a 2" face mill.

[nickel-city-fab]

Did lots and lots of sanding and lapping.... at least it involved friction and oil.

[DICKEYBIRD]

Hey Jerry, all that good maintenance helps a lot but what really works every time is to heat the head, intake manifold & carb with a hair dryer to get the "local" temp up to where it was last August. It'll start right up, usually on the 1st pull. I can't tell you how many neighbors I've made lifelong friends with that trick.

[danlb]

finally got off my ar$e and trammed my mill. Tilt was a pain as tightening the bolts on my Grizzly 6x26 knee mill shifted the tilt. Got it within 0.02-0.03mm over about 5", that was good enough for me. Nod was a lot harder. Ended up slipping a piece of 7up diet cherry can under the turret, which got me dead nuts over 5". Couldn't get that good if I tried

got a really nice cross hatching with both a 1/2" end mill and a 2" face mill.

Looks great! You might want to replace that coke can shim with one of an equal size made from steel Aluminum can material may squish over time from stresses induced by milling. I find a nice assortment of polished steel shims is available for under $10. Here's one: https://www.amazon.com/Hotop-Blades-...2XCP3P9BB4DS9G



Dan

[danlb]

Every once in a while I get the feeling that I don't really machine much. I don't post about what I machine because it's often silly little things. Let me illustrate.

The wind gusts that were blowing against my sliding glass door were making a racket. I The "bristle" strip at the top of the door channel has disappeared sometime in the distant past. The purpose of the strip was to act as a bearing surface and seal out breezes too. The edge of the door has a pocket (0.804" wide) that mates with a tenon that stretches from the top to the bottom. The tenon is 0.657 wide. That 0.14 gap was enough that the door was slamming back and forth. A fix was in order.

Like everything, I measure once and make a drawing, then come up with a plan.




I had a block of 1 inch thick HDPE (plastic) that was already cut down to a 2 inch by something bar. I used a 1/4 inch carbide endmill (Thanks NCF) as a router. A mess ensued. The part took shape.




It fit perfectly on the first try!




Screwed into the door recess. All done!




See why I don't post?

Dan

[J Tiers]

Nope... what's wrong with that?

A lot of what I end up making is also silly stuff. I dunno why it's any better if it goes on a tractor or antique steam engine than if it goes on a house door.

Silly things I have made that I recall include:

A set of nuts for an old outdoor brass lamp fixture that was missing most of the originals (for a neighbor)

Some custom nuts for the battery cables in the solar battery bank because the others did not fit the terminals

A pair of custom brackets to hold a coat hanger rod in the front coat closet when that was re-done.

And many more such "silly side projects" that could possibly have been dealt with by driving several miles to the hardware store to buy something that almost kinda sorta worked as I wanted.....

[PStechPaul]

On Thursday I took advantage of decent weather to take a walk up the hill in back of the house to the meadow and woods. I found the remains of a deer, probably killed by coyotes:



Here's a young deer on the hill a few days before:

[PStechPaul]

Today I moved the heavy workbench that holds my mill. It's on casters, but the wheels were not turning freely. I was able to spray some WD-40 into them and some squirts of oil, which helped some. But the floor was rotten and the wheels had sunk into the tiles and plywood. So now I have another big job on my hands. The floor was installed along with a lot of other work that was done by a fly-by-night a$$hole contractor guy back in 2010.



I am also going to install proper ball bearing slides on the old desk drawers that I had crudely put in the bench.



Yeah, that fuzzy looking stuff is actually mold growing on the wood