He's Working Now

Time to get things rollin'. I decided to put up a few more pieces of OSB in the top of the new barn so that I can hang a few more things on the wall and make it easier to heat some time down the road. I got that put up New Years Day instead of sitting around eating and watching football all day like I've traditionally done.

Tubing for the 900 exhaust & new TIG torch head

The swingarm tubing, exhaust tubing and a dust collector "cyclone" all showed up on the same truck on Wednesday. In addition, I've got a new torch head for my TIG welder. The postflow timer on my old Miller Goldstar gave up the ghost. A new one is close to three hundred bucks. That's a pretty sizable investment for a welding machine that's about 50 years old. The new torch head was less than forty. As long as I remember to turn the gas on before welding and off again afterwards, I should be in good shape. It'll be nice to have that thing up and running again. I still need to get the shop in a little better shape before I start doing too much fabricating in there. I'd hate to burn the place to the ground.

The dust collector "cyclone" is for the woodshop. It fits on top of a 5 gallon bucket and is supposed to remove most of the sawdust before it goes into the shop vacuum, keeping the filter from plugging up as quickly. I'm either going to make a base with some casters that I can mount the vacuum and the bucket on so  I can roll them around together, or I'm going to get another length of suction hose that will allow me to reach all of the machines without moving the vac. I'm leaning in the direction of buying another piece of hose. I can mount the vac under a bench and everything will be out of the way. And from the nothing's ever easy file, I just bought a bunch of nuts and bolts to replenish my stock. Sure enough, I was still short what I need to bolt up the cyclone to the bucket lid. I made a backer for the inside of the lid from a left over piece of 5/4 decking so I needed six 2" bolts and I only had two. And this was right after coming back from Menards so I could stock up on things with their 20% off fill up the bag sale. It's no wonder everything I do takes as long as it does.

I did pick up some more PVC parts to make a few more TIG filler rod holders. I still need to make a rack for these but that won't be too tough. Just one more thing on the list. You'd think the list would be getting shorter but that doesn't seem to be the case. Especially when I checked the hole saw collection and found out I didn't have a 2-3/8" that the filler rod rack requires. One thing keeps leading to another. Or more properly, another trip to Menards. I do have another 20% off sale bag. Might be worth my time to do a little inventory and head back. I have to be up that way on Monday but the sale ends on Sunday, naturally enough.

Enjoy your weekend and try to stay with the resolutions for at least another week.