Spirit of '76

 

Birthday yesterday - "Another day older and deeper in debt." Actually, doing pretty good financially. Starting on my second million - because I gave up on the first, as the old joke goes. Had a good day - went to lunch with a friend and then came home and mowed the back yard. Can this guy party, or what?

Taking stock of my situation as I normally do on my birthday, my life is damn good right now. After the heart attack in December, I figured I better get back on the program. My weight's down. I need to lose three more pounds and I'll be a middle weight again. I've been doing some Tai-Chi exercises to keep the muscles moving without a lot of pounding or strain on the joints. I've been doing a bit of strength training but my arms still look like toothpicks. I need to add more protein to my diet and cut out more sugar. I'm still a work in progress but all things considered, looking forward to a few more years, God willing. No way I'm going to be able to finish all the projects if I don't have more time. 

Fortunately, the mental game is still good. I've become a little forgetful like a lot of old farts - walk into a room and forget why. Still not bad, though. I've been weaning myself off the news. I like to stay informed but not much I can do to change the world. I did get my paperwork turned in for mail-in voting, mostly to benefit the Missus, but as long as I was at the courthouse I got mine as well. As long as you're over 65 you can get mail-in - beats standing in line.

The temperature is supposed to cool off starting today to something more seasonable. The heat index yesterday was 105 again. I waited until the sun went down behind the tree tops before I mowed, so it wasn't too bad - glad I installed the bottle rack on the mower. Going to mow the front yard today and hit a couple of licks on the oil tank job.

Life is good. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones. Prepare for the future. Live long and prosper!  

 

"Cool Down Daddy"

 

"Cool down Daddy, don't you blow your top!" Tough to cool down here lately. Temperatures have been in the mid-nineties with heat indices over 100. Pretty hot for most everyone, but elderly cardiac patients especially need to watch it. Just getting out of the sun helps but the humidity is a pisser just the same. Forecast calls for a heat advisory again today, but I've got things going on for most of the day at places that are air conditioned. 

 

The Missus and the "cleaning lady" are making great progress with the cleaning and organizing. The young lady handed off the spoon in the photo to me. It was tarnished to the extent it was almost completely black, so I did some work with the Auto-Sol polish and got it shined up. If you look closely you can see the Holiday Inn imprint on the end of it. The spoon is a souvenir from a trip to Elkhart Lake when the newly married love birds went to the Can-Am races in our brand-new Olds Cutlass in '71. 

I welded up the filler neck for the oil tank yesterday. I had a little trouble seeing what I was doing at first due to my glasses fogging up. I had turned on the AC unit about 45 minutes before I started welding but it was still 88 degrees and humid in the shop. It'll be fine, it's just not as pretty as I'd like.

I finished the trailer jack mount yesterday as well. When I was drilling the holes, I got three of them done and then I ran into a bit of trouble. I was using a 3/16" pilot drill, and when I was lining up the last one I brought the drill down on the center punch mark while I clamped the vise down. It developed a hard spot and I couldn't do anything with it. I turned the pieces over and drilled it from the back side. No big deal but it did indicate the material had some carbon in it. Because of that I stick welded the pipe to the plate with a low hydrogen weld - E-7018. Low hydrogen rods are for high carbon, high sulfur steels, by the way.

I've got the oil tank bottom and sides ready to bend. I used a chassis punch to make the 3/4" holes. The sheet is actually trapezoidal in shape, but it looks a little whacky due to the camera angle. One of the end pieces needs a couple holes punched in it. I'll get that done and then I can start fitting the pieces together. 

 

Jacks and Chairs

 

Went for walkies yesterday with Coach Jen - got 4 miles in - and she said her husband had a small job for me. I stopped by their barn later and he's making a jack mount for his camper. Needs the pipe welded to the piece and holes drilled in both of the flat bars. No biggie - I'll get it knocked out in the next couple of days. 

You'll notice the parts are sitting on the sheet for the oil tank job. I went out to the shop the other day to get started on cutting out the pieces and I saw a woodchuck run past the big door. I quick went outside and saw the bushes moving where he ran along the side of the building. The raspberries have been taken over with scrub brush and weeds, so I stopped work inside and started clearing a spot about two feet wide next to the shop. I didn't find a burrow, but a couple of years ago one actually chewed through the siding of the shop and found its way in. I need to just cut everything down and start over with the berries. Of course, it continues to rain and the mosquitoes are terrible, but I need to make sure the woodchuck isn't burrowing under the shop or coming through the wall again.

Meanwhile in the fun never stops department, the $20.00 recliner I bought not too long ago broke after the Missus body slammed it while forcing it to recline. I think I figured out how to repair it without too much trouble. Not much of an initial investment, but the upholstery is like new and it's American made. It just wasn't designed for the rough and tumble reclining method.  

 Need to mow again because it's only been a day - mow the front, mow the back, wait a day, and repeat. As long as it's dry enough. If not, I end up with big clumps of grass all over the yard. Usually, this time of year everything is brown, mow maybe once every week and a half. Always something.  

Architecture

 

Surly came down the other afternoon and gave me the highlights of his recent motorcycle trip - 1800+ miles into Canada and around the Great Lakes. The photo above is St. Andrew's church in Kingston, Ontario, rebuilt after a fire in 1889. The photo is one I glommed off the internet. The couple Surly showed me were taken at night and were much nicer. Anyway, as per usual, our conversation veered off to an architectural conversation including Brutalism

I was in Lowell, Mass. years ago on a grant from Eli Lily and did a walking tour of the city. Along the way our guide pointed out a building as an example of Brutalism. I had never heard of that style of architecture before and thought at the time that was a pretty cold description of the building. Later I realized Brutalism was a real thing, not just the guide taking a cheap shot at the building's style. Surly sent some links so I could be better informed on Brutalism. The only forms of architecture I'm familiar with are Gothic and the industrial buildings made of red brick, steam power, line shafts and big glass windows and skylights. 

The county courthouse where I went to make arrangements for mail-in ballots for the Missus and I in the upcoming election. This building was made in 1898 - beautiful inside and out. The church, the courthouse, the industrial buildings I'm familiar with, and the old farmhouse I live in were all constructed during the American Industrial Revolution. My house was built along with several others in my little village as a result of the railroad coming through. Would have been a great time to be alive for a guy like me. 

I need to fill in the void in my education on building styles - maybe find myself a book or two to study this winter.

Sad Day

 

Rest in Peace Dolly!

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I made a lay-out of the tank on the 16 ga. sheet I'll be using. I wanted cold rolled but got hot rolled instead, so I'll have to grind off all the surfaces where I'll be welding, especially if I TIG weld the seams and all of the bungs. The layout doesn't have the top as part of it because he had the steel supplier cut that out to size. I don't have a finger brake, so I think I'll bend up the long sides and cut the ends out and weld them individually. 

Assembly procedure as follows:

Cut out all parts and drill holes

Bend sides

Tack weld end pieces and top together

Finish weld sheet metal pieces

Install all bungs and filler pipe. 

I haven't decided if I'm going to TIG weld the sheets or gas weld them. Likewise, I might TIG weld the bungs or braze them in place. Lower heat input with braze welding and I should be able to get a nice, smooth, leakproof fillet all around them.

I might try a couple of practice pieces before committing to either method.

Filler Neck

 

I did a little homeowner work yesterday and then made my first move on the oil tank for TVI. The weld-in bung is pretty short. It was designed to be poked down into the tank until it bottomed out on the flange so it would be only about 1/8" proud of the sheet. However, TVI wants it to be parallel with the bottom of the tank, rather than at the 8-degree angle of the top sheet. I'm going to weld the bung into a tube that I'll cut at the proper angle and then weld the tube to the top sheet.

So how did I arrive at the 8-degree angle, you ask? Let me count the ways. First, I checked the angle with a protractor. Second, I used the trig formula tan A= a/b and looked up the number in the Trig Tables in Machinery's Handbook. Third, just to get a little better with the calculator on my phone, I ran the numbers and figured out how to enter the second function on the tangent. The protractor gave an approximate 8-degree answer, the trig tables gave me the answer in degrees and minutes, and the calculator gave me the answer in a decimal format. Sounds like a lot of work but it only took me about 5 minutes. 

I'm still contemplating my sequence of operations for putting this thing together. There are quite a few fittings that need to be welded into the tank and each one of them will potentially warp the edge of the sheet. I'll give it a little more thought before I jump in.

Oil Tank

 

I think the safety posters only work if people can figure out the message, even at that, no guarantee.

I went to check out the oil tank job yesterday. TVI had purchased all the fittings and the sheet metal a while back, he was just waiting to get his engine back to check the fit of his pattern. We talked over a few other bike things and shot the breeze a bit - nice chat. 

Beautiful day, so when I came home I swapped out the mower blades and then cut the front yard. Did a bit of tinkering as well. Looks like the next few days are going to be nice - be a real blessing for the storm victims. I'm going to try and get some more outside work done while it's dry, myself. Maybe get out on the bike as well.