Productive Day

 

Beautiful song. The young lady singing passed away not too long ago, I believe. I don't recall hearing her on any other recordings but with a voice like that, there surely must have been.

Another beautiful day again yesterday and a busy one. I dropped the taxes off at the tax lady's house, then stopped at the hardware and auto parts stores on the way home. When I got home I started on the hose fitting. It was probably more trouble to make it than it would have been to buy one but I'm sure the local Chrysler dealer or a junkyard wouldn't have turned up anything. First of all, there aren't junkyards around like there used to be, and I'm sure talking to the parts man at the dealership would only end in frustration, so might as well make it. 

The part started out in life as a 3/8" black pipe nipple. I drilled out two 5/8" nuts to slip over the pipe, as well as thinning them down in the lathe. The one on the outer end was welded on, then turned to shape and the OD of the pipe thinned down to 5/8". The second nut was welded on after that. I ran a tap into the hole in the head to clean up the threads, and bingo! There we have it. I'll put a little of the engine enamel on it so it looks "factory".

While waiting for the hose fitting to cool between the welding and machine steps, I finished the electrical outlet on the bandsaw. I tacked a piece onto the outlet box the other day, drilled and tapped a hole in the "beam" of the saw to mount it, and yesterday I put on a new plug for the saw motor. I should have installed another wall out nearby when I wired the shop but having the extension cord as a semi-permanent installation will work just fine. 

I loaded up the trailer with the second helping of firewood to take to the splitter. It was a serious load but the trailer is hell for strong. The springs didn't compress much at all, the tires, however, were definitely over loaded. It looks like the valve stem blew out from the pressure. The tires have a bunch of cracks in the sidewalls, so I'm going to get a couple of new ones and install heavy-duty valve stems while I'm at it. That should be a lifetime fix for me.

I've got a nice pile of firewood for next year's heating season now. I need to move it under cover but it'll have to be with the wheelbarrow since the trailer's out of commission for a while. Sure glad I followed the advice (order) of the Missus and bought myself a splitter. That Hawthorne would have been a killer-diller to try and split by hand.

The nice weather is gone now for a few days. Windy today with gusts forecast greater than 60 mph. Colder temperatures on tap tomorrow. Standard operating procedure around here. I'll be back in the shop today again working on something.