A visit to Foltz of Hagerstown, family easter, and spring chores

Easter at Mom's

We all got together at mom's place on Saturday for our Easter celebration.  Was wonderful weather and good food!

Tom did the camera work.  He set it for time delay and was able to get in the shot.  Great job!

After the meal we went on a quick walk around the place to fix some damaged fence stringers and just take in the spring beauty.

Katherine and me! :)

Katherine and I are trimming mom's Elderberry bush.

A visit to Foltz in Hagerstown, MD - AMAZING!

Katherine had done an internet search to find places that sold metal stock that were on my way to our farm.   I have been getting some stock through the mail, but shipping can be a bit high (metal is heavy and awkward).  She found a place in Hagerstown that we decided to stop at on the way to the farm. The front of the store, what you would see if you just saw it from the street, is nothing particularly special.  However, I asked to see what metal stock they had in their inventory at present and was permitted to go into the back section and look...

This is the metal stock rack!  Plenty of hot rolled and a bit of cold rolled steel.  Even some brass and copper!  A good selection

OMG - the old, wonderful machines!  this is a Mill/drill - looks to have about a 8-10 foot throat!

Millings machine

A metal lathe with what look like a 6 foot swing and a 20 foot bed!  The owner says this was brought in from Baltimore by horse and cart in 4 sections.  It was used to service the trolley system in Hagerstown.  That face plate on the lower right is about 4 feet in diameter!

The old machines were powered by a steam traction engine out back of the shop.  Here are the power distribution pulleys

Another view of that faceplate!  You can see the headstock of the lathe better here too (up and to the left of the faceplate)

Drill press.  Massive.  Hard to get a good sense of size in this picture.  It must have been about 12 feet tall,
maybe a tad more.

This place also has some nice deals for machinists metal workers near Hagerstown.  They still have one gentleman on staff that can fabricate stuff, if you have a need.  I might have to visit them if my tries at making my milling arbor don't work out...

Gardens resize and plowed!

I wasn't feeling great this weekend due to springs wonderful allergies, but I was able to get out long enough to pull and move some garden posts and to plow all the patches.

The big patch was pretty much cut in half.  I sectioned off the "clay" region since that was not very productive anyway.  I plan to plant some of the new elderberry plants there in a couple weeks.

"big patch" - not so big anymore.

Plowing went very well.  No broken shear pins and soil didn't stick to the plow blades.

Here you can see the unplowed old section that I am not going to garden anymore.

Soil looks fairly decent.  I may still have some water issues, of course, but this should help by keeping to the section without so much clay.

The "new" section of the front patch plowed much better than last year due to the fact that most of the tree roots are now gone.  The soil is still not up to snuff, but it will get there - just need to keep putting mulch on there!

I left a bit more room on the left between the blackberries so that I can mow easier.

Again, plowing went pretty good.  Very few tree roots left.

The soil is still crap, but it will improve as I add amendments.  

The paw-paw patch also changed shape a bit.  I moved the patch up the hill a little bit and extended it toward the road a few feet as well.  I sectioned off the wet section.  I redrilled the posts but did not put up the fence yet.  I figure that can wait until after I till.

The grounding rod for the electric fencer put up a hell of a fight!  I never did manage to pull it!  I think I will just cut it off below ground level and bury it.

The soil in the paw-paw patch looks so rich!  This is where the sweet potatoes go this year.  I think I have beans scheduled to go here too - although it might be corn.  I can't remember.

These patches will sit like this for a months or so before I till and plant.  This will give some of the organics in the mulch to decompose and get integrated with the soil.

 More flat-electric fence put up

I didn't get to do a lot on the farm, but i did get some more of the flat electric fence up.  Just did the blueberries.  This stuff is way more visible than the old polystrand.  I hope the deer take notice!

More work on the spindle thread protector

I mounted the thread protector into the 4-jaw chuck and dialed it in.  It is within 4-5 thousandths of centered, which is fine for this purpose.  Then I used brill bits in the tailstock drill chuck to drill out to about 1 1/8".   After drilling to 1 1/8" I was able to mount up a boring bar and start boring to the final dimension (I am not 100% sure what the final dimension is yet, but I have a ways to go before I have to worry about that!).

I found these big drill bits in the stuff I bought from Ken's family.  Biggest is 1 1/8".  They have .5" shaft so that worked out well!  I am not sure drilling bigger than 1 1/8" is advisable.  The drill chuck did slip a couple times in the MT3 tailstock.  No damage was done, but anything bigger I think would cause excessive spinning in the taper possible causing damage.

Showing boring bar and hole in center of spindle-thread protector.

When boring I noticed that a lot of chips go inside the spindle.  I guess its ok to use air to blow those out.

Looks like at least another 1/4" to go.  The bore is about 1 3/8 right now.

Discovered some Wilton Vises!

While looking for some drill bits to enlarge the bore in the spindle-thread-protector, I discovered several little vises - about 2" jaws.  Two of them are Stanley, and two of them are Wilton - little bullet vises!   Very nice!  I really need to get a workbench surface so that I can mount these - I need a vise or two installed!

Garden Seeds started!

Smaller gardens this year

Yes, that is what I said last year when I ended up expanding them...  But this year I am serious!  We have way too much food on the canning shelves and in the freezer to keep producing at those rates.  Besides, now i have identified some changes that should be made to the physical gardens to make better use of the land and my time.

Just one 72 cell box this year - so far.  

I will add more cabbages and peppers later though

With the lid on to keep them moist and warm.

Here is the layout plan for the gardens this year.

Note that there are still a lot of direct sow items and I have 50 strawberry plants coming April 4, so the gardens aren't exactly disappearing!

RIP Smokey

Our beloved pet dog, Smokey, passed away today.

He was a couple months past 20 years old, that's about 110 in equivalent human years.  He was an old dog.  He went in for surgery to remove a skin cancer/tumor on his rear leg.  When the surgery was over he did not wake up as quickly as usual.  When they did get him up he had trouble maintaining his breathing and body temperature.  The vet suspects the Smokey a had stroke and that part of the nervous system that maintained his breathing and such was damaged.    Katherine was able to call me and get me to the vets in time for us all to say our last goodbyes.

It was a sad day - it felt like the end of an era.  Smokey was a loving pet and a special friend.  I will miss him dearly.  Even so, I can't help but smile thinking of him during his life.  He had a wonderful, happy and long life.

Spring is here - kinda.

Quick walk around the farm

I have had the flu for the past week and a half, so when I got to the farm this weekend I really wanted to get out and see what the state of affairs was.  Many plants are starting to come out!

Elderberries!

Forsythia

Spindle thread protector

I received a threading tool (internal and external, indexed) this past week and wanted to try some threading.  I figured one of the first things I should make was a thread-protector for my lathe spindle.  Lathe spindle is 2 1/4 x 8TPI.  Only metal stock I have that can accomodate this was a piece of old 1" plate-steel that I got from the scrap-yard years ago.  I have been using it as a makeshift welding table.  I got my 14" metal abrasive chop-saw out an went to work.  To finish the cut I used a metal blade in my sawzall.

While it is only an inch thick, the spindle threads only go about an inch, so that's perfect!

It's in rough shape, but the lathe should be able to clean it up.  

After I cut out the beast, I needed to put it on the lathe for cutting.  This is where the 4-jaw chuck shines!  I popped it in the chuck and had it rough centered in only 5 mins or so!

I did a touch pass there to make sure I was at a good center.   I wish I had paid more attention at this point though; from this picture it is obvious that there was a partial cut in the piece!

Then I was ready for some serious metal removal!  I used a carbide tool and about 600 RPM (maybe a wee bit faster - 800rpm?)

Ugh - that cut is deeper than I realized.  I am hoping to use the TIG and fill and recut later to overcome this problem.

Ready to flip the piece and cut the other side.

At this point the phone battery was too low to get the action on the back side.  All I did was flip the piece over, recenter (roughly, no indicators) and face and turn the piece to approximate shape.  Then I decided to mount the piece on a mandril in a collet chuck to get the best concentricity quickly.  The ER32 collet chuck worked great!

Here it is with a half-inch hole bored into its center.

Actually, the mismatch in centering isn't too bad, but it needs to be perfect before I bore it to size and thread!

Ready to clean up the diameter

Making swarf.  This stuff is a pain in the ass to clean up.  Clogs the shop vac and is friggin dangerous to handle due to extremely sharp edges.

All done!  The finish isn't great due to the carbide tool chipping a bit.  But at this point its fine.  I did break the edges with a file file before I took it off the collet.

Not bad!  Next step is to bore it out 

Maybe not so bad.  I will bore and then clean it up for TIG fill

Cherry tree relocation and flat electric fence

I figured that this was the last chance to move the cherry trees before they had come out too far.  I dug them up and moved them to the other side of the sour cherry patch.  Sweet cherry trees can get big so I wanted them as far from the septic drain as possible.  Crossing fingers that they survive!  Also, since the electric fence had to be moved anyway, I went ahead and swapped in the new flat fence!  

Flat fence is definitely easier to see!

I will have to bury the old line.. hmm

Threading issues - leadscrew and apron cleaning

I had planned on taking the apron apart later in the year and giving it a good going over, but fate intervened...

I was setting up the lathe to do a test thread-run and noticed that the leadscrew was becoming disengaged when the cutter was up near the chuck.  The split nut seemed to not be engaging there for some reason.  I thought maybe the leadscrew there was dirty or something so I cleaned it thoroughly.  Still there was the problem.  I felt around where the split nut should engage and noticed a lot of dirt and crap in there.  So I bit the bullet and decided to take the apron off!

Look Ma, no apron!

A picture of up-into the saddle where the apron gear connect to the crossfeed

Apron is off!

What a mess!  I don't think the apron had ever been removed

It looks as though the crud was blocking the split-nut form closing completely.  Either that or thread on the split-nut has been worn too badly ....

UGH - look at the filth on the bottom of the oil-reservoir!

Yeah, a little filthy

Lots of cleanup to do!

Almost 5 cans of brake cleaner later...

Threads are in great shape!

I tried them on leadscrew and they really dig in!

Cleaned and coated with light layer of WD-40 to keep from rusting

Back together!

Reassembled on the lathe!

I ran the leadscrew again like before and it did not disengage - BUT, I did hear some strange sounds and then the leadscrew it self stopped turning!   I freaked out a bit and traced the problem back to a loose nut on the "banjo" - a metal arm that holds the threading stud gear in contact with the spindle/backgears.  I simply moved the arm back in place an actually tightened the bolt good and restarted the lathe.  No problems!  Whew

Here is a video I made of the cleaning ordeal:

I hope to get to do a threading test next weekend....