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!