Welding stuff! Fixing things. Cold.

Nutcracker Progress

I continued to practice my welding skills on the nutcracker build.    I am, slowly, getting better I think.  I am still using .030" flux-core wire in my welder, so technically I am NOT doing MIG welding.  MIG requires a shield gas.

Handle/lever was added - its now functional!

Here I still need to chop off the tail and figure out an option for the clamp.

Video showing the nutcracker in operation!

Throttle control for the backhoe

It's still too cold to even consider starting the backhoe, but I figured that I could still try to fix the throttle control.  As you can see from the pictures below, the cable broke off from the control lever.

Well, long story short - the throttle cable evidently got some water inside of it and froze - I couldn't move that cable at all!  I considered forcing it, but I didn't want to risk breaking that cable anymore - it's too close to the point where I will need to replace the whole run  of cable if it gets any shorter!

Not much cable on this end to work with!

There is some cable length at the other end I could pull through - if  the cable wasn't frozen in place!

The next day, however...  it warmed up enough for me to pull a little bit of cable through - enough to get a hold of anyway!

I managed to straighten out the cable enough to get it through a hole that I drilled in the bolt shaft on the throttle lever.

The cable is secured in place on the throttle lever by two nuts I tightened against each other

I am still afraid to try it out because its cold and that throttle cable is brittle!  I am also thinking that I should put some loctite on those nuts to keep them from loosening from the vibrations.

Examining some of the scrap walnut

I had moved some of the scrap walnut from the floor and cleaned it up and temporarily restacked it on the sawmill bed.  I brushed it off good too.  I think there may be some good wood in some of this stuff! 

There is a fair amount of this walnut 

There will be some waste, of course, when milled into a usable condition

Here is a piece that I trimmed and put through the planer.  It actually looks quite nice!   Very nice wood to work with as compared to oak and maple!  I ended up giving this piece to friend at work who helped acquire and mill this wood.  He has considerably more carpentry skills than I do.

Post soaking continues

I have been trying to get one post a day through the copper naphthenate bath.  I like to let each post soak overnight.  I think that some of the ones I did when it was real cold out may not have absorbed as much preservative as they need.  I may put them back in for a while.

Six posts left to go!

I am not using as much treatment chemical as I would have thought.  The wood only absorbs so much.  I have used about 1 gallon of the CuNap concentrate so far.  I did mix mup another batch this weekend.

Welding table - ideation to early build in one day!

In preparing for the welding I will need to do for the belt-grinder build, I decided to just make a welding table.  I determined I needed one after looking at the damage my tablesaw table was taking from my nutcracker build!  

I found pretty much everything I needed right in one place - my garage!  Actually sitting next to each other!

Looking around for ideas and scrap to work with - I found this old packing frame from my woodmaxx woodchipper!

Old shelf support brackets (I think) from an old store

Just need to get it out...

After using metal cutting chopsaw to liberate these square steel tubes

Just need to correct the height and attach those tubes and its done!  Next weekend will see it done!

Belt grinder supplies are in!

I have everything (well most everything) I need to build the belt grinder!  Now the hard part...

That's about $200 in metal there!  Not to mention the shipping.  Ugh.

2 HP electric motor!  3-phase, sealed (TEFC)   Bugger is heavy.

Tractor and UTV off to be fixed and maintained

Now that it is snowy/cold/icky outside and I am not in dire need of my tractor and UTV, I decided to have them serviced.   Hines came out Friday and picked them up just before the rain started (as it started actually).   They got them both on the same truck.  They were packed in tight though.

We had to push this down to the truck bed from the garage - fortunately its all downhill!  They used a winch once it was this far.

The tractor was able to back right up onto the bed.

Off they go!