Coffee 1-18-14

NWBuilder · Post by **NWBuilder** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 8:57 am

Good Morning ALL,
Thanks for the coffee Freddy, apparently with 3 misspelled words already I need it. I love your ingenuity Freddy, great job!!
Not much going on here either although I feel pretty good that it is 32 outside and rising. I have basketball practice today as usual but that is a highlight for me. The wife is starting to ask where her new dining table and hutch are but it has just been too damned cold out in the shop to be gluing anything up out there. Good excuse right??! I always find something to keep me occupied. Well, have a good weekend all be safe and of course warm!! Ken

michaelanthony · Post by **michaelanthony** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 9:35 am

Good mornin' all, Freddy I'm going to grab this lonely greek yogurt if you don't mind, I have to look good for my movie debut monday morning, yup you guessed it Colonoscopy. 53 yrs young and need to make sure there is no baby wipes floatin' around

I finally finished decorating the porch I built last year

Hambden Bob · Post by **Hambden Bob** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 9:48 am

Real Festive,M.A.!

titleist1 · Post by **titleist1** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 10:04 am

NWBuilder wrote: The wife is starting to ask where her new dining table and hutch are but it has just been too damned cold out in the shop to be gluing anything up out there. Good excuse right?

This is the perfect excuse to get that small stoker for the workshop! Worked for me a few years back! I also said it was a trial run before moving it into the basement, but then the next summer I found another used stoker to put in the house and left the other in the workshop! Then I found a third stoker that I sold her on as a backup for the other two regarding onsite parts. Regardless that the hand fed is still in the basement waiting to be wheeled into place if we get a real long power outage.

I am not sure she has picked up on the addiction yet, there has been no hint of kidnapping me for an intervention.

LsFarm · Post by **LsFarm** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 10:37 am

Good Morning!
Freddy: post a photo of one or two of the brushes. Most of the problem is the attaching wire or connection.
You can file a brush shorter, narrower etc. I have an Auto electric rebuilder nearby that has a huge selection of brushes that I've been able to pull some from and modify to work on odd jobs.
Post a photo so we can see the attaching wire etc.. OH, add a measuring stick to the pic,

Well a disaster this week, next door:

.JPG | 190KB | barn fire.jpg

My neighbor's big old barn burnt to the ground.. no injuries or collateral damage, thankfully.

PLEASE, PLEASE be careful. In the winter, the humidity is low, the wood and other combustibles are tinder-dry, and a fire is a fast moving and deadly monster!! Look up Richard's fire from several years ago!!

Have fire extinguishers at every outside door!! and at each end of any workshop.

I had a guy in our old car club complain about the cost of my recommended Halon 1121 fire extinguishers.. My comment was: hey, Tony, what is your car worth? $175,000-$200,000 ? What's a $175 fire extinguisher compared to that ??

Anyway, cold, 12* this morning, gloomy overcast. a snowstorm of about 3" is due tonight for Ohio and Kentucky, and I'm leaving early tomorrow for a drive to Atlanta and on to Florida on Monday.. DAMN, the truck is going to get well-salted. GRRR

Ok time to get to work.
Greg L

Cap · Post by **Cap** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 1:00 pm

Hello Everybody,
That's a great piece of engineering Freddy! How did you get the 3 cap screws to tighten & loosen without spinning when adjusting the interlock plate ? Did you tack weld a nut to the back of the front panel cover?

I was in the hospital yesterday for a procedure called a Kyphoplasty to my L1 & L4 vertebrae. Two weeks ago, a ladder slipped out from under me when I was attempting to do some PM work on the back of a building. The ground was frozen and not quite level. I used wood to shim the ladder to level it up. It seemed sturdy until I reached onto a roof. The wood slipped out from under the one leg. It happened very quickly with no warning. Scared the crap out of me. But I managed to get up, load up and go to a medical center. Two fractured vertebrae. I feel better today.

Greg, I think the pig did it!

Take care everyone.

Hambden Bob · Post by **Hambden Bob** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 1:55 pm

Christ,Cap ! You are one Tough Hitter ! They don't generally Manufacture Guys like you anymore! Do the time,and recover complete,my Sturdy Friend !

SMITTY · Post by **SMITTY** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 2:25 pm

Glad you're alright there Cap! I don't know how I haven't done the same after working industrial roofing for 3 years, then doing my own barn's roof in fall of '12. I had the ladder kick out on me once in the driveway, but luckily the aluminum ladder snagged the powerlines to the barn on the way down!

Ironically, that saved my ass!

Got one more roof to do that I've put off for WAY too long. My porch ... I don't even want to look up there. Was horrendous 5 years ago ..... I can only imagine how bad it is now! Only thing keeping it somewhat water tight is the ice/water shield the previous owner thankfully threw down first.

TSB, that Eurton Electric is a GREAT company! I had a generator rotor rewound there a couple years back. Was cheaper for me to ship it all the way out to the left coast than to have it rebuilt locally ... by $200!! WOW! They did an excellent job, and had a quick turnaround. Forget the owner's name, but he was very helpful in the process. Highly recommend those guys for anything. They know their stuff over there.

Yeah been a balmy week over here. Ice fishing went to hell in a handbasket, and my yard is a mud bog. In the 30's right now - has been for the past 72 hours or more. Snowed like hell for the first part of today - just enough to cover everything, and get the sand trucks out to destroy what might be left of your undercarriage ....

I left the compound for the first time in a while to return some cans/bottles. What a friggin waste. Don't know why I even bother. I get there (like 8 miles away, one way) and the machine rejects all these soda bottles ... so now I have to drive all the way back to town, and to the store that sells that brand. Wouldn't ya know, the damn machine is beeping that it needs emptying ... so I go walking around the store with my bag of empties trying to find someone to fix this damn thing. I was getting pretty irritated ... I could tell, because people start eyeballing me funny when that happens ...

So basically I wasted an hour of my time for a whopping .80 cents ...

All told I got $4.30 ... and I used $6 in gas to get it.

Why I bother leaving my property, I'll never figure out!

Here's my "interlock" device. It only works if you can READ ENGLISH ...

Hambden Bob · Post by **Hambden Bob** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 2:31 pm

Smit's,You are simply one UL Approved Dude !!

SMITTY · Post by **SMITTY** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 2:34 pm

You should see my plumbing work ...

Freddy · Post by **Freddy** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 2:58 pm

Cap wrote:How did you get the 3 cap screws to tighten & loosen without spinning when adjusting the interlock plate?

I drilled and tapped the holes then used nylock nuts on the back.... Plenty of room on the back side. It didn't work well at first.... the 100 Amp breaker sticks proud of the cover by a fat sixteenth of an inch and the interlock dragged. Back to the CNC machine and removed 3 /32 from where the interlock lands on the breaker. Once that was done it slides smooth as a salamander on a wet rock. I wish it were my idea.... some guy came up with the idea 4 or 5 years ago & sells them for $149. I hope he's a millionaire! $149 seems like a lot, but it's way cheaper than the switch alternative. I'll tell ya, it's a sick feeling if you accidentally energize the grid. A couple weeks back I thought for a split second that I did, but, I have a two part mental safety so I did not actually make what could be a deadly mistake , but, I never want to have that feeling again. A buddy of mine added a interlock switch a couple years back. He put it this way: I used to turn off the main breaker "knowing" that I was careful and I had taught the wife how in case something happened to me while it was hooked up. But then I realized.... IF a lineman dies and the power company starts coming door to door, I am on the "the list" of people that might have caused the death. Am I supposed to prove I am innocent? Now that I have the interlock, I am simply OFF the list. THAT's a good feeling.

The generator brush... at some point I will remove it's mate to measure and photograph. Once I get some time! At this point I do not neeeeed it so it's a back burner project.

Greg, sorry to hear of your neighbors fire.... I hope no one was hurt.

Hambden Bob · Post by **Hambden Bob** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 3:29 pm

I'm Always Impressed,Freddy ! Greg,it just blows me away,after having served 20 years in Fire and Rescue,what Folks don't bother with to help save their Structures and Their Contents! You hit the nail right on the Head,and I Thank You for that! Damn Shame. No time is a good time to lose it all,but right now really magnifies the loss......

KLook · Post by **KLook** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 4:19 pm

I have that last bit of coffee.

Dang its strong after laying there all day! Feel like I need something though. I wish you guys would stop sending the cold fronts this far south as I am experiencing a coastal Maine winter here with higher daytime temps. Going to be below freezing for the next week at least, at night of course. I am just amazed at the lack of knowledge about winterizing (or summerizing) a structure here. The electric bills are a topic on the evening news. It is that same thing keeping heat in as keeping heat out! But they build them like garages in the north and then complain. The fact that power is so cheap here is the culprit I believe. Georgia has a test on all new construction now, but a guy that conducts the test told me you could pass with a 2x2 window open! Code enforcement in Tenn. is non existent as far as I can tell.
Hey Greg! Just lay on the horn when you go by the East Brainerd exit, I'll wave.

Kevin

LsFarm · Post by **LsFarm** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 5:01 pm

Freddy: when you NEED the generator, the power is already out !!
I have an 11k pto generator I'm not using, you want me to send it to you??

Greg

Freddy · Post by **Freddy** » Sat. Jan. 18, 2014 7:11 pm

LsFarm wrote:Freddy: when you NEED the generator, the power is already out !!

Ahhhh... that would have been today! Two Saturdays in a row we have lost power. Geeepers! We've lost power maybe 8 or 10 times in the last ten years.... 7 or 8 of those times have been since Thanksgiving! I guess things were so crazy I didn't get a chance to mention..... Last Sat we had unpredicted freezing rain. The roads were impassable all morning. Just as it started to be OK we lost power, for half the day! I guess it was the next day I bought a 8,000 watt Generac back up generator. So, I'm all set for now. But, that 11K PTO sounds sweet! I'll trade you for a dead 15k!

Coffee 1-18-14

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