I've hooked up the Tig welder!

And my first job is a humdinger!

There are a few things that stay with you as you get more experience in life. "Don't bite into an unknown pepper from anybodies garden, even your own" is one of them. But that's for later. I had a project offered to me in a seemingly innocent exchange one day a fellow ask me how much to rebuiild an engine? Seems simple enough, there are questions that must be ask first, but I said yes as it is a medium size Briggs single cylinder engine , I'm thinking I can pop in a set of rings and seat the valves and throw a coat of paint on it and be done for about a hundred bucks. Well there is this one little problem, the side of the engine was pried at. In an attempt to open the engine, why? Who knows? Anyway a large pry bar and a hammer were used, to try to remove the 6 to 1 gear box. It didn't come off due to the two remaining bolts inside the gear reduction unit. However, some of the gear reduction unit did come off, in the form of a twisted broken flange. This is the second aluminum item I ever welded. It was pretty gobbed up. My excuse is that I was welding a piece of aluminum that has been soaking in oil and grease for 55 years, the age of the engine, and it wasn't about to be acid dipped, like it should have been to properly clean it, to weld it the easiest (right) way. I ground a lot of the excess weld away, and finished the areas where it had to be flat, on the milling machine.

 

As it turns out , this is the first thing I welded with the TIG welder, I've been keeping the parts taped together for years, It really upset me when I broke it. I think I had it about a week before it broke, and I don't think I had done anything wrong to cause it, but it happened so long ago I don't really remember, just that I wanted to fix it, if I ever got around to welding aluminum. It worked pretty well, which emboldened me, to attempt the gear box repair myself.

Oh, and about that thing you need to remember about welding? Even if you can't see well, it's not a "Bright Idea" to lift the mask for a better look, DAMN that heliarc is amazingly bright, I can't describe it, the sun is a dim bulb in comparison, it is bright to the point of, wow I don't know what. I would just suggest not doing it again! And even gloves have a limit to the amount of heat they will protect you from. After a certain point is reached they will assist in removing the skin from your hands. Just a couple things to consider when working with thousands of degrees in close proximity to your body. Of course it's not as if I'd do anything as silly as these cautions might suggest, just glad I kept some creams from my firefighter days....

 

 

When I picked up the engine it was reported to have just started smoking and that's why my friend had attempted to open it up, though it bore little resemblence to a can of beans, the methods used would have been more appropriate if it had been.

 

 

 

 

 

Well you might recall that I just finished hooking up big power lines to the garage to use my other welder, the TIG that I had never had a chance to hook up, Mainly because I fell soon after I went across Pennsylvania to get it. Another Ebay purchase gone wild.... Anyway I borrowed Russell's truck and drove to nearly Philadelphia and picked up a truck load of welding stuff.

Having never imagined I'd own a TIG welder, I had no idea what all it would come with, or need to operate. Which I confirmed recently. I didn't have the right parts and it was near catastrophic before it all ended.

OK I went to a weld shop , a place that supplies welders, and ask the guy to change one small thing on a special hose for me. The thread was right handed on mine, and left handed in the part it needed to mate with. SO I needed, either a new large brass connector with two different threads (right and left handed) or the same connector with both right handed threads and a new small hose with two right handed fittings, or change to a left handed ferrel on the large "special power supplying" hose. Three totally do-able options...I ended up settling for the left handed ferrel option as that was all I could get him to understand, and it was the only option he had the parts to accomplish without a week wait for parts to be delivered. Basically this was a left handed nut, it cost $57.00. Really! I had to buy an entire hose replacement assembly for a welding torch I don't own and remove the nut, actually worth about $4.oo, and then put it on the hose I brought with me.

Here's where it gets ugly. Now "remove a fitting and replace it," seems so mundane. So the guy says, "I won't charge you to recouple the hose." I'm thinking "Great! Works into the NADA farm price range." SO... he procedes to go to the "back room" area. You know, where all the magical work of "those who know" gets done. Fortunately, I had another question, so I popped my head into the "back room area" to ask him, just as he was looking quizically at the hose he had just cut. "I didn't know this had a wire in it" he said as he cut some more off the end, the end he needed to reattach. "What is in this thing?" he said as he started to cut more off. "STOP!" I nearly screamed, as this "craftsman" was about to really screw things up.... I quickly gathered up all the parts I could find, as he had been chopping over a trash can, i ended up fishing a half dozen sections of the hose he was macerating, so I could see what had been in the hose, he was intent on slicing into little pieces! My hope was, that I might be able to salvage the remaining hose, but I needed to stop the carnage first... I was intent on trying to salvage something from "the only hose ever made this way" according to the person I had mistakenly considered competent. About 30 more seconds and I would still be waiting for a new torch set to be delivered , and trying to explain how a $4.00 piece cost $300.00 and I still hadn't gotten anything done. And the profit margin on this little excursion isn't very large, basically i'm doing it in a neighborly fashion, for cost. Now obviously I can't push the cost on the job, it's nobodies fault, but my own, that the parts weren't compatable. Of course I trusted the guy selling them to give me the right parts or that they would be available when I hooked it up about 5 years ago, and they may have been then, but with the injury and all, I didn't get to it for a while and it cost just a little bit more to make it right after the fact. Another little kiss related to my accident and the incredible response by the City of Akron...

But what's really important is, that I'm not there (in Akron) anymore. At the top of this page is the little vista I see every day now, as the trees change colors, though the picture really doesn't do it justice. The colors are amazing, and changing everyday.

We decided to wait until next spring to get the goats to eat the Multiflora Rose, the predominant briar here at the Briar Patch. I'm hoping to replace them with more productive Berry Bushes. About half the Purple Raspberry bushes I planted, as well as the Red Raspberry bushes, didn't make it past the middle of June. Too dry, and we didn't have the water situation under control yet. In fact it's still pretty dry, not looking good for farming in this area, not unusual I'm told.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This little machine, chops up the corn, stalks and all, and blows them into the trailer behind. The trailers are swapped, when full, and taken to the silos. The chopped result is called, oddly enough, silage. It is "augered" up to the top of the silo, where it is stored, to feed the hundreds of cows next door, throughout the winter months. I'm astounded at my ignorance about the simplist things, as are the neighbors. I learn pretty quickly, but some of what they do only makes sense to me after I see the whole process. I'm sure there is a significant amount of head shaking after I leave most of our encounters. And by the way, the little machine is really about 15 feet tall, and all engine, but the chopper. I begin to see where farming accidents would be quick and fatal. A new board game is forming as I watch...

Man, are we happy out here!

 

The Chores, Fresh Air, Green Acres is for ME.