What did you do today?

[Tom King]

Spent the day moving Pam's sewing room upstairs.  It had outgrown the room it was in on the first floor.  I thought about some of you guys moving tools into a basement.   This was similar, only it was up, and finished woodwork to move on top of without scratching anything.  It wouldn't have been so bad except some of the machines are commercial, and those things are heavier than they look like.

We ended up putting towels on the handrail, and after taking the heads out of the machines, the tables with motors were slid upside down up the railing.  It was too awkward, and dangerous for toes, and woodwork, because of the low crossbars between the metal end legs, to tote them up.

My smart Wife sewed up a loop of strap that went under the machine heads, and with one person on each side, holding a vertical leg of the loop in each hand, what I had thought would be the hardest part became the easiest.

The worst part of the move was that she wanted a table that was stored up in the loft of the barn.  Of course, it was all the way at the back, under a pile of stuff, so the absolutely hardest thing to get to up there, and it's jamb packed with everything but barn stuff. It took at least 20 minutes, with all of us working, to move enough stuff, and clear a path to the door.

Another worst part was trying to dispose of two pickup loads of furniture that came out of that room.  Couldn't find anyone that wanted the furniture.  After the first trip to some dumpsters about 10 miles away, including waiting at three different road blocks for different kinds of work, we had another trip just like that to make.  When I got to the dumpsters the second time, the guy driving the truck that empties them told me that it was not allowed to put furniture in them, and that I'd damn well better head back the other way with it before he would leave.   Two other places that would have taken the load were closed today, so we took it back home, and hopefully the three work crews will finish today, so we don't have to spend all that extra time waiting tomorrow.  Kind of an industrial sized version of Alice's Restaurant scenario

Two of the work crews were actually pretty interesting.  The first was a brand new rig, on the back of a big truck, that unfolded in a complicated manner, and lowered over the side of a bridge without touching anything, but did block one of the two lanes.  The other interesting one was at another bridge.  There is a little peninsula off the side of the fill going to that bridge, with a tremendously tall power pole planted on the little peninsula.  There were two of the longest armed bucket trucks sitting face to face, blocking one of those two lanes, working on putting Osprey guards on the crossarm of that tall pole.  We have an overpopulation of Ospreys here.

All in all, a typical day for keeping a Wife satisfied with the house, and everything in the house is where she wants it........for now.

[Pondhockey]

1 hour ago, Tom King said:

 

My smart Wife sewed up a loop of strap that went under the machine heads, and with one person on each side, holding a vertical leg of the loop in each hand, what I had thought would be the hardest part became the easiest.

Impressive.

Your smart wife used the same method that movers used to move my floor mounted woodworking tools (jointer, planer, TS.)  Sounds like your wife (thanks to a previous post, I can picture her) can sew multiple layers of canvas.  That's pretty handy for industrial strength stuff!

 

[Tom King]

One of the industrial machines is a SInger from WWII that had belonged to the Army.  It's a straight stitch walking foot that was originally very high speed for sewing tents.  We bought it at an auction, from a company going out of business that made cargo parachutes for government contracts.   They had changed the small wheel on the end of the head, that the belt runs on, to a large diameter one, so it's now geared Way down.  They were sewing multiple layers of webbing for the cargo parachutes with it.  It'll sew through webbing stacked over a half inch thick, and never slows down.   It will also sew most anything thinner too, and with the low gearing, the speed is very easy to control.

I bought a manual for it off ebay, and in the back are instructions for where to hit it with a hammer, to disable it if you're being overrun by the enemy, so they can't use it.

[wdwerker]

The thing that caught my attention was that she remembered the table that was buried in the back of the loft. So I am guessing it went in long before all the other stuff accumulated blocking access to it.

My dad has a commercial sewing machine that was used for binding pamphlets. Powerful, heavy and kinda scary . That needle could easily poke through meat and bone.

[Tom King]

Actually, there used to be a stack of Walnut tables more towards the front, nearer the door, but neither one of us remembered why they are not there now.   There used to be a factory, about 25 miles away, that made school furniture.  My Uncle took some Walnut there, and had them make several desks, a bunch of chairs, and tables out of Walnut. 

 If you went to school back when they had Oak pieces of school furniture, they're just like them, but made out of Walnut.  He never had any children, so we ended up with most of his stuff.  He died in 1982.

 Our kitchen has Walnut school chairs around the table.  We did find two Walnut teacher's desks up there today, that we didn't remember we had.

The table in the back was one of those, and the only one that has a couple of drawers in the apron.

The loft is about 24 x 40, and of course, the one we ended up with was at the other end, the 40 foot way.  We quit putting hay up there 30 years, or more, ago, so it's accumulated a lot of "stuff" since then.

[Catco]

19 hours ago, Tom King said:

One of the industrial machines is a SInger from WWII that had belonged to the Army.  It's a straight stitch walking foot that was originally very high speed for sewing tents.  We bought it at an auction, from a company going out of business that made cargo parachutes for government contracts.   They had changed the small wheel on the end of the head, that the belt runs on, to a large diameter one, so it's now geared Way down.  They were sewing multiple layers of webbing for the cargo parachutes with it.  It'll sew through webbing stacked over a half inch thick, and never slows down.   It will also sew most anything thinner too, and with the low gearing, the speed is very easy to control.

I bought a manual for it off ebay, and in the back are instructions for where to hit it with a hammer, to disable it if you're being overrun by the enemy, so they can't use it.

I probably ran the same exact machine during my time in the Air Force. My specialty code dealt with all manners of egress equipment, parachutes included. Had to make many repairs to chutes and webbing. Especially once we started having C-130's doing cargo drops... Those cargo chutes get messed up really bad really quickly.

We used to perform a specific demonstration on the dangers of the heavy duty sewing machine to newbies fresh out of Basic and Tech School... We would sew a "Box X" on 4 layers of 1/4" thick webbing, which was marginally impressive. And then we'd blow their minds by sewing a quarter to the webbing at the middle of the X. Through the quarter, through the webbing, didn't slow down a bit. Imagine what that'd do to your hand. Ouch.

[Tom King]

I think our machine was used to tack the webbing together before it went to the automatic box-x machines, but not sure.  It was sitting near where all the box-x machines were.   I said a half inch, but it will probably handle more than that.

If I'm remembering correctly, this one is a Singer 111.   We thought it was a good buy at $75, but then traded the 3 phase motor for a single phase one for another hundred bucks.

I believe Pam is set up to sew anything, any kind of way.   The commercial machines make regular sewing machines look like childrens' toys.    Even the ones that aren't designed for high speeds are still pretty damned fast, and the pedal is sensitive.

[Chet]

Put in our vegetable garden for the year.  You can see where the dust collection gets emptied some times.  I can dump about two bags around the bed's walking paths each season.

[pkinneb]

Wow that looks like quite the project bet you get a pretty good haul from those beds

[lewisc]

Nothing beats homegrown food - especially tomatoes. Store bought are tasteless in comparison. 

[Chet]

14 hours ago, pkinneb said:

Wow that looks like quite the project bet you get a pretty good haul from those beds

There have been a lot of benefits since we went to raised beds about ten years ago.  The soil stays in great shape so you get better root growth which give you a better yield AND you don't have to be on your hands and knees to take care of it.  You can't hardly grab a hand full of soil with out there being worms in it.  Last year we had one cantaloupe plant that gave us twenty plus melons.

[Minnesota Steve]

On 4/11/2018 at 6:30 PM, Chet said:

Put in our vegetable garden for the year.  You can see where the dust collection gets emptied some times.  I can dump about two bags around the bed's walking paths each season.

Those are much prettier than ours... 

I need to come up with some sort of fence this year to keep rabbits out.   We also have a problem with deer, but I think if I made it unappealing to jump they'd stay away.

 

[woodbutcher74]

Where did you get all the soil? I've thought about going with raised beds but the thought of buying all the soil scared me off.

[Chestnut]

23 minutes ago, woodbutcher74 said:

Where did you get all the soil? I've thought about going with raised beds but the thought of buying all the soil scared me off.

Look into composting collection sites where people haul and dispost of leaves and grass clippings. In larger population centers that have equipment to make some dang good compost and usually sell it dirt cheap .. hehe. I think i paid $5 a yd if i loaded it myself.

[Chet]

52 minutes ago, woodbutcher74 said:

Where did you get all the soil?

Four years ago I completely re-did our back yard trying to get it more water wise.  In that process I rototilled the whole back yard, then added a bunch of redwood compost and rototilled again which gave me a lot of extra soil which ended up in the beds plus each year I add about a 1/2 yard of mushroom compost.

[Coop]

Chet, good looking set up. I’m a little ahead of you but you’ll be eating tomatoes long after mine are gone.

[Tpt life]

2 hours ago, Chestnut said:

Look into composting collection sites where people haul and dispost of leaves and grass clippings. In larger population centers that have equipment to make some dang good compost and usually sell it dirt cheap .. hehe. I think i paid $5 a yd if i loaded it myself.

Be very careful with this. It is easy to get nasty yard chemical residue if the site is not selective. 

[Chet]

28 minutes ago, C Shaffer said:

Be very careful with this.

When  I first started  I almost made this mistake.  All I get now is the mushroom compost from an organic mushroom farm.

[Tpt life]

I stopped a sentence too soon. Many of the woods we like to work come as trees that carry blights. Yard waste can often be a bad idea for this reason also. Compost is best when you can control what goes in at the start. 

[Chestnut]

Shoveled 6" of the driveway twice now. Was supposed to be my birthday party but instead i get to shovel again in 2 hours.

[mat60]

1 hour ago, Chestnut said:

Shoveled 6" of the driveway twice now. Was supposed to be my birthday party but instead i get to shovel again in 2 hours.

OH my. 

[Chestnut]

Hey it's not flooding so I'm happy. I've had many a birthday party in a sand bagging line

[Minnesota Steve]

4 hours ago, Chestnut said:

Shoveled 6" of the driveway twice now. Was supposed to be my birthday party but instead i get to shovel again in 2 hours.

I have a 24" Ariens snowblower...   We were supposed to have some people over this afternoon, so I went and cleared at 10am.   Then again at 2pm...   And then it started snowing harder so they didn't come over.   So at 6pm I went out again and there was more snow than the first two times, a good 8-10"...

I'm so glad I didn't have to shovel as that stuff was heavy. ;-)

[Cheeset202]

Wow that is a depressing scene for Mid-April and I live in N. Idaho!  Happy Birthday by the way!

[Cheeset202]

I flattened one face of the top slabs for my roubo build with my jointer plane, waiting for a friend to come over and help me pass them through the planer.  Ordered the benchcrafted leg and tail vise........broke again!