What did you do today?

[B1rdhunter]

Supposedly if you put them in a brown paper sack in a cool place/ basement they will ripen.

 

[B1rdhunter]

What kind do you like to plant? Jealous of two crops. I would not plant so many if I could have fresh practically year round.

 

[Coop]

Yeah, I’ve heard the same and plan on trying that, thanks. I’ve tried many and have come to like the Big Beef the best. Good producer and great taste. Brandy wine is my absolute favorite but it requires more cool weather than we normally get. If you have them in your neck of the woods, plant a couple after your last frost. The leaves look like potato vine leaves so don’t become alarmed. 

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, Coop said:

So, I don’t know if these will ripen off the vine? 

Sure will. Place them somewhere cool ish like 65F and in 1-2 weeks they'll taste like they just came off the vine. I ripened about 20 lbs of green ones like this. The pasta sauce they made is amazing.

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, B1rdhunter said:

Supposedly if you put them in a brown paper sack in a cool place/ basement they will ripen.

 

Not necessary. I've experimented with sacks or boxes under plastic on the counter in the sun it's all about the same. Big thing is if ones start to go rotten to get them away asap. it might happen to 1 or 2 out of 100.

[wtnhighlander]

Grandma kept a batch of green tomatoes ripening on her kitchen window sill all summer long. Man, I miss those fresh tomatoes!

[Mark J]

Coop, if the tomato plants were still producing why pull them out and replant?  Won't the plants continue to produce?

[Coop]

I don’t know but probably. They have already out grown their cages so I took a bunch of cuttings and will root and plant the, along with some new plants, just in case. 

[Chip Sawdust]

About five years ago my bro-in-law gave me this A-10 model. I never finished it, we moved twice and the pitot tube got broken off - no idea where that is. It’s in Air Force gray on gray camp, hard to see in the photo but the paint is done. Here’s where it is today, with eight cluster bombs and a couple napalm containers to affix to the underwing mounts. Then decals and details  

 

[RichardA]

One of the best air support planes troops have ever had.

[drzaius]

My son spent some time in North Carolina & became good friends with a guy who flew an A-10. In one of their big training exercises he actually "shot down" an F16, something that is very rare.

[Chet]

I went t visit an uncle in Tucson AZ. and from his place you could hear and see the A-10's taking off from Davis–Monthan Air Force Base.  I could have sat on his porch all day and watched that.   They're one of those planes that have a distinct sound to them.

[Tpt life]

I like visiting my sister and her fam on DM, but hands down better was visiting them when they were stationed at Nellis. 

[drzaius]

When I was in Tucson several years ago, we bought 3fer tickets to the DM bone yard, the excellent Pima air and space museum, and a Titan missile silo. I don't remember how much they were, but it was a bargain. The Titan silo was an especially profound experience.

[Chet]

25 minutes ago, drzaius said:

DM bone yard, the excellent Pima air and space museum, and a Titan missile silo.

Been to all those myself and well worth it.  Pima Air museum was the last thing I did with my dad before he passed.

[Coop]

The Warthog is my favorite plane at our annual air show in Oct. 

[RichardA]

Try walking the airplane graveyard. I did it once, it's almost haunting.

[Chet]

1 hour ago, RichardA said:

Try walking the airplane graveyard. I did it once, it's almost haunting.

The stories those planes could tell huh.

[Chip Sawdust]

13 hours ago, drzaius said:

My son spent some time in North Carolina & became good friends with a guy who flew an A-10. In one of their big training exercises he actually "shot down" an F16, something that is very rare.

That would indeed be rare! They’re not really made for air to air combat. I’m so glad they didn’t retire them, nothing else in the inventory comes close for ground support, although the AC-130 isn’t half bad. That 105 howitzer onboard is incredible. But the Warthog gets close in and personal.

[Chip Sawdust]

2 hours ago, RichardA said:

Try walking the airplane graveyard. I did it once, it's almost haunting.

I’ve been to a few of those around the country and found some amazing “bones” in out of the way places. It does make you ponder the history. I was sad when they decided to use up the inventory of retired F4s for target practice...

[Chip Sawdust]

10 hours ago, Chet said:

I went t visit an uncle in Tucson AZ. and from his place you could hear and see the A-10's taking off from Davis–Monthan Air Force Base.  I could have sat on his porch all day and watched that.   They're one of those planes that have a distinct sound to them.

Living in Portland, OR for a while I spent a bit of time around the PDX airport where the Guard F-16s would take off in pairs. You could certainly tell when they took of compared to any commercial flight. It was awesome to watch. Gives you goose bumps  A real sharp, cracking, determined sound compared to the whoosh of, say, a Boeing.

[Tom King]

Not really today, but what we did the past several days:   We're putting Luxury Vinyl Plank in the old lake house we're fixing up to start renting, hopefully this Spring.  It was some sort of agricultural building before the lake was built, and converted into a house sometime soon after the lake was flooded.  The floor is concrete, and poorly poured.  There was a raised seam running the length of the building, down the middle.  It would have shown horribly under the LVP.

I rented a concrete grinding machine that came with a Hepa vacuum.  It worked really nicely, and the vacuum, that has two motors, really did a good job of capturing all the dust.

In one section the floor was pushed up on one side of that seam by large Oak tree roots.  I needed to get some conduit in that area, so we broke up the high side with a 20 lb. sledge hammer.  We put the conduit in, and poured some concrete to fill in the hole, and level out the floor across where the old seam was.

I had asked Pam for an old Yoga mat that she didn't use any more, to place on the floor where it would be hit with the sledge hammer, so it wouldn't spray concrete chips all over the place.  She gave me one, reluctantly, but then when we got into it, we are pulling the old carpet up anyway, so I used some of the old carpet foam rubber pad, and it worked like a charm.  The house has some old furniture left in it, not really worth anything, but we're going to leave some of it, so I didn't want to make any more mess than necessary.

Mike is too tall to hit the floor many times with the big hammer, so I ended up doing most of the swinging.  I thought I would be really sore from it, but never really was.  Not too bad for an old man, I guess.  A friend called last night, asking if I wanted to play golf this weekend.  I told him what I'd been doing, and that if I needed to hit a ball straight down, that I would be ready.

I ground down the seam a little lower than level, because we could build it back up to flat, and level easier than trying to grind it down perfectly.  I wanted some concrete mixture that would leave a smooth surface, but didn't want to put all the moisture in the house that using the pourable floor leveling stuff.   I picked thinset, normally used for laying tile, and mixed some straight Portland cement, and hydrated lime, to make it almost like plaster.   By the time we got finished, I had found the right combination of additional cement, and lime.  Too much cement, and the mix was too sticky.  I ended up adding 4 trowels of cement, and 10 of lime.  The last batch, and the last trial mix, finished wonderfully.

Sorry, as usual, I forgot to take pictures of the finished floor.

 

[Tom King]

I probably should tell of my fiasco with tools for this job.  The only long cement finishing trowel I own is one that I use for flush, taped sheetrock joints, and I didn't want to be rubbing concrete with it, and I certainly didn't want to use any of my good plastering trowels on it. 

Looking at the new finishing trowels in HD, they had gone up a Lot since I bought one last.  Since this was probably just a one time use, I decided to get a $14 off brand 18" finishing trowel, instead of buying the 40 buck one.

Man, was that a mistake.  In using the cheap trowel on the first batch of mud, it just wouldn't work worth anything.  You have to push down hard, just like finishing plaster.  This _____ trowel, when I pushed down on it, which is enough to flex one slightly, the middle of the side bent, but the ends didn't at the same rate.  The ends would dig out grooves, and not only dig out a small groove, but the material that was in that groove is now pushed out the end, leaving a raised ridge.

I always get bit when I try to save a few dollars on tools.  This required another several hours wasted, since HD or Lowes are both about a half hour away.  I bought a new rub brick, and a Marshalltown long finishing trowel with curved ends for $42.  I don't remember how much the rub brick was.  I had to rub out the ridges that were left, and then put on another skim coat, so regardless of the money spent, all that cost us most of a day.  If we had been working for someone paying us, I would not have charged them for that time, and it would have been very expensive for me.

The new Marshalltown trowel worked like one is supposed to.  I told Mike that every time I ever tried to cheap out on a tool that it came back to bite me.  He said he'd heard me say that before.  I try to forget how many times.  Maybe one day I'll learn.

[Chip Sawdust]

Finally got the A-10 done.

Lots of little decals on this, took a couple hours just to get those done tonight.

Next is a Ferrari F1 car that's on its way from somewhere... The F2001 Michael Schumacher drove to yet another world championship during the Scuderia Ferrari's last period of dominance in Formula 1.

[Mark J]

If you haven't seen Ford vs. Ferrari yet, it's a great movie.