Projects

[willedoo]

I miss the dry inland climate. Here on the coast the winter is ok but for a lot of the year doors and windows stick and mould tries to take over.

[Litespeed]

I curse and complain about the dry rot of wood and constant need to use quality materials and still have maintenance.

 

Especially as I fix my friend Michelle's deck on her house boat.

Today after crap health, I went to start work after a big shed trip to Bunnings Aerospace.

Grabbed a broken fishing knife to cut some simple cable ties...voila, I slashed open the base of my left thumb/palm deeply.

As a certified bleeder on heavy doses of rat poison aka Warfarin, I fucked up and bleed like a pig.

Fortunately my supervisor is a RN so went into ER mode. 

It took 15 minutes to stop the bleeding, used steristrips instead of sutures. 

Ideally medical super glue is better but bleeders can't be choosers.

 

Now rowing the 500m to my boat adds new meaning. Each row's pain reminding me of my mortality and most of all stupidity.

 

With rain forecast for the next few days, I will lick my wounds, recover then do the blood cover deck.

 

But I would still rather the anguish, fuckups and pain of living in the water.

 

Even bad days are good .

[onetrack]

You got to how old? - and you still can't use a knife without slashing yourself?? Remember the old adage - "cut towards your chum, not towards your thumb!" 🙂

[Marty_d]

I still remember a neighbour's older son teaching me to always cut away from myself.  I would have been about 5 and he was 18 and already a fairly hardened criminal.  He spent a lot of time in prison after that so his knife/shiv handling skills may have served him well.

[willedoo]

21 hours ago, old man emu said:

I'd also like to know why 19 mm plywood is so expensive. 

Here's one possible scenario: it could start with a chainsaw wielding bloke in Borneo. The trees are cut, topped and hauled out of the jungle with a log skidder so a grapple can load them onto timber trucks for the journey down to the coast. There a crane loads them onto barges for the trip down to the main port where they are unloaded and loaded onto ships for the trip across the ocean to the port at Jakarta. There they are unloaded onto trucks and transported to the plywood factory where the logs are processed by peeling and cutting to size. Add lots of expensive glue, pressure and heat and a bit more sizing before stacking the finished sheets on pallets, strapping them and forklifting them into shipping containers. Then container trucks take the containers back to the port to be loaded onto a container ship bound for Australia where the importer will pay customs duty and a raft of other port and inspection charges on top of the freight and initial product cost. When the ship arrives here, the containers are loaded onto trucks and transported to the wholesaler/importer's warehouse where the plywood is unloaded from the shipping containers and stored. As orders come in the plywood is then loaded onto delivery trucks and taken to the big green and red shed, forklifted off and stacked in the building supplies section where the friendly staff will sell us a sheet or two and collect the GST for the government. But that's only a guess.

[willedoo]

Most plywood is imported, but I suppose the few remaining Australian manufacturers wouldn't be able to offer any better price due to the high production costs here.

[spacesailor]

I enjoyed reading about the " board " making plant in nz .

' one hot night ' , the workers opened the skylights ,

Which let a huge swarm of moths in, and onto the boards being made .

The boards were Finnished with an exceptional " moth patern . That was an immediate hit with their customers.

spacesailor

Edited September 26 by spacesailor

[nomadpete]

Wille, are you suggesting that plywood is a diesel intensive product?

[spacesailor]

Again .

The same " Whakatane Board Mills " , lost one of it's workers one night .

The following day they found the previous nights production were a very ' orangey ' colour, and samples were taken for '' DNA " analysis. 

Missing worker found ! .

spacesailor

[pmccarthy]

In 1959 I paid 1/- for a piece of plywood to make a boomerang. I bought it at the side door of FA Stowe & Co in North Albury. I still have the boomerang and can provide photographic evidence if required.

[willedoo]

I had a plywood returning boomerang when I was a kid but it was a bought one.

[willedoo]

One step closer to those slabs. Yesterday I got the saw all bolted together, cleaned up, free of hornet mud and in to the local Husqvarna dealer to see if they can get it going. I gave it a few pulls before taking it in but saw no sign of any spark. Fingers crossed it won't cost an arm and a leg to fix. That's one job that's been a long time coming. It's been sitting around semi disassembled for a long time.

 

 

[willedoo]

It was a good lesson not to leave a saw lying around in an uncleaned state for a long time. The  chain oil residue mixes with the sawdust to make corrosive gunk. It ate a few decent sized pit marks on the inside of the aluminium drive sprocket case and even went right through in a couple of small areas. I think it's the acid or tannin in the sawdust that does it. When I get the saw back I'll do the old superglue + baking soda trick to fill the pits.

[nomadpete]

That's interesting. I have left oily sawdust on my old chainsaw for years without seeing any corrosion when I eventually cleaned it up with degreaser. I cut gum and wattle. What timber did you cut?

I have seen aluminium disappear when left in contact with damp concrete but never when exposed to oily wood.

[willedoo]

I don't remember the last timber I cut with it but it would have been either brushbox, ironbark or bloodwood. I've never had it happen with the Stihl saw; maybe the Husqvarna case has a different alloy composition.

[onetrack]

If you want a pro saw, you buy a Stihl. All others are cheap imitations. Husvarna would've had the alloy casting provided by the cheapest tenderer, from anywhere in the world.

Despite saying that, I've got a 2000psi Husqvarna 240V pressure washer which I bought during COVID and it's not too bad. But it's made in Italy, where all the good pressure washers are made.

 

I've a got a Stihl 028 chainsaw I bought new in 1988. It's made in West Germany. It's done a heap of work, and it still runs like a top. It's gone through about 3 bars and 5 chains.

All I've done to it is give an occasional clean, replaced the spark plug several times, and I had to replace the anti-vibration rubbers between handle and body when they buggered up a few years ago.

They don't make 'em like they used to! But the Stihl cost me $799 in 1988, and that was serious money, back then.

[old man emu]

15 minutes ago, onetrack said:

It's gone through about 3 bars and 5 chains.

Sounds like grandfather's axe. 

[willedoo]

21 minutes ago, onetrack said:

If you want a pro saw, you buy a Stihl. All others are cheap imitations. Husvarna would've had the alloy casting provided by the cheapest tenderer, from anywhere in the world.

Despite saying that, I've got a 2000psi Husqvarna 240V pressure washer which I bought during COVID and it's not too bad. But it's made in Italy, where all the good pressure washers are made.

 

I've a got a Stihl 028 chainsaw I bought new in 1988. It's made in West Germany. It's done a heap of work, and it still runs like a top. It's gone through about 3 bars and 5 chains.

All I've done to it is give an occasional clean, replaced the spark plug several times, and I had to replace the anti-vibration rubbers between handle and body when they buggered up a few years ago.

They don't make 'em like they used to! But the Stihl cost me $799 in 1988, and that was serious money, back then.

1988 was the same year I bought my Stihl which is an 034 Super. The Super was about 61cc so an extra 5cc on the 034. It's been a good saw. I don't know what the smaller Husqvarnas are like but the one I have was the most used saw in forestry work around the world at the time I bought it. The professional range seems to have a fairly good name in the industry although I don't know much about the new model that has replaced mine.

[willedoo]

When I went to ag college it was a two year course that was the equivalent of grade 11 and 12 high school. The college owned a bush block up in the hills and in the middle of the second year we all had to go up there to do a week long timber camp. It was real back woods stuff. Accommodation was a long corrugated iron hut with one big long dormitory room full of bunk beds and a second room on the end with a kitchen and eating area. There was no electricity, just kerosene lanterns and a wood stove with an old shearers cook toiling away with the biggest, blackest pots and frying pan I've ever seen. He could cook bacon and eggs for a dozen or more people in one go with that frypan.

 

It was freezing cold at night with no showers on site. We all had a bogey in the dam after work and it was that cold, you had to strip off and run in, scream and run out to soap up, then run back in again to rinse off. It was like those Russians jumping in a hole in the ice for Epiphany. We didn't do any chainsaw instruction until the last day of the camp. The rest of it was all cross-cut sawing to drop the trees and stump and top them. A little Cat crawler (D3 or D4?) would snig the logs up to the flat area where we would bark them, cross-cut saw them into fence post lengths then split them into posts with wedges and sledge hammers. They also made us adze the rough split edges of the posts. I think it was supposed to be one of those character building things. When my dad did the same camp back in the 1930's, he sunk the adze blade into the side of his foot and ended up with a stay in the local hospital.

[onetrack]

I can understand a rough bush camp, but even in the roughest bush or site camps I was in, it was always a priority to have hot water for showers.

One time I set up a cut-open 60 litre drum with a firebox under it. Filled the drum with water and when it got hot, a hose from a 12V pump was dropped into the drum, and the water pumped through a conveniently-strung shower rose. The pump was battery-powered. The Glind exhaust system/heat exchanger showers for vehicles are good, too.

[willedoo]

The 60 litre oil drums were handy for a lot of things like that. I don't know if they still make them or not; I haven't seen one around for a long time.

[onetrack]

Yes, they're still made, but the newer ones are much lighter gauge steel than the older ones.

[willedoo]

I once had a 60lt drum as a water heater. It was on it's side on a frame with legs long enough to build a fire underneath. For the water outlet I screwed some threaded gal pipe into the bung hole which was positioned at the top. At the other end of the drum I cut a round hole in the top. Into this went a length of gal pipe that ran almost down to the bottom of the drum. The top of the pipe was brazed to a half cut 20lt drum that acted as a bucket. You would light the fire, heat the water up, then whatever amount of cold water you poured into the cut 20lt section would go to the bottom of the drum and force the hot water up and out the outlet spout. A fairly primitive donkey. This is a rough sketch done by a mouse:

 

 

[old man emu]

17 minutes ago, willedoo said:

This is a rough sketch done by a mouse:

You've got yourself an incredible mouse. Just like this fellow,

 

 

[willedoo]

On 25/09/2024 at 6:49 AM, nomadpete said:

Wille,

I think you might need a skip tooth chain for your chainsaw. I believe a standard chain get bogged down when cutting slabs.

Checked out the chain and it's a skip tooth full chisel chain, so should be all good for cutting slabs. The saw originally came with a regular chain but I seem to remember buying this chain to rip out some fence posts. It tests the memory when you haven't used something for a few years.

 

The beast returned today in full running order. I thought it was a pretty good deal from the chainsaw place. I dropped it off on Wednesday and picked it up the following Monday. $225 all up including labour and GST. That was a compression test, ignition test and new plug, flush the fuel tank and fit a new fuel filter, clean and adjust the carburetor, clean out and dress the bar rails and sharpen the chain, fit a new air filter, replace a crook top cover screw and re-fuel.