A Pressing Issue
This last weekend I worked on quite a few projects. Got the call Friday afternoon from Binford, a local machinist, that he has time to start welding up my mini hydraulic press. Quickly I threw all the parts into the truck and headed to his workshop. The best part is that he's only about 6 miles from home. He started by looking at all the parts and figuring out what needs to be done in what order. The base is a piece of 10" channel, 12" long with uprights made of 2" square tubing- 32" high. It took a bit of work to get the base welded up square and parallel. Only one pic turned out from my phone, so next time the camera goes along. I had to take some of the crossbar pieces back home with me to do some grinding on before he can proceed to welding them together.
My press was designed using ideas from a bunch of other designs on the knife forums. Binford also has great ideas to make it better. One of those ideas is to cap the uprights, drill and tap them so a bar can be bolted between them to keep the uprights equidistant. That also allows me to take the crossbars off for any reason. His welds look 1000 times better than I could do. With all the forces that a 20 ton air/hydraulic press can exert, I knew it would need to be welded up by an expert. The best part is being able to help him. He says he's not used to having help, and luckily I'm not just getting in his way. More info later..........
Getting Tanked
Friday was busy, busy. As soon as I got out of work, I went to the Clifton Turnpike water tank. There, with the help of James and Paul, we set up scaffolding for me to paint the 2011 Wayne Co.High School Football Champions info onto. Saturday I started by painting over a couple of dates so everything looks good to begin with. It took two coats to cover up the black lettering and I'll have to repaint those dates. Sunday all I could do was a bit of layout.
Talkin' Turkey
We've had two Bourbon Red turkey hens around the homestead for 2 1/2 years now. The tom turned aggressive and was butchered last spring but the hens were allowed to stay. Well the hens really slowed down their egg production, which was only a few each per week. So it was decided that they would have to go. Only a few of our friends would take the turkey eggs which are 1 1/2 times regular egg size and shells that need a chainsaw to crack open. After dispatching them I took the breasts and leg quarters. These went into the crockpot within minutes. The breasts were only the size of a large meat chicken breast. The wings were kept for arrow fletchings and trapping enticements. Life on the homestead can be cruel some times.
As soon as that was done, Leslie and I took everything out of the upright freezer in the house. It needed a defrosting in a big way. There seems to be a small gap between the door and the rubber seal. Guess I have to figure out a way to correct that situation. The dogs are in for a whole lot of treats. Since I don't like to waste anything, we found many bags of treats hiding all over the freezer. We had three pots going on the stove to cook all those treats up. There were rabbit livers, hearts and kidneys, chicken hearts and livers and even a guinea hen from a few years ago. It is surprising how items get lost in the freezer, even big things. Our next freezer related project is to use up what we can before the upcoming hunting season.
This created more work because the chest freezer had to be cleaned out prior to cleaning out the upright. Really...all I had to do was take a bunch of fruit out and transfer it to the refrigerator in the workshop. This fruit is going to be used to make a bunch of wine and mead. I have almost 3 gallon bags of grapes and about the same amount of plums. These are all going to be put through our juicer and made into 12 gallons of fruit wine. There is also an 8# bag of crushed blackberries that will go into a 5 gallon batch of mead. Some of this mead will be going along on our belated Honeymoon Hog Hunting trip to Texas. More about our trip soon.
Later Y'all!
