Been going slower because of those gotta fix this tool to fix that tool to do this so I can do that chains of behavior.
I was doing a few welds on the "waterball" as we've begun to call it using a new HF TIG machine plugged into a portable racket generator and let a little magic smoke out of the welder. Not enough to kill it, but a good scare. I started thinking about the Listeroid diesel generator right nearby, adjcent to the tiny shop which is adjacent to the waterball, and not having run it for awhile, decided to start it and check out the 240 volt output.
I had to kill some wasp nests to get into the shed. A mouse had built a nest out of fiberglass insulation over the gen head brushes -- luckily a new nest, and not all urine soaked from last winter. The brushes and slip ring were fine and I cleaned them with alcohol. The diesel started right up and I had voltage on the meter. Went to check out the cooling system for a minute (radiator in the tiny shop, and overflow container). When I came back. No voltage.
After awhile the culprit turned out to be a dead leg in a bridge rectifier, and I rectified that problem by knocking the old Chinese one out of its integrated heat sink, and fitting a new prime part -- fit the sink perfectly. The old rectifier, had only been glued in at a couple spots, and no heat sink compound. The new one was bolted in and compounded. It's a 25 amp vs the old 10 amp.
Voltage came back, and i played around with the Listeroid, cleaned it up, did maintenance, and started thinking again about all the upgrades/improvements I'd wanted to make, and never did.
I had cut some trees last week for lumber, and then decided I'd better saw them up before the bark got really glued down solid. I de-bark by hand before sawing, and it's best to de-bark right away. But had to change the band blade on the sawmill, and found I had one stuck guide bearing. Fixed that, and it turned out the new band was longer than my old ones, don't know why, ordered the same length from the same place. Anyway, this pointed out a problem I'd had all along with the tracking adjuster/blade tensioner (which I'd built 12 years ago), so I decided to take that apart and make it right.
That worked fine even with the longer blade, but the square tube saw guide arms had become very tight in their sockets, and it took a hammer to shift them. So I decided to take those apart, and file them down so they slid nicey nicey, but couldn' t get the arms out because the ends were a little belled from the hammer, naturally. So I thought I'd bring up my tiniest generator a harbor freight 2 cycle 800 watt baby, easy to carry up the hill to the sawmill (which is outdoors near the woods and no electricty), and bring a small disk grinder to grind down the ends of the guide tubes so I could get them out of the sockets so I could file them so they would slide nicey nicey.
But the generator didn't want to start, so I gave it fresh gas and oil mix, and pulled and pulled, no go, until I found a gas shutoff, which is kind of hidden. But it was set to on, so I thought, damn, I should have shut that off and let it run out, I bet the carb is a mess. But no, when I got my glasses, I realized this shutoff is backwards compared to most. Usually when the handle is inline that means gas flows. But with this one it meant shut-off. So I had shut it properly after all. So then I turned it the right way, and whaddya know......It started right up.
So I ground the ends of the guide tubes, pulled off the guide bearing holders, etc. There are lock bolts so when you slide the guides over and out to suit a new blade, and the log width. One was missing, but the tube had been so tight it hadn't moved anyway. But I decided to replace the bolt. Well It stripped, apparently a bit of weld splatter had got in the threads from an earlier repair, so then I hunted up a tap and cleared the thread. After filing the tubes, the guides slid smoothly, the new bolt locked properly, and I reassembled the saw guides and put the blade on. I cut up a log, and then it was supper time.
Oh I forgot, I also rebuilt the engine on a weird little log winch I own, built of sheet metal and oak and an ancient emergency brake -- I think it was originally used to haul ice fishing shanties off the river. It's sled shaped. Anyway the Briggs engine magneto had died and the gas tank had rusted. It's one of those old ones integral with the carb -- from the 60's. I found a replacement more or less similar on another junker engine I have, switched both carb and tank, and had to jury rig a governor -- they were quite different. It worked. I replaced the old magneto and points with a new one and electronic ignition, and she fired up pretty as you please. Hauled the logs with it a hundred feet through thick woods to the tractor that got them to the mill.
Anyway here's the waterball progress. I got the horizontals on and started looking at how to place the expanded metal lath. Diagonal planking is how we do cold molding on boats to minimize fitting the edges -- usually you can get way with straight edges then on a 3D curve. Looks like it will work here, too:
ps. that ghost in the upper right corner is just netting over a blueberry bush. The chipmunk likes it because he can munch the berries underneath without fear of hawks!
