Creeker's Past Week's Accomplishments

[Dennis Peacock]

10 Oct 2022

Greetings,
Plenty of work at the day job! I'm looking forward to being able to retire one day soon...as in years and not days.
Gearing up to help a buddy of mine build his kitchen table. 8 boards of 8/4 white oak = $1100.00!!!
I never dreamed that my wholesale lumber prices would go up as much as they have. But it is, what it is.

No more crying for me, so what did YOU do this past week?

Best of weeks to you all.

[Justin Rapp]

1) Finished installing the final sections of baseboard molding in sections of the house we were working on. I has a mild sore throat that led to #2
2) Covid, but mostly recovered now, however my now has it so while I am about done with my self isolation, she is just started. So far my son and wife are good.
3) Thought about going into the shop to start the next round of rough lumber to molding (a few more rooms to go).

[Jim Becker]

My week was pretty much what it's become as of late...doing things for the new shop building when I was able and getting ready for the big push around the interior as soon as the electrical service gets done, hopefully this week. The overhead door went in today (mentioned in my shop thread in Workshops) and I'll start working on getting the light fixtures up tomorrow as the big brown truck dropped off two very long boxes of them today.

I also am preparing to replace the backhoe bucket curl hydraulic cylinder on the Big Orange Power Tool...the replacement arrived today at Tractor Supply. Sadly, they don't carry the proper fittings that are required for the Chief brand cylinders they sell, so I have to order them in. The shipping on two $8 fittings will likely be more than the product. Go figure. I did not opt for the OEM replacement which would have been north of $800 by the time the sales tax got applied. So I'm being creative.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Jim, unless cylinder rod was bent, why didn't you have it rebuilt? Spent a lot of time getting things lined up for State Fair Ministry with Campers on Mission. Lucky for us, Boston butts for BBQ went on sale for $0.97 / $1.29 a pound, depending upon where they were bought. This is a great savings from the normal $2.59 a pound, especially when we need 185 pounds. Savings on meat payed for the rest of the BBQ. FYI, we normally feed around 400, for FREE! It's a ministry.

[Jim Becker]

Jim, unless cylinder rod was bent, why didn't you have it rebuilt? .

No issues with the rod, but the rebuild cost was as much as a new OEM cylinder ($775) because of the parts cost. This would have required replacing the outer case because of both the fitting AND the "nipple extractor" breaking off. None of the three Kubota service centers in the area would remove and weld a new port on the cylinder case for a variety of reasons. The aftermarket cylinder was $300, brand new with a warranty. The fittings were $7.42 with $8.00 first class mail shipping from Philadelphia just down the road. Oh, and $3.00 of bushings to account for the difference in width at the bottom end for the aftermarket cylinder. The damage here was breaking off the fitting and then breaking off the extraction tool, sealing the port with something "undrillable". My bad...my hit to the wallet. At least I can do it with aftermarket parts since spending $800 for OEM doesn't make sense for a 20 year old machine.

[Wes Grass]

The damage here was breaking off the fitting and then breaking off the extraction tool, sealing the port with something "undrillable".

Taper thread fitting? Always assume, from a risk/reward ratio, that you'll *NEVER* get one of those out with an extractor. Drill it out as far as you dare, and saw through it until you just start to see the threads. Grind the back of a jigsaw blade to fit if you have to. And then collapse it with a cold chisel on each side of the cut. If it won't come out after that, saw and chisel again at 180. if it's still sticky, you've got a couple slots you might get a screwdriver in.

I lost count of the broken nipples I pulled out of the sprinkler system at my parent's house. Didn't even saw them, just a chisel and hammer and work my way around them. But they're 1/2", easier to collapse than the small stuff.

Even the o-ring sealed fittings can be a hassle. But at least they're not wedged in with a taper.

Had a friend bring me a motorcycle wheel that had been sandblasted and repainted. He got a stud stuck, and broke it off, putting it back together. Hadn't cleaned the sandblast grit from the holes. And then broke a screw extractor off in it. I had to make an electrode for the EDM to burn it out. Told him if he'd brought it to me with the broken stud it would have been an easy job on the mill.

In the case of a stud, it seems most people don't consider if the full diameter of the stud wasn't strong enough to remove it without breaking, why would you assume something much smaller, the screw extractor, is going to?

[Jim Becker]

Too late for that, Wes. LOL The new cylinder uses #8 SAE to 3/8" JIC. I don't know what was on the OEM cylinder specifically because the fitting was broken off flush.

[Paul F Franklin]

Mary and I were in Sin City most of last week visiting my sister and her hubs. Mary had work conference for a couple of days there and we extended the stay to almost a week. Haven't been out there since BC.

Vegas has decided Covid is over; saw a few masks, but not many. Likewise on the planes. We seem to have made it through OK. We also got to visit with one of my college roomies and his sweetie; they just moved to Vegas from Anaheim. We've kept in touch but it was great to see him again and meet his sweetie.

Anyway, no shop time for me.

[Eugene Dixon]

I confess between cruising, conferencing, and covid, I've not been to the s'hanger. Did manage to buy a 42" floor fan yesterday for those hot SC summer days.

[David Sochar]

Since I sold my real shop this past April - to my no 1 employee, I have not spent much time in it. Before selling, I built a new set of stairs to our North door.




First, I had a hip replacement installed in June. This has since come to dominate the Summer and most of my waking hours.
All went well, but after walking very little for the past 3-4 years, I was in terrible shape. No muscle strength in the mid body or core muscles. I have been walking with a cane for the last 4 years, mostly to augment the left hip. At 71, muscle mass lost is very hard to regain. That left hip was the one replaced. So now, after 4 months of physical therapy, I am still not walking. So, I am strength training my self with my exercise bike. After only 70 minutes (7 10 min. sessions) I feel much stronger and better coordinated. I hope it is the answer.
Plans for the rest of the year include an interior stair balustrade to replace an old, rickety rail original to my 1918 house.

I will also add a large pair of doors to my shop. Large enough to get a small car inside. To restore. Probably a Bug-eye Sprite. I had two of them in my distant past, and as is want with aging guys, we would like to recapture our youth with such a project. Only now I have more time, a decent place to work, and the money to do it right.

[Ben Ellenberger]

Finished up a couple little cherry boxes. We had a family get together this summer and saw some relatives I hadn’t seen in several years because of Covid. One of my aunts organized and rented a nice place for us all to stay. My other aunt gave several of us really generous gifts. So, I decided to make some gifts for each of them. These got done a month or two after I intended, but I think they will still be appreciated.

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[Myles Moran]

I have been busy hanging doors in the basement. I had 5 bifold doors for 3 openings, and 2 prehung doors. Trimming out the jams for the bifolds wasn't bad until the 3rd one. I had been relying on measuring width and using my level to get them sized right. But for the 3rd one, either the unlevel floor messed me up, or the bubble in the level wasn't accurate enough. I ended up needing to adjust the jamb a good bit, about 3/8" on each side, to get an even reveal around the doors. Math on that worked out to something like .3°

At the end, all but the last prehung door is in position. It gave me a good respect for why shims are so important in fitting a door into the rough opening, how much more work it is to trim an opening and fit a door into it, but also how much heavier the prehung doors are - and the need for an assistant to get a prehung door positioned.

Hopefully in a week or so I'll finally have the shop wall paneled off with plywood, and my days of cleaning sawdust off the furnace and the hot water tank will finally be over.