Good morning!!!!

[wngsprd]

51 and so foggy I had to use the chainsaw to cut through it going out this morning. Going to 64 and windy.

BEF, just kidding. Hope your numbers are good. You will love retirement. Hope you get to go see your dad.

Another rainy day yesterday, so got a few small things done outdoors, and then roasted coffee for my son/DIL, who are coming to visit.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Good Morning!!!! 60F @ 4:15AM. Plentiful sunshine. High 81F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
Pretty much the same forecast as yesterday, but a cooling trend will start this weekend. We could use some more seasonal temperatures; it's just too hot out there!

Neat furniture, Helogabals. Always liked working with birch plywood. There are two 5x5 sheets in the garage waiting on me to do a cabinet upgrade for the van.

Hope the check clears OK, Don.

We finished clearing yesterday. There is still a lot of wood and debris on the ground, so I experimented with the 4in1 bucket yesterday, and learned that back dragging with the lid works really well. But I need to drive to more level ground to flip the tractor around to finish pushing the resulting pile down to the bottom of the hill.

I lit the burn pile yesterday, and fed it all the wood stacked up next to it. Tried to use the 4in1 for that, and could barely manage to grab one tree at a time. Put the grapple back on and life was good again. Nice to have the right tool for the job.

The dozer operator finished cutting the trail along the top of the cleared land, and built a ramp at the end near the driveway up so I can drive a truck down onto the new road. The two ends are at about the same elevation, but the middle dips down several feet. If all goes according to plan, we'll use the material taken out of the driveway hill to bring the dip up to level, and the new ramp will give good access to a dump truck. There's also space enough to turn the side-by-side around at the other end, and he's about 3/4 through cutting more trail that will loop through the lower side of the clearing back to the start. The top part of the new trail is looking a lot like a rifle range for some reason.

TGIF gang!

 

[Eric Salop]

Good morning all. I am struggling to keep up with GM, the weather here has been fantastic for doing things outside, yet the list of things still to do seems to get ever longer.

While we were moving sheep around this morning to make room for the latest arrival of lambs, my wife pointed up at the shed roof. The bizarre sight of a rabbit's head hanging over the side of the guttering had conclusively solved a mystery. Yesterday Max caught a rabbit, but I tempted him inside with a sliver of smoked salmon before he gorged himself silly. When I went to move the carcase a few minutes later it had gone. I suggested a fox had taken it, my wife said probably a rook. Unless the fox also had a ladder, she was right (again).

Kyle, BEF, good luck with choosing which job to go with. You have both worked hard for many years, maybe now you deserve to worry less about the money and go for whatever makes you most happy.

L4N, our 1 day old Yorkshire pudding is still soft, delicious as a desert, served up with a dollop of strawberry jam. After that it is always all gone, so never had chance to play pudding frisbees with Ravens.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

51 and so foggy I had to use the chainsaw to cut through it going out this morning. Going to 64 and windy.

BEF, just kidding. Hope your numbers are good. You will love retirement. Hope you get to go see your dad.

Another rainy day yesterday, so got a few small things done outdoors, and then roasted coffee for my son/DIL, who are coming to visit.

Did chain saw get dull?

Working this morning before heading out to Ohio. My son leaves today to head back to TN. He wanted me to run his taxes, but we never got to that. He’s busy with lots of work.

Coffee sounds good today with this cold I’m developing.

 

[Helogabals]

Good Morning


Yesterday was spent ordering and collecting things for a batch of speakers. A few challenges, but I’m back in the leaker business. My supplier only had 10 sheets of Baltic Birch in the thickness that I use, so I bought them all, fearing that once this is gone, it’s going to be scarce. At $106 for a 5x5 sheet, you wouldn’t expect a run on it, but they had 13 sheets the day before. I paid about $38 a sheet a year ago.

I’m off to Asheville again this morning, but just a quick down and back. Well, not so quick going down, I’ll have a 120kt headwind. But the ride home will be quick. Should be driving home before noon. Then I’ll start cutting up those sheets of gold.

I have checked with friend of mine who is a kind of big boss there at Finieris.

They have increased prices, but no more that 10 %. THAT big increase you mentioned is greed of importer.

And.
I have asked, why Baltic, no Latvian. They marketing people have done market research which have revealed that most of Americans have no clue what Latvia is. On another hand "Baltic" rings some bells to your people. So they have decided to go big - Baltic. And now they suffer a lot. Sneaky russians have branded their plywood as Baltic either. Well, technically they are not VERY wrong. Area north of St Petersburg, is not really Baltic, it's Karelia. But person with rich fantasy can call that region as Baltic
Don't get me wrong, birch there is very good, russian have issues with thickness accuracy and sometimes with glue quality. But other than that material is great.

IMHO wood is not sanctioned yet. Actually you can check packaging. Latvian letters is latin - 100 % like English. But if you find on package any letters in Cyrillic - material is made in russia and could be banned anytime soon. Because bigger russian plywood factories (Sveza, Red october, etc) belongs to sanctioned oligarchs, Putin's friends. So your concern about shortage of plywood is legit.
We (Latvians) are working hard to supply you. But we here are only small country

 

[kenmbz]

Morning all, 43 going up to 60 and it's Friday!
May get some brushcutting in this weekend as son does not have competition.

LS - hope all findings turn out good for you.
Helogabals - interesting read and great pics of the furniture.

Off to get blood taken for annual physical, which I do every 5 years or so. I hope this Dr. works out as I hate incompetent, snobby Dr., Which wife and I have had a long run on.
My heart Dr. has been really good, but he is the fourth in line from when this all started.

Stays safe and be well,

Hard to believe this was only a few weeks ago, now weather people saying will be back into 20's at night Mon-Tue.

 

[Rich B1]

Good morning! 37 now, 44 later. Snow is in the forecast. A return to winter for this weekend.

The cat adoption is going slowly. Something bad happened to her before she was dumped. It is taking time. But she made big steps this week. She is getting into bed at night and even gives me attention in bed. She has bonded fairly well with Joyce. The other 2 cats are still not happy campers but are not being a PIA about her moving in.

Yesterday was my last day of work. Still on the payroll through next week, but burning vacation days. Yesterday afternoon was somewhat bittersweet. Still doesn’t seem real after 43 years.

Not sure what I will get into today. Waiting for the tow truck for my wife’s work truck. It developed some bizarre electrical gremlin on the way home yesterday. Horn blows, warning lights flash, warnings come on on the dash. Then stop for a while and then repeats. I disconnected the battery. She drove her car and made arrangements for the truck to be hauled.

@Wagtail - we have Guinea fowl. They are quite entertaining. They aren’t afraid of anything. So it seems.

Everyone stay safe out there!

 

[PJSprog]

38°F and cloudy this morning, going up to 59° today. Drove through a light rain shower just before crossing the river into STL on the way to work. Radar said there was nothing around. Windshield said otherwise.

Visitation is this evening for The Wife's uncle, and the funeral is tomorrow morning.

Neat pictures, Helogabals. When I worked for Ampeg, when we first started using birch for bass speaker cabinets we called it "Russian birch." After a couple of years, our supplier started calling it "Baltic" birch. However, it still always came to us with Cyrillic writing all over the bundles. That was sometime in the late '90s or early 2000s, I think. It was more expensive than the typical OSB and marine grade plywood we used for most cabinets, and was only used in higher end stuff like the PR-series bass cabinets. And you are right, that 18mm plywood was rarely actually 18 millimeters. Even with all the parts cut on a CNC router, we sometimes struggled to get them together correctly due to the material thickness variations.

That looks like it would make a fine rifle range, RNG.

 

[txdon]

Don, glad Carvana worked for you. My truck has 92k miles, might be too much for internet sellers.

I have seen some with high millage. You don't know till you plug in the numbers.

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Good morning! 38˚F early, now 45˚F heading to the 80s with cloudless skies and South wind.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Neighbors sent this pic, snagglepuss had her kittens

They did say gray was killed on the road.