51F going to 77F under partly cloudy skies with light winds again today.
B7510HSD, it won't take long before you wonder how you ever had time for a full time job. Congratulations!
wngsprd, how does DSL ever go down? Somebody get into the line with a backhoe?
Drew, if I ever get another chance to lay out storage in a shop, nearly everything will go inside cabinets. Shelves may save space, but they collect dust. Things in drawers and hutches stays clean without any extra work, and all the clutter is out of sight. The only problem is remembering what's behind each door or drawer. Old kitchen cabinets work great, and there is always somebody nearly giving them away on Craig's List.
Eric, it doesn't have to be an odd sized rock that stops the auger, as any rock'll do. And that's almost guaranteed around here, for each and every hole. Just depends on how deep you get before the spud bar or backhoe comes out.
Larro, I think I had a bad dream about snakes last night. Just the thought of that cold skin under a bare foot has me shivering!
Farmer, let us know how you like that HF saw. I wasn't impressed with the reviews when I was shopping for one last year, and ended up with one of those $600 Dewalts (a DWS780). Very happy with it, especially after I replaced the junk blade that came on it with a nice Freud. But the junker was good enough to get me through about 1200 sq. ft. of Pergo flooring, and the shadow casting feature on the saw made lining up the cuts pretty easy.
Try as I might yesterday, I didn't finish putting the FEL back together. As usual, the uneven gravel lot I had it parked on made trouble when it came time to put the pins back into the pivots, and through a long series of trials and mostly errors, found I needed 4x4 blocks under the tractor wheels on one side to even things out. A couple of strong bungee cords also came in handy at the end. That was just the start of the fun, though, as I'd left all four hydraulic cylinders attached to the steel lines when I took them off, and getting everything properly oriented was like wrestling with an arm load of snakes. Very heavy snakes, none of which were particularly interested in cooperating. And fancy boots wouldn't have been any help. In the end it just took lots of little nudges while referring to the many pictures I took as the parts came off, and the pieces are now mostly in place. One run of steel lines is still a bit out of place, but that'll take another day to sort out. As things stand I still don't know if all this has taken the slop out of the mechanism so that the bucket stays level, and the suspense is killing me. But at this point all the pivots and pins are clean, and one thing's for sure: No more black grease for me! What a mess it's been cleaning it all up, then cleaning it off of me. It's back to the red stuff, which is just as greasy, but somehow doesn't bother me quite so much when I find a smear if it on my shirt or under my nails. One of these is also on the way, and even though it's not likely to arrive in time for the first big lube job, it'll make it a lot easier to keep the grease where it belongs:
Amazon.com: LockNLube Grease Gun Coupler - Zerk Grease Coupler Fitting Tip - Easy Lock-on, Clip-off - Stays on - Grease goes in, not on the machine: Automotive
But today I head back down to the SF Bay Area to help a friend clear out the last of his warehouse. My reward will be a set of pallet racks which I one day hope to use for equipment storage inside a hoped for shop building. So it'll be a good couple of days of lifting and hauling, but it'll also be good to catch up, and perhaps do a little shopping in the big city. One thing's for sure: I'll be very happy to get back out of all that traffic and noise!
Have a great week everybody!
