I purchased a 1972 Deere 301 utility tractor/loader to help out with some landscaping chores at the new home. When I got it, the front frame was about ready to break loose from the tractor. I ended up splitting the tractor to repair it. Having a loader should make moving dirt around a little more fun.
The last installment of the tiller rebuild is up. After many hours of work, I finally get a chance to till some soil.
I've got the third page up on rebuilding the John Deere #33 tiller. All that's
left to do is take some measurements, then design and fabricate a PTO to power it.
I've got the second page up on rebuilding the John Deere #33 tiller.
I've been working on the new home, so not a lot of shop time lately. However, we've decided that we want a bigger garden next year. This means that I get a new toy. I bought a Deere 33 tiller and am in the process of rebuilding it. The story is here.
Happy New Year. After months of planning and a lot of work, the last piece of equipment has been moved into the new workshop. More pictures of moving have been posted.
After the short sale from hell we finally bought our new home in late September. Since then we've been doing some work fixing up the place and I've been trying to move the past two decades worth of tools I've accumulated. Some pictures of the moving have been posted.
Closing on the new home should be next week. 4+ months after we made the offer. Short sales are lots of fun. In the mean time, I put together a new bench for the South Bend 405 and scrape in a model B saddle.
Still waiting on whether the bank has accepted our offer. In the mean
time I've put together a sleeve hitch, hitch lift rod and a one bottom
plow for the garden tractor.
Story is here.
Summer is here. After 7
months of looking, we've put in an offer on a home and are enduring the
slow process of trying to buy a short sale. We have a contract with the
seller, but not yet with the seller's bank. If you want a quick
transaction, avoid short sale homes. However, if it turns out that we
get the place, the hassle will have been worth it and we'll finally
have a bit of wooded acreage, a spacious home and a nice sized detached
shop.
Between house hunting and researching the short sale process, I've
managed to spend a little time in the shop and garage. Here's a link to
the latest quick project. I put some Hummer H2
rims and tires on my Dodge Ram 2500.
I've spent the first part of
the winter doing some work on my new to me John Deere 317 lawn and
garden tractor. It now sports power steering adapted from a Deere 318
and 345. Here's the story.
To fix some ongoing issues
with my former hosting company, I've had to move to a new one. If
you're seeing
this note, the new hosting provider has me up and running. Happy New
Year!
In the second installment, I
finish scraping the mill. It turned out to be a lot more work than I
had envisioned, but the good news is that it's done and the mill is a
great deal more accurate. The second part of the adventure may be read here.
After talking about trying to
improve the accuracy of my Grizzly G3103 mill for 4 plus years, I have
finally
begun the project. In addition to the issues I'd thought I'd see,
I've come across some that I didn't expect. The first installment is here. More fun than a barrel of monkeys.
The workshop has been invaded
by kittens! If you're in the Northern Virginia or Washington DC metro
area and you're looking for a kitten, we have a litter that arrived as
a suprise. We really need to find homes for these little fur balls. Please take a look, or better yet, take a
kitten.
I finally got around to doing
some repairs on the Shumatech
DRO-350. I also add a pair of glass scales to the mill.
The final installment of the
Surface grinder rebuild.
I finish up by overhauling the spindle.
I finish scraping, Magnetic
chuck
repairs, coolant system and spindle troubles The
latest updates may be found here and here.
More scraping, more lapping,
and getting ready to build a copy of a lathe alignment tool. The
latest update may be found here.
Still scraping, but I also do
a little lapping on my granite straight edge. Also, using the Automatic
Generation of Gages to prove flatness. This installment may be found here.
I've spent most of my
free time in the last month working in the garage with a scraper in my
hand.I've made some progress on the surface grinder, but I also made
a mistake. You can read about it here.
After spending the last
year reading about machine repair and scraping and doing LOTS of
scraping, I have finally gotten to the point that I am going to attempt
a large scraping project. The project is a 1967 DoAll D624-8 surface
grinder.The first installment may be found here.
It has been a while since
I updated anything here, but there seems to be a lot of email
asking questions on how I like the Grizzly Mill after a year of having
it. So I came out of hiding long enough to do a small piece on the
mill.
You can find it here.
Before I take a bit of a
break
from the workshop to do some spring clean-up on our home, I buy an old
South Bend lathe and give it some TLC. A new
tool is always fun.
I finish up the Shumatech
DRO with the addition of a Jenix scale and adding some ball bearings to
one of the calipers. You can take a look here.
I've been busy in the
workshop
adding a digital readout to the mill. I've finished the first
stage of the project and am quite pleased with the results. ShumaTech Dro-350 Digital Readout
I found another
little annoyance with the mill. This one got a temporary fix that
is working out well, for the time being. Spindle
Noises
There's a new piece on moving the mill into the workshop.
There's an update in the Workshop section.
My wife Susie has been volunteering at a
local organization that finds homes for homeless animals. I had
the opportunity to tag along last weekend. I must say that I was
impressed with FOHA. They are
located near the border of Prince William county, in Loudon county, and
serve the Northern Virginia and metropolitan Washington DC area. They
have been helping animals find good homes for decades and currently
have
about180 dogs and cats in residence. The kennels, complete with runs,
for the dogs and cottages for the cats are all air conditioned!
The cottage for the FIV positive cats even has a comfy couch so yours
truly could kick back and spend some time getting to know all the
residents.
Susie had told me that she had fallen in love with a bunch of the
cats and wanted to adopt at least one of them. We currently have one
cat
and he's not used to sharing his home, so we decided that we would
become a"foster family" for one of the cats and see how our cat Petey handled some company. We chose a
cat named Nubby who has a little problem with one of his hind legs as
we
thought that he wouldn't stand as good of a chance in finding a home as
the others. He's a great little guy with a super personality. Petey
is feeling a bit threatened by his new roommate, but he's getting a
little more comfortable as the days go by.
Click to Enlarge
So
why am I telling you this? The answer
is
that FOHA has been helping with the rescue and boarding of some of the
animals displaced by the flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
and they have more animals than usual to find homes for. FOHA really
needs good homes for their dogs and cats.
If an
animal is unlucky enough to be homeless,but
lucky enough to wind up at FOHA, they are very well taken care
of. All of the dogs and cats receive a visit with a veterinarian to get
their shots and get checked over for health issues. The volunteers make
sure that all the cats get plenty of petting and brushing and the dogs
get walked through the beautiful wooded countryside around FOHA (they
have many acres) and get washed, groomed and played with as much as
possible.
If you
reside in the Washington DC metro area
and
have been thinking about getting a dog, cat, or kitten, I recommend
FOHA
highly. Please visit their website at http://www.foha.org/ or give them
a call for general information at 703-385-0224 or shoot them an email
at
info@foha.org Their
website even has pictures and a "BIO" on each of the animals.
Thanks
if you can help out.
~ Jim
P.S. If
you are near Sterling, Virginia on
Sunday September 18th...
Friends of Homeless Animals
presents
our 3rd Annual Barktoberfest
Music and Pet
Adoption Festival
This event is for the entire
family.Bring your blankets and lawn chairs for a day of the area’s
finest music on two stages, games, delicious food, and an opportunity
to
meet FOHA animals up for adoption.
- Six Live Bands
- Games and Kids’ Activities
- Dog and Cat Adoption Booth
- Silent Auction
Admission: FREE
(Donations gladly accepted to benefit FOHA)
When: 12 noon to 6pm Sunday
September18, 2005
Rain date: Sunday
September25, 2005
Where: Melodee Music –
Outdoor Amphitheater
46077
Lake
Center
Plaza
Sterling,
VA
20165
(More info on FOHA
site.) |
Geez it's been a long time since I have
posted. A lot of stuff has been going on and I am still doing
projects.It is just that the subject of the projects has changed. The
latest projects involve a security camera for the house. I have been
wanting to do this for a long time and finally got started on it a year
ago August. There was a lot to learn, especially with the electronics
side of it. I spent a few months playing with preamplifier circuits
and trying to become somewhat proficient with circuit design software.
I ended up with a pretty nice little preamp for my old sound card to
up the clarity a bit. Some time in the future I will be incorporating
the preamp/sound card setup to help control my latest project, a
tilt-pan camera mount for my infrared assisted security camera. You can
take a look at the first tilt-pan mount and the preamp here.
At this
point, I am about to start on the
third prototype of the tilt/pan device. This one should be a fun
project
as I have finally broken down and purchased a milling machine. I have
been wanting a mill for ages, so this is really a neat thing.
I have
cleaned up the site a bit and hope to
start
documenting a few of the projects I have planned for the coming months.
On top of building another tilt and pan mount, I will be doing some
modifications to the new mill. I also want to build a
computer controlled circuit board cutting and drilling device using the
leftover stepper motors from the first tilt and pan mount. The
second tilt-pan mount was moved with servos, as will be the third, so I
have these extra stepper motors and a controller... well, you know how
that works... I can't just let them sit and collect dust.
Well,
the mill is supposed to arrive tomorrow
and I'll try to document the delivery and the subsequent move of this
beast into the basement workshop. That ought to be worth a laugh or
two.
This thing is heavy!
That's
all for now. Stay tuned for more to come.
