Axe Saga Continues to Breed Suffering

I have some advice. Buy a chainsaw and throw out your axes.

I have been trying to get a decent library of axes for some time now. In the old days, you walked into any hardware store, you bought an axe made in America, and you were all set. American axe companies made great axes. The steel was hardened and tempered carefully. The handles were made correctly. You didn’t have to think much. You just bought.

Today, hardware stores don’t sell American axes. There are exceptions, but generally, you’re going to be buying Chinese. The heads will be soft. The handles will be dubious. It’s a bad situation.

If you want a good American axe, you go to Ebay and buy an old axe head for five bucks, because used axe heads are nearly worthless. HAHAHAHAHAHA. You fool! Try it! A good used axe head will cost you at least 30 bucks, and when you receive it, there’s a good chance it will have a fatal flaw you couldn’t see in the pictures.

I bought a new Council Tool axe. This is one of the few American axe companies that remain. They sent it in a flimsy envelope, and the Post Office apparently dragged the edges on concrete. Back it went. I ordered an old Ebay Collins axe head. It turned out to have a mashed eye a handle would not go through.

I finally got a nice Plumb axe head. It looked fine. It still had wood in it, but that was okay. I had a hydraulic press. Today I bought a handle at a hardware store, and I tried to hang the axe. When you put a handle on an axe, you’re hanging it.

I put the axe in a vise and used a 3/8″ drill bit to waste a lot of the wood so the remaining stuff would collapse easily. I put it on the hydraulic press, and the wood wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t support it in a way the looked totally safe, so I didn’t apply full force, but I applied about 10 times what you would think the drilled-out wood could take.

I took a coping saw and sawed the wood between the holes to weaken the wood more. The blade got stuck in the axe. I drilled and did various things, and finally, 80% of the wood slid out. Great. But the remaining 20% was stuck in the axe.

You would think an axe handle would not stick to an axe, but this one did. It was as if the Plumb people had painted the handle and hung the axe while the paint was wet.

I tried various things, and I used a big punch. Finally, the remaining wood came out, and it did so in a perverse way. One second, it was glued in there, seemingly permanently. The next, it just fell out. Okay.

Now I was ready to insert the handle. Well, not really. There was all sorts of rust and crud inside the axe. I had to sand it out by hand.

Remarkably, things didn’t get any less complicated after that.

You would think hanging an axe would be simple, and that lots of people would know how to do it. You would think almost any Youtube video would be a good guide. That’s not how it works. Because Americans don’t use axes much any more, people don’t know how to work on them. They post videos just the same. Doesn’t even slow them down.

They use wedges wrong. They don’t set the axes down far enough on the handles. They force axes onto handles instead of shaping the wood. It’s like Beavis and Butt-head became lumberjacks and bought Gopros.

I found a couple of guys who appeared to know their stuff, and I can tell you what they said.

You don’t force an axe onto a handle and make wood peel up underneath it. That’s the pea-brain method. You shape the handle and try it in the axe repeatedly until you get a good fit. When you finally have it right, you don’t have to pound anything. You put the axe on the handle, and you bop the lower end of the handle on a piece of wood on a concrete floor. The axe will seat itself where it should, which is just above the little protrusion or protrusions on the handle.

I used a belt sander to shape my handle. It was a little slow, but the result was very nice.

When you get your axe onto your handle, you trim the excess wood above the axe, and you insert your wedge. You can coat it with wood glue, or you can soak it in a product called Swel-Lock, which makes wood swell permanently. You force the wedge into the handle as far as you can without splitting anything, and you let everything dry. Then you trim everything and make it look nice.

I did all this stuff, except for inserting the wedge. For some reason, I don’t have wood glue.

Apart from the wedge, I was done, right? Of course not. Don’t even think it.

Handle makers paint handles with varnish This is bad. If you use a varnished axe without gloves (always wear gloves), the varnish will pull at your skin and give you blisters. Even though I use gloves, I used lacquer thinner to remove the varnish from my handle. Then I sanded it and treated it with paste wax.

After I did all these things, I discovered that I had bought the wrong handle. An axe handle should have growth rings that run more or less parallel to the axe. I knew this, but I forgot to check when I was at the store. My handle has growth rings that run across it. This may not cause a problem, but it’s not what I wanted.

My understanding is that the real problem is grain that runs out. That means you have places where a split between two layers of wood can divide the handle into two parts. I don’t know if I have that issue. I am afraid to look.

I blew $17 on a handle, I researched as carefully as I could, and I still ended up with a handle that may be unusable. I’ll give it a try tomorrow and see if it’s safe.

I can see why chainsaws are so popular. They’re all the same. They don’t have grain that wanders around. And if a part goes bad, you take it off and put another one on. You don’t have to use a belt sander or a spokeshave to change a saw bar. Skill is not part of the paradigm.

Tomorrow I’ll buy wood glue, and I’ll check my handle. If it worries me, I’ll buy another one. I’ll get it right some day.

There was one bright spot in my day. I used the belt sander to sharpen the axe, and it took about two minutes. It was a joke. When it was finished, it was sharp enough to be dangerous. I know. I handled it incorrectly and started to peel skin off a finger.

Look how hard it is to prepare and use simple tools. You know–you don’t have to check–almost no one does these things right. No wonder Americans don’t like hand tools. They don’t know what they’re doing. Hand tools are great when you buy good ones and use them correctly, but that’s not obvious when you walk into Lowe’s with a head full of nothing.

On the whole, I’m more grateful than I used to be for my chainsaws. They haven’t failed me yet, and the learning curve is pretty gentle.

I Sleep all Night and I Blog all Day

I’m kind of drained after visiting assisted living operations today, so I will write some more.

I conquered two of my tool-acquisition problems this week. I think. I won’t know until the tools arrive. I ordered a Pexto brace with a Samson chuck, and I got a good deal on a used Collins axe head.

If you don’t know what a brace is, it’s because you’re a little green sprout who hasn’t been on Earth long enough to know anything. A brace is a drill you operate by hand, without batteries or any other helpful technology. Usually, you don’t hear “brace” by itself. You hear “brace and bit,” but since I didn’t buy a drill bit, what I have on the way is a brace.

It turns out braces are useful for certain things. When you want a lot of control and you don’t want to worry about electricity, a brace can be convenient. They are very handy for countersinking and deburring in metal.

Braces have chucks, and some chucks are better than others. Two types people like a lot are Lion and Samson chucks. These are versatile ball bearing chucks. Lions were made by the Millers Falls company, and Samson chucks were made by Pexto (a contraction of “Peck, Stow & Wilcox”).

Ordinarily, braces take drill bits with weird, 4-sided shanks. I have not tried a Samson chuck, but supposedly, they will work with round drills. I hope so, because otherwise I will have to buy adaptors. Which do exist. You can find adaptors for sockets, hex-shanked tools, and…other stuff I don’t remember.

Braces come with reversible ratchets, so they turn in two directions.

I look forward to checking my brace out. I found one that looked reasonably pretty and didn’t seem too beat-up.

The axe head was an unexpected find. As I said in an earlier entry, modern axes are very badly made, and people are selling rusty old American axe heads on Ebay for high prices. A lot of Ebay axe heads have been sharpened so many times there isn’t much of them left, and many, for reasons I can’t fathom, appear to have been stored with one side underwater. There are a lot of Ebay axe heads that look fine on one side and have a second side which is a vast expanse of craters.

Some sellers wire-brush axe heads until they look nice, but they’re still junky. Also, many axe heads have sledge marks on them. Apparently, old timers used sledges to knock them out of logs. I hate tool abuse. I’m not going to trust an axe which has substantial deformations on it.

There is another problem with Ebay axe heads. Some are burned up. Ignorant sellers will sometimes burn an axe head to get handle fragments out of it. Hardened and tempered steel loses its conditioning when it’s heated too much. A roasted axe head which looks nice due to wire-brushing may be too soft to use.

The axe head I found is a Collins. This is a company that made highly regarded axes. I sent the seller a message and asked how the wood was removed, and she said it was removed with wedges. I think she means drifts. You use a drift to knock the wood out of an axe head. Anyway, it’s not fire. The axe head appears to have very little wear, and no one has beaten on it with a sledge, so I think I’m finally getting a decent tool.

I have to buy a handle now. I plan to try the local stores, but I may end up buying an American handle online.

Axe handles are commonly made from hickory, which is a hard and very springy wood. You can’t just take a hickory four-by-four and cut a handle out of it without further examination. You have to make sure the striations in the wood run more or less parallel to the axe head’s length. You also have to look for cracks or whatever. I have read that there are some pretty crappy axe handles out there. I hope local stores will fix me up, but if not, I can get an American-made handle for $15 or less online.

Once I have the head and handle, I have to “hang” the axe head. This is tool talk for attaching it to the handle. Supposedly, hanging a head incorrectly causes problems when you use the axe, and this is where the expression “getting the hang of it” comes from. This may be Internet BS, so caveat emptor, or if not “emptor”, whatever the Latin word for reader is.

I found a neat resource for axe scholars. Some dude who probably doesn’t date much works as an axe expert up in Montana, and he wrote a long treatise on axes. He tells people how to hang them and so on. I will provide a link to his PDF, in case you want it. And I know you do.

https://www.pcta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/an_ax_to_grind.pdf

Tools are never simple. I guarantee you, even a putty knife has complexities you would not suspect. I don’t even have to check. I’m sure of it. You can spend a whole day reading about hammers and be amazed when you’re finished. It doesn’t surprise me that axes have substantial lore.

I bought a double-bitted axe head. Some people say they swing better. We will find out, I guess. I learned that double-bitted axes aren’t symmetrical. Not always, anyway. One bit is thicker than the other. The thick one is for splitting, and the thin one is for chopping. How about that? I told you tools aren’t simple.

I’ll have to sharpen the axe. Some people get their axes shaving sharp. I think that’s stupid, because after three whacks, an axe will lose the fineness of its edge. That is my guess, anyway. That will mean that you wasted maybe 2/3 of the time you spent sharpening it. It’s easy to get a blade fairly sharp. Making it super-sharp takes a lot more time.

I suspect that once you get your axe sharp enough to slice bologna, it’s more than sharp enough to cut wood well. Maybe I’m wrong.

We live in a funny country now. We have bad Chinese tools and clueless hipster tool buyers who have no idea why good tools matter. I can’t understand why people continue to buy tools now that they’re bad. Using a good tool is a pretty pleasant experience. Using a bad tool is usually very unpleasant, and often, the tools we buy are so bad they aren’t useful at all; it’s impossible to make them work no matter what you do. Companies manufacture tools that don’t work, and we still buy them and try to use them. Strange.

I may continue to be clueless and unskilled after I get my axe hung, but at least I will have a good tool. And I’m not wearing skinny jeans. Two things to be grateful for.

I guess I’ll get a beverage and a parrot and watch a Fred Astaire movie on Turner Classic Movies. Tomorrow, more assisted living.

Levi’s Joins the Fight Against Civil Rights

I have two points to make:

1. The Levi’s people are pushing gun control and even pressing employees to take part, so they are now on my list.

2. The CEO of Levi’s, one Chip Bergh, never washes his pants and thinks he’s doing a good thing, so he probably smells like a bum in August.

3. Levi’s jeans aren’t very good.

Okay, three points.

Today I read that Levi’s is getting on board with Michael Bloomberg’s anti-civil-rights campaign. They are going to push for “sensible” laws, i.e. the eventual confiscation of all firearms. I’m not sure how many pairs of Levi’s I’ve seen at gun ranges. A lot, for sure. I wonder if Mr. Bergh is aware that many people who stand up for their civil rights do it in Levi’s.

While I was reading about Levi’s doing its best to kill sales, I came across a disgusting article. Mr. Bergh says it’s wrong to wash jeans. EVER. If you must do something about the filth, you’re supposed to do it as rarely as possible. Says the fragrant Mr. Bergh, “A good pair of denim doesn’t really need to be washed in the washing machine except for very infrequently or rarely.”

In a way, he’s right. The jeans don’t need to be washed. They don’t need anything. The people who wear them need them to be washed.

Let’s get real. Jeans cover the pelvis. This is where genitalia and anuses are found. In an ideal world, the contents of these body parts would never, ever come in contact with one’s pants. This is not an ideal world, however. Things go wrong. Our digestions have bad days, resulting in fecal issues. Urine goes where it shouldn’t. Unfortunate things that emerge from our genitals go where we don’t want them to. Things like this happen to everyone, including people who lie about it. Over time, anyone’s pants will eventually develop smells and even stains.

Then there is sweat. It contains oil, salt, and bacteria. It lifts dead skin off and onto our clothes. You can’t just leave it there.

Wearing filthy clothes will eventually cause people to avoid you and maybe even fire you, and it also leads to things like boils and skin infections. I don’t know, but I would guess that lice prefer dirty clothes, too, and lice are not things of the past.

The fact that Bergh thinks filth is okay tells you his values are not in line with those of relatively sane people, i.e. conservatives and Christians. He is way off in that “calling evil good and good evil” area. He works for a major corporation in San Francisco, so no big shock.

Imagine standing next to a man who has defecated maybe 600 times and urinated a couple of thousand times without washing his pants. No, don’t.

If it’s not obvious to you what’s wrong with Bergh’s plan, there is no point in talking to you. Either it’s obvious, or you are under a delusion.

He’s wrong. That’s what I’m getting at.

He’s also wrong when he uses the term “good denim” to refer to Levi’s.

Levi’s uses crappy fabric. Not all cotton is the same. Some cotton has long fibers. Some has short fibers. Long fibers are stronger and nicer. I’m sure there must be other characteristics that set good cotton apart from bad.

Cheap cotton falls apart faster. The way Levi’s do. If you wear a pair of Levi’s long enough for them to fade from WASHING (Mr. Bergh), they will start to tear at the crotch. The buttonholes on the fly will start to fail. The belt loops will tear the pants. You may get other rips even if you don’t make them deliberately. This happens because Levi’s fabric is not “good denim.”

I have Carhartt jeans. I started buying them last year, when I realized dressing like a Miami boat bum was not going to work on a farm. I have some pairs that are around a year old, and I have some pairs I got last month. I wear them every single day. I wash them after almost every use. I use them for farm work and hunting. It’s hard to tell the new ones from the old ones. That’s “good denim.”

Carhartts also fit better than Levi’s. They sit at the waist, not down at the hipster level where they cut you in half every time you bend. Levi’s sit right where a beer gut makes its first fold. This is why so many men with beer guts are able to wear size 30 Levi’s, and it’s why they look so bad doing it. Levi’s make your legs look short, and they slice into you every time you move. Carhartts make your legs look longer, the way pants are supposed to.

Here’s what you can put in a pair of Carhartt jeans: a Glock, a big knife, a big cell phone, a bunch of car keys, a wallet, a bandana, some cash, and whatever fits in the remaining secret pocket. You can also put something in the hammer loop. You can put more stuff in two Carhartt pockets than all the pockets in a pair of Levi’s. You can’t even fit one Glock in there.

Carhartt jeans have triple seams. Levi’s jeans…not.

Carhartts run about $40. For that you get a pair of jeans which is stronger, longer-lasting, better-looking, more comfortable, much more useful, and less of a threat to the Bill of Rights. I don’t know what Levi’s (which are made in China in spite of their liberal pretensions) cost, but it’s more than $40.

The choice is obvious. If you’re a 9-year-old girl who wants to look like Rihanna, and your sexually ambiguous parents don’t care if your overpriced jeans fall apart in 6 months, you want Levi’s. If you’re a grown American who cares about civil rights and wants superior pants at a good price, you want Carhartt.

I can’t say I’m going to boycott Levi’s because I don’t wear them. I found something much better a long time ago, so Levi’s are no longer a factor in my life. I just thought I’d let Levi’s wearers know what they’re missing. Levi’s are the Budweiser of jeans. Great advertising, at least in the past, but no substance.

People say great things about Wrangler and Lee, which are also cheaper than Levi’s. Something to think about.

Tractor = Superpowers

This is a momentous day. I finally got the big rock out of my front yard.

My property has a fair amount of rocks under it. It’s not full of small rocks. You can dig a hole without hitting rocks. The problem is big rocks. Some that have already been dug up are the size of couches.

I have several rocks sticking up in the lawn, and I have hit them more than once. I decided to try to get rid of them. I dug around one with a shovel, and I couldn’t do much with it. I tried the tractor, but all I had were a bush hog and a frond end loader with forks, so I had to come up with a new strategy.

I decided to get a subsoiler. This is a very sturdy hook that goes into the ground. It has a rectangular plate on it at the bottom. The plate gets pushed through the ground, and you end up with a deep, narrow slit. You can use a subsoiler for digging slits for pipes. You can also use it to dig up your existing pipes and destroy them, but that’s off topic.

My subsoiler arrived a couple of days ago, and I installed it today. I hooked it to the rock, and the rock would not move much. It was stuck on various things under the ground. I turned the tractor 90 degrees, and the rock popped right out and slid on the lawn.

It was a little hard to get the hook out of the rock, because I had the hook facing forward. It kept pulling the rock toward the tractor. Next time I’ll reverse the hook.

If I had known what I was doing, this would have been a 5-minute job. As it was, it was probably 10 minutes.

I have guests this week. A couple of large friends helped roll the rock into the tractor bucket, and I moved it to the area of the yard where all the other big rocks have been dumped. It’s not laziness. It’s landscaping. No, really.

Now I have a gaping hole and some torn-up grass. I can fill the hole with dirt from my berm.

This is sweet. I hate those stupid lawn rocks. They are all going to pay. At least the ones that aren’t too large to be moved.

The subsoiler cost about $160, and I’m sure paying other people would eventually have cost a lot more.

I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I can’t stand those hidden rocks. I’m wondering what kind of mess I’m going to see the next time I take the deck off the mower and look at the blades.

I was able to put the subsoiler on the tractor by myself, easily. The Pat’s Easy Hitch made it simple.

The low point of the day was lifting a hydraulic lever too far and dropping my new ballast box on its rear. I nearly squooshed my friend Mike, who was helping me remove the box. The box ended up on its back, and some sand fell out. The paint job I spent two days on is messed up somewhat. Not a big deal, apart from the near-fatality.

I know Mike would want to go out like that.

There is nothing like having the right tool. Always remember that.

More

Got a few more rocks out. The subsoiler is fantastic. I’m not sure, but I doubt I could do better without a backhoe attachment.

To Haft or Haft Not?

It’s nearly impossible to walk into a hardware store, grab a tool, and know that you’ve gotten a quality item. China has done us in.

When I was a kid, I did not realize I was living in the golden age of American tools. We made great tools of all types. Machine tools. Hand tools. Power tools. Most of the stuff sold in stores was made here, and the quality was very high. Now we have stores full of great-looking tools that don’t work very well or last long.

I have a stump near my front door. I want it to go away. I got myself some saltpeter, and I opened the stump up and poured it in the holes I had made. The saltpeter will weaken the stump, and then I’ll be able to remove it with hand tools and so on.

It’s very weird how saltpeter will mess up a stump. Hard to believe, but it works.

I want a good mattock to break up the stump. I want one or more axes, too. No problem, right? You go to Home Depot and buy a mattock and an axe or two. Simple.

It doesn’t work that way.

I have a Home Depot cutter mattock. This is a mattock with one vertical blade and one horizontal blade. The vertical blade is very nice. The horizontal blade is so flimsy, you can twist it while pulling it out of a stump. You could grip it in a vise and put a 45-degree twist in it, easily.

Where was the mattock made? I don’t know, but I’ll bet you three fortune cookies I can guess.

Why would anyone put a non-hardened, easily bent blade on a mattock? It defeats the purpose of the tool. A mattock is for tough digging jobs. It’s for hacking up stubborn roots. You can’t do that with a blade that bends.

I looked into axes. It turns out the American axe industry is nearly dead. We used to have a bunch of great axe companies. Collins, Kelly, Plumb, Sager, and others. They made top-notch tools. You could find them anywhere in America. You didn’t have find a special store that sold to professional lumberjacks. You didn’t have to know a password or a secret handshake. The axes people saw every day in every hardware store in America were very good axes.

Now if you want a good axe, you have to search. You may have to buy something made in Sweden, Germany, or Switzerland. The Aryans apparently have a gift for axe-making. You may have to pay $200 or more. How many Deutche Marks is that?

Wait! You know the answer! Buy a used American axe on Ebay! Yes, you can do that. You’ll be surprised, though. People are selling heavily rusted axe heads for $50 each. They are selling axes that have been sharpened so many times they’re practically sledges. A really good used axe head will run you a hundred bucks or more.

I think I found a decent answer. An American company called Council Tool still makes axes. They claim to be hardened to 1-1/4″ back from the ends, so you shouldn’t have to worry about soft cutting edges.

I found an appealing (new!) double-bitted Council Tool axe on Amazon, and I decided to take a chance. It wasn’t expensive at all, and it’s made out of a real, known type of carbon steel (not random melted Chinese scrap). A lot of people who bought it criticized the handle, but I noticed they seemed happy with the head. Hey, I can buy a new handle. The head IS the axe. I think it’s worth a shot. It certainly beats shelling out $250 for something from Sweden.

An axe handle costs a maximum of about $15. If the Council Tool head is good, and I have to get a new handle, the total outlay will be $75 or less. These days, that is a screaming bargain for a lifetime axe.

I also decided to buy a maul. This is a sledge with an axe bit on one end. I think it will work well on stumps. I got the double-bitted axe for more general axe jobs.

I am not buying my maul on the web. Fiskars makes a maul people adore, and I can get it at Lowe’s. It can’t be all that bad, if over 4,000 people rave about it on Amazon. I hope.

I’ve already bought one Fiskars axe since moving here. It’s a Fiskars hatchet. I had used Fiskars products in the past, and they seemed okay. The hatchet does what a hatchet is supposed to do, but the metal seems way soft. It sharpens very, very quickly. Too quickly. It does not inspire confidence; I don’t know if it’s a lifetime tool. I’m hoping the maul will be better.

I don’t know a whole lot about axes, but I have a great tip for people who use them. When I was a kid, I used one a lot. My parents had a cabin in the mountains, and I loved using an axe. If you want to use an axe without making yourself miserable, get yourself a pair of cowhide gloves and soak them in neatsfoot oil. You should never use an axe or mattock or similar tool without a leather glove. If you like blisters and calluses, go your own way. I don’t like them.

The neatsfoot oil will soften the gloves and make the interior seams less abrasive to your skin.

I used to wear Wells-Lamont Trucker’s Special gloves, with adjusting straps that had little red balls on the ends. It looks like they still make a modernized model without the little cartoon trucker on them. I’d love to have a pair for old time’s sake. But Chinese leather gloves from Home Depot work fine, and they have reinforced palms.

I made the mistake of buying deerskin gloves when I moved here. Deerskin is funny. It’s soft and thick, and it sort of gloms onto your hand in a way that feels confining. The inside is very fuzzy, like a caterpillar turned inside-out. Give me cowhide any day.

I will report on the axe and maul eventually. I can’t wait to see the stump disappear.

How to Survive Internet Shopping

I come from white collar roots. My mom’s father was a judge. My mom went to law school and ended up getting a degree in social work. My dad was a lawyer. His dad was a bookkeeper who later became a sheriff. I know a little bit about some of my ancestors, and I don’t know of any who were tradesmen. Not one.

Because of my background, I don’t have anyone I can go to when I need information on things like metalworking, woodworking, and so on. I rely a lot on Internet forums. They’re very useful.

Today someone on a forum tried to make fun of me for buying a tractor attachment on Amazon, so I shut him down pretty good. I was polite, but by the time I finished explaining my choice, he looked silly. People who make fun of Amazon users in 2018 are like the people who made fun of the first firearms. Not smart.

In case you buy stuff online, which is like saying, “in case you live on earth in 2018,” let me tell you why you should use Amazon, Ebay, and Paypal. Some conservatives hate these companies for various reasons. I’m not going into that. I’m just going to write about the ways these companies can help you avoid being abused.

In 2009, I bought a used metal lathe from a company called Plaza Machinery. It’s now out of business. The owner died, which means that legally, I can’t be sued for libeling him. I will omit his name, nonetheless, simply because I think it’s what a Christian should do.

I wanted a Clausing 5914 lathe. He said he had one. He gave me a price. He sent pictures. He said it had seen very little use. He said it had a 3-phase motor. He insisted on payment by check or money order.

NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER pay for anything using a check or money order if you have a choice. Cash is even worse. Don’t do it. Don’t. You’re begging to be cheated.

I paid by check.

When the lathe arrived, I saw that it was a Clausing 5936. This is a pretty stupid lathe, for various reasons. It had a single-phase motor. It was beaten up. It had been used for decades in a prison, as a teaching tool.

When I complained, the seller was nasty to me. He made some feeble efforts to fix things. He sent me an ancient 3-phase motor. He said he would take the lathe back if I paid for half of the shipping. That’s a hefty three-figure sum, and I’m not the one who caused the problem.

He cheated me. It’s that simple. He may also have committed fraud. If he knew the lathe was the wrong model, and he misrepresented the condition, then it was fraud. Would an established machinery dealer know the difference between two lathe models? Would he be able to tell if a lathe had a lot of wear on it? Draw your own conclusions.

He eventually refused to communicate with me.

I could have sued him, but because of my religious beliefs, I chose not to. I made do with what I had.

Why did he refuse to accept credit cards? I don’t know, but I know that if you pay for something using a card, you may be able to get the card company to reverse the charge or at least dispute it. I wonder if he thought about that when he formed his policy.

It’s just possible.

Anyone who refuses to take credit cards is probably a crook. There is no other solid reason for refusing. Credit cards are convenient. They result in higher sales. They allow for easier bookkeeping. In order for a businessman to choose to forgo the profitable practice of accepting cards, he has to have a very powerful motivation.

Was the guy from Plaza Machinery a crook? Judge for yourself. I’m not taking a position. Maybe he was simply demented, and he really thought he was doing the right thing.

Plaza Machinery. Remember that name. They may resume operations. Put that name on your list of companies to think about if you ever buy machinery. I’m not saying you should reject or endorse them. Just think about them.

Personally, I would not buy oxygen from them if I were suffocating. It would probably turn out to be chlorine gas, and my estate wouldn’t get a refund. You have only yourself to blame if you step in the same anthill twice.

Because I paid with a check, had I wanted to take action, I would have had to go through the aggravation of suing. That would be easy for me because I’m a lawyer, but it’s not easy for most people. It’s a painful process, and it’s slow. Collecting is not fun, either.

Now let’s talk about the tractor attachment I just bought. I could have ordered it through various sites. I chose Amazon because I knew Amazon would make some effort to look out for me. I knew the dispute process would consist of writing a few emails instead of going to court.

NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER buy through a little backwater website when you can buy the same product from Amazon or using Paypal. If you want Lulu’s Famous Patented Eyebrow Tweezers, do not buy them from Lulu’s site unless she offers Paypal. Use Amazon, or put yourself at Lulu’s mercy.

The tractor attachment was beaten up when I received it. I complained. The seller took it back. They sent me another one which was beaten up. I complained again. They would have taken that one back, too, but I was tired of the process, so I accepted their offer of a discount.

Why did they do all that? Their company has a dubious reputation when it comes to customer relations. Why did they do so much for me? Simple. The power of Amazon. They don’t want bad reviews because they kill sales. They don’t want Bezos down on them.

Had I bought the same item from a small website, they might have told me to go get bent. Because I used Amazon, I had some leverage.

I’ve bought a lot of things off Ebay. I always use Paypal. When I have problems, I do NOT NOT NOT use the Ebay resolution process. It is completely useless, and it wastes days or weeks. NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER use Ebay’s resolution process.

When I’ve had problems with Ebay sellers, I have ended up using Paypal’s resolution process. It’s faster. It works. Paypal favors buyers, as they should. Most of their customers are buyers, not sellers. Paypal has stuck it to sellers for me. There was nothing the sellers could do. They had to eat my problems, as they should.

Why is it that some Ebay sellers don’t accept Paypal? A cynical person would say that it’s because they enjoy cheating helpless buyers. I’m not a cynical person, so I won’t say that.

No, no. I won’t.

If you’re shopping on the web, and you see something you want, your first move should be to look for a way to get it on Amazon or pay with Paypal. If you can’t do that, use the biggest, friendliest site you can find. If you have to use a crappy Wix-based site the seller’s nephew put together, make sure you pay using American Express, which has a fairly good system for helping customers. If you can’t use American Express, accept the fact that you’re dropping your pants for the enemy and hope for the best.

Last year, I bought some mulching blades on Amazon. I learned something interesting. While Amazon claims to have a great guarantee, every seller has variations on it, and in order to know what their policies are, you have to locate an obscure page where it is laid out. I found that out after I bought the blades. Think about it the next time you buy something there.

I’m getting off track.

I bought the blades, and then I found out I couldn’t use them. The seller wanted me to pay a very high restocking fee (also known as a “BS fee” or “customer abuse fee”). I sent the blades back, and then the seller didn’t acknowledge it.

I complained to Amazon. Guess that they did? They gave me a 100% refund. The seller had to eat a big plate of festering crow. I was out clean, but for the cost of return shipping. I’m not sure I even paid that.

What if I had bought the blades from the seller’s Homestead or Tripod site? I would probably still have them, or I would have a Priority Mail receipt and no money.

Why am I so pro-buyer? Simple math. Internet sellers cheat buyers all the time, day in and day out. It probably happens 30 million times a day. It’s much less common for buyers to cheat sellers. It’s not easy to cheat a seller. Once you pay, you’ve done your job. Your money can’t be defective or disappointing the way a product can.

Read this carefully, and remember it: when you shop on the web, do your best to use Amazon or Paypal. Never use a check or money order. Always use a credit card. If you read this and don’t do what I tell you, you will suffer, and you will bring it on yourself.

Even my Time is Worth Something

Yesterday I wrote a long piece and then decided not to publish it. Basically, I had noticed something about my dad. He woke me up yesterday, yelling from downstairs. He wanted to go out to breakfast.

When I walked out of my bedroom, he was angry at me. We had not said good morning to each other yet. We had not interacted at all, and he was already mad. That made an impression on me. I thought about his nature; what an angry person he is. Who gets mad at people because they don’t come to the door instantly when you yell for them? That is far from normal.

Also, even if you’re upset, how can you feel entitled to yell at someone over something like that? The fact that you’re upset entitles you to nothing. It certainly doesn’t entitle you to make other people suffer.

When you deal with someone who mistreats others habitually, you have to sit back once in a while and take stock. If you’re not careful, you will start to accept their behavior. You will stop seeing anything wrong with it. That’s not good. When that happens, you sort of decide you’re a toilet for other people to dump in.

I told him we weren’t going to breakfast and went on with my day. He wants to go to a restaurant for every meal, and I want to go to a restaurant about three times a month. I have other things to do. If I let him call the shots, we would spend $20,000 per year on restaurant meals, and dining with a dementia patient is taxing.

I have trained myself to say “no” a lot, and I have also learned that it’s okay to walk away while he still wants to talk. He can turn a two-minute conversation into 20 minutes of confusion and yelling. Sometimes I have to walk off and let him wind down on his own. Later in the day, he won’t remember it, and it will make no difference.

He wants to eat out because he’s bored. I have learned that his boredom is not a crisis I have to respond to and mitigate.

He’s going to be bored a lot for the rest of his life, because he has dementia. That’s normal and inevitable. Even if he were in a home, they wouldn’t be able to hire jugglers and minstrels to keep him and the other patients amused at all times. Sometimes life brings you problems you can’t fix. I make a good effort to spend time with him, but after a couple of hours, I have to rest. I can take a certain amount of exposure, but then I have to get away from it.

I wrote about this, and it turned into a very long essay. I decided to file it. This is why you didn’t get to read anything new yesterday.

Today has been productive. I primed my ballast box and changed the oil in our SUV.

I bought a Titan ballast box for my tractor. This is a steel box that holds sand or other heavy things. You use it to balance your tractor so it works better and lasts longer. I found it impossible to get one of these things delivered without damage, so I got the seller to give me a discount which I applied to paint.

This was by no means a good deal. The box should have been ready to go out of the box. I got a $30 discount, I’m going to end up spending $50 on paint and brushes, and I’ll do a lot of labor in the process. At least I’ll have the box.

These boxes arrive with damaged powder coating, and the hand-done Chinese welds are so bad they may need grinding. If it weren’t for these problems, they would be very good deals. As it is, they’re merely better than the overpriced competition.

You can make your own ballast by putting three-point hitch connections on a block of concrete, but I didn’t want to fool with that. In retrospect, I probably should have. It would have cost $50, and I would have worked less than I’m working now.

I’m painting the box with Rust-Oleum farm implement paint. I don’t know how good this paint is. I was advised that I had to prime the box even though it already had powder coating on it, so that’s what I did today. I sanded all the surfaces I’m painting (except for the inside of the box, which will be full of sand), and I applied primer with a brush. I’ll post a photo.

I’m not going to paint the bottom of the box. At least I don’t think I will. It will not be visible, it’s a pain to get at with a paintbrush, and even if I paint it, it will look bad because every time I put the box down, paint will come off the bottom.

One benefit to all this aggravation: my box will be Kubota orange. The Rust-Oleum people are not stupid. They know Kubota and John Deere own most of the market, so they make paint that matches the familiar orange and green.

I got this behind me, and then I gritted my teeth and changed our Explorer’s oil.

Oil-changing technology has changed since the last time I shopped for oil-changing tools. They have really neat catch basins now. I bought one which holds 5 gallons. It’s a big flat bowl about two feet wide. It has a rim that curves back into the bowl to keep oil from sloshing out. There is a neck molded into the rim, like a jug neck. The neck has a screw cap on it.

You slide the bowl under your vehicle, drain the oil into it, slide it out, open the cap, and use the bowl’s neck to pour your oil into a container so you can take it to the auto parts store for disposal. It’s neat.

The Ford is not set up all that well for oil changes. It’s not a real SUV, like an Expedition. It doesn’t have 4-wheel drive, and the ground clearance is not great. The low stance means you can’t get under it very well to reach the oil filter and plug.

I found I could get to the plug and filter if I turned the wheels to the left and crawled into the right wheel well. It was tight, but it beat buying ramps.

The last time this thing had an oil change, I took it to Jiffy Lube. I was having a busy month, and I didn’t feel like changing the oil myself. They must have used an impact wrench to put the oil plug in, because I had quite a time getting it out. Sometimes dealers and mechanics overtighten things in order to discourage car owners from doing their own maintenance. I don’t know if this is a Jiffy Lube policy.

Thank God, they didn’t use a wrench on the filter. I was able to get it out by hand, and that’s as it should be. If your filter won’t come off without tools, it was installed by an ignoramus or someone who wanted you to bring it back for more work.

My Harley received a free fluid change when it was nearly new. I don’t know what they used to install the filter, but getting it off was a Herculean chore. I have read that they do that intentionally. I had to use my machine tools to modify an oil filter wrench into a tool that works on Harleys. There was no way I was going to splurge for an overpriced Harley tool.

Manufacturers and dealers ought to make things easy to work on, because people remember things like that when they buy new products. It doesn’t do you any good to pressure customers to pay you for products and labor if they hate you so much they start buying from someone else.

I bought 5 quarts of synthetic oil for the Ford, and I figured I would dump the used oil back into the jug. When I tried to do that, the oil overflowed. At some point, American car makers decided to go from 5 quarts of oil to 6 quarts, and no one told me. I had emptied a 5-quart jug into the engine, but 6 quarts came out into the pan. I now have a vehicle which is starting out a fresh oil change one quart low. Oh well.

I was highly responsible when I spilled the oil. I don’t think a few ounces of oil can turn a property into a toxic waste dump, but the oil spilled near my well, and what the hell. I got a shovel, scooped up the oily dirt, and threw it out. Rachel Maddow would be proud.

I don’t drink water from my well, but still.

Tomorrow, I hope to get the ballast box painted. I hope to apply two coats of Kubota orange. The next day, I plan to fill it with sand and pat myself on the back a lot.

I have all sorts of jobs waiting for me in the days ahead.

I ordered a subsoiler to help me remove rocks from my yard, and I have a big rock exposed, ready to yank. I have to do some fence repairs. I have to fix the fuel shutoff solenoid on the Kubota. I need to take the mower deck off the John Deere and see just how badly I damaged the blades when I plucked a canteloupe-sized rock out of the ground with them. I have to loosen the bolts on the golf cart dump bed and move the tailgate to where it should have been in the first place.

As the ballast box picture shows, I still have boxes of stuff from Miami which I have not figured out what to do with.

I am starting to get on top of this place. I’m even using an edger now. It arrived last week. One day the farm may look like it belongs to a responsible person.

If I get that big rock out, I’ll post a photo. I know that will be exciting for everyone.

Engineer Stupid Knows no Bounds

Today’s exciting achievement: I got my Pat’s Easy Change 3-point hitch system installed on my tractor. In order to do that, I had to generate another major achievement: I got my bush hog disconnected from my original 3-point hitch.

I’ll put up some photos of the tractor with the Pat’s kit installed. It’s not clear to me why tractor manufacturers haven’t decided to sell tractors with user-friendly hitches, but I have compensated for Kubota’s strange failure, so I don’t care any more.

The yellow thing is a pry bar I used to line the ends of the hitch up.

The kit consists of two cast spring-loaded claws that trap implement pins and hold onto them. That’s all you really need to pick up a mower or baler or whatever. You still have to attach the PTO shaft and the top link, but you don’t have to beat and kick on the lower arms any more, and you can back your tractor right up to an implement and connect the lower arms without an assistant or a nightmare of adjusting and cursing.

It is astounding that tractor makers went a hundred years without making implements easy to change. The stupidity boggles the mind. A tractor is a torment to use if you can’t change implements easily. One of the great virtues of a tractor is that you can use it for a lot of different things. When it takes an hour to change implements, you’re not going to change them very often, and you’re going to lose a lot of the tractor’s usefulness.

Dealing with this thing put me in a foul mood. I need to pray and decompress. I hate stupid engineering. I really hate it.

The Pat’s invention is wonderful, but I have some complaints. The instructions are on a par with Chinese instructions. The diagrams don’t match the parts, either. You have to sit back and say, “If the person who wrote this had known what he was doing, maybe he would have said THIS…”, and then you try your theories out.

Another gripe: the parts are covered in sticky paint that makes them hard to assemble. Some of the tolerances are tight, which is a sign of quality, but the manufacturer ought to let you know you need to use oil or anti-seize in order to get the kit installed. One user says the heavy pins that go through the clamps will actually seize inside the tractor arms if you don’t do something about the paint.

It should take half an hour to get the kit installed, but I took more like an hour, because I had to do things more than once. The instructions tell you to do things in the wrong order, so you have to take things apart after you’ve put them together.

I don’t care. If the invention works, I can stand the one-time pain of poor instructions. It’s better than dealing with the repeated pain of not being about to remove and attach implements.

I had a great time removing the bush hog from the tractor. In a sane world, this would take no more than one minute. I would guess it took me two hours. The worst part was the PTO shaft. This is the implement’s drive shaft. It’s covered with a shield that prevents you from touching the moving shaft. That would be fine, but the shield is very hard to take off.

In case anyone else out there is having problems taking a Eurocardan shaft cover off an implement, I will clue you in. You lift the tabs on the little black collar. Then you slide it back to expose the end of the big yellow shroud. Then you will see the idiotic giant snap ring that holds the big yellow shroud on.

The snap rings are made so it’s hard to get a tool under them to pry them off. Because who would ever want to do that? Only someone who doesn’t want to use the same implement for the life of his tractor.

You have to put a screwdriver under the ring, lift it up, fight with it, and get it to move toward the implement. This releases the compression on the yellow shroud, and then you can slide it back, exposing the end of the PTO shaft. Then you MIGHT be able to push the spring-loaded button that releases the shaft so you can remove your implement. You MIGHT.

It’s so stupid. There are better designs out there. I’m considering buying a new shaft just to avoid dealing with this one again. Or maybe I should put hose clamps where those Satanic snap rings used to be.

The solution they used in the old days wasn’t too bad. Here it is: stay away from the spinning, uncovered shaft. That worked really well. But then lawyers showed up and ruined it. I’m sure.

Now I have a hitch I can use, probably. I hope. That means I can attach my ballast box and quit hauling that annoying bush hog everywhere. Today when I got the bush hog off, I could not resist going for a joy ride without it. I’m going to love having the ballast box back there. It will be good for the tractor, it will keep the rear wheels down, and it will give me a place to put a chainsaw. Perfect.

Next project? Either a new flail mower or a new set of brush forks. The ones I have are a horror to remove and install, so I can’t use the loader bucket. If I can find a better alternative, I’ll be all over it.

Finally, a Use for the Leaf Blower

I conquered some small issues on the farm today.

I have been researching stump removal. It looks like the best option, short of paying someone, is potassium nitrate (saltpeter). You pour it on your stump, wait four weeks, and then burn the stump. The saltpeter eats the wood and makes it porous so it will burn quickly.

There are other options which work faster.

I had a few small stumps, and I decided to burn them without using saltpeter first. That meant I had to have something that would keep the fire going. I thought about it, and I figured charcoal would work. I bought some charcoal at Tractor Supply, soaked my stumps with diesel, added charcoal, added more diesel, and lit the charcoal with a torch.

It works. The charcoal keeps the stump hot, and the stump burns. It may not burn like a torch. It may burn more like a cigar. That’s fine. Burning is burning. The only problem is that a stump that hasn’t been treated will not burn all that well, so you may have to use charcoal more than once.

I’ve seen people on the web use steel drums to confine charcoal on top of stumps. I didn’t see the point. It’s not like charcoal is going to get up and walk away.

I realized forced air would make the whole process go much faster. I would like to get a small electric blower to point at burning stumps. I don’t have one, so I did something amusing instead. I took my leaf blower and blew on the stumps. They lit up like the sun. It was really neat.

I’m going to get some saltpeter. They have it at Tractor Supply. I don’t know how to make a dry powder stay on top of a stump in a wet climate. Maybe I’ll have to use tarps or something. Other people do it, so there must be a way.

My other big triumph: I ordered a quick-hitch system.

Tractors use what are known as three-point hitches to connect to implements. The three-point system is ridiculous. It’s proof that no matter how long people have been doing something unpleasant, they may continue doing it stupidly instead of inventing new methods. It’s very hard to get a three-point implement onto or off of a tractor.

One answer is the quick hitch. This is a bulky steel frame that connects to your tractor. It’s a stupid idea. You use your stupid three-point hitch to hook to a frame that uses hooks to connect to implements. The obvious question: why not put the hooks on the three-point hitch to begin with? There is no reason why Kubota and John Deere can’t do that.

The frame will limit the number of implements you can use, because the lower hooks are a fixed distance apart. If your implement isn’t just the right width, you have a problem. Dumb.

Someone came up with an obvious solution. It’s called the Pat’s Easy Change quick hitch. You put two new receiver doodads on your lower arms, and you connect the top link the way you did before you had a quick hitch. Because there is no rigid frame, the width of your implement doesn’t matter.

I have a hay spike, a bush hog, and a ballast box. I’m planning to get a flail mower. I also want a subsoiler. I have to be able to change implements fast. The current system is idiotic. It’s so bad, it makes it seem worth it to have one tractor for each implement. How did we get all the way to a new millennium without confronting the issue? Amazing.

Once the quick hitch is in place, I should be able to move from the bush hog to other implements without too much pain. Then I’ll be able to tear rocks out of my land with a subsoiler. That will be wonderful.

I hate tools I can’t use. Everyone has tools that are so difficult to deal with, they sit and collect dust. If I have to blow a couple of hundred dollars to make my tractor useful, I’m all for it.

I need to liberate my front end loader. I have brush forks on it now, and that’s great for moving limbs and logs, but it makes the bucket useless. I have to find a solution. The forks are very hard to remove. It would be worth it to buy a second bucket or a different type of forks. That’s how bad it is.

If I had the loader working, I could fix up my berm. I could level my cart roads. I could move a lot of dirt. I have to get it functioning.

You wait and see. I’ll get things working the way they should. I’m not going to put up with this crap. Life is too short!

When I get the big rock out of my front yard, I’ll put up a photo. I want you to share my joy.

The rock is going to lose. Watch and see.

This Yard Will Respect Me

Ordinarily, I am not up this late, but today is special. I wiped myself out working in the yard, and I came in after 8 p.m. It took me a while to decompress and stop exuding sweat, and then I had to get cleaned up. I also spent a lot of time Googling, trying to find tools for removing rocks from yards.

I love my farm, but I have no illusions about the soil. It’s sandy, and there are a lot of rocks. The rock is fairly hard limestone, unlike the airy oolite of South Florida. I don’t know how much rock is under my land, but there are some full-blown boulders sitting in my front yard. Bigger than couches, I mean. I assume I would find a few more if I knew where to dig.

When I first got here and tried to mow, sparks shot out from under the mower. I ran over an exposed rock in an unexpected place. The seller did a lot of work on this property, but he left several rocks sticking out of the lawn, and I have a talent for running into them. It’s disturbing watching sparks shoot out from under your deck.

I want to clear the lawn of rocks. I don’t care if there are a few in the woods, but the yard has to be clear of mower obstacles. The huge boulders are fine, because they constitute landscaping. The ones I hate are the smaller ones that peek out and try to bite me.

Today I warmed up for rock removal by attacking a strange piece of wood I’ve scalped with the mower twice. It was sticking up all by itself in a grassy area. I tend to give the previous owner too much credit, so until today, I left the wood alone, figuring that he would have moved it had it been possible.

I backed the Kubota up to the wood, and I slipped the end loop of a tow strap over it. I started pulling, and the wood snapped suddenly. It was now pointing 180 degrees away from its original direction. I thought that meant it was loose, but when I tried to pick it up, it felt like it was anchored to the earth’s core. I can’t figure that out. I hooked it to the tractor and pulled it in the other direction, and it came flying out of the ground. That felt good. I pitched it into the woods and decided to take on one of my rocks.

I didn’t get all of the wood. The piece I took out was part of a live oak root. I don’t care. The rest of it is too deep to bother me.

The rock in question is 30 feet from the porch. The exposed part was the size of a salad plate. For all I knew, it was the tip of an acre-sized boulder. I decided to try digging it up anyway. I got a shovel and dug around it, and what I ended up with was a rock about two feet long and ten inches wide. It’s probably around 20 inches deep. I haven’t gotten it out yet, but I proved that it wasn’t yard-sized. I proved it could be removed.

The rock had roots around it. Annoying. A big one at one end grew over it. I never got anywhere with that one. I got a mattock and cut the rest without a lot of effort. Never, ever try to cut roots with a shovel. A mattock will work. An axe will work. A sawzall will work. A shovel will just bounce off and tire you out.

Once one end of the rock was exposed, I tied the tow strap to it and pulled it with the tractor. I got it to rise a few inches, and it moved about 9 inches to the north. That’s all I got. I believe I drove it under the root that holds it down, so now I’m stuck.

What do I do now?

I have to cut the root. I believe I’m going to use the sawzall. That might loosen the rock to where the tractor will pull it out. If that won’t work, I’m going to get a subsoiler.

A subsoiler is a very strong hook you pull behind a tractor. It cuts a slit a couple of feet deep. If you hit a rock below a certain size, it will hook under the rock. Then you can use your hydraulics to roll it out of the ground. It will also bust roots. It can move stumps if they’re not too big. Sounds like something I need.

It also sounds like a handy device for tearing up water pipes, septic tank pipes, and buried cables of all types. I’ll have to make sure I know where everything is. I know for damn sure there are no cables near that rock, because it’s obvious that no one made any effort to disturb the soil in that area.

Once this rock is loose, I’m going after the rest. They will pay. Believe me. If I can’t tear them out, at least I can use the subsoiler to prove they’re too big to move. Then I can get a sledge or the rotary hammer and shatter the tops of them. I can remove everything that sticks up and put soil over them.

Eventually I should have an assortment of nice landscape boulders. Not sure if I should use them or sell them.

It’s neat to succeed at this stuff, especially when the previous owner could not get it done. I’ve found I can go out after the sun abates, use the right tools, and get a great deal done in a couple of hours. Last year I spent a lot of time working long hours in the heat of the day, wearing disgusting sunblock. That was a mistake. Work shorter hours. Work consistently. Use stuff that gets the job done. Avoid the heat and sun. That’s what makes things happen.

If you need rocks, I am the guy to talk to. I have more than I know what to do with.

Enjoying Nature’s Thoughtful Gifts

Today I had fun cutting a tree that had collapsed on a fence. Afterward, I realized the area near the tree was carpeted with something which is probably poison ivy. Now I’m sitting around reading everything I can find, trying to figure out how to cope with this weed.

My farm has lots of poison ivy. I didn’t know what it was when I moved here, but at some point, I did some studying, and I found out the little three-leaved plants that occupied so much of my land were the famous toxic vine. Sometimes it appears as small, isolated plants. Sometimes it’s thick, woody vines 70 feet long. Today it was a big area of lush ground cover that actually looked pretty nice.

Most of my poison ivy has fat leaves with multiple points. The plants I saw today had long, oval leaves with pointed ends. They looked very little like the rest of the plants, but that doesn’t mean anything. Poison ivy has an annoying ability to look like different plants. If you see a shiny plant with three-leaf clusters, and the first two leaves in each cluster are directly opposite each other instead of being staggered, you may be looking at poison ivy.

Because the stuff I was wading in today didn’t look like normal poison ivy, I was happy to thrash around in it and put my saw down on it and walk on it for about an hour.

The Internet is full of mythology, but I think I’ve distilled a few facts out of the mess, so here I am to relate them to you.

The poisonous part of the plant is an oil called urushiol. It takes its name from urushi, a lacquer used by Asian woodworkers. There is a tree that secretes urushi. It’s called the kiurushi tree.

Japanese woodworkers coat their work with urushiol, and then they let it cure for months. Once it cures, it’s harmless. They wear gloves and long sleeves when they handle the uncured oil.

In poison ivy, urushiol is found inside the leaves and vines. You can’t get a rash just from touching a leaf. Maybe that’s not true for people with crazy sensitivity, but it’s generally true. To hurt you, a leaf has to be damaged.

Once the oil is out of the leaf and it gets on something, it can remain poisonous for 5 years. That means you can get it from sharpening a lawnmower blade or resting your hand on a tractor tire. That’s bad. How many people know exactly what their tractors have run over? I’m sure I’ve run over poison ivy. I wonder how tractor mechanics keep themselves safe.

If you get urushiol on yourself, it will only cause a rash on the areas it touches, and it has to stay in contact with your skin for a minimum amount of time in order to cause a reaction. If you remove the oil from your skin right after you get the oil on you, you will not get a rash. Unfortunately, you won’t know if you’re in the clear until days later, because poison ivy can take days to develop.

To get urushiol off of your skin, you have to use soap or detergent and friction. You can’t just run water over yourself.

Experts say people get less sensitive to urushiol with age. They also say you get more sensitive with successive exposures. They don’t seem troubled by the obvious contradiction.

Here’s a bummer for you: the mango tree is related to poison ivy. It does not produce urushiol. It produces a similar chemical called resorcinol. This chemical is found in the leaves, sap, and rind. If you’re allergic to poison ivy, you are probably allergic to mango sap, and vice-versa.

I have worked on this farm for almost a year, and while I have been burned, bruised, scratched, and bitten, I have never had a poison ivy rash. This is true even though I didn’t know what I was walking through (and on) until long after I got here. Now questions arise.

Am I immune, and if so, will it last, or will it go away? This is the question that interests me most. Some people never get a rash. On the other hand, some people start out insensitive and then break out in oozing blisters. I want to be in the first group. If I’m not, how can I protect myself? I have a mower and a tractor. God knows what’s on them, and they’re not that easy to clean.

If I’m immune, what about other people who visit the farm? Will I put them in the hospital by letting them use my tools? That would be awkward, wouldn’t it? And what if I take my tractors to the shop? Do I warn them, or will they think I’m nuts?

Doctors claim you can’t make yourself immune to poison ivy. They say you can only make yourself more sensitive. Okay, but I have seen claims that people who have been exposed to mangoes a lot can become insensitive to poison ivy. Supposedly, Hawaiians, who eat mangoes, are insensitive to mango oil, which would mean they were also insensitive to poison ivy.

I’ve been around mangoes for decades. Miami is buried in them every year. They’re a plague. I’ve handled tons of them. I’ve sliced them up. I’ve gotten the sap all over me. I’ve never had a reaction, which is good, because some people in Miami can’t go out in their yards without blowing up. Is it possible the mangoes got me ready for poison ivy?

Am I immune? If so, am I immune because of mangoes? If that’s not it, am I just temporarily immune because I haven’t been around poison ivy enough? Do I have to worry that one day I’ll swell up after touching my boots, which have definitely stomped on a fair amount of poison ivy?

What if I’m sensitive to poison ivy but I’ve been incredibly lucky all year? Maybe I just happened to avoid touching every contaminated surface, consistently.

I don’t know the answers.

I have considered taking a poison ivy leaf and applying it to a tiny area of my skin, in an area where a rash wouldn’t drive me crazy. This would be my DIY patch test, to see if I react. But what if it merely made me more sensitive? What if I’m immune now but my little experiment ruined it for me?

My prediction: nothing will happen to me after today’s exposure. I got in the shower when I got home, and I used my usual toxic castile soap to scrub myself, so if I got any oil on me, it’s gone, along with all of my skin’s natural oil. Also, I wore long pants and leather gloves today. I do feel a little regretful about using the finger of one glove to scratch my eyelid, but I think I’m in the clear. There has to be urushiol on my boots, but that’s always true, and nothing has ever happened to me.

After I realized I was probably in poison ivy, I drove back to the house and got the super-duper Roundup. Most people don’t realize Roundup comes in two varieties: the super-duper kind, and the kind that doesn’t work. The regular kind is useless except for accidentally killing your lawn. The super-duper kind actually kills weeds, and it even mentions poison ivy on the label. I blasted the daylights out of the area where I had been using the chainsaw earlier. I hope it works. I just need a few more dry hours to let it soak in.

It would be nice if being exposed to mango sap all my life left me with some protection from poison ivy. I would like to think I got one positive thing from my horrible relationship with Miami.

Weeds Closing In

I am considering getting a flail mower.

The farm is getting weedy and overgrown. Apparently the cattle that used to live here did a good job consuming vines and bushes. Now that they’re gone, I need a solution.

I was thinking about goats and sheep. I still am. Everyone says goats will get the job done. I have read that Katahdin sheep will do the job even better, without the goat behavioral issues, and they don’t mind the heat. They raise them in the Caribbean, so Ocala will not be a problem. They don’t produce wool. They’re among the breeds known as “hair sheep,” which means they don’t have to be sheared.

A friend of mine says she talked to a lady who has raised goats for 30 years. The lady said goats won’t eat weeds. What? Google “goats” and “weeds” and see what comes up. Cities are paying four figures each to rent goats to clear lots of weeds. How can people have different opinions about goats and their appetite for weeds in 2018? Hasn’t the human race had enough experience with goats to figure out the truth?

My best guess, based on the gigantic amount of material claiming goats eat weeds is this: goats eat weeds. But if that’s true, why would a lady who raises them disagree?

I read that you’re not supposed to give goats grain. Supposedly it makes them ill if you give them a lot of it. I wonder if this lady has spoiled hers with goat feed.

If I get ruminants, I have to get a donkey. We have coyotes, and donkeys hate them. Coyotes may be brave enough to mess with sheep, but donkeys scare the bejeezus out of them. They chase them around, and they have been known to grab them and throw them. I would pay to see that. I wonder if I could teach one to throw coons and squirrels. Maybe I could set up a target.

If I do all this, I have to think about water, fencing, veterinary expenses, and God knows what else. But they’ll do the work for me, and they’ll probably do it better than machinery. They can go places machines can’t.

How many animals would I need? That’s a good question. I was hoping I could get away with maybe three goats or sheep, but this is a fairly large property. I don’t know how much they eat.

I have a bush hog, which is basically a 6-foot-wide lawnmower. It will take down grass, bushes, and little trees, but it’s sloppy and it’s not easy to maneuver.

Someone suggested flail mowers to me. I had no idea what they were. The reason I didn’t know is that they are new to America. They are popular overseas. A flail mower has a rotating horizontal cylinder on it, and the cylinder is covered with hinged knives. The swing into the vegetation and pulverize it. It’s hard to describe it, but you can Google and see pictures.

A flail mower sits right behind a tractor’s rear wheels. It’s compact, so it’s not hard to make it go where you want. It will clobber branches better than a bush hog. It cuts things in small pieces that fall straight down, while a bush hog sort of throws things into an undesirable row.

You can use a flail mower to do all the things a bush hog does, and it will also mow grass. You can cut your yard down to an inch if you want, and it will look like you did it with a real lawnmower. A bush hog is useless for finish work.

If I get this thing, I should be able to sell the bush hog and make space in the workshop. The bush hog is old and grimy, so it doesn’t matter if I leave it outside, but it would be nice to be rid of it if I don’t need it.

It’s tough trying to keep a farm under control when you grew up in the suburbs. I’ve spent a lot of time on farms, but they belonged to my grandfather, and he had cattle to keep the grass cut. I don’t have anyone to advise me except for Internet forum people.

Animals would provide poop, and they would generally do a better job than a machine, but they are a bigger responsibility, and if they decided there were things they didn’t want to eat, I would still have to cut those things myself.

I’m trying to make myself accept something: the people who used to live here didn’t do a great job. They chose plants badly. They left a lot of trees that need to come down. They didn’t choose the best machines. They kept it neat, but I need to make this place my own and quit trying to restore their strange plan. I need to get better plants and better tools, and I need to start killing annoying things the sellers left here.

I feel like I should seriously consider a donkey plus some sort of animal to keep it company, regardless of what I do. Any animal that injures or kills coyotes is a treasure.

We Have to Call off the Hunt! The Cocoa is Cold!

Because the state of Florida gave me the go-ahead to kill nuisance squirrels near my house (in writing!), today I went out and sat in the blind and dispensed frontier justice. I nailed three of the mangy thieves from something like 40 yards.

This is the right way to hunt! I’m 50 feet from a house with a toilet and refrigerator. I have a nice plastic Adirondack chair under me. I have a cold beverage. I’m sitting in a shady blind under shady trees. The squirrels don’t make me chase them. The present themselves for execution.

The Marlin 60 Remington sent me as a replacement for the one that shot like a musket is wonderful. It has a nicely figured stock, and it shoots great. I used a rimfire scope today, and I popped two of the squirrels in the head. The other one got it in the shoulders. My story is that he moved. You can’t prove me wrong. I killed the only witness.

The trigger is awful. I was trying to shoot today, and for a minute, I wondered if the safety was on. No, that’s just how bad the trigger is. I ordered a trigger kit from an aftermarket company. When I get it installed, this gun should be a prizewinner.

I baited the yard with Mike-Sell’s Puffcorn Delites, which are like Cheetos, only a thousand times better. The squirrels didn’t go for them. I thought it was worth a shot.

I learned something today. You can’t hunt without learning something. I learned I really need to carry my .22 pistol when I hunt.

The third squirrel I shot did not die right away. He was scampering around, so I got up to kill him at close range. When I reached him, I remembered something important: you can’t focus on a squirrel using a rimfire scope if you’re 4 feet away. This was a bad situation. I don’t want game to suffer, and I couldn’t see to shoot this squirrel. I couldn’t use the sights because the scope blocked them. I had to wait until he held still, and then I was able to hold the gun pretty close and finish him off.

I’m sorry it happened, but I don’t feel guilty, because hunting is a good thing, and I did my best. It was a noob mistake. Next time, I’ll have the pistol.

There have been a lot of shots I wouldn’t take. I want to be sure the squirrels drop and die fast. I’m not going to take unnecessary chances on wounding them. But no one is perfect.

I ordered a holster for the pistol, and it arrived this week. Looks like a quality item. I’ll wear it next time.

When you shoot a squirrel through the head, you may think you only winged him. They kick for quite a while after they die. That surprised me.

I got to use one of my hunting knives for the first time. I used my Entrek Beaver. It was not as great as I had hoped. The knife seems like a quality item, but the factory edge doesn’t seem up to the task of slitting squirrel hide. It will do it, but you have to apply pressure and go back over cuts. I will have to see what I can do about putting a better edge on it.

I improved my squirrel-skinning technique. When you have three animals to clean, you learn more than you would if you only had one. I learned the techniques I’ve seen on Youtube won’t work on the local squirrels. The skin is too tough, and it sticks to the squirrels too hard. I wonder if the squirrels north of Florida have looser skin. When you skin a Florida squirrel, you can’t just make a cut above the anus, step on the hind feet, and yank the tail. Nothing happens. You have to make cuts down the legs, shove your thumbs under the hide, and loosen it around the thighs.

Another thing: you don’t want to gut a squirrel before you clean it, unless you have to. When you gut it, poop is likely to go everywhere, and various types of goo will coat the fur and make life difficult. You skin the squirrel first, and then you cut his head off with poultry shears. You shove the shears up the servants’ entrance and cut him all the way to the neck, and then you pull the guts out and throw them as far as possible.

Shears are even better than a cleaver for cutting away all the nasty bits in the crotch.

I plan to kill the bejeezus out of these things until I quit seeing them around the house. They’re terrible. City people think they’re cute. They’re not cute when they’re eating your fruit or ripping the insulation out of your attic. It would be lots of fun to feed them and give them names and keep track of their offspring through the years. And live in a fantasy world. Unfortunately, squirrels don’t know how to behave, so it’s breading and hot grease for the lot of them.

It’s great to learn these skills. Nothing is worse than an urban pansy who can’t do anything. And it’s terrible to live in a state of delusion about wildlife. Most people in America get their knowledge of wild animals from Pixar. You come to see animals differently when you have to fight with them all the time. Life in the country will turn a vegan into a stone-cold killer. Well. A SANE vegan.

Oxymoron?

I have to kill mice. I have to kill squirrels. I have to kill coons. I have to kill coyotes. I have to kill moles. I have to kill gophers. I may have to kill crows. I may have to kill pigs. I have to kill these things just to be considered responsible and not helpless.

Butchering warm-blooded animals is disgusting. I need to get over that. Butchering fish always made me hungry. Squirrels feel sort of like puppies, and they exude a musk which makes the whole animal smell like a huge crotch. When I cut them up, part of me wonders if what I’m doing is normal behavior. It’s irrational, but it’s hard not to feel a little bit like Hannibal Lecter. It’s healthy, though. I’m more in touch with the reality of predation. This is where all meat comes from. Animals don’t unzip big pockets in their sides and hand us steaks.

It has never bothered me to cut on raw pigs or poultry, but they always arrived cold and hairless!

I used standard velocity ammo today. The nominal speed is 1070 fps, I think. Anyway, it’s subsonic, so it’s not as loud as regular .22 ammo. I thought the neighbors might like it. I ordered some ammo which is even slower: CCI Quiet segmented ammo. These are very slow, very quiet rounds that fly apart inside squirrels and kill them fast. They’re supposed to be very accurate, although the low velocity limits the range. CCI claims you can use them without hearing protection. That would be great. We’ll see how they work. They’re twice as expensive as regular ammo, but I wouldn’t expect to use a lot of them.

If the Quiet rounds work, I will have to consider selling the air rifle. I won’t need it. It’s nice to have something that shoots 3-cent ammo, however.

I used Primos shooting sticks today. These are sticks joined at one end. You cross them and put their tips on the ground, and they form a bipod. Much more stable than a monopod. They’re also very compact when you fold them up. I like it.

I will clear the yard of squirrels, or they will reproduce so fast I will have squirrel meat all the time. Either way, I will be happy.

Government Signs Off on Squirrel Blitzkrieg

I have wonderful news. A stinking squirrel cleaned the blueberries off my blueberry plant.

Why is this great news? Here’s why:

You may shoot the following species of animals on YOUR private property as long as you check with you local law enforcement agency (Sheriff’s office or Local Police Department) to make sure its lawful to discharge a weapon in the area prior to shooting. Raccoons, Armadillo, Opossums, Most snake [sic], Foxes (during daylight hours only) Wild hogs, Coyotes, Bobcats, Skunks, Beavers, Otters, Gray Squirrels.

That squirrel just signed its death warrant. In blueberry juice.

That block quote comes from a response to a question I asked the Fish and Wildlife Commission, about nuisance animals. It has the force of law. I am now licensed to kill squirrels at will, by the government of the United Nations. Like Carl Spackler.

My friend Amanda graciously brought me a medium-sized blueberry bush, complete with berries. I planted it by the pool. The berries got bigger and bigger. Then they vanished down the unworthy gullet of a predacious rodent. Was I supposed to take that lying down? Oh no, my friend. I’m going all Walken on his behind.

The key to responding to aggression is to turn it into a blessing. That stupid squirrel didn’t realize it was dealing with a lawyer who knows how to read a statute. It thought I had to wait for squirrel season, and then it was going to hide out in the woods and laugh at me. No such luck, you vile aboreal rat. Your butt is MINE now.

It’s even better than I’m making it sound. I can shoot foxes! I just have to find a way to turn them into a nuisance. Maybe I could train them to play loud music while I’m trying to sleep.

I think you pretty much have to have chickens in order to claim foxes are a problem. Would it be unethical to buy a couple of fat, slow chickens solely for the purpose of drawing a foul? It certainly sounds like it’s worth a try.

Amanda has three boys. I wonder if they would be willing to wear chicken suits and sit in the yard. After all, it’s for science.

Okay, okay. I won’t bend the law just to shoot foxes. But the squirrels near the house are in very serious trouble. Finally, the air rifle will earn its keep.

Is it weird to put a blind on your home’s front porch? I don’t care. I am not giving the vermin the fruits of my labor.

I have a few blackberry patches. Will the squirrels eat those, too? If so, I know where to put the blinds. Oh, yes. I do.

I don’t know if I’ll accomplish anything. This area is filthy with squirrels. Maybe they’ll reproduce too fast for me to kill. That’s not so bad. Worst case scenario: I get really good at killing squirrels, and I have a good supply of free meat.

It’s a great day to be alive (for me). I can’t tell you how annoying it is to see those smug squirrels mincing around the yard all day, full of food I paid for.

I will eat my blueberries one way or the other. If I can’t have them in blueberry form, I’ll take them in the form of squirrel meat.

I am Godzilla. Squirrels are Japan. Deal with it.

Tough Afternoon

Today I spent a huge amount of time praying in tongues and reading Christian material. I am determined to have peace, and the price is prayer time.

In the afternoon, I fired up the tractor and enjoyed the outdoors. I’m still amazed that I live here. Back in Miami, I would be hiding from the world around me, trying to distract myself from my surroundings. I didn’t like going outdoors because I didn’t really want anything to do with my neighbors. Also, it was hot. Here, I embrace my environment.

Here’s the view over the top of the tractor.

I bush-hogged a bunch of weeds at the east end of the big pasture, and I moved a whole bunch of oak branches to the burn pile. Some of this stuff is from Irma, and some fell later. The pile is enormous. I’m somewhat less eager to light it these days. Setting fire to the pasture made me realize I’m better off burning debris when I have help. It’s best to have one person to watch the fire and one person to go get more limbs.

Look at the burn pile. I think this is a new record.

The weather is wonderful. I wish we were still having 65-degree days, but it’s still better than Miami. Down there, the temperature is 82. Up here, it’s 73, breezy, and comparatively dry. Tonight we will drop to a pleasant 56.