Three-Dog Nights

I’m back. I was busy with Christmas.

I have an aunt. I will call her Polly. She has a lot of problems, and she has been rejected by the family. She has been divorced for many years. Her daughter, whom I will call Mabel, has also suffered a lot of rejection, as has the daughter’s son, whom I will call Larry.

When I took my dad’s ashes to Kentucky earlier this year, I spent a fair amount of time with Polly and Mabel. All three of us felt we were no longer integral parts of the overall family circle. A few years back, my other living aunt called during the fall and told me how she, four of my cousins, and their families had gotten together for Thanksgiving, and she apparently didn’t think about the fact that she was talking to someone who hadn’t been invited. My dad and I didn’t make the list, which seemed odd. Since then, I have had the impression that we no longer had insider status.

While I was in Kentucky, I told Polly and Mabel they were welcome to visit me over Christmas, and I said they could bring Larry, too. I figured I would probably be entertaining friends as well. In the end, some of my friends could not make it due to work conflicts and another could not be here due to difficulties with an interesting parent, so I only expected Polly, Mabel, and Larry. They had committed to come 9 months ago, so I thought they were serious.

Not long ago, I talked to Mabel, and she said Polly had suddenly changed her mind about coming. She has arthritis, and she didn’t want to travel. At this point, it was starting to look like attendance was going to be limited to me, my parrots, and the squirrels.

People change plans. This is normal. It’s a little out of the ordinary to announce you’re calling off a holiday trip right before it’s supposed to happen.

I wanted them to come. In Kentucky, Mabel and I had talked a lot about God, and she had accepted Jesus. I prayed for her in her mom’s driveway. I told her about the benefits of baptism, and she said she wanted to do it. I suggested she go to a Last Reformation event, but she insisted she wanted me to do it. I thought this was a bad idea, because you should be baptized as soon as you receive salvation, but it was what she wanted. I let her know about some events she could attend, but she didn’t go. I ended up pinning my hopes on the Christmas visit, and it looked like it was not going to happen.

I prayed and encouraged them to come, and they decided to do it. I didn’t understand what I was asking them to do. The only decent car they had belonged to Larry, and it was a mini-SUV. They had two golden retrievers and an Australian cattle dog, and they weren’t happy with the boarding options that were available at the last minute. They had to jam three adults and three dogs into a pretty small car.

They didn’t want to put three large dogs in my house, but I told them to bring them. I was not going to give up that easily. Baptism is important.

When it came time to leave, Polly said she had a bunch of errands to run, and they were determined to make the 11-hour drive in one shot, so they ended up arriving at 4 a.m.

Polly and Mabel both smoke, and the dogs are big, so it was an interesting time. No one smoked in the house, but when you smoke intensely, you can change the atmosphere in a house just by being in it along with your belongings. The dogs behaved, but you can’t have three big dogs in a house without issues.

I didn’t care. I wanted to get the baptism done. How often do people with dysfunctional families get to fight back with real weapons?

Polly has some firm views on religion, and she tends to take a dim view of new things. I had told her about TLR in March, and since then, she had done some Googling. TLR and its leader, Torben Sondergaard, are getting very intense persecution from a wide variety of nutcases here and overseas, so there is plenty of unflattering slander out there for anyone to read. My aunt got the impression that I had joined a cult, and she thought Torben was a wanted criminal in Denmark. Maybe he is, if full-gospel Christianity is a crime. The authorities passed a ridiculous new law because he and his friends were casting demons out of people.

I don’t belong to TLR, and Polly and Mabel had been told this. I think TLR does a lot of good work, but I don’t join denominations or churches, and I think there is a strong chance that TLR will become corrupted and overly regimented soon, as virtually all other denominations have. Polly already had her bad impression, however.

I have Googled TLR a lot this year, trying to find out if they have ever done anything wrong, and all I have seen is prevarication and innuendo. The people who attack them are just like the people who attack Trump. I’ll post a video I found, to give you an idea what I’m talking about. It’s basically hysteria.

That’s a video in which some person uses a video of a completely different ministry to “debunk” TLR.

Here’s an even weirder one. You will see TLR’s own footage, which they post for the purpose of ATTRACTING people, used for the purpose of “exposing” Torben. It’s truly bizarre. Torben and TLR want people to see this footage, so clearly it’s nothing that makes them look bad. It’s Torben and others, helping kids receive deliverance. The kids are happy as they can be when it’s done. No one is forcing them to do anything. They’re glad to participate.

When I was at the TLR event in Raleigh, I was part of a group of people who cast a spirit out of a woman who foamed at the mouth and screamed. Two little girls came over and got involved. I don’t think the oldest one was older than 7. They were working right along with us. They weren’t disturbed at all. Afterward, they accompanied my group on an outing in which we healed people. They continued to pray for people, and they performed some healings. It was their own idea, and they had a great time. The idea that you should hide Christianity from children is a little hard to understand, especially when you consider the fact that we routinely expose them to toxic things like occult videos, Halloween activities, violent entertainment, video games, and the Internet.

The people who post these things appear to be unbalanced fanatics. They evoke visions of torches and pitchforks. There are a lot of truly ill and dangerous people among the ranks of the charismatic-haters.

It’s unusual to see enraged charismatics, but the people who are against charismatics are often extremely angry, to the point of being out of control. There is a reason for that.

The TLR saga is a very interesting thing to watch. The irrationality of the critics is an indicator of a supernatural cause, and this is characteristic of persecution, the flames of which are lit and fanned by spirits.

I fixed prime rib, scalloped potatoes, cheesecake, and Texas trash for Christmas, and we did as well as we could. Things were complicated by the dynamic between Polly and Larry. They had always gotten along in the past, but for some reason, Polly was laying into him over various things, and Larry kept reacting by going to his room and staying there with a video game device. He would come out the next day early in the afternoon, which made group activities difficult.

My understanding is that he spent a lot of time contacting friends, trying to get someone to buy him a ticket home.

My take is that Polly was 70% responsible, with the remainder of the fault belonging to Larry. Polly refused to give an inch, and Larry didn’t do a lot better. It’s a shame, because she won’t be around forever, and they should be trying to create better memories. Larry has a great deal of potential, but he needs to take on the responsibilities and attitude of a man.

I talked to both of them, but I didn’t make significant headway. It’s a shame, because until recently, they had a very warm relationship. Larry has a heart deformity, and he had lots of problems as a kid, and Polly was always there for him, fighting to get him what he needed.

Pettiness is extremely destructive, as I have learned from practicing it. It seems like modern Americans don’t understand how forgiveness works or why it’s necessary. They also don’t understand the principle of the extra mile. It’s okay to let yourself be wronged a little.

Anyway, you know it’s a real family Christmas when people keep making things awkward with what appears to be very little justification. It could have been worse. All over America, cops responded to domestic violence reports on Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.

Our challenges were compounded by my refrigerator’s sudden decision to fail, with many pounds of holiday food in it. Luckily, my spare refrigerator was already turned on. Mabel got down on the floor with a tiny shop vac and cleaned the fridge’s coils, and then I got on the web and figured out what was wrong: the bearing in the circulation fan motor was going, so the fan flopped around and got stuck. With Mabel’s help, I removed the fan and motor, and I used my belt grinder to make the fan’s blades smaller so they didn’t catch on things. The fridge resumed working, and I ordered a new fan and motor which should arrive on Monday.

Speaking of pettiness: really, Satan? You went after my refrigerator?

Last night, Mabel started talking to Polly about baptism for some reason, and they got into a very long conversation about doctrine. Polly made some veiled jabs at my beliefs, and I didn’t respond. I just waited. And waited. I would say she went to bed at around 12:00, which is two hours later than I like to go to bed. I stayed up, avoiding participation in the conversation, because I was determined to get Mabel baptized if at all possible.

When Polly went to bed, Mabel started talking about her reservations and problems, and I told her what I knew. Eventually, she decided her baptism didn’t have any relationship to her mother’s progress as a Christian, so she changed clothes and got in the pool, which was freezing. I had suggested the jacuzzi tub, but she wanted the pool. It probably took her 15 minutes to get into the water because it was so cold.

In the end, we got it done, and Larry was there to witness it. Finally. I guess I got to bed at 2 a.m.

I didn’t care about anything but the baptism. It was done, so I was happy.

They wanted to start driving home today. Polly has a green thumb, and she was not happy with my plants, so when I strolled out at maybe 10:30, after compensation sleep plus prayer and a shower, I found Polly and Mabel fixing up the plants on my patio, which was very nice of them. They also insisted on cleaning their linens and straightening up the house. Larry came downstairs at around 1:15.

I didn’t know what to think. If I had a long drive to make, I would want to leave in the morning, but they do things differently. They had things in the washing machine, so I knew they weren’t leaving for a while. I offered to take them out for barbecue, which I did. I would guess they got off my property at 4:45 p.m.

Until I saw them pack the car, I didn’t realize what they had gone through to get here. There were things stuffed in the footwells. It was very tight. If they have an accident, the EMT’s will need the jaws of life to get them out, even if the car isn’t damaged. With those big dogs in the car, they don’t need airbags.

Whatever. Mabel got baptized. That’s the important thing. Now maybe she can mature and work with Polly, who is extremely unhappy.

Long before all the difficulties arose, I told Mabel to expect Satan to throw everything he had at her to prevent her from coming, and boy, did he come through. But he lost. I prayed, and she prayed, and God listened.

“This Variety Always has Black Bark”

I’m back to writing about my workshop again. Or am I?

Today I wrote about the favor God was showing me. I said it seemed like I couldn’t go to Home Depot without them giving me something for nothing. After I wrote that, I visited the store to get 30 feet of 10/3 power cord for my band saw. The guy who cut the wire made a measuring mistake. I got 31 feet for the price of 30.

Okay, I give up. I surreptitiously returned the last two things they gave me, because I was pretty sure the employees who gave them to me did not have the authority to give things away. This time, I let it go. You can’t give Home Depot back a foot of wire. It was going home with me, or they were going to cut it off and put it in a dumpster. There was no way they were going to go back to the wire area and cut it off. I had to take it.

It was almost as though God were joking with me.

I went to the metal dealer today to get some things I needed. I have a sprayer boom for my golf cart, and I’ve been attaching it to the back of the cart with clamps. That’s no good. I need a support that goes in the cart’s 2″ receiver. I bought three pieces of square tubing to make one.

I also bought several pieces of angle iron in different widths. My Offroad Swag finger brake is a wonderful tool, but in order to make it work, you need accessories. Little pieces of narrow angle iron serve as bottom die adaptors. The press’s bottom die is a huge piece of angle iron which is too wide to work with some things, so you rest small pieces in it to fill up space.

I bought three feet of 1″ steel strip for no good reason at all. I thought I might need some for a plate for the sprayer mount. Screws would go through it to attach it to the boom. I would only need maybe 4 inches for that. I bought three feet because 1″ steel strip is a handy thing to have when you weld. You never know when you’ll find a place where a little strip of steel will save the day.

Scrap is very important. You can’t make anything without scrap unless you drive to the store every time an idea pops into your head. I try to buy more materials, fasteners, paint, glue, and other things than I need, because I know they’ll be useful later.

Yesterday I took some goat wire and stretched it between two shelves on my monster shelf thing. I put it there to prevent long metal objects from falling off the side. I’m using a shelf as a material storage area. The old system of piling it in the corner of the room is no longer in vogue.

Scrap is already piling up on the shelf, making me feel more secure.

I bought 20″ of 2-1/2″ square tube. I made a front end loader support for my Kubota the other day, and it came out great, but it was too short to put the loader as high as I wanted it. The tubing I bought today will become a new support. I could have cut the old support and welded more metal in to make it longer, but I didn’t think about it until I had the new metal, and I don’t know if I trust my welds for a job like that.

When I got home, I cleaned my new steel with window cleaner and paper towels because new steel is always covered with black grime. I deburred the steel using the belt grinder, and I also ground an angle into one of the pieces for the sprayer support so it would project backward from the golf cart when the finished support was in use.

I put 5/8″ holes in the tube that will go into the receiver. There are matching holes in the receiver, and a pin will go through them to hold the support in place. The Silver & Deming bit left huge burrs inside the tubing where I couldn’t hit them with the belt grinder. Enter the Dumore hand grinder.

This is a tool that falls between a Dremel and a die grinder. It’s small enough to use with one hand, but it won’t poop out as badly as a Dremel, and it’s a real industrial tool, so it will last longer than a year. I put a carbide burr on it, reached into the tubing, and ground the burrs out in a hurry.

Nice.

There’s a reason why new Dumores cost hundreds of dollars. Thank God I bought one that was new old stock.

I used a Walter flap wheel to clean up the tubes, and then I used my Harbor Freight MIG to weld them together. It was great. The welds, though imperfect, look better than most professionally done welds. Most pros make ugly welds. Most pros aren’t that good, if you want the truth. It’s a wonder things don’t fall apart and kill people all the time. I was very happy with my work.

The Titanium welder is a joy to use. I don’t know how it will stand the test of time, but for now, I’m thrilled with it. It’s light. It’s easy to use. The Harbor Freight Vulcan welding cart is ergonomically perfect. Zero complaints.

I cleaned the newly made support with a wire brush, and then I sprayed it with black hammer finish Rust-Oleum, using the tried-and-true “hang it from a magnolia tree you don’t mind painting” method. It looks wonderful. There are worse-looking welded products on store shelves across the world.

I’m not totally happy with the tubing I got for the upper part of the support, so I didn’t make that part. I’m going back to the metal place to see if they have something a little wider.

I enjoyed my visit today. The lady who runs the place started talking to me about guns and politics and so on. Of course, she has a carry permit. So nice to live among sane people.

While the paint on the sprayer mount was drying, I started on the front end loader support. I used the dry cut saw to cut one end at a 47-degree angle, which was the biggest angle I could manage with that tool. I then took the plasma cutter and started turning the 2-1/2″ tubing into a C-channel. It has to slip over the tractor’s hydraulic rod, so one side has to be open.

The first time I did this, it took a very long time, because I relied on bad information and didn’t give the plasma cutter enough air. It didn’t cut all the way through the part, so I had to finish the cutting with an angle grinder. This time, I left a few spots that weren’t cut, but severing them only took a couple of minutes.

When I was done cutting one side out of the tubing, I was left with a lot of rough metal on the inside of it. I tried smoothing it with a flap disk, but it wouldn’t really get in there, so I used the Dumore again. It’s terrific. It smoothed and debored everything so a person handling the support can’t get hurt.

I cleaned up the shop and put everything away. The support is waiting for me to come back and weld end plates on it.

I got a great deal done in a very short time. That’s rewarding. So much better than fumbling around and wasting time because I don’t have the right tools or the needed skills.

Welding is a huge blessing. I can make things other people have to buy, really quickly and cheaply. I can customize them. I don’t have to make do with things that aren’t quite right.

I’m planning to build my own welding table. A manufactured table will cost over a thousand dollars, and I just don’t think it’s justified. My milling machine will be here soon, and with it, I’ll be able to make a precision top for the table without paying some company my life savings.

I’ll bet I can build an excellent three foot by two foot table with casters and a fold-out plasma area for $250.

The little Harbor Freight portable table I use now is fantastic for the money, and if you want to weld when you’re away from your shop, it can’t be beat, but it’s flimsy for a main welding table, and it’s small, so it gets crowded.

Maybe if I go to Home Depot tomorrow, they’ll give me a table.

Things are coming together nicely. I almost look forward to spraying the yard.

When You Get the Devil on the Canvas, Just Punch him Harder

This has been a wonderful day.

I got up and mowed the yard. The John Deere didn’t blow up, quit, run over its own grill, pump oil out onto the lawn, or refuse to start. For a John Deere product, that’s remarkable. As far as I can tell from my experience. I also ran the leaf blower, the weed eater, and the edger, and I poisoned some plants I didn’t like. Wonderful.

My friend Amanda came over with her sons, and I showed them some tools and taught them how to run the pressure washer. Which DID quit. But I know how to deal with that. I went to Amazon and bought a new carb for $20, plus a fuel filter, which the pressure washer appears to lack. Never pay anyone to fix a small engine carburetor. Just buy a new one. I could have gotten a fine carb for $13, delivered, but I decided to splurge and get a genuine Honda, which surely comes from the same Chinese factory. Probably. Anyway, it’s coming.

I fired up my tools and made another end shield for my tractor front end loader brace. I didn’t have to pay for the steel. My friends at the metal place gave me free scrap to practice welding on, and one piece was a nice sheet of 1/8″ plate. I cut a rectangle out of it with the dry-cut saw, made a hole with the drill press, cleaned it up with the belt grinder and drill press, and I was done. Bang. Like that.

I used the new 6″ Metabo grinder to cut a piece out of the shield to open it up for the belt grinder. The Metabo is dynamite. So glad I bought it. It will save me a lot of time.

The shield is beautiful. I won’t be modest. I love metalworking. This just proves I need more tools. Which I already knew.

The first end shield is 1/4″ steel, and I wondered if I should wait for a similar piece, but I chose not to. The 1/8″ piece is strong enough, and every time I see it, it will remind me of the pleasant experiences I’ve had at the metal dealer’s place FAR, FAR FROM MIAMI.

In three or four days, I’ll have the new carb, and the pressure washer will almost definitely run. The pump could be giving out, but I don’t think it is. If it is, I’ll buy a new $125 pump on Ebay for $70 and install it. It takes 5 minutes. There is probably no good reason for ever buying a new pressure washer until the engine dies and can’t be fixed.

That’s it. I’m about to go relax with my pets and a cold beverage. I will post photos of the metalwork later.

Oh, all right. I’ll post them now.

Floor now Visible

Yesterday I got a lot of stuff done in the workshop.

Ergonomics is a weak point with me. I tend to put things I use in the worst possible locations. I stack things on the floor in front of shelves. I cover new horizontal surfaces with junk so I feel like I need to buy more tables. I put tools where I have to walk past junk to use them.

I hate clutter and disorganization, yet I tend to generate them.

Yesterday I moved a bunch of stuff in the shop and made it possible to do more work.

First off, I put a set of Amazon casters on my Harbor Freight 20-ton press.

If you don’t have one of these presses (or a better press), you must be a fool. For around $150, you get a press that functions perfectly well, and you can easily upgrade it to air/manual power. If there are things about the press you don’t like, you can modify it. It’s a very simple piece of machinery. The fundamental structure is fine, so any problems the press might have are unimportant and repairable. They used to make orange presses that tended to fail, but the grey ones they make now are great.

These presses sit on steel angle irons, and the angle irons are pre-drilled for casters. I spent around $20 on Amazon and got a set of 4 swivel casters, two of which have brakes. It took 5 minutes to install them. Now I can move the press wherever I want. It will no longer be blocking my access to other things, and I can move it to the metalworking area of the shop.

I plan to put a sheet of plywood between the press and casters. It will give me a storage surface that moves with the press. I may also put some kind of box or shelves on it. I can fix it so they can be moved off when they obstruct the press.

I ordered a Swag Offroad finger brake kit for the press. This will let me put decent-quality bends in very heavy steel. I plan to use it to make improved mobile bases for my heavy tools. Storebought bases have to be adjustable, and this introduces lots of problems. I look forward to having bases that work better, and I also look forward to being able to make boxes and brackets.

I’ll have to do some welding to put the kit together, but I have–let’s see–THREE welders ready to go. I should be able to get it done.

I advertised my John Deere utility cart for sale, and I moved it to the goat shed. When I bought my tractors and golf cart, the seller threw this thing in. I can see why. It’s useless. If I want to move things, I have a pickup and a golf cart with a dump bed. The JD cart sat in the way collecting leaves and dead bugs.

John Deere is a sad cult, like Snap-On and Apple, so people will pay stupid prices for anything green. I think this cart is worthless except for parts for projects, but I have already had two contacts from the ads. I priced it at $500, figuring John Deere lovers had no common sense whatsoever. I’ll bet anything I get $250.

If I can’t get a high price, I may cut the sheet metal off and turn it into a base for a mobile barbecue.

I moved my drill press and grinding cart to the metalworking area of the workshop. Now they’re near my toolboxes, as they should be. I also added my Chinese welders, since I am more likely to use them than the Lincoln, and I put my Harbor Freight welding table nearby.

My wood stuff is all on the other side of the shop now.

With the cart gone, I was able to move a lot of junk to shelves, so now I can walk quickly across the garage instead of stopping and turning to avoid things.

I ordered a 25-foot cord for the 50-amp socket. That will let me move the welders and plasma cutter around instead of jamming them against the wall by the socket. Manufacturers save money by selling these machines with tiny cords.

One of my air hose reels was on a shelf, and the hose was on the floor in sprawling coils. I mounted the reel on the wall and put the hose on it. Now I have air up to 70 feet from the shop. It’s not much air, because the compressor is small, but it’s air. And I can walk where the hose used to be.

There is no outlet on the side of the shop where the compressor sits. That’s unforgivable. There is an outlet maybe 18 feet away, embedded in the wall, and the wires that feed it drop down through the cinderblocks from above. I believe I can pull the box out, drop new wires down from above, attach them to the existing outlet to draw power from it, run them down the wall to the compressor area, drop them into the cinderblocks, and install a second outlet. This is my plan. I don’t really want to splice into the existing romex, but that could actually be a better plan. Anyway, I WILL have another outlet.

I am considering hanging 4 power cords with multiple sockets from the roof trusses so they’ll end about 6 feet in the air. That would let me connect tools to them without running cords on the floor. I already have one outlet up there for the useless ceiling fan. I plan to replace it with a four-socket outlet, and then I can run the cords over the trusses.

I may also run a couple of 250V cords up there for 20-amp tools.

I had a brainstorm regarding the big tractor. I was thinking I should build a shed for it and get it out of the workshop, but then I realized I could park it with the front end loader in the air. The loader and forks take up an area which is maybe 6′ by 8′, so this would make the workshop much easier to use.

I learned that hydraulics can’t be trusted to hold pressure. That means the loader will slowly sink if I leave it up, crushing whatever is under it. Also, if someone (like a kid) touches the hydraulic lever, the loader can plummet very quickly. To prevent this, I need a brace to fit over one hydraulic ram. Kubota doesn’t make a brace for this loader, but I can make out from steel C channel. That’s one of my projects for today. I want to buy the channel, make an end plate for it, cut recesses to fit the loader hinge, weld the plate on, and paint it Kubota orange. Whenever I park the Kubota, I’ll stick the brace on one rod, and the loader will stay in the air.

I looked into sheds for the John Deere, but you have to spend a lot of money to get a shed with a doorway a 6′-wide tractor can negotiate. I might make a wooden shed myself, with one open side. It would be very cheap, and it’s not complicated. Four four-by-four posts with concrete slugs. A bunch of pressure-treated boards nailed to the posts. Galvanized metal for the roof. Done.

I’m going to put casters on my shop fan. It’s very heavy and hard to move.

I now have a big clear area by my workbench, and my metal tools are right there. Very nice.

I’m going to throw out my Rockstar beverage fridge and put my retired mini-fridge in the shop for drinks. I have to make a stand for the fridge first. It’s very short, and I don’t want to waste floor space. A rolling stand will allow me to have some shelf space under it.

I vacuumed the shop. I have given up my delusions about blowing debris out. Women are right about this. Men like to blow debris away. Women like to suck it in. When you suck it in, you can get rid of it. When you blow it away, it just lands somewhere else, where it has to be blown again. From now on, the leaf blowers and compressor blow guns are only for things the vacuums can’t handle.

It makes a big difference to have a somewhat clean floor.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my basic strategy. I was considering building a new shop, because there was so much clutter in the existing building. If I can put up a shed and keep the Kubota’s forks up, I can do a lot with what I have.

I want more 50-amp lines out there. That project is looking less intimidating. The electrician I called to give me an estimate turned out to be completely incompetent, and I had been relying on his expertise. He was wrong about a lot of things. I’ve been investigating, and I don’t think running more wires will be hard. He couldn’t find the place where the existing wires entered. I did. I found out how to bury bigger wires. This is something I can handle.

I tried to open one of the boxes the big wires go through, but the screws are carbon steel, not stainless. On an outdoor box. Unbelievable. The philips slots are nearly gone. I decided this was a good excuse to order special pliers for removing damaged screws. They’re called Vampliers. They look like they have little teeth.

Vampliers are sold on TV, but they’re actually excellent Japanese pliers. The company makes other good tools. If you order them under the Japanese company’s name, you pay much less for the same product. That’s what I did.

I had to find stainless screws made to screw into plastic. They exist. Amazon sells them. They’re called “thread rolling screws.” I ordered a pack of 25 for $3.47. I made sure they had Philips heads on them so I don’t have to go dig out a ridiculous Torx bit or use a flat blade which is guaranteed to slip out 15 times per screw.

I want to put my lathe and mill in the garage by the house. This is not an optimal setup, but I think it’s better than cramming them in an un-air-conditioned workshop. For under $600, I can put a unit in the garage window.

It’s not that terrible, having to walk between buildings to get tools. The distance is around a hundred feet. In fact, now that I’ve got a hose reel mounted, I don’t think I need two big compressors. I can do most of my air-intensive work in one building, and if I need to something in the other one, I can just extend the hose to it.

All I need now is good weather. Hurricane Dorian was wonderful. Yesterday, I enjoyed the hurricane in cool weather with pleasant breezes that really mitigated the sweating. Now we’re getting abnormally hot weather, and it’s supposed to be here for days. The shop fan is okay, but it’s no substitute for October.

I may get tarps for the tractors and start parking them outdoors right now. That extra space is very tempting. The John Deere looks like it has spent at least 15 years outdoors already, so a tarp is probably more than adequate. It’s never going to look like a new tractor.

I still want the brace for the front end loader. With a brace, you can work on the tractor with the loader raised. Very helpful. And it’s a simple and fun project.

I will post a photo to show where things stand now.

The junk in the foreground needs to be stored and/or rearranged.

Clearly, I now have room for a propane forge.

Workshop Soon to Spring to Life

It is a momentous day. I found out I have 250V power in my workshop.

As an annoying side note, I have decided to write “250V” from now on. It seems like no one can settle on 220V, 230V, 240V, or 250V. It causes problems when you search for things online. Well, guess what? Manufacturers put “250V” on their products, and from now on, that’s good enough for me. It’s also accurate. The voltage here is about 250, and it was also 250 in Miami. I’m also going to say “125V” instead of “110V” or “115V”.

Anyway, I got an electrician to check the workshop out a long time ago, and it looks like he was really inept. He said I had 50 amps of 125V (HA!) service out there, and that was all. I never checked to see. He did some other things that were not bright.

He said that because he couldn’t see where the power for the workshop left the house, he was going to have to dig a new trench for new lines. That would have cost thousands, for some reason he didn’t explain. I don’t understand why it costs more than $200 to dig a short slit. Here’s the thing; no matter where you live, you can call 811, and someone will come out and locate your underground power lines…free of charge. You can look it up online. How could this guy not know that?

I’m assuming he didn’t know it. Maybe he did, and he was just a crook.

This free service is provided in order to prevent unskilled people from ripping out power, gas, and water lines while planting trees or whatever.

He also failed to give me the estimates I needed. I told him I had two jobs, and I wanted two estimates. He combined them. I told him I needed him to break the estimate into two parts. He said he would get right on it, and then he disappeared. He was looking at work worth something like $6000, and he just let it go.

Maybe he was dishonest, and he realized he was taking a risk by trying to fool me. I asked a lot of questions. Maybe that scared him.

Anyway, today I checked the workshop electrical panel and found out I have 50 amps of 250V service. It’s not much, but you can do a lot with it. I can run all three of my welders, my band saw, my drill press, and my big table saw. The only thing that probably won’t work is my plasma cutter. Actually, it probably would work on 90% of the jobs I would throw at it. Most jobs would involve thin metal, and the thinner the metal, the less power you need.

While my dad was declining and dying, I really crawled into a hole. I let things back up. I didn’t do things I should have done. I should never have let the power problem go.

Now I have a plan. I’m going to get some #8 wire, some conduit, three or four receptacles, a junction box, and a box for a 20-amp breaker, and I’m going to wire up the workshop. This will give me back everything except the big machine tools and the big compressor. I’ll install two 50-amp receptacles, and I’ll have a 20-amp breaker that goes to two 20-amp receptacles.

I don’t think I really need a separate breaker for the smaller receptacles. The theory is that if something goes wrong, the 50-amp circuit could send 50 amps through a 20-amp cord without one, but we all have 20-amp circuits connected to multiple items that have cords that are only safe for 13 amps. You have things like that in your house right now, and the fire chief isn’t pounding on your door, waiting to give you a citation.

I don’t know. I may put the breaker in just to feel smug.

I’ll probably pay less than $250 for materials, and once I get started, it will take a day or less.

I could also put a couple of lines in my garage, for my mill and lathe. There is room on the main panel.

I’ve really missed the drill press, the table saw, the band saw, and welding with 250V input.

The belt grinder! I just realized I’ll be able to use the 3HP belt grinder! That thing is MURDEROUS. It will do things to metal you would not believe.

I think I should also go ahead and get an anvil. The mashed grill for my John Deere garden tractor will cost almost $800 to replace, which is ridiculous. The tractor doesn’t even need a grill. It does nothing to filter out dirt. Stuff goes right through and gets trapped on an internal screen. I can beat the old grill back into pretty good shape, but without an anvil, it would be pretty unpleasant work. This gives me a great rationalization I can use: I’m spending $600 instead of $800. I’m actually SAVING money.

Yeah. Saving.

That grill is going to sit around the shop and make me crazy until I do something with it.

I feel like I’m about to come back to life again. The only thing that would be better than 250V juice would be a garage air conditioner.

It could happen.

No More Balancing Wrenches on the Tractor Hood

I am rapidly becoming Harbor Freight’s best customer.

Harbor Freight used to be a place where people bought junk tools and nothing else. If you really needed a chipping hammer, but you only needed it for a few jobs, or you just didn’t have the money to get a good one, you went to Harbor Freight, bought the tool, and accepted the fact that it probably wouldn’t be working two years later. You might have ended up paying 25% of the cost of a Bosch or Makita, and you knew you weren’t going to get longevity or a serious warranty.

It’s a different story now. Harbor Freight keeps adding new lines of tools, and some are as good as the big boys. They won’t save you 75%, but they might save you 33%, and that’s still very good. You can still buy the really cheap stuff, too.

Yesterday I bought my first US General product. This line has been around for years. Maybe it inspired Harbor Freight to add newer quality lines like Vulcan and Hercules.

US General is one of Harbor Freight’s funnier brands. They love trying to come up with product names that sound as Caucasian as possible. “US General” is one of their clumsier efforts. “It’s made in China, so we’ll call it ‘US’ something!” No idea what the “General” is all about.

US General makes a line of tool boxes and carts, most of which are about 85% as good as Snap-On, for about 15% of the money. Really, you have to be high on something to buy Snap-On while US General exists. The products will last just as long, and they will do everything Snap-On does, just as well. If you don’t believe me, you can ask around and watch Youtube reviews.

I needed a tool cart. I finally realized this. One of the disadvantages of coming from a white collar family is that I had no one to teach me obvious things about tools, and it should have been obvious that I needed a cart.

Are you a white collar tool dunce? Let me help you. Remember all those times you carried 35 different hand tools across the garage to work on something? Remember balancing 15 different wrenches on the hood of your lawn tractor, while holding 7 screwdrivers in each pants pocket? That happened because you didn’t have a tool cart. It’s why tool carts exist. They’re not substitutes for tool chests. You need one even if you have a tool chest.

This week, I worked on my ethanol-damaged generator, and I found myself putting tools on top of paint cans and other items not designed to hold anything but dust. It was not pleasant. When I needed the impact driver, for example, I had to ask myself whether it was on the white interior latex can, the utility shelves, the Homer bucket, the side of my lift table, or the generator itself. Naturally, things rolled off of other things and had to be chased down and retrieved. This happened to my bowl float pin, and I never found it again.

My rolling tool boxes were 15 feet away, and it was not convenient to move them or the generator. I needed a cart, and it had to be small so I could move it around easily.

I checked the Harbor Freight website, and they had a couple of three-tier US General carts. The $49 one had three trays, and the top tray was designed so you could put flat things on top of it. Capacity: 450 pounds. The $69 one also had three trays, but the top tray had two annoying tubing handles sticking up from it, where they would be sure to get in the way. Capacity: $350 pounds. Guess which one I picked.

I don’t know if it’s as good as the big US General tool boxes, but it should work for my purpose.

I also got two magnetic parts dishes. You stick these things to steel surfaces and drop parts in them while you work. They will hang onto steel parts pretty well. Better than the top of a paint can.

Now I have to put my cart together. I want to keep the parts dishes in the top tray.

The obvious problem with my plan is this: if I put a liner in the tray to protect the paint, it will prevent the magnetic dishes from sticking. I don’t want the paint to get banged up more than absolutely necessary. It causes rust. My solution: truck bed coating in a spray can.

I’ll use the coating on the insides of the trays. It should be much tougher than whatever is now on the trays. I plan to use a tan coating. I don’t want black because it will make things hard to see. Tan is the lightest color I can find.

I think I’ll put my most-used tools in the cart and leave them there. They come out of the box and go back in, over and over. It’s silly to keep putting them back.

If my dad had been a mechanic, I would have had a cart a long time ago, because he would have told me to get one. I had to figure it out myself.

In other news, I know why my ultrasonic cleaner died. This may be of use to other people who own them. I inherited two cheap plastic cleaners from my mother, and I use them on small carburetors ruined by FILTHY STINKING ETHANOL. The cleaners have two compartments each, and I have been using one compartment at a time. This damages the cleaners. If you have an ultrasonic cleaner, keep it full.

I have decided to get a real ultrasonic cleaner. They’ve come way down in price. Thank you, China. I have learned some fascinating things about using them.

In the past, there were wonderful chemicals that worked wonders in ultrasonic cleaners. They would take just about anything off. Unfortunately, they caused things like birth defects and cancer, so you probably won’t want to use them. So what do you do?

Many people suggest the two most obvious things: Dawn dish soap and Simple Green.

I don’t understand the Simple Green craze. First of all, it’s not a safe chemical. Look it up. It’s the same basic thing they put in Windex, only more concentrated, and it’s not good for you. Second thing…doesn’t work. I’ve used it on a number of things, and it’s grossly overrated. I don’t understand why people keep touting it. It barely does anything, it costs a lot, and it’s faux-green.

Dawn is a wonderful product, but it’s not perfect for everything.

I saw a guy on Youtube, using Gunk carb cleaner in his ultrasonic cleaner. You buy this stuff in gallon cans. It’s very expensive. Each can comes with a little basket. You can put a carb in the basket, lower it into the can, and let it soak. Unfortunately, people say it doesn’t work all that well. They took all the cancer stuff out of it, apparently.

I’m going to pass on the most amazing ultrasonic solution information I have found to date. It comes from a Youtube channel called Steve’s Small Engine Saloon. He uses three different cleaners: Dawn, some kind of corrosive degreaser, and pure gasoline.

I can save you the trouble of watching the video. He says nothing cleans parts like gasoline. It even removes rust. And it won’t oxidize aluminum.

His other genius idea: put your solutions and parts in waterproof containers before putting them in the machine.

This is a tremendous idea. When you use the machine, garbage will fall off whatever you clean. The fluid will be contaminated. Eventually, you have to change it, and you will use a lot of fluid. Even if you just filter the fluid and reuse it, it’s a pain. Also, what if you want to use different fluids? Do you really want to empty and refill the machine several times in one day?

He fills his machine with plain old water, and then he uses peanut butter jars to hold parts and solutions. For example, you can put gasoline and a carb in a jar, throw it in the machine, and clean it. The cleaning action works right through the plastic.

I suppose you could also use a freezer bag.

I’m not going to throw out my mom’s old cleaner, but I’m going to get a real one that holds bigger things. I may use it to clean guns. Cleaning kits are not that great, and they damage gun finishes over time.

So, to recap, you need a tool cart and an ultrasonic cleaner with little plastic containers. Stop doing things wrong. Seriously.

Now I have to get to work.

One of my upcoming tasks is to change the oil in my John Deere 430 garden tractor. This machine is a nightmare to work on. I just found out I have to pull out the 300-pound deck in order to drain the oil. I am not kidding.

The deck is supposed to pop on and off like a party hat, in a couple of minutes, but in reality, removing and reinstalling it will probably take me an hour and 45 minutes. It’s badly designed, period.

John Deere is a cult, and a lot of people lose their minds when you say anything negative about the brand, but this tractor is PACKED with inept engineering. They say the 430 runs forever. Well, maybe that’s because Yanmar made the engine. It’s NORMAL for a diesel engine to last a long time, especially if it’s Japanese.

As far as I can tell, all of my problems have been caused by the junk John Deere connected to the engine. By that, I mean the tractor itself.

Imagine what it would cost me to have a dealer change the oil. First, they would charge for pick-up and delivery. Then they would charge for the deck removal and installation. Then they would charge for the oil change labor. Then they would hit me for full retail on the oil and filter. I’ll bet it would run $300, for something I can do on the Kubota in 10 minutes wearing my best suit.

People say this may be the best garden tractor ever built. That may be true, but then the others may all be garbage.

I don’t know how long it will take me to change the oil, but I’m secure in the knowledge that I won’t be scattering my tools on the driveway this time.

Vexing Tractor Finally Under my Boot Heel

In case the Internet is wondering, my garden tractor is fixed.

The other day, the alternator belt came off, and I discovered that in order to replace it with a continuous v-belt, I would have to remove the driveshaft from the engine. I bypassed that issue by putting a linked belt on it. While working on it, I dropped a part on the mower deck, and I had to remove the deck from the tractor to retrieve it.

The deck weighs over 300 pounds, and it would be hard to remove if it weighed 50. John Deere promoted it as something a woman could remove and reattach in a few minutes while holding a gin and tonic in her left hand, but in reality, detaching it takes 20 minutes at best, and reattaching it goes more like 45. And to do these things, you have to lie on the ground and shove your hand under the tractor and wrestle with the unbelievably filthy PTO shaft.

Took the deck out, and noticed that my muffler was resting on it. It had torn free from the tractor in a bid to escape. It had a big hole in it, so there was no saving it. A replacement would have cost $256, and it probably would have broken off, too, because John Deere designed it badly.

I cobbled a new exhaust together from several parts, and I put it on the tractor using two clamps. It ran fine for a minute or two, and then it fell off. Because of the shapes of the parts I had used, I needed to weld two of the parts together. A clamp was not going to work.

My generator was recovering from an ethanol problem, and my MIG welder needs a generator to power it. I still haven’t had 240 sockets installed here. No generator, no MIG. I had a TIG/stick welder that worked on 120, but I’m really bad at TIG and stick. For a long time, I had been wanting to try a Titanium Unlimited 200 MIG/TIG/stick welder from Harbor Freight, so I decided it was time.

I hooked the new welder up and used 308L stainless wire to weld the parts together. One part was a stainless decorative exhaust tip, and the other part was a mild steel pipe I had cut out of the John Deere muffler. People told me stainless wire was best.

I set the welder too hot, so the welds were not pretty, but I got it done. The welder seems very, very nice for the price. I would recommend it to any beginner. You can use it to learn all three major welding processes. You’re supposed to start with stick and then learn MIG. They say TIG is very hard to learn if you can’t stick weld. I have found that to be the case. I still can’t really stick weld.

I put the new exhaust on the tractor and started mowing. Wonderful! Then I felt a bump, and I saw a green object coming out from under the right front tire. I had run over the tractor’s probably-expensive grill. I was afraid it would go into the blades, so I put the tractor into reverse. And ran over it again

I set the pretzely-looking grill aside and tried to restart the tractor. No joy. I figured there was a safety switch that wouldn’t let me restart it because I had had the blades engaged when I stopped the engine. No, I was mistaken. The tractor’s battery had chosen that exact moment to die on me. Incredible.

Today I put a new battery in, and the tractor ran successfully for an hour with no explosions, fires, engine seizures, reactor core meltdowns, tornadoes, or unexpected teleportations into trans-galactic wormholes.

The web says a new grill runs $750. Cost to produce: probably around $30. I think I’ll see what I can do with the old one. It would literally cost less to have it professionally restored and painted than to get a new one. It amazes me that anyone buys anything made by John Deere.

Luckily, the grill is totally unnecessary. It just makes the mower harder to work on.

If you were to ask me what I did for the last 4 days, I would probably say, “I mowed my yard.” Now that I’ve listed all the things I had to do to get the yard mowed, that answer will make more sense.

I feel like buying some metal and welding something together, for no reason at all. Maybe I’ll weld myself a new John Deere grill.

If only it were that easy.

I should get some metal and see if I can figure out how to stick weld.

Anyway, it would be nice to have a little project that went quickly and didn’t try to suck my soul out of me.

Tractor Pipe Project Nears Completion

I need to go to a car parts store and return a borrowed tool, and it’s raining, so I’m stalling. Yesterday when I picked the tool up, it was raining much harder. I parked 30 feet from the door, and I used a golf umbrella. I still got soaked. I didn’t know it was possible for it to rain that hard, and I’ve been through hurricanes.

I went to a car parts store because I needed a tool to expand an elbow on an exhaust part I bought. I am replacing my John Deere 430’s $256 muffler with some Amazon stuff I cobbled together, and the elbow would not slip onto the tractor’s exhaust pipe. They are both 1.5″ pipe. In order to fit over the exhaust pipe, the elbow has to be expanded. Some online genius suggested using a tailpipe expansion tool.

This tool is made up of a bunch of long steel pieces surrounding a screw. You insert the whole rig into your pipe, and when you turn the screw, the long pieces push outward. I learned something interesting: the Chinese make these from pot metal, not steel. If you buy the Harbor Freight version, you will be lucky if it works even once, because pot metal snaps like graham crackers. You need an American tool, or at least a good Chinese one. Car parts stores will lend tools if you leave a deposit.

The tool did not work for me. It’s supposed to work for pipes as small as 1.5″, but apparently, that number refers to the inner diameter, not the outer diameter. That’s pretty stupid, since pipes are sold by outer diameter. At least mine were! There is no way to get the tool into my Amazon elbow.

I was pretty bummed out when I saw that the tool wouldn’t go in. I would like to visit Tennessee, and I can’t go while my yard is a mess. I guess I could mow the yard with no muffler, but I want to defeat the tractor and make it eat its liver.

People said I should go to a muffler shop, because they expand pipes all the time. I did that. The lady up front said, “of course,” when I asked her about it, but the guy who ran the shop basically said “no” and waited for me to leave. They didn’t have a machine that fit the pipe, and they didn’t know of any shops here that did fabrication. My guess is that he did know, but he was just mad that I came in with a weird job. Or maybe he always looks that unhappy.

You run a muffler shop in a small town for decades, and you don’t know any of the fabrication shops in the area. Yeah. I buy that.

I decided to pray for them when I left, as well as the Haitian lady who was in front of me in line with a bag from a loaf of white bread on her head. Rain, you understand. I could tell right away she was Haitian. A Jamaican would have a nice hat or just let the rain hit her. She wouldn’t put a bread bag on her head.

When I got home, I tried to come up with other answers. I considered heating the pipe and beating it onto a brass bar, but it didn’t sound like it would work.

I needed a short piece of bent pipe made to fit on another 1.5″ pipe, and it had to have an expanded end that would take a clamp. I pondered this as I stood in my shop, near my discarded muffler, which had a short intake pipe that was bent and had an expanded end that would take a clamp.

Eventually, I saw the obvious.

I took one of my 4…or is it 3…angle grinders and cut the intake pipe off John Deere’s $256 can. I ground the burrs off of it. I cleaned it with dishwashing liquid, and then I hit it with my new old buffer, which has an 8″ wire wheel. When I was done, I had what you see in the photo.

Bosch, Bosch, Hercules…I think it’s three.

I made sure I wore a face shield while I used the wire wheel, and after I was done, I realized I had it in the up position, so basically, all it did was mess up my hair. I did squint, however. A popular Youtube tool guy refers to this as “safety squints.”

I combined it with my other parts, and it worked great. Better than the Amazon part would have. Unfortunately, my new Amazon exhaust clamp wouldn’t fit on it.

Here is what the muffler stuff looked like when I tried to put the Amazon pipe on it.

When I first tried to put all this mess together, the clamp seemed way too big. It’s one of those clamps that has a lock nut and a T-bolt. I thought the end of the bolt hung out so far it would make the clamp hard to install, so I cut it off. Now the clamp won’t go around the expanded pipe.

It’s always something.

I felt sort of bad about borrowing the tool from a store where I had no intention of buying anything. I thought their $25 fee was a rental charge, but as I said above, it turned out to be a refundable deposit. Now that I need a clamp, I have a way to reward them. I’ll go in there today and spend, possibly, over three dollars. They will be repaid handsomely for their generosity.

I prayed for the lady at that store, too. I am trying to develop the habit of interceding for random people I meet.

Someone has to do it.

If my new muffler works, I’ll be as happy as a BLM protester watching someone else’s business burn down on Christmas Eve while high on medical marijuana I smoke for stress.

How can it not work? It’s a pipe. It has to be big enough. It’s the same diameter as the 20″ of exhaust pipe that connects to it.

Still can’t believe the price of the new muffler. I can’t believe they still sell it with that design, given that they fall off all the time. It’s like they want to charge me to punish me. I’m trying to think…is there some conceivable incentive to buy anything else, ever, from John Deere? They act like the thought of selling you something is offensive to them. “Okay, we charge four times what the part is worth, plus it will break and knock other parts, also overpriced, off your tractor, so you will have to buy another one later. Cash or credit card?”

If I get a new tractor, ever, I should get a Kubota or an RK tractor. “RK” stands for “Rural King.” They went into the tractor business not long ago, and they undercut everyone else pretty badly. Their tractors are Korean TYM tractors, and they’re no worse than anyone else’s. Supposedly, they lift more than comparably sized tractors from other makers, and that’s a big deal to me, because lifting and moving stuff is a huge part of a tractor’s job. A $20,000 tractor that lifts as much as a $40,000 tractor is a tempting item.

Kubota is about like John Deere, only they can’t charge quite as much for parts. It’s still a cult, but it’s a lesser cult.

I better get on the road. I have to get the tractor running so I can see what will break next.

It’s not Good to be Angry at a Tractor

My John Deere problems continue.

I am trying not to be crabby about the unpleasantness of working on my John Deere 430. When you let yourself get crabby about every problem in life, the net result is that you are crabby a lot. Other than that, the impact is low. It doesn’t make things better in any noticeable way. It just assures that every time something bad happens, you will go into a bad mood.

Bad things are sure to happen, but bad moods are optional to a great extent, so the best thing is to try to opt out. You still have bad experiences, but at least you don’t have the additional burden of intense, prolonged annoyance.

When I was young, it really bothered me when other drivers refused to dim their headlights. They made it hard for me to see the road, and it’s also a little bit painful to be blasted with high beams. One day I realized most of the discomfort of high beams came from the fact that I stared into them. When I learned to look away from them, about 75% of the unpleasantness went away. That meant I, not other drivers, had been causing it. You have to train yourself not to focus on the things that cause you to feel bad.

While trying my best to avoid being crabby, I will tell about my latest John Deere problem.

After I installed the linked belt on my tractor’s alternator and water pump, I had to remove the mower deck. I had dropped a bolt on it. I used a magnetic tool, my hands, and a leaf blower to try to find it, but nothing worked. I didn’t want to remove the deck. I think the manual says it weighs 345 pounds, and while John Deere claims it’s a breeze to remove, the job is very unpleasant because of John Deere’s poor engineering.

I got the deck out, and once it was in full view, I noticed the tractor’s muffler, lying on top of it.

I investigated and learned a few things.

First, the muffler had a hole in it. I thought this was made by a numbskull…I mean a mechanic…who was trying to improve the muffler in some way. I now believe the cheap steel simply tore away from a mount, making a very nice rectangular hole.

Second thing…no clamp. If there ever had been a clamp on the muffler, it was long gone.

Third thing…the muffler had what looked like mounts on the side, and one had snapped off. The steel was very thick, so it had to be low-grade steel in order to do that. Another mount had a little object attached to it. I never figured out what that was, but I think it must be a fragment of a structure the muffler used to be bolted to.

I could not get the muffler back into the space from which it had fallen. Not sure what the problem was, but there was no putting it back.

Eventually, I started the tractor and drove it indoors, and I noticed that it was no louder than it had been when I bought it. I have always worn hearing protection when running the tractor above idle speed. It’s pretty loud. Because the loss of the muffler didn’t lower the noise level, I concluded that the muffler had never been attached. Not since I bought it.

I found out a new John Deere muffler, which is a can with two pipes sticking out of it, costs $256. You can get big mufflers for farm tractors for 50 bucks or less, so I kind of suspect John Deere is gouging just a little.

I also found out that the muffler is a weak point on the 430. They break and fall off a lot. If I blow $256 on a muffler and somehow manage to repair all the damaged bits that it attaches to, it may fall off a month later.

Because I’ve been running the tractor unmuffled for two years, I know I don’t really need a muffler. This engine supposedly doesn’t need back pressure in order to work right. I would like a muffler, however, because a little less noise would be nice, and it just seems less bubba-esque to have a muffler.

I found out it’s hard to come up with a new exhaust solution. No one has found an easy answer. The neatest solution I found was a car resonator. Some guy bought a foot-long resonator and attached it directly to the exhaust manifold on top of his engine. The manifold is on the right, and it points to the left, horizontally, behind the fan. He made a hole in the left side cover of the tractor and ran the resonator through it. He put a shiny tip on the end of the resonator, and it looks great.

The resonator is supported only at the end where it attaches to the manifold, but it’s so light, it isn’t going to snap anything. The guy who did the mod referred to the original muffler as a monstrosity.

I can do what he did, but I would have to cut my tractor’s side cover. I would also have to find or make an exhaust flange for the resonator. Square flanges for 1.5″ OD pipe, with 2″ bolt centers, appear to be nonexistent. I would have to weld the flange to the resonator, and I’m not a great welder. Welding thin metal is especially hard.

I came up with a new idea.

A company named Gibson makes pretty tips that go on the ends of exhaust pipes. They clamp on, so they’re easy to install. My muffler is gone, but I still have a 1.5″-OD pipe beside the engine, pointing straight down. I can put a Gibson tip on it and direct the exhaust out under the tractor. I can get a bent tip to make it go sort of sideways.

My exhaust pipe points down toward some heavy items. The pipe needs to be offset by about an inch. That’s not a problem. I bought a small stainless pipe elbow. I’ll fasten one end to the exhaust pipe and the other will go into the Gibson tip.

What about noise? I don’t care much, because I wear protection, but why not try?

I found baffles that go inside motorcycle exhausts. They’re wide at the ends and skinny in the middle. You push them into pipes skinny end first, and then you use screws to fasten the fat ends to the pipes.

I ordered a short baffle. I can’t fasten it to the end of a bent tip, but I can drop the entire thing into the tip from the tip’s upper end. I don’t have to fasten it to anything because the bend in the tip’s end makes it impossible for the baffle to fall out.

For less than $60, I should have an exhaust which directs gases away from the inside of the tractor and could conceivably make it possible to use the tractor without ear protection.

I just don’t know. Maybe it’s better to spend $256 plus shipping and spend hours fighting with a new muffler, only to have it snap off a month later. I mean, this is a John Deere! Modifying a John Deere with infidel parts is an outrage!

I think it will be fine. In fact, it would be fine if I did nothing at all to it.

The OEM muffler is a spark-arresting design. I had to read up on that. Diesels throw off a certain amount of hot material, and it can cause fires. Hmm…I live in a place where it rains a lot, and I’ve been using my non-spark-arresting tractor for two years without any problems. I think I can forget about sparks. If I sell it to someone who lives in Arizona, I’ll warn him.

They make spark-arresting screens for exhausts. I would have to figure out how to adapt one to my shopmade “muffler.” I’m not doing it today. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

My garden tractor problems have me thinking about a new machine. I can afford it. I know I don’t want John Deere. Other people say they’re hard to work on, and my own experience has been bad, so I am willing to take a chance on something else. Kubota makes garden tractors. They also make subcompact tractors which will mow. My understanding is that the subcompacts are so much better, you should buy one instead of a garden tractor if you can.

I could go for a zero turn (a phrase which makes no sense). They mow better, but having a second tractor is a great thing.

I talked diesel with my buddy Mike today, and he gave me a great idea. If I move to Tennessee, I should sell my Kubota tractor to someone here. I want a bigger tractor, so why pay a lot of money to ship this one and then sell it? I could sell the Kubota and John Deere down here and buy something else up north. Clean start. The Kubota has been fantastic, unlike the John Deere, but there are things you can’t do well with 37 horsepower.

Of course, I could put a finish mower on the Kubota and use it on my lawn. It would be clumsy, though, and I would need to follow up with something smaller.

I’m very happy with my muffler scheme. I don’t like dealing with John Deere at all, and the thought of paying $256 for a can really bothered me, especially when I considered the likelihood that it would fall apart quickly.

I think John Deere is like Snap-On and Mac. You get people addicted to a mythology, and then you can charge them whatever you want. I don’t have to have machines that are all one color in order to feel good about myself. That’s a sign of mental illness, not good judgment.

I’m not the Only One who Deserves a Belt

It seems like every time I try to do a two-hour job on the farm, it turns into a ten-hour job.

This time it was the garden tractor. I wanted to mow the yard. I was putting along on the old John Deere 430 when the temperature light came on. Steam came out of the overflow hose. I stopped and Googled.

I read that you have to clean grass out of the radiator frequently. This was news to me. I cleaned the radiator as well as I could, added coolant, and took off. The tractor heated up again, and the battery light came on.

I started reading about all the things that could be screwed up. The thermostat. The head gasket. The water pump. Thermostats are cheap, but the other items are not, and replacing them would be hard.

My solution was to post questions on forums. I figured other people had run into the same problem. The answers I got were not useful.

Today I took the thermostat out. I assumed that if it had failed in the shut position, it would explain the heat problem. Running the tractor without a thermostat in August in Ocala wouldn’t be a terrible thing, because the tractor was going to warm up no matter what.

God bless the guy who installed the thermostat. Of course, he torqued the bolts down about four times as hard as necessary. Manufacturers and dealers do that a lot. I think the purpose is to destroy fasteners and make products impossible to work on. It forces you to take your machine to a mechanic, and they hope you’ll use a dealership. Of course, dealerships of all types are notoriously overpriced and dishonest.

I had to use a breaker bar to remove the thermostat. A strong impact driver wouldn’t budge it.

I took the mower out again, and it heated up. Frustrating.

Finally, it occurred to me that I needed to make sure I had checked all the belts. Cars (maybe I’m dating myself here) have belts in the front. I didn’t look at the rear of the tractor’s engine. When I checked, sure enough, there was a bare pulley. The belt driving the water pump and alternator had shredded.

Great news, right? I mean, assuming it didn’t shred because the pump or alternator quit turning. You just pop a new belt in there and go.

Guess what a John Deere belt costs. Guess. Here’s a hint. The same belt from Tractor Supply costs 9 bucks.

Wrong. The John Deere version costs $24, and that’s the cheapo Ebay price. Maybe you can get a better price from your local dealer, but I am trying to avoid all contact with mine, for obvious reasons. “You used a ninety-cent Tractor Supply clevis pin on your mower deck? My boy, you’re playing with fire. You need a set of gold-plated John Deere pins, for the low, low price of three hundred dollars!”

I bought two belts in sizes that were likely to fit, and I sat down to work. I got ready to slip the belt in behind the three pulleys on the rear of the engine. Water pump pulley…no problem. Alternator pulley…no problem. Crankshaft pulley…wait…what?

Yes, the pulley went around the crankshaft, and there was no way to install the belt without removing the shaft from the engine. This meant removing the tractor’s entire upper pan, dropping the deck, taking the bolts out of the pulley (surely installed by the same guy who tried to weld the bolts to the water pump housing), and basically killing maybe 8 hours.

A belt, you understand. I have installed belts in 10 minutes.

I should also add that the alternator bolts were just as hard to move as the water pump bolts. You really need 300 foot-pounds of torque to hold a tiny bracket that secures an alternator.

I Googled some more, and I saw that someone out there had used a linked belt. This is a belt made from links that can be added and removed. You can make it as long or as short as you want. One of the big pluses is that if you can’t install a continuous belt because of obstacles, a linked belt can be threaded in without problems.

Guess who had a linked belt on his drill press until about an hour ago?

A long time ago, I put a linked belt on the drill press because the old belt had a flat place in it. It went “whump whump whump” all the time. The linked belt didn’t do that, but it was stiffer and generally not as smooth as a normal belt. I have been planning to take it off for quite a while. Today turned out to be the day.

About half an hour after I sat down to work, I had a running mower. The alternator and water pump turned. I didn’t see any problems. Maybe it’s fixed.

I have the operator and service manuals for the John Deere 430. I should be able to handle anything, right? Well…guess what they say about changing the belt? Here are the instructions: “remove fan/alternator belt.”

I’m not kidding. And here’s the weird part: the fan is on the other end of the motor. The alternator belt isn’t connected to it.

John Deere, like Apple, is a religion. That’s why John Deere is able to charge people so much for parts. Reason doesn’t factor into it. Whenever you use anything not made by John Deere, someone will fuss. I saw some codger on the web warning that using non-John-Deere belts would cause a catastrophe. He didn’t say why, of course, because he had no basis for his warning. It was just doctrine.

People are using linked belts on all sorts of expensive industrial machines all over the world. Maybe they need to switch to John Deere before it’s too late.

Here’s the funny thing: John Deere doesn’t make John Deere stuff. I’m sure they make some of it, but they didn’t make your tractor, unless you bought a huge one. America stopped producing tractors below 100 horsepower decades ago. If you worship at the John Deere altar, you’re really worshiping Yanmar or some other foreign company (which probably doesn’t overcharge for parts).

I hope this belt works out. I see no reason why it shouldn’t, except that it may be a little too fat. The original belt is 1/2″ thick, and I used a 1/2″ linked belt. Maybe I should eventually try a thinner one. We’ll see. I mean, if the pulleys turn, it’s working, right?

What’s the worst-case scenario? Maybe the belt will come off. Oh, boy. Then I’d have to spend half an hour putting a smaller one on. Yeah, that would learn me.

I hate bad engineering. I really hate it. End users are people. It’s not right to put these little time bombs in the products we pay for.

I better try to mow the yard before it gets dark. Here goes nothing.

I haven’t had problems like this with the Kubota. I am going to ask around if John Deere products are generally a pain to work on and buy parts for. I can’t see myself buying another one after this.

High Occupancy even in August

My bed and breakfast continues to attract customers.

This weekend, I played host to friends I got to know at Trinity Church and New Dawn Ministries in Miami. I will call them Fred and Ginger. Fred is half Nicaraguan and half Puerto Rican. I think Ginger is Puerto Rican, but I’m not sure. Their 13-year-old son Rupert came with them.

I have a list of people I pray for. I pray that God will move them out of areas where his people are weak and the spirits against them are strong. I ask him to give them homes in places where his people are strong. I ask him to use those properties for prayer and gatherings. So far, I’m the only one who has received these things. Fred and Ginger are not doing too bad, though. They lived in Little Haiti when I met them, and they had to deal with voodoo parades on their street. Now they have a townhouse in Pompano. A step up from Voodooville, AKA Miami.

Fred and Ginger drove up in June, and we had a long prayer session the day after they got here. We prayed a lot during their visit. Someone I know was baptized with the Holy Spirit, and since then, she has been praying in tongues a great deal, which means her life is going to change tremendously.

Fred got fired from a job he had had for a long time, and he got a similar job which didn’t pay as well. When he came in June, he and Ginger wanted prayer for a new job. Fred was also unhappy because he was mismanaged. He wasn’t trained well, and the company didn’t back up employees. They had very lofty expectations, but they didn’t do the groundwork to support them (much like the churches we attended).

I have been praying for God to rid people I know of things that aren’t pleasing to him, including jobs. This weekend, I realized I might have had a hand in Fred’s firing. I didn’t feel too bad, because he hated the job. He was at peace with what had happened, because the job was so unpleasant.

A week or so before they arrived, I had a dream in which Fred showed up at a table where I was eating. His head was shaved. To me, this always symbolizes a lack of prayer in tongues. I relayed this info to Fred, and as he talked to me, he essentially admitted he hadn’t been praying in tongues enough. That was a relief. If someone comes to me and says he has been praying in tongues for two hours a day and still suffers a lot, I don’t have much to offer him. If he hasn’t been praying, I know what to recommend. You can’t have a really blessed Christian walk without it. You will have problems you should not have.

I don’t know if Fred will jump back into prayer in tongues or not. Sometimes he is slow to take advice.

It was wonderful to have them here. There is nothing like having Spirit-filled Christians to pray with. I have two more coming this weekend.

While they were here, I dreamed about my dad. He generally symbolizes Christian leaders. I dreamed we were walking down a street. He was telling me a story from his days of practicing law. When we got to the end of the street, we came to a wooden dock. I stopped on the dock. My dad walked right off of it and sank to the bottom.

I didn’t jump in. In the dream, he was pretty healthy, and he was capable of swimming. I figured he would pop right up. He didn’t. He was under the water for 5 or 10 long seconds before I saw his head emerge.

I started guiding him toward a ladder about 10 feet away. Two women showed up. One had short hair and extremely large breasts, like soccer balls. She was distressed by my dad’s predicament, and she seemed angry at me. She jumped in the water and pushed him toward the water.

When he reached the ladder and climbed out, it turned out the ladder was nearly on land. He rolled off and onto dry land covered with green grass.

I took the dream to mean that I don’t need to sink to the level of frustrated Christians in order to help them. That would be enabling.

Water represents the water of the world, which is the bad ideas and words of spirits who are against God and of people who don’t know God. When you don’t have authority that comes from time spent with God, you sink below the water and lose. My dad represented anointed Christians who don’t spend enough time with God.

The ladies represented feminine insurgency in the church. Women are not supposed to lead churches, period. Sorry, but that’s how God has set things up. These days, churches are feminized. They don’t talk much about judgment and consequences. They gloss over personal accountability. They teach us we’re supposed to wallow in other people’s problems and coddle them, which is nothing like what Jesus did.

The lady with the big breasts had short hair because she didn’t spend enough time with God. She didn’t hear from him, so she took charge inappropriately instead of submitting and letting me handle things. Abnormally large breasts represent compassion which is out of hand and not balanced by logic.

The ladder represents Jesus. He was Jacob’s ladder (or stairway). The dry ground with grass is where God wants to put us. In Psalm 23, he says he makes us to lie down in green pastures. He doesn’t make us plant green pastures or hoe weeds. We just lie down and eat.

The lady sank into the water with my dad and got herself wet. Her pushing didn’t help my dad at all. He was almost at the ladder when she got full of pride and took over.

I was saved from the striving and fussing. I stood on the dock, dry, and watched a confused person act up and make a fool of herself.

The message is that we don’t have to carry people like babies. We’re supposed to be helpful, but not to the point where other people’s failings eat into our blessings. Example: if your son is a compulsive gambler and tells you someone is going to break his legs for money, you’re not supposed to mortgage your house for him. He needs to repent and go to rehab. It’s not on you if he refuses.

I have a responsibility to warn other people when they’re blowing it, but I don’t have to get involved with their carnal efforts to save themselves. If they’re not doing what God has told us to do, they need to get back to that before bothering me and spreading their problems to me. I am available to pray and guide and so on, but I don’t have to pay off your student loan (although I got roped into doing that for one defeated person).

When people fall off the dock, I’m not supposed to dive in and wrestle them to shore. They’ll just fall off again, unless they change their ways. I’m supposed to stand on the dock or the shore and tell them where the ladder is.

When Peter sank in the Sea of Galilee, Jesus didn’t sink with him. He stood on the water and reached down to him.

I woke up after this dream with a new understanding of favor.

I was my grandfather’s favorite grandchild. My mother was his favorite child. I was my parents’ favorite. I’m the smartest person in the family. Now that my grandparents and parents are gone, God favors me. He doesn’t favor everyone. There are many people he does not favor, and many are Christians. I’m not supposed to feel bad about this. It’s a good thing. It has to be good, because God ordained it. Anyone who demands an explanation needs to demand it from God, not me.

To be favored is to be a favorite. This is what God offers you, if you turn to him. Joseph was a favorite. Jacob and Isaac were favorites. David was a favorite. Daniel was a favorite. It’s okay to be a favorite.

I tend to think of Psalm 91 as a psalm of protection, but it’s more accurate to call it a psalm of favor. It’s about a person who escapes the problems other people have, because he is close to God. Diseases don’t touch him. He is delivered from problems. He watches while thousands of people fall around him. He is set above spirits that reject God. No evil befalls him.

It’s okay. If God makes you one of his 1%, you have nothing to feel guilty about.

If I get to stand on the dock while proud, carnal Christians who don’t pray strive and resent me for refusing to jump into the mosh pit, it’s okay. It’s right.

Remember Mary and Martha? Jesus was at their house with guests, and Martha was working her butt off to serve everyone. Mary sat at Jesus’ feet instead. Martha told Jesus to order her to get up and help her. Not only did Jesus refuse; he told Martha what Mary was doing was better.

It was better–more righteous–for Mary to sit at the feet of Jesus and do nothing than for her to help her sister.

It is believed that John was the only one of the 12 disciples who did not die a violent death. Ancient sources say the emperor Domitian put him in hot oil in a stadium full of people and fried him alive, but he felt no pain and was not injured. His deliverance spurred a lot of conversions. Sure looks like John had favor, and what does the Bible call him? “The disciple whom Jesus loved.”

When Jesus was murdered, he turned his mother over to John, not Peter, to be looked after. That says a lot.

We are not responsible for what happens to other people unless we fail to speak the truth to them. If we warn them, whatever happens later is their fault. Completely. Not one particle of responsibility adheres to us.

If good things happen to people who are close to God, while other people suffer and lack, it’s fine. It’s what’s supposed to happen. The Bible says, “The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.”

People ask why God created the world, knowing spirits and people would end up in hell. The answer is that he’s not responsible for what anyone else does. The fact that he created you doesn’t mean he’s to blame for anything you do.

I’m not responsible for other people’s suffering. I don’t owe anyone a single word of apology or explanation if I do well. It’s unpleasant, to say the least, to watch people fail unnecessarily, but it would be worse, and it would not be God’s will, if I chose to share their misery and abandon his favor.

My beliefs about personal accountability have firmed up a great deal since my dream. When you and I stand before God, he won’t let you tell him what I’ve done wrong, and he won’t let me tell him what you’ve done wrong. We’ll be expected to account for ourselves and no one else. He won’t care if you didn’t get slavery reparations or student loan forgiveness. He’ll want to know why you didn’t spend time with him and give yourself to him.

The entitlement crowd is pathologically deceived. I’m so glad I don’t live near them. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to move back to Miami, or if God sent me to live in Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, St. Louis, San Francisco, or any of the other envy hotspots. Cain murdered Abel because of envy, and his descendants are no better.

I hope I’ll be dead or raptured before the rot gets to the place where I live!

A Gas-Powered Brush Cutter Beats a Herring Every Time

The joy of the Lord is strength. It will help you get up and get things done. I am learning that firsthand.

Every day, I say something along these lines: “In the name of Jesus Christ, who is God, I speak the Lord’s opposition to every created being who is against the Lord, me, or his children on this property and every other property that belongs to me. I speak victory to the Lord, to his children, and to me, and I speak the glory to Jesus Christ. I am a son of God, and this is how things are supposed to work.”

When I do that, I have strength to get up and do things. When I don’t, I may or may not have strength.

Today I tackled some lingering tasks.

The lady who used to live in this house made some unfortunate landscaping choices. She put some sickly hedges beside the house on one side, and some were beside the driveway. They looked awful. They were diseased. They grew too high for the area. I decided they had to go. The lady who came out from the university’s extension office agreed fully.

I started ripping them out with the tractor this week, but I learned that they were not as easy to remove as other hedges I had destroyed. They had stubborn roots, and they liked to slip out of the rope I used to grab them. I found out there is a device called a grubber that grips shrubs securely so a tractor can remove them, but grubbers are made in China, and they tend to break, so I went outside today and used a sharpened hoe. It was not pleasant, but it worked.

I pulled every visible trace of the shrubs, and then I planted two dwarf podocarpus bushes. These bushes look great, and they’re indestructible. They require no fertilization and no pesticides. They won’t grow higher than three feet. I’m starting to think every shrub should be a podocarpus.

I filled the area in with bagged soil, and then I added melaleuca mulch. Hopefully, I’m done with that particular spot. Now I have 15 more feet to do, beside the house. I may buy that grubber after all.

I found a cable while I was digging the shrubs out. I had been afraid of that. Intelligent people bury cables a couple of feet deep, but not everyone is responsible. I found what appeared to be a phone cable about six inches down, right next to a shrub root. I didn’t cut it with the shovel. Not at that point, anyway. I may have cut it elsewhere, because I was using a sawzall on roots. I don’t care. I don’t use the phone cable. If I ever decide I need it (very unlikely), I can run a new one myself and do it right.

Yesterday, I hosed the old shrubs with 2,4 D, which is a weed killer. I figure any bits I leave in the ground will be less of a problem if they’re already dead. If I don’t kill the shrubs before pulling them, I may leave living roots which will try to come back.

Yesterday was weed-and-feed day, which is why I had 2,4 D on hand. I sprayed the whole yard. It does a dandy job of killing things I don’t like. This is an incredibly weedy region, so heavy applications of chemicals are mandatory unless you want to live in what looks like an abandoned lot.

I had a hard time getting my Fimco motorized sprayer to work. It refused to prime itself. I replaced O rings. I replaced hose. Finally, I realized Fimco just makes bad products. The design of the equipment, not the condition, was the issue. It does not seal very well, no matter what you do. I had to open the system up, pour water into the pump, and then turn it on. Now I have a new project. I’m going to add a T to the system with a hose and valve for priming the pump. I’m not going to let bad engineering force me to take the pump apart every time I want to use it.

Today after I fixed the shrubs, I got the pressure washer out and bleached the hidden side of my workshop. I bleached the house and shop a month or two ago, but I didn’t get around to the side of the shop that faces the woods. It was pretty bad. Today I went through more than half a gallon of high-powered pool bleach, and I still need to bleach the shop one more time.

I like using the pressure washer, because I brought it back from the dead. I installed a new hose. I fixed the carb. I put a new muffler cover on it. I have a cover for the cylinder head, and I’m going to replace that. I even have special paint to fix the rusty frame. I found out where to get cheap replacement pumps, so when the original Chinese pump dies, I’ll be able to keep the pressure washer running. The motor is a nice Honda, so I should be able to keep the pressure washer going for a very long time.

Later on, I grabbed my portable pump-up sprayer and wandered through the woods by the house, hosing everything down with glyphosate and Dawn. Grape vines, Virginia creeper, and poison ivy are taking over, and I’m not having it. I must have blasted a third of an acre by hand today. I also got out the gas brush cutter and cut away a lot of the shrubbery by my water pump.

I have complained that every tree here is a trash oak. Today I noticed that the same principle applies to weeds. Every weed is a grape, Virginia creeper, or poison ivy. It’s not completely true, but it’s true enough. When you look out through my woods, you see grape leaves everywhere. The plant life here has almost no variety.

It reminded me of something I already knew: the woods in Florida are not friendly or particularly useful.

In Appalachia, you can walk through the woods without problems. You can sit down. You could take a football and play catch under the trees if you wanted. There’s a lot of room, because weeds don’t take over. There is also a huge variety of plants, and many are useful. Ginseng, blackberries, teaberries, sassafras, various mints, and huckleberries come to mind.

Florida is not like that. It’s grape, grape, grape, Virginia creeper, grape, grape, poison ivy, all day. And the grapes don’t bear fruit. Almost all of the plants are male. When you find grapes on a female vine, they’re about the size of garbanzo beans. Mostly skin and seeds.

So, to recap, the trees are useless and tend to fall on expensive things, and the plants are worthless and annoying.

I think I need to rig up the sprayer and blast the woods with 2,4 D or glyphosate. Hunting season is coming, and I don’t want to be buried in grape leaves while I punish squirrels for existing.

I love it here, but I can see that when I try to make this a substitute for Appalachia, I am jamming a square peg in a round hole. It’s never going to be Tennessee or North Carolina. I can see why so much of the land here was undeveloped until fairly recently. It’s not like settlers could come here, build log cabins and barns from quality wood, make furniture, grow crops, and gather berries and herbs. The land doesn’t have much to offer unless you’re an animal.

This is a neat place to live, in the age of concrete block houses, air conditioning, and grocery stores. Before technology tamed this place, it was not hospitable.

That’s my impression, anyway.

I’m glad I have the Lord’s joy, because I am working a LOT. I have a lot to do. Because so much of the landscaping is screwed up, I’m doing much more than maintenance, which is a big job all by itself. Things should ramp down once I get the shrubs fixed, a couple of trees planted, and some rocks removed.

Unfortunately, I’m doing these things during the summer.

I hope the place looks better, not worse, when I’m done. If I move, I’ll have to sell. I don’t want buyers to show up and grimace at the landscaping.

Buying Tools is Never Wrong

I know the entire world is wondering what happened when my jackhammer arrived.

My back was bugging me last week, which is one reason I bought the jackhammer. It arrived on Friday, and I felt good enough to break it out and use it. I only had time to run it about 45 minutes, but that was long enough to convince me everyone needs a jackhammer.

I guess it sounds stupid to say a person whose back hurts needs to buy a tool that weighs over 40 pounds and has to be held up while it rams a huge piece of steel into hard objects, but you have to consider the alternatives, including doing nothing.

I was trying to get a giant rock out of my yard. I pulled on it with a strap attached to the tractor, and as far as I can tell, I was able to rock it about a quarter of an inch. I bought rock-splitting wedges, and they worked great, but splitting chunks off an oddly shaped rock requires contorting yourself into odd positions while crouching in a hole in the ground, and you will have to do repeated splits. I used my rotary hammer to break up the rock, and it works well, but it’s much slower than a jackhammer, and because it’s only maybe two feet long, a certain amount of contortion is still needed.

The only other choice I had was to do nothing. I could put the dirt back in around the rock and continue trying to remember to drive the lawnmower around it for the remainder of my stay on this property. I wasn’t having that. That rock needs to go, and besides, I like using tools to make problems go away.

I bought a refurbished hammer from CPO Outlets, which is known for selling refurbs. Sometimes their deals aren’t all that great, but they sold me a thousand-dollar hammer for under $600. That was hard to pass up. I’ve bought other refurbs from them, and I think it’s smart business. A refurb, typically, is a tool someone bought and then returned because he didn’t like it. The manufacturers have to look them over and make sure they’re up to new standards. They are basically new tools, but they can’t be sold as new, so you get a break. You are likely to get a full warranty, so it’s hard to see any reason not to go for it.

I could have gotten a Chinese hammer for a lot less, as I have said, but it would have been Chinese, so it might have crapped out quickly, and I doubt I could have gotten it repaired.

Interesting thing: the manual for the hammer I bought bragged that it wouldn’t need to be serviced until I had 300 hours on it. That surprised me. None of my other tools have manuals saying, “Get ready for this tool to die at 300 hours.” Made me wonder if Chinese was the better solution. I don’t know how much money it costs to get a jackhammer serviced, so right now, I can’t judge. For all I know, it just means I have to take out a couple of screws and replace an O-ring.

CPO Outlets enhanced its profit margin by not including a bit for the hammer, but that’s okay, because I didn’t want the bit it would have come with. They come with pointy bits. I wanted one like a big flat-bladed screwdriver. When I checked them out online, I saw startling prices. Like $40 each. Then I noticed a DeWalt for $15. It was exactly what I wanted, and it was from a real company, so I ordered it. It works fine, and I can’t find anything wrong with it. I feel like I scored.

I took the hammer out to the hole, put the bit against the rock in a place where I thought it needed to be hit, and went to town. Right away, I was surprised to see how pleasant jackhammering was. I was nervous when I started. I thought the bit might jump around and put my feet in danger. I thought I might be jarred a lot. I equipped myself with safety glasses, a respirator, and ear plugs because I was concerned about noise and flying quartz chips. In reality, the bit stayed nearly where I put it, I was not jarred at all, nothing the bit broke off flew anywhere near my face, the machine was quiet, and if there was inhalable dust, there was so little I could not see it.

When I think of jackhammers, I think of fat guys on city streets operating huge air-powered hammers that seem to make them bounce around like toys on top of a washer full of towels during a spin cycle. It was not like that at all for me. It was more like having a pleasant belly massage. I guess the four fat springs on the hammer suck up nearly all of the pain.

Hammering made me wonder if I understood how rocks work. I think of rocks as things that exist in two states: shattered and not. I don’t think of them as things that can weaken gradually, like fatigued metal. When I hammered on my hard quartz rock, I found that sometimes the bit would stay in one place a long time, seeming to do nothing, and then the rock would suddenly give way, as though the prolonged hammering had softened it up. That was strange.

I had some problems with the bit getting stuck. Sometimes it will go straight down, making a tight hole, and then when it gets too deep, I’ll have to pull it back out. The hammering action doesn’t work when you’re lifting the hammer, so the machine doesn’t help at all. Also, you’re not supposed to pry with the bit. The hammer isn’t made for that. Which is a shame, because the bit alone probably weighs 8 pounds and could certainly pry as well as a typical pry bar. The hammer and bit, together, are about four feet long, so I would have a lot of leverage if I could pry with them.

It seems like I need to keep the sledge and rotary hammer nearby, in case the jackhammer gets stuck. I can beat the rock with the sledge or chisel the jackhammer it out with the rotary hammer.

I cracked a lot of big chunks off the rock in the short time I spent using the hammer. I can see that one of two things will happen. I may crack enough junk off the rock to make it small enough to tear out with the tractor, or I will simply remove stuff until the remaining rock is so far below grade I won’t mind burying it and moving on with my life.

Was this a stupid buy? I don’t know. I didn’t need to remove the rock at all. I could have painted it day-glo orange and driven around it. The house is 19 years old, and the previous owner never had to remove the rock. On the other hand, the rocks are annoying, and they really should be removed. It would cost me maybe a grand to get them removed with a bulldozer, and it would tear the yard up even worse than I have. After all that, I would not have a neat jackhammer and splitting wedges, or the ability to use them, in my tool arsenal. I would just have a bill and a messed-up yard.

It’s fun tormenting the rocks, and I have amassed a very big rock collection which I could conceivably use for decoration.

In other news, my friends Freddly and Freddelle visited this weekend, along with Freddly’s children Noah and Grace. Noah is my godson, and he is 4. I think. Grace is 10 months old. Freddly’s husband couldn’t make it.

Freddelle is a law student at FSU. I have known her since she was 17. We met at Trinity Church. She found out I was a lawyer and immediately began grilling me for advice. Over the years, I have been able to be somewhat helpful to her. She calls me a mentor. I would say I’m just a guy who gave her advice a few times. She had doubts about even getting into law school, and here she is, coming up on graduation, with one solid job offer already in the bag.

Freddly was an armorbearer at Trinity. The code name she gave herself was “Oreo,” which I found extremely amusing. I was somewhat instrumental in helping her reattach with God after the Wilkerson family and Trinity disillusioned and discouraged her.

When they started talking about visiting, I wasn’t sure what two Haitian girls who were suburban at best would do here, but things worked out very well. We went to a barbecue place and a great Italian restaurant, and on Sunday, we went on a glass-bottomed boat at Silver Springs. Noah was beside himself. You would think he had never seen a fish before.

Noah likes trucks and tractors, so that’s what he gets for holiday presents, and he was well-prepared for my farm. He has a Tonka John Deere, so we got the real John Deere lawn tractor out, and he helped me drive it around the yard.

Noah loves Marvin and Maynard, and I think they enjoyed his company, too.

The ladies and I talked about various Christian topics. They seem much more well-grounded than I had thought. I told them I was thinking of moving to Tennessee, and I mentioned the strange trend of Christians moving to that state. Freddly told me something crazy. She had had a dream in which she visited Tennessee. This was before she knew about my plans, and she has no Tennessee connections. She said she visited to see if it was okay for black people move there.

Something is going on in the supernatural.

My back is at about 95% now. I don’t know what I did to it, but it was not serious. I almost never have back problems, so a week of limited activity was a strange and unwelcome experience. Today I went out and did a few things. A three-trunked oak fell over for no reason at all, so I had to go out in the woods and cut all three trunks to take pressure off the trees it was leaning on. There was poison ivy everywhere. I had to walk like I was in a minefield. Before I started my saws, I hosed the whole area with glyphosate. I may have to go back in there, and obviously, it’s harder to get a rash from dead vines than big juicy leaves with oil all over them.

I noticed something interesting: when you cut a lot of wood and throw sawdust everywhere, it covers up poison ivy and makes an area less dangerous. I don’t think I’m very sensitive to poison ivy, because I have eaten mangoes with sap on them for decades with no problem, and I worked in the poison ivy before I knew what it was without getting rashes, but I don’t want to be exposed any more than I have to. When I came home, I used a brush and dish detergent to scrub the soles of my boots.

Cutting leaning trees is dangerous and difficult, especially when you can’t stand wherever you want. I relied on bore-cutting, which means cutting the middle out of a tree before you sever the remaining strap or straps on the outside. It prevents the tree from splitting, which can throw a trunk in your face. I was not able to get the tree down completely in the time I had, but I severed it from its roots, ensuring that it will dry up and rot faster, and I cut enough off the trunks to give substantial relief to the trees holding the fallen tree up.

I can get more done once the ivy is dead.

I am no arborist, but from watching Youtubes, I can tell I know a few things a lot of the old pros don’t. Some of them don’t know much about bore-cutting, for example. I’m not afraid to cut a leaning tree which is hung on other trees, because with a bore cut and two or three wedges, I can fix it so the tree can’t split in a dangerous way or pinch my saw. I can also fell a leaning tree that isn’t hung, as long as I’m okay with it falling in the direction of the lean. I don’t know enough to log or take down rotten trees that are still vertical, and cutting free leaning trees so they fall away from the lean is too much for me, but I know enough to do what I need to do on this farm.

Cutting leaning trees that are not hung is very dangerous. If you leave the wood in the center of the trunk, the torque from the lean may make the tree split up the middle, and then you get what’s called a barber chair. It’s a heavy trunk supported on a springy bit that has split away, and the trunk may bounce and swing unpredictably. They kill people all the time.

Here’s a video of a tree barber-chairing.

This shows why you should always wear a hard hat when you cut anything taller than you are. You can cut a tree a foot from the ground, but if it barber chairs, the base of the trunk may rise up over your head and then come down on you.

A barber chair ruins a lot of the wood in a tree.

I’ve noticed that some of the techniques loggers use are designed to spare the wood. For example, they often cut almost flush with the ground. My wood is worthless, so I don’t care about any of that. When I look at videos and read about tree felling, I discard the stuff that doesn’t apply to me and could cause problems.

Cutting a tree flush with the ground is hard on your back, and if something goes wrong, it may be hard to straighten up and run. You also end up with a stump you can’t pull out with a chain or rope. I have had to deal with stumps people cut this way (stupidly), and I wouldn’t dream of cutting them like that. The higher you cut a tree, the more leverage you have when you pull the stump with the tractor. I try to cut low enough to be safe and high enough to leave me with something to pull on.

It’s funny, but the oaks here rot like crazy while they’re alive, but once you cut one, the stump lasts forever. It absolutely will not rot. You really have to think about stump removal when you cut an oak here. You can always have a flush-cut stump ground, but it’s expensive, and then you end up with a permanent mass of wood just under the ground, where you had hoped to plant something.

It’s dumb.

I had a maple struck by lightning, and because it was not a dangerous tree, I ended up cutting it about six feet up. After that, I had no problem pulling it out. Took about three minutes. It was nothing like the flush-cut stumps that required hours of digging and hacking.

I guess the world has read enough about my doings for one day.

I’ll try to post some jackhammer photos eventually.

When all Else Fails, Spend More Money

The giant rock in my side yard is proving to be a stubborn and clever foe.

I have lots of rocks on and under my property. The other day I pulled a 6-footer out of the yard with the Kubota. I got cocky and started working on another rock. The more I dug, the more rock I saw. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve stumbled upon one of the longest roots of the country of China.

Last week, I shoveled and lifted quite a bit. I try not to lift anything heavy, but I still managed to strain my back. I felt bad on Saturday, but I prayed and did my thing, and on Monday morning, I felt great. So I went out to do more work, and on Tuesday, I strained my back again.

This time, I decided not to pray alone. I made sure I contacted my friend Amanda. She has been getting a lot of miraculous healings, and she prayed successfully for her son when he cut his toe very badly. It occurred to me that I ought to be contacting her whenever I had a physical problem. I believe in investing in success.

Last night little voices kept trying to tell me I had a serious problem which would not go away, but I got up this morning and felt fine.

When you help other people develop in Christ, they tend to come back and pay you dividends. Preachers don’t talk about that much, because most of them don’t know much. It’s a little bit like raising kids. If you raise successful kids of good character, you’ll have help when you get old. Same principle.

I had pastors who did me some good, and I tried to do good things in their churches, but they couldn’t be blessed. They wrecked whatever I gave them. Many people complain about the way their lives go, and they don’t realize they have turned themselves into people who are only capable of being cursed.

You can’t bless everyone. Curses bounce off God’s children, and blessings bounce off the children of darkness. It’s another example of the symmetry of the supernatural. You could give my sister 10 million dollars tomorrow, and in three years, she’d be broke, and she would also have made a lot of people suffer.

When we involve ourselves too deeply with cursed people who refuse to listen, they become parasites to us. Good things leave us, go to them, putrefy, and are lost. When Satan can’t get a grip on you directly, he may be able to use a cursed person you pity as a handle. This is the essence of enabling.

My back feels good, but I am not interested in a routine of injury and prayer, so I decided to invest in a jackhammer.

So far, I’ve been using a rotary hammer and some splitting wedges. The wedges work very well, but in order to use them, you have to have a rock of a suitable shape, and you have to be able to get at the part you need to split. Also, when you’ve split a rock, you have to be able to get the pieces out of the hole. A jackhammer should allow me to break the rock up into pieces which are light and easy to pick up.

I considered getting a Chinese jackhammer. They’re bargains. You can buy one, including an extended warranty, for less than a third of the price of a name brand. I found a refurbed Bosch for about twice the price of a Chinese model, and I felt like it was a better choice. It’s less likely to break down, and if I decide to sell it, the low up-front price, combined with the Bosch name, should permit me to get out with a very small loss.

I don’t know what I’ll do with a jackhammer once my few troubling rocks are gone. You can use them for other things. You can drive grounding rods with them. I don’t see that happening. You can use them for general destruction of annoying objects.

It will be nice to have. It was nice to have my little-used rotary hammer around when I needed it. I don’t know how easy it will be to use far from the house. My portable generator will power a welder, and it should run a jackhammer, but I can’t say until I’ve seen it.

The big rock moves very slightly when I yank it with the tractor. Maybe if I cut enough off of it, it will come out of its hole before being broken to tiny bits. I hope so.

I’m already using one rock from the job as a landscaping decoration, and I plan to use others. Bonus!

Sometimes I wish I had a skid steer. I suspect a skid steer is a better tool for this farm than a tractor. Skid steers are more powerful. They lift more, too. A skid steer can rip out stumps a tractor can’t even move. I think a skid steer would have enabled me to remove every annoying rock I have in a couple of hours.

If you’re wondering why they’re called “skid steers,” it’s because their wheels don’t have any steering mechanism. They’re always aimed straight ahead. To turn a skid steer, you move one pair of wheels one way while moving the other two the other way (or stopping them completely…I think). The result is that one pair of wheels may skid across the ground while the others turn.

Now you know.

I will post humiliating photos of the defeated rock when I have them.

My Boulders are Calving

Today I had fun with some new tools. My feathers and wedges arrived from Amazon. I bought a set of 10.

A wedge is really basically the same thing as a masonry nail, except it’s bigger. A feather is a tapered piece of metal that flanks the wedge. There is one feather on each side of the wedge, and the wedge slides between them.

You drill a hole in a rock you want to split, and you push your wedge and feathers into it. After drilling several holes in a line and putting wedges into all of them, you bop the wedges with a small sledge. As they tighten up, they force the rock apart. Before you know it, the rock splits. It’s hilarious. It’s not hard at all. A long-handled sledge would be too big for the job. You use a little one, like a blacksmith’s hammer.

I have a lot of rocks in my yard, and I hate them, so I am removing them. The other day I pulled a six-footer out of a hole with the Kubota. I am now working on one which is apparently considerably larger. I haven’t been able to budge it. I put a strap on it and yanked with the tractor. A piece of the rock snapped off, the strap slipped, and the strap came flying at me at considerable speed. The end of it missed my head by less than a yard. I didn’t think I could stretch a strap over three inches in width that much.

People say a flying strap will kill you. I can tell you from watching this one fly by my head that it wouldn’t even have bruised me. Nonetheless, I was not pleased to observe its flight. I was trying to use common sense, and I had read a lot about safety in these situations, but the strap took off anyway.

The rock is oddly shaped. It has big projections on it. My theory is that if I split them off one by one, the rock will eventually give up. Picture a fat guy using his hands to hold onto a doorframe while you try to pull him out of the room. Cut off his hands, and he will come flying out.

The rock has, or had, a big wing pointing north. I put 4 wedges in it and bopped them with the hammer, and a crack opened up, severing the wing. Unfortunately, it was still pinned by the main body of the rock. I moved around 6″ closer to the rock and made another cut. Now I had three rocks. The big rock, the wing I couldn’t move, and a piece between them. Oddly, the middle piece was easy to move, even though it was stuck between two rocks that refused to budge. I picked it up with my hands and threw it out of the hole.

I used my Makita rotary hammer to drill the holes. Everyone should have a rotary hammer. It’s in between hammer drills and demo hammers. My hammer is about 1-1/6 horsepower, and it will do three things: hammer, drill, and hammer-drill.

I needed to make 5/8″ holes for the wedges, and when I got started today, I found out my only 5/8″ carbide bit was for my little hammer drills. My cordless hammer drill is very nice. It will push a 1″ auger through oak as though it were cheese. I tried it on my rock, and after maybe a minute, I was probably only 1.5″ in. I was not having that.

I drove to Ocala, bought a 5/8″ SDS-Plus bit 18″ long, and got out the rotary hammer. I would say it cut roughly twice as fast as the hammer drill. Well worth the drive. I am sorely tempted to get a considerably bigger rotary hammer. Makita makes one that hits with 4 times as much energy as mine. That would be a joy to behold.

It’s really hot and muggy these days, so I can’t work hard for more than maybe 90 minutes. “Won’t” may be more accurate. I made two cuts, and my clothes were already heavy with sweat, so I called it a day.

The rock is defeated. I don’t know if I’ll continue until the whole thing comes out, but I can definitely knock the top off, and if I do that, I can bury it again, and it will be well below lawnmower range. The challenge of removing the entire thing is tempting. I don’t think I’ll be able to resist. I enjoy mocking the rock too much.

Once I get the rock removed or beheaded, I’ll be able to clean the area up, add soil and mulch, and plant my blackberry plants. Then I can move on to shrubs that need to be murdered and replaced.

It’s surprising to me to see such hard rock in Florida, which I think of as a giant sandbar. Parts of the rock are hard and glassy like flint, and other parts are basically sandstone. They’re mixed together, along with empty voids. I wouldn’t have expected to be able to drill it so easily, but it shatters readily, so the drill goes right in.

After this, I have one more rock to go. There are others, but they’re in areas where they don’t cause problems. I have a big ridge of very large boulders on the west side of the property. Some are as big as several couches. They’re fine. They look good, and they’re not in the way of my lawnmower.

Don’t let rocks push you around. If they try to intimidate you, show them your drill and wedges. You don’t need expensive equipment to turn them into pebbles.