Projects

[jamiebk]

Hope you got a good sturdy one this time!
http://www.veedersmailbox.com/home.html
They have a picture of this one being run over by a bulldozer...Imagine the surprise to the local kid with a baseball bat.

[Shapley]

Heh. I need one of those. I just bought one off the shelf, since I needed to replace it quickly. I work at a steel fabrication facility, and I thought about having them make me one, but it needed to meet postal regulations. I'm sure I can get those online, so I may still have it done.

This one went about ten years without being vandalized, so I'm sweating it too much.

And I promise not to make any reference to the fact that it didn't get vandalized until we had a Democrat in the White House.... err, sorry, I guess I just did....

[jamiebk]

And I promise not to make any reference to the fact that it didn't get vandalized until we had a Democrat in the White House.... err, sorry, I guess I just did....

I would have thought it to be more the other way around...

[piqaboo]

I pulled iceplant for 30 min.
Before that, I pulled nettles and tall grass for 30 min, so we could get down to the iceplant.
Hmmmmmm... didnt I make this same post about 11 months ago?

Started the vegetable gardening. The carrots are sprouted. We put in seeds for tomatoes, okra, sweet peppers, beans, peas and lettuce. I bought 6 tomatoes in 4" pots, various types. Now to dig in the compost, get back to the dump for more, buy trellis stuff, buy and bury chicken wire etc.
March is looking busy.

[Shapley]

The wife would like a garden. I don't know why, they always fall into disuse as soon as they become too leafy to see if snakes are hiding in them. I've considered building the raised-box style using landscape timbers, less bending over, and it gives the snakes a higher target than the ankles. It also keeps the grass clippings somewhat at bay, reducing the amount of weeding necessary (or so I'm told). I'm still not sold on the idea.

[dai bread]

Raised gardens are very good when your back starts to give out. So are long-handled weeding forks (as distinct from the big cultivating forks about the size of a spade). The gardens need to be quite narrow, otherwise you've just raised your ground level and still have to stoop.

[Schmeelkie]

I pulled iceplant for 30 min.
Before that, I pulled nettles and tall grass for 30 min, so we could get down to the iceplant.
Hmmmmmm... didnt I make this same post about 11 months ago?

Started the vegetable gardening. The carrots are sprouted. We put in seeds for tomatoes, okra, sweet peppers, beans, peas and lettuce. I bought 6 tomatoes in 4" pots, various types. Now to dig in the compost, get back to the dump for more, buy trellis stuff, buy and bury chicken wire etc.
March is looking busy.

We're still getting snow and are just happy the crocus are coming up. If I get around to uploading photos soon, I'll post one of the crocus in the snow on the first day of spring! We don't plant anything around here until May! Just hoping I actually get some daffodils to bloom this year. Think they don't get quite enough sun - the front of the house faces east, and once the leaves start coming in on our huge (~50 yr old) maple, the garden areas only get an hour or so of direct sun.

One of our local columnists calls late-Feb to late-March the 'ugly' season around here. Snow's mostly melted (or there are ugly dirty piles still around), but everything's brown, lawns look awful and you discover all kinds of junk that was hidden by snow for months (between Jan and Feb, we had about 40 days of constant snow cover). I found a newspaper we thought wasn't delivered a month ago - looks like it was blown off our front step behind the bushes, then got buried. Also discovered that a plow missed the side of the road one time and we've got a big gouge in the lawn by the street. One more thing to take care of before putting the house on the market.

[barfle]

I had three trees cut down on Thursday. Two of them were dead, one of them had so many surface roots you couldn't walk near it.

I had the arborists cut the trunks and branches to fireplace length and leave them near the stumps, which will be ground on their schedule. I moved all the pieces into one pile and started chopping firewood. The living tree's trunk was about two feet in diameter, and a 16" long chunk of that wood is HEAVY. And I have no idea how I'm going to split them. Fortunately, the trunk split into branches about five feet up, so I only have three of those monster slabs. The fireplace will be roaring next winter.

And my arms are really sore today. Quite a workout.

[analog]

no idea how I'm going to split them.

Hope they're not elm !!!!

do you have a splitting maul? looks like a cross between sledgehammer and axe.

I burned a lot of walnut this winter. Seems blasphemous, but neighbor took out three .

[barfle]

No, they're not elms. The dead ones were oaks (which are weeds around here, not the precious icons they are in southern California) and the live one was a maple.

I'm using my axe for the time being. I have a splitting wedge, but I can see the need for "stronger stuff."

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

I looked on Amazon, and there are a whole bunch of hydraulic log splitters. I'm thinking power would be the way to go. Might the local rent-a-machine place have them?

[Shapley]

The power log splitters are nice, but you still have to pick the logs up and put them on the splitter. At least that is so for the ones I've seen. We've even built a couple of them here in the shop, although my only involvement with them was to order a few parts and design the attachment for the cylinder to the splitter.

They're generally fairly simple - two steel channels with a hydraulic cylinder mounted in the recessess between the channels. A wedge slides between the channels, moved by the cylinder. The log rests on the channels, and stops are placed at one end to hold the log while it is split. We actually used a double-faced wedge on the units we built so that the logs could be split on the outstroke, and the instroke of the cylinder. They are usually mounted on wheels with a hitch for towing.

We used to have people around that had them, and they would hire themselves out splitting wood. Years ago, some of the local farm hands produced a little winter income doing that when there was no farm work to be had. I assume they still do that, but I don't have contact with them through my current job.

Right after you cut a live tree, it is still full of water. Let it lay for a couple of weeks, and it'll dry out, making it a lot lighter. My son and I tugged at a tree that fell during the ice storm, and eventually gave it up as a bad job. I decided to wait for the ground to dry thoroughly, so I could hook it to my truck to haul out. After a couple of weeks, however, I gave it a pull and noticed that I could move it. I managed to drag it by myself a couple hundred feet to the burn pile, whereas my son and I couldn't move it a foot two weeks earlier. It's amazing how much a little water weighs.

[analog]

oak is the firewood of choice in these parts.
Coming from Florida where you seldom even see oak lumber is seems strange to burn it. But it's sure plentiful here, our local lumberyard sells clear oak cheaper than pine ! I just bought a 1X14 X10ft and am still awed by $3 a foot for it. Probably Shap is used to that.

I keep a maul handy and when get a load of wood split a few pieces every day, it's part of my cardiac exercise routine. About four swings and i'm puffing good, eight is enough for one day.

Elm is extremely tough to split, that's why i asked.

a.

[Shapley]

I don't do enough wood work, or rather wood butchering, to know prices well. I do know that when oak was in real high demand, back in the '80s, the price was through the roof. In the '90s, it began to fall. For a while, it was cheaper than pine and poplar here, particularly if you weren't too selective about the quality.

Back when I worked at Hammond Organ Company, poplar was the cheap wood, and we used it wherever the wood was hidden. Oak and Pecan were the popular finish woods, although we used White Ash for Pecan in solids (easier to work, less waste). 'Spackle' was added to the finish to simulate the Pecan finish.

We've got a nice Beech tree down, thanks to the recent ice storm. It was cut up to clear the road, but is still laying in big logs by the road (very big logs, as the tree was about 3' diameter, and was cut up into the largest pieces we could roll off the road. It's good firewood, but there's such an abudance of firewood available now, that it'll probably be burned where it lays. Someone's romance was memorialized in the bark many years ago. That, I suppose, will be lost in the flames.

V/R
Shapley

[Schmeelkie]

My folks just had a pine taken down - Dad estimates it was about 60 yrs old. This was the last pine in the front yard - lost one many years ago to a blizzard - it was close to the road, but luckily fell right across our yard - from one side to the other - just touching the driveway. Still have a line of pines officially on neighbor's property between the two houses. I remember my brother's windows in his upstairs bedroom getting hit by branches on windy days. These trees are probably all about the same age - put in when they built the houses. They reach at least 4 times as high as the houses. Can't imagine anyone trying to take them down!

Don't know if they saved any of the wood - my aunt and uncle have a fireplace and brother has a wood-burning stove... Seem to remember pine isn't great for burning, though.

We've got a pine in the back that may or may not be dying...tree guy says it may be too soggy back there. When we moved in we found 2 small, likely pine, stumps in the back - may have bit it the same way. Our back yard is soggy from when the snow melts (anytime in March) until late May depending on the rain...it's been pretty dry here for a few weeks and it's still majorly soggy back there.

[BigJon@Work]

Back when I worked at Hammond Organ Company, poplar was the cheap wood, and we used it wherever the wood was hidden.

Sheesh, you missed the obvious pun:

poplar was the popular wood

[barfle]

I looked on Amazon, and there are a whole bunch of hydraulic log splitters. I'm thinking power would be the way to go. Might the local rent-a-machine place have them?

Indeed, power will be the way to go once I exhaust the ability of the tools I already own. And when the need arises, I'll go shopping. No idea what I'll get, but rental would be the smart way. I just can't see spending an amount with a comma in it for something I'll use for two weeks.

[jamiebk]

Barfle...I recommend renting a hydraulic log splitter...I have used one many, many times for splitting heavy oak logs for firewood. The wood comes from my friend's ranch. Any way you cut it (sorry for the pun) it's hard work, but the log splitter makes fast work of it. BTW, you should look for one that pivots the cutter to a vertical axis. This way you avoid having to hoist the full rounds (logs) up onto the cutter. You simply roll them over to the splitter...place them on end and crunch-o...you have split wood to burn. http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=p ... lpage=none

You are correct that these run $1,000 and up. I would look for one that has at least 20 tons of power...more is better. And some have faster acting hydraulic action than others, though I could not tell you which ones. Good luck!

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

...at least 20 tons of power...more is better....

Now you're channeling Tim Allen. I recognize the philosophy <insert man noises>

[jamiebk]

...at least 20 tons of power...more is better....

Now you're channeling Tim Allen. I recognize the philosophy <insert man noises>

You should see what my microwave oven can do!