What did you do today?

[lynnmor 7,546]

19 minutes ago, Ed Kennell said:

I much prefer to plow, it's quicker, quieter, and more fun.   But at 14 degrees and some wind today, I hid in the warm cab.   Might have to look for a cab for the plow tractor.

I like plowing as well but if there is much snow I don't want the piles accumulating.  So I blow off the majority and do some touchup work with a plow.  This time a sheet of frozen slush formed first I had to do a complete plowing after a complete snowblowing. 

[MainelyWheelhorse 954]

Today, I visited with family. Plowed with the old 308. Then, shoveled the front steps, oil fill, and in front of two garages for a family friend with mobility issues. 

[8ntruck 7,336]

Lots of no school days lately.  This means I've been spending about 8 hours a day mentoring the local robotics team.  Last week, the team decided to set back and look at an alternate design for the robot, so they spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday adding away at the new idea.  I was guiding the students I work with to prototype the new ideas - the most critical being the climbing mechanism.  Turns out that the new ideas did not work as well as they thought they would.  My group's prototyping had a large part in showing how things would really work.

 

Sunday's session started off with a design review that resulted in pulling the original design off of the shelf and continuing it's development.  

 

Tonight, my group finished up climber mark 3.3 with a successful test climb.

 

As a side note, we had posted climber mark 1 pictures out on the internet a week otr 10 days ago.   With our team being a 2024 world champion, it seems that other teams are paying a bit more attention to what we are doing.  Today, a short video showed up of another team's climber prototype inspired by our mark 1 climber.  Somewhat of a new experience for us.  We will probably have more pit visitors at the competitions that we will be attending this year as well.

Edited January 21 by 8ntruck

[adsm08 2,571]

20 hours ago, 8ntruck said:

Lots of no school days lately.  This means I've been spending about 8 hours a day mentoring the local robotics team.  Last week, the team decided to set back and look at an alternate design for the robot, so they spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday adding away at the new idea.  I was guiding the students I work with to prototype the new ideas - the most critical being the climbing mechanism.  Turns out that the new ideas did not work as well as they thought they would.  My group's prototyping had a large part in showing how things would really work.

 

Sunday's session started off with a design review that resulted in pulling the original design off of the shelf and continuing it's development.  

 

Tonight, my group finished up climber mark 3.3 with a successful test climb.

 

As a side note, we had posted climber mark 1 pictures out on the internet a week otr 10 days ago.   With our team being a 2024 world champion, it seems that other teams are paying a bit more attention to what we are doing.  Today, a short video showed up of another team's climber prototype inspired by our mark 1 climber.  Somewhat of a new experience for us.  We will probably have more pit visitors at the competitions that we will be attending this year as well.

 

 

Think you could swing into Detroit and Dearborn and teach the dingbats in Ford's design division how to test stuff before OKing it for production? Those dopes clearly don't know that "looks good on paper" does not always translate into "works in the real world" and it seems to me that is the lesson you are really teaching those kids.

 

[8ntruck 7,336]

  One of my goals is to teach the whole design process.  Start by defining what is needed, brainstorming on ways to do what is needed, sketch, do some reality checks (thumbnail calculations, rough geometry investigations, etc.), start more detailed designs, reality checks again with prototypes, and the importance of all the sub groups getting together to check the master assembly.

 

I also tell the students to expect big design changes and not to take them personally if the part they put lots of work into don't get used.  When developing a machine that has several complex systems, changes will happen - it is just part of the process.  More is learned from an idea that does not work out, than an idea that works right out of the box.

 

Oh, early in my career, I made many trips to Ford Engineering in Dearborne.  Being a young, non Ford engineer, I guess I didn't  have much influence.

Edited January 22 by 8ntruck

[Ed Kennell 40,305]

11 hours ago, 8ntruck said:

 

I also tell the students to expect big design changes and not to take them personally if the part they put lots of work into don't get used.

 

Working in a hydro research lab for 47 years. 

 

My favorite quote,    "Failure is a success if we learn from it"

[Handy Don 13,265]

35 minutes ago, Ed Kennell said:

My favorite quote,    "Failure is a success if we learn from it"

Mine (and there is a lot behind it): “Make a new mistake every day"

[ebinmaine 70,389]

Wouldn't it be nice if Society as a whole could move past the mental deficiency that failing is a mental deficiency.....

[Handy Don 13,265]

13 hours ago, 8ntruck said:

and not to take them personally if the part they put lots of work into don't get used. 

These students are extremely fortunate to have you as a mentor! Well done.

This is an extremely hard lesson to learn. It finally hit home for me when a competent and patient QA lead (one of the best hires I ever made!) asked me “What’s more important here--that it works the way you think it should or the way that works best?” She also taught me that a QA team that crows about “faults found” is hurting the project, not helping. It was also the first time in my career where I’d built a team that was really humming and had my boss tell me “Go find a new job--I need only a solid caretaker to keep this team running and you are not that."

Edited January 22 by Handy Don

[ebinmaine 70,389]

We've been working on organizing and moving things from the basement to the new workshop and barn for quite a while.

At the bottom of our stairs was an open concept with no doors.

Just a few days ago everything to the right side of the red line in the picture below was open space.

 

 

Trina has been working on getting that closed in some.

These doors were given to us by one of her friends. The same people that we built the tractor for, in fact.

They were in the house when they bought it a couple years ago. Smelled kind of nasty and they were old and stained. Trina cleaned them up by hand and also using the power washer. Then painted them from dark to light.

She started by hanging just one door and then seeing how it would look from there.

No measuring.

Doesn't use a level...

😬

 

And yet they come out looking great just like always.

 

 

 

This will give her mom a little bit of privacy down there and also keep some of the heat from going up the stairs. Being open bifold doors we may put a solid item stapled to the back side.

[MainelyWheelhorse 954]

I’m working on this today. I got a rebuild kit from Amazon for the carburetor and a gasket kit for the engine. I did luck out because it’s the same engine as my 312. In the paperwork for that, it had a maintenance and overall settings guide for the M8-16 which had the base Main, Idle and Idle Fuel needle settings for this carb.

 

 
 

 

[ebinmaine 70,389]

3 minutes ago, MainelyWheelhorse said:

carburetor

 

Remember to carefully check the LOWER throttle shaft bore along with the obvious upper one. 

[MainelyWheelhorse 954]

@ebinmaine it doesn’t seem super varnished/gummed up, I may just clean it off well put the gaskets that disintegrated when I took it off in it and run it. We’ll see though.

[ebinmaine 70,389]

4 minutes ago, MainelyWheelhorse said:

@ebinmaine it doesn’t seem super varnished/gummed up, I may just clean it off well put the gaskets that disintegrated when I took it off in it and run it. We’ll see though.

 

 

 

Watch this video. 

 

 

 

IF the bores are OK.. the rest is usually just cleaning. 

 

 

 

[MainelyWheelhorse 954]

@ebinmaineThe top looks to be about a 16th of the one in the video on the top. Unless you are looking right at it closely it doesn’t register. the bottom bore doesn’t move.

[ebinmaine 70,389]

48 minutes ago, MainelyWheelhorse said:

@ebinmaineThe top looks to be about a 16th of the one in the video on the top. Unless you are looking right at it closely it doesn’t register. the bottom bore doesn’t move.

 

 

Excellent.  You should be good with just a cleaning.  

 

 

 

[ebinmaine 70,389]

We are having more land cleaned up around the outside of the garden. 
They're clearing out stumps and brush and burying all that while flattening out the land.
One of the main focuses will be to give us a flat trail for getting the tractors down into the forest.

We were going to do that by putting up a couple of bridges, but I think it'll be easier if this guy makes a nice level area with a runoff stream first. Save us an incredible amount of work.

 

Before. A couple evenings ago. 

 

 

 

In process. 

 

 

 

 

[Beap52 1,139]

We are involved in a similar project as Eric.  Our family farm in north Missouri hasn't been maintained very well since dad died 27 years ago.  Each year the man who plants the crops moves further and further away from the fence rows, ditches and water ways.  Last year the electric cooperative paid for an easement for new 161KV power line.  We are using the money to improve the farm.  Below  you'll see an example of what is being restored.  There are places where the first row of beans or corn are 36 feet away from the fence.  Not cheap but I'm hoping we regain at least 5 acres of farmable land. 

 

The work being done involves  a bull dozer, a track hoe and a couple of skit steers, one of them having a contraption that grinds smaller trees. Fascinating to watch.

 

[ebinmaine 70,389]

Here the excavator is placing a big flat boulder that Trina wanted setting in a low spot. 

 

 

 

 

 

Right side drainage ditch. 

 

 

He'll be back Monday. To the right of the red line is done. To the left he'll continue the same process.  

 

 

 

 

[ebinmaine 70,389]

On 1/13/2025 at 5:45 PM, Ed Kennell said:

Warm 40F temps forecast today, so I shut down the wood burner last night and cleaned the stove pipe today.   She has been burning 24/7 for several weeks.

This is what came out of the 8" pipe. Nothing in the masonry  chimney.      Keep em clean.

  

 

Here's the flue temp indicator we use. One on each stove. 

 

This one's reading low because we just fired it up. 

 

Normally we keep it on the low side of the yellow range.  

 

[Handy Don 13,265]

41 minutes ago, ebinmaine said:

Normally we keep it on the low side of the yellow range.  

I've measured the temps using a contactless (IR) meter along the entire four foot length of the single wall chimney pipe on our stove. 

Once it is at full operating temperature, i.e. the flue gas probe sensor shows ~900º right at the collar, the pipe exterior will range from ~500 at the stove collar to only ~250 as it gets to the thimble where the insulated chimney begins. Heat transfers off that pipe very quickly, cooling the gas inside along the way, possibly to condensing levels.

[EB-80/8inPA 1,784]

Replaced the hearing element in the dryer.  Of course, I had the dang thing almost back together before I noticed those two extra screws!  I oftentimes have to take things apart two or three times due to those part hiding gremlins that follow me around.  It’s all their fault!

[ebinmaine 70,389]

Here's a video showing what's to be done Monday by the excavator. 

 

 

 

[Beap52 1,139]

5 hours ago, EB-80/8inPA said:

Replaced the hearing element in the dryer.  Of course, I had the dang thing almost back together before I noticed those two extra screws!  I oftentimes have to take things apart two or three times due to those part hiding gremlins that follow me around.  It’s all their fault!

"before I noticed those two extra screws!"   That's how I acquired most of the spare bins of screws in my shop! 

[adsm08 2,571]

Today we sold the wife's old car, took the kids out to breakfast, then spent a few hours checking out the Harrisburg Auto Show.

 

Saw lots of interesting stuff there, including a '47 Rolls and a '27 Bentley.