Where has 2 weeks gone?

    I was relaxing yesterday and thought, hell I haven't done a blog post in almost two weeks. Well, where should I start, most of you know I was in SC with the my better half, JUGM, and of course the boys were with us as well. We tried to make it a spring break trip as the kids were out of school but her dad was in the hospital and we got a 2 day late start. Once there, didn't do a whole lot, just some chores and maintenance around the place and plowed up the garden and threw some rows for JUGM to plant some stuff. Me, I want a full garden but she only wants to put low maintenance items in the ground, so we compromised a bit, only put rows in half the garden. Hey, not bad for my first time on a 1948 Farmall Cub.....

  There are a few rows of sunflowers and a few rows of yellow onions.

   Saturday rolls around, and we have had rain since Friday afternoon and as the rain clears out, we take a trip to Harbor Freight. If you have been in one of these stores, yes it is full of Chinese junk, but how many times do you use a torque wrench? Would you want to pay $21.00 for one there, or spend up to or over $100 at Sears? I'm not a full-time mechanic, so figure which one I went with. Also, you can find items that will help you out in a survival situation in there, yes the quality is not top of the line, but budget minded preppers can start here. On the way home, we stopped by our local Gander Mountain and yes, we gandered through the store and left. Prices are just too damn high!

   Today was an easy day, went to china-mart to get a few things for dinner, on the request of the kids and NW and I stroll to the sporting goods section and buy a few boxes of TUL Ammo in 7.62x39mm. At $5.47 a box, can get it cheaper from online retailers when you add shipping in. With all that is going on in the Ukraine, bet 7.62x39mm may increase in price or be part of a trade sanction.

    Once home I think, what would be more relaxing than doing some reloading. Well I had some 300 Blackout primed up so I hit the single stage and got to work. Here are two of the components. Federal small rifle primers were the other, besides the brass.

    My load call for 16.5 to 17.7 of IMR 4227, my target load was 17.1. As you see I am off by a bit but no worries.

     The final mess of Blackout rounds. it was a nice day, notice me wearing my Crocks and shorts?

 

 

     This week will be a busy week, have some work to catch up on from the spring break trip and have to get things prepped before the spring heat arrives. Also, I will be heading north for an interview with one of the top two logistic companies in the world with a chance to be placed in their management development program. Wish me luck. Have a great week everyone.

 

Senior

Working Weekend

    This past weekend was supposed to be a group working weekend; however, Wednesday I received a call from my close family friend that a branch fell on one of my dad's storage buildings and punctured a hole in the roof. He routinely goes up and checks on the place for me. Hell, he helped with welding the chain, and installing the gate to the property the day before dad's funeral. Since Duke was out of town and I needed to go take care of this, Stephen thought it was best to cancel the group workday. We arrive late Friday night after picking the kids up from school and as it was dark, I waited until the next morning to investigate.

    Once I wake up and have my coffee, I proceed to investigate what had happened. The property has numerous large, and I mean large oak trees with an abundance of acorns too. I discovered there is one branch on the oak tree adjacent to the oldest storage building had one limb that was in bad shape. I suppose one of the storms that passed through from the last time I was up there had snapped this bad limb in half and the other half came down and punctured the roof. It's a dead limb, but it sure as hell is not rotten.

    I grab dad's keys and open the door and the limb happened to puncture the roof just aft of the soffit, and when it fell through must have hit the top sill plate and bounced out and off the roof.

    The repair consisted of pushing the still attached plywood back into place, with it being slightly wet from rain was easy to push back into place. I cut a 2x4  and used it as a brace under it with two nails through the rafter, and two nails toe nailed into the face of the other rafter. In past experiences with nailing through 40 + year old wood, it was quite difficult to do in a small space without bending the nail. I finally resorted to toe nailing it into both through the brace.

Once done, I climbed up on the roof and used some metal flashing to replace the shingle that was missing.

   Once in place, using some roofing nails to secure the metal and remaining tabs of the nearby shingles, I commenced to using a whole tube of wet/dry roofing caulk to cover the nails and the metal flashing in a nice layer of gooey tar.

 

 

   Once finished there were a few other things to do. My dad always worried about his fireplace, specifically the stove pipe. He told me for years that it needed to be replaced. I decided to take a gander up to the roof, visually inspect the stove pipe from the top down. I was really surprised at the condition it was in, it had some slight build up but not enough to sweep it. I pull the roof cap off and inspected the galvanized piping he had the stove pipe in and it still looked brand new. Well next test was to light a small fire, get it going good, then cut off most of the air to it and generate a lot of smoke. Once done, back on the roof, with the use of my 400 lumen flashlight, eyes, and nose, I observed no smoke, only from the end of the stove pipe. Only thing between the other two galvanized pipes was a bit of heat coming out from the stove pipe itself. Well seems to me that everything is ok.

 

   With more time on my hands, his 1948 Farmall Cub tractor needed the fuel bowl gasket replaced. I make a quick call and find that my family friend had some, so I run over for a few minutes. Once back, took about 20 minutes to change it out, put some fresh gas in it and cranked it up. Ran like a champ. The next 2 hours were spent plowing the garden area up. My dad stopped having a garden about 4 years ago, he just couldn't manage it like he did in his older age. I have been down there before messing around but this time I went all out. I know it is not the prettiest tractor out there, but it has been mechanically sound and well taken care of.

 



 

 

 

    Once done this is the view of the garden, the back right corner will be where I plan on putting a burm for a firing  range. I got the word out that I will take any fill dirt locals are wanting to get rid of and our friend has two front loaders with backhoe's attached, shouldn't take to long to construct. Hey, when you have a 186 acre cattle farm, you can write a lot of equipment off.

 

 

 

 

Have a great week.

 

Senior