Wind Powered Wedging

I get to cut down some interesting trees in my line of work. This ash tree was three stems grown together with included bark, and one of the stems had been broken off in a storm. When faced with a tree like this you can either handle each stem separately, or tie them together and drop them as one. The latter method is quicker and easier if you are able to do it, and in this case I was able to wrap the stems with a couple of chains and binders.

Note the sawdust flying away in the wind. This tree was weighted heavily against the direction it needed to fall, so after setting up the hinge I cut out half of the back, pounded in a wedge, and cut out the other half of the back. Before I could pick up my hammer I saw that the tree was lifting off of the wedge with every wind gust, so all I had to do was push the wedge in, wait for the next gust, and push in a bit more. Easiest wedging ever. The hardest part of this job was removing the chains after the tree was on the ground; that required quite a bit of sawing and disassembly work of the tree.

Traces

This old farm house is just about melted into the landscape, and I spent a few minutes looking at it the other day and tried to reconstruct a bit of the history. The trees that have taken over the yard look to be about forty years old, so the home was probably abandoned in the 1960's. One of the cisterns is on the left side of the photo, and the pipe sticking up tells me that the family had running water in the house.

Most of these old home sites have flowers, and to me, that means that the farmer had a wife. The house had a floor in the loft, and if there were kids, their bedrooms were probably up there.

This part of the country was electrified around 1950, and there is a base for an electric meter visible on the corner of the house. The old cream separator tub tells us the family had a cow. There is no way of knowing if the family bought a new-fangled electric separator or if they continued to use the old hand-cranked one. I couldn't see any sign of the remains of the barn, maybe it burned long ago. Nature is doing a pretty good job of reclaiming this spot.

Sighting In A Scoped Rifle...

Courtesy of RugerFirearms. Good advice for the uninitiated, and a good review for old hands.

Colorful Easter

I hope that all of our blog visitors had a great Easter weekend. Our weather was perfect, and we spent lots of time outdoors enjoying a lovely spring day. The flowers are off to a great start this year. This one is a baby iris.

Daffodils, of course.

The hickory buds are popping.

Peach Blossoms.

Not My Victrola

From Pax41 on YouTube.

Weekend's Over!

Back To The Old Grind!

Mr. Completely's March Contest Scores Are Posted!

Mr. Completely has the scores processed for the Seein' Stars contest, and you can look at them HERE. Mr. C had 41 entries, which is a new record. Be sure to enter the April contest, hosted by the Conservative UAW Guy.

Mr. Completely's April e-Postal Contest; Hosted by...

The Conservative UAW Guy. Click the link to read the rules and download the target. This will be a fun contest, and you will need to know your limitations in order to come up with the right tactics to maximize your score. Be sure to include family or friends in a range trip and introduce more people to online shooting contests.

Weekend Steam: 1904, 16 HP Advance Engine

The nearest engine in this lineup is a 16 horsepower Advance engine that I saw auctioned near the little town of Wayland, Iowa, nearly 40 years ago. The Advance and a straight flue, overmounted Avery were both listed in the estate sale for a Mr. Swartzendruber, and my dad and I went hoping we might pick up a steam engine cheap.

Both engines needed extensive restoration work, and the Advance had a bad crown sheet. We learned a little about steam enthusiasts that day. Both engines started at Dad's upper bidding limit, and they went up fast. Wayne Kennedy bought the Advance, and has been showing it at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa ever since.

The Avery ended up in Illinois, and Wayne still keeps track of it and its current owners. That is Wayne in the straw hat. He is an accomplished machinist, and a real steam expert. He is one of the instructors every spring at the Old Threshers' Steam Traction School.

I have always liked the art work in the Advance trademark. Mr. Swartzendruber had a neat setup for making sorghum molasses at his farm. Instead of the traditional wood fired evaporating pan he had a pan with a layer of pipes in the bottom that were fed steam from one of his engines. He also used a steamer to power the sorghum press. I am sure others have made similar evaporating pans, but that was the only steam heated one that I have seen.

Fairbanks 208

Pumping units are all over the Southern Illinois oilfield, so this is a common sight for me. Much of the country does not have oil wells putting away, so I thought it would be good to share one with the True Blue vistiors. That is a Fairbanks-Morse 208 engine, and it burns gas from the well head. These engines have a closed crankcase, with a splash oil system, and Timken roller bearings instead of the plain babbit bearings you see at antique engine shows. The radiator on top of the cooling tank serves as a condenser for the coolant that boils off. The pumper (person who checks the well every day) checks the oil and antifreeze as part of his routine every day.