Eleven Shot In St. Louis Last Weekend...

...and several of them dead. Click  It scares me to go into St. Louis nowadays.  About forty years ago I drove through St. Louis on my way to East Kentucky, and it was late at night. Going over the Mississippi, a car got on my tail and I could see when we passed lights that there were three big Afro haircuts in that car.  They followed me well into Illinois, and it gave me an educational scare. I did learn from this that I can load a single action revolver in the dark while I am driving 55 MPH, with someone on my tail.  They finally backed off and I keep my head on a swivel to this day.  Be alert, be prepared, stay alive. Here are a couple of Colin Flaherty's latest videos.

Routine Activity Theory

Aberrant Behavior?

Tuesday Torque: Hit and Miss Briggs and Stratton Engine

805 RoadKing is a great YouTuber, making lots of videos of cool engine projects.  This video is the final one of a series where the Road King turns a 1951 Briggs into a nifty hit-and-miss engine with a beautiful governor assembly.



Road King's current project is building a water-cooled Briggs engine, and it is equally as cool as this project.  Here is the play list if you want to see the process that this engine went through: LINK

Gooses and Geeslings!

I don't know how they are avoiding all the snappers, coons, and coyotes, but there are still ten goslings, and they are growing!

The Easy Winners, Scott Joplin, Performed by Joshua Rifkin

Joshua Rifkin channels Scott Joplin.  I've never heard anyone who could play these songs better.  I first heard these renditions forty-five years ago, and they are still my favorites.  We feel like winners today.  It's been a beautiful Sunday, and I had a great nature walk around the pond.  No alarm for Monday!  Winner!

Weekend Steam: Let's Fire Up The Lorry and Go Out For Fish and Chips!

Thanks for the tip, Merle!

If You Want Oak, Plant Pine

That's a line that foresters learn from other foresters, and from experience.  Our little pine stand is shortleaf that was planted sixty some years ago, and we enjoy watching the sun set behind them in the evenings.  There is a problem, though.  The pines have been dying at an alarming rate, and oaks; mostly white oaks, are filling the gaps.  We now officially have an oak-pine stand, something that you will see in the Ozarks where there is an occasional fire.  It is a timber type that requires fire for long term maintenance.  It's a good thing I am now retired.

This spring and summer I will be doing chainsaw work to move heavy fuel away from trees that I do not want to be harmed, and then I hope to get the first burn in this fall.  What is happening is this; oaks have seeded in with the help of mottled sunlight coming through the pine stand, and the pines have not been reseeding themselves because the need a fire to create a seedbed.  I should have been working on this for the last five years, but you know the cobbler's kids never have good shoes.

Farming Is Much Faster Now...

...than it was when I was a kid. Our renter tilled this 40 in the morning and planted it in the afternoon.  Boy have things changed!  I remember my parents reading in the newspaper when I was a kid that John Deere was discontinuing the 2-cylinder engines and was going to inline engines like the other manufacturers were building.  I thought the World was coming to an end!  I have loved that sound all my life, so here's a little bit of that, just for fun.

Chainsaw Fail Video: This Poor Guy...

...needs to take a class.  Here are the basics for looking at lean/weight on a tree and figuring out if you can handle it, or need to call a guy with a bucket truck. (If a tree has a chance for hitting an improvement, you don't take chances! You call the guy with the truck!)

Lean Limit Basics

There is an easy set of guidelines for limits of lean you can handle on a tree you need to fall. Measure the distance from the back of the hinge to the back of the stump. Say it's 1 foot. That will be your segment length. Measure the height of the tree. If it is 50 feet tall you have a 50 segment tree. On 50 segment trees the limit on back lean you can handle with wedges is about 10 feet. (Not Fun!) That is true if the wood is solid and has good fiber strength. Eastern hemlock will be much less than that. Old black oak may be much less. Every tree has its own secrets. If it's taller by 10 feet, that's a  60 segment tree. Now the limit is about 8 feet.  If it's shorter by 10 feet to 40 segments,  the limit is about 12 feet. Tipping trees near the limit is hard, and the hinge may fail, making the tree go over backwards. A 1" wedge will move the top of a 50 segment tree 50 inches; two stacked 1" wedges can move the top 100 inches. Figure your height and number of segments on all trees that need wedging over and you will know if you can get it with the thickness of one wedge. Use parallel wedges to increase your lift.  Three side-by-side wedges will push three times as much weight as one wedge.

Your most important application of this skill is to know your limits on side lean, so you don't have the hinge fail. If 10 feet is the limit for back lean on a tree, the limit for side lean is less than 1/2 of that! That is because back lean is pulling equally across the hinge, but side lean is pulling hard on 1/2, and compressing the other half. Going too far on side lean will cause the hinge to fail, so don't push that at all. Watch some videos where people have side lean and do not pull against it. The tree will go where it wants! Look at all your trees from two vantage points to make a quadrant for weight and lean. You will then know within 90° where that tree will go if it is severed. You need to know that in case the hinge should fail you; then you will know where to step to avoid being crushed.

How do you determine the amount of lean? Step way back from the tree, at 90° from the fall line. Put your hands up in front of you and surround the crown. Bring your eye to the middle, and bring a line straight down. Note that spot, go to it and pace in to the stump (or measure).

PS: It looks like about 8 feet of back lean on this tree, and he probably could have wedged it over, but he used only one wedge.  You cannot pound one wedge against that much weight.  Instead, he cut the hinge thinner from the front, with predictable results.  If only he had watched a few of my videos he could proudly say, "I'm a logger!"

Ruger's Auction To Benefit The Massachusetts Shooters Foundation

Ruger's offering this week is a Blackhawk Convertible made for Buckeye Firearms in .32-20/ .32 H & R Magnum in 1989.  It is up over $1000 already as I post this; who would have guessed that a rollmarked buckeye leaf would be such a hot item?  CLICK HERE to read all about it and to place that winning bid.  This fine revolver will sell mid-day April 19, 2017. (Patriots' Day + 242 years!)

$1026.11

Tuesday Torque: Let's Go Pump Some Arsenic!

I used to run across old orchard sprayers like these on my walks, but haven't seen any lately.  They have been sucked up by high scrap prices, I guess.  I saw a good one almost thirty years ago in deep Southern Illinois that had a restorable Fairbanks Dishpan engine, but the owner did not want to sell.  You will see a pretty good variety of engine makes on orchard sprayers, and believe it or not, the USGS has maps made showing the orchard locations from the Twenties to the Sixties because of possible soil contamination from arsenic, lead, and copper.  You have to wonder how farmers survived when they were spraying arsenic insecticide and getting it all over themselves.  Anyway, here are a few old sprayers with different engines for your viewing pleasure.