Crush, Screen, Spread

Back To The Old Grind!

Valentine Song Festival! Nobody Does It Better, Carly Simon, 1977

Valentine Song Fesival! John Steel, Love Nest, 1920

Valentine Song Festival! Mary Chapin Carpenter, Passionate Kisses

Weekend Steam: Overhauling A 1914 Rumely 16-48 Traction Engine

It's well worth your time to click this video over to YouTube and read the description of the work that had to be done to this engine.

Valentine Song Festival! Nellie Kelly, I Love You!

We had such a positive response(Hey, five comments on a theme over a month is pretty good here!) last year to our daily love-worn songs that we are going to do it all over again.  The list is large, so there will be many songs we did not use last year.  We are starting out with Nellie Kelly  because that's the kind of music that started this little blog.

No Safe Cities

Form Community Groups!  Yes, That Will Fix It!




You will see the police official lamenting that people are not coming forward with information about the murders. Witnesses know that Snitches Get Stitches! Witnesses in St. Louis have been turning up dead lately, and that is happening everywhere. You don't rat out your neighborhood gangster; not if you don't want to be beaten to death or shot.

Hollow Helpers

Overmature and damaged black oaks become hollow in spectacular fashion sometimes.  You always thump a black oak to see if it's all there when you measure it, and this is why.  Carpenter ants love to eat black oak (and other red oak species, too).

They are like big, bad termites, and boy do they tear down a tree.  The snag I dropped last weekend was riddled with them for several feet.

There is something peculiar about the red oaks that I can't figure out.  A standing snag will have damp wood when you drop it and split it, but being an open pored wood, it dries fast, and burns well within a few weeks.  However, red oak tree tops that are on the ground can be there (drying?) for several years, and when you work them up into firewood they are soppy and must dry for months before they will burn.  I can understand a log lying on the ground being soaked, but tree tops are up off the ground with air moving all around them.  If you are going to work up tree tops, do it while they are fresh so you don't waste your effort on half rotten, soppy wood. I have never found carpenter ants in wood lying on the ground...those bugs are as picky as I am.

Ruger's Auction To Benefit The Light Foundation

Ruger is offering another of their great P85 Pistols this week, so be sure to check their auction page and place a bid.  These pistols do not usually grab the interest of collectors, so it is a good opportunity for you to get a good pistol at a decent price while doing a good deed.  This one is New In Box, and is from 1990.  It will sell mid-day, January 11, 2017.  Click Here to read all about it and to place your bid. $714 <

Tuesday Torque: Big Engines At Coolspring

There is a good writeup to go with this video if you click it over to YouTube.  The first one you see running is a 1913 vintage one-of-a-kind engine with four cylinders laid out in an N pattern, and producing 300 Horsepower.

Firewood Weekend; Here's One We Dropped Today

Don't Get Wrapped Up In Your Work This Week

Videos of screw-type log splitters keep coming up on my YouTube feed, and they look to me like a maiming or death waiting to happen.  Watch this fellow working constantly around the spinning screw.  If it ever grabs him, it's Curtains.




Watch this next video and see how easy it is to be hurt working around equipment.



Back (Safely) To The Old Grind!