30 December, 2012 - 5 January 2013 - Chimney Cleaning, Icy Roads

Another day another ... train?

Susan went through some of the toys we have stored from "yesteryear" and found this train set. It was missing a few pieces but there were enough left to make the loop.  Scott spent hours playing with it.

This is another of his favorite toys.  His big interests in life right now are planes, trains and automobiles.  Here he's making a crash landing on the snow.

Okay, on to the next adventure...

We bought him a kid's computer for Christmas.  He loves it and isn't as interested in "helping" us when we're using ours.

His mom and dad got him a Cars blanket.  Cars is one of his favorite movies.

I was sorting some brass so Scott decided to help a bit.  I gave him a can of 270 and 25/06 brass to mess around with.  I don't have any firearms in those calibers.  (Although if I found some at a good price ...!)

Chimney cleaning time again.  This time we need some repairs on the top pipe.  The bottom and top have both corroded to the point that they need replaced.

I took it off then ran the brush through the pipe a few times to knock the ash out.  There wasn't any creosote build up.  We only burn seasoned wood and I run the stove hot for awhile every morning which keeps creosote deposits at a minimum.  As long as I was already there and had the brush it only takes a few more minutes to scrub out the chimney.

I didn't feel like going to town for a new cap and and we keep a couple new sections of pipe on hand so I just attached the old cap to the new pipe.  It should work okay for several years before it needs to be replaced.

The snow was piling up on the U-Haul so Susan shovelled it off.  I think I hear the camper whispering "let's go south until the snow is gone."

We got a call at 5:30 am from our SIL.  He ran off the road dodging a deer and needed help getting on to work.  The battery was dead in his truck so I drove him to work then we got him out after he got off work.

A neighbor brought his tractor over to lend a hand.  It worked great because he could lift the back of the truck out of the ditch using the loader.  (The bumper is rusted through and was already bent before he hit the ditch.)  I'd have had to chain up all four wheels to get him out with the Cherokee.

I thanked another neighbor who stopped traffic on the curve while we were extracting the truck.  It's pretty icy and we were worried that anyone coming around the turn would ignore the flares I set out and either hit someone or wind up in the ditch themselves.

 

When Scott's parents came up Saturday there was a wreck blocking the road about two miles closer to the highway than where this photo was taken.  They had to make a ten mile detour (one way) to get to the next road to make it to our place.

 

We bought some bacon and fried it up for breakfast.  It was a nice treat. It's a lot better cooking it on the wood stove.  Eventually the grease splatters will burn off.

Getting water for the animals is always a chore during the winter.  We don't like using our drinking water if we can avoid it so I set a bucket of snow behind the wood stove.  It warms up during the day so we have water on hand for the animals.  All we have this winter is the cat, dog and seven chickens.  The chickens don't drink a lot but they need fresh water at least a couple times a day.

 

 

17-29 December, 2012 - More Snow, Christmas, Car Problems

Ever have one of those busy times yet you could summarize it very quickly because so much was repetitive? That's been what most of our winter has been like so far.

Susan is still dehydrating the frozen, shredded potatoes our SOL brought back from work plus she's been cutting and dehydrating onions from our garden. We can't seem to store them for long unless we dehydrate them so once they're harvested we spend the next several weeks drying them for long term storage. We have the daily routine of writing, household chores such as washing dishes, clothes, cooking, bringing in firewood, and caring for Scott.

Last week we had a new project when the Cherokee wouldn't start. I did some investigating and it was in severe need of a tune-up. I thought I'd done it last fall but by the looks of the plugs I didn't. We ended up taking the truck into Eureka a couple of times. I don't like driving it because it uses so much gasoline. My oldest son was here for Christmas so he and I fiddled with the car a bit and got it running again. We drove it into Eureka Friday and bought the parts we needed for it and a blower motor for the U-Haul. I want to get it replaced before we head south this winter.  We have a truck that belongs to one of the kids that we have to get back to the property.  It took a couple of session on the charger to get the battery up again.  They'd left the key on and ran it down to zero volts.  It takes a long time to charge one when they're that dead.  I ran a load test on it after charging and it seems to have survived okay.

 I've been bringing reloading supplies up from the shack this week. I'm going to build a reloading bench in the cabin. It's too cold in the shack during the winter and when I use the stove I get condensation on all the steel and aluminum equipment plus I worry about condensation in the loaded cartridges. I need them all in a warmer environment.

Our book sales have fallen a bit but we've put some new ones up and they're picking up the slack. The reduced sales are widespread according to other authors we've talked to so are probably season related.

The snow is still coming down nearly every day.  It's mostly very light snow and doesn't accumulate quickly but over time it adds up.  The worst part is that we get very little solar power on the cloudy days so we've had to run the generator about three hours every couple of days.  It's still a lot cheaper than being on the grid though.

 

As usual, Scott's day wouldn't be complete if he and grandma didn't get some trampoline time in.

Sometimes it's kind of nice to just relax and watch TV at night.  Of course it's more fun if you can get away with commandeering grandpa's chair.

 

Ah, Christmas!  We had almost all the kids here for Christmas this year. 

Of course there was lots of food, conversation and presents.  We played Pictionary after eating then they began to filter back to their own homes in the early evening.

Of course we all had the most fun watching Scott open his presents.  He's two now and understands more of what's going on.  The only other grandchild here was Tommy.  The two families who didn't make it have the other seven grand kids.

Dad is helping Scott with the final steps of opening one of his gifts.  If they built the toys as well as they packaged them they'd never break or wear out.

Susan is waiting to open one of her packages.

...more gifts...

...more gifts...

Tommy playing with some spatulas.

Susan found some things online for Scott to watch. He did very well holding her notebook computer while it was showing.  He loves videos of airplanes, trains, and cars and YouTube has some good ones on it.

I'm writing a book on reloading for beginners and these are some of the illustrations and photos that will be in it. 

 

My Kindle book (The Gun Guide for People Who Know Nothing About Firearms) is now available in print form from me or on Amazon's site.  The easiest way to find it is to type in my name on a search.  The print version has a slightly different title but it's the same content as the Kindle version.  We did that for marketing purposes.  If they have the same ISBN Amazon buries the Kindle book (which costs less) making it harder to find.  By making a slight title change they both come up on a search.  The Kindle version is selling very well.  The print version hasn't been up long and hasn't sold many copies yet.

I'll be covering things like head space and rim construction so I made some illustrations to go with the text.  The one above is on the head space section.

This one is in the chapter on "Case Preparation."

 

My goal in writing the book is to take someone who has no experience reloading to the point where they understand how to reload ammunition and what needs to be done in each stage.  I'll have a special section on equipment for the apartment dweller so that they can still reload ammunition even if space is limited. 

 

The book should be available on Kindle in a two or three weeks and the print version will be along a few days later.  (Setting up the print version is a little more involved.)

 

I'd also like to mention Susans blog at http://povertyprepping.blogspot.com/.

It's loaded with information and she does a better job keeping it up than I do on mine.

Creating the Low-Budget Homestead

My book is printed up now and I recieved my ten copies from Paladin Press in the mail today.  They did a nice job on it.  The title is Creating the Low-Budget Homestead.  The retail price is $25.00.

28 August - 4 September, 2012 - Camper Painting, Wood Cutting, Truck Repairs, and more...

It's been one of our more productive weeks.

The U-Haul got a new coat of paint this week. We decided to repaint the camper to a lighter color to make it a little cooler in the sun. Susan masked off the windows and lights and covered the cab with old blankets.

Then she began shooting the paint. 

We're using an airless paint gun which doesn't throw the best spray pattern but does okay considering the primitive conditions we're under.  The bad thing is that it takes a lot of cleaning to keep it functioning properly.

Susan finished the light color then we decided we didn't like it and bought some new paint to go over this coat.  It's nearly the same color but more glossy. More on that in the next blog!

We have a son-in-law who works at a grocery store and the store threw out a box of bananas because they were getting too ripe to sell.  He gave most of them to us and Susan peeled and froze them.  We bought some chocolate coating and after they're frozen they'll make great treats.  Take them out, dip them in chocolate and they'll taste great on these hot, 80 degree days, we've been having.  (Okay, 80 degrees is hot for around these parts!)

We bought another hundred pounds of grain for the chickens but decided to save it for later.  Regular chicken feed has tripled in price in the last two years so we're getting more creative.  We bought a 50 lb. sack of cracked corn and another of mixed grain of corn and barley.  We'll mix them together when the time comes to feed them to the chickens but in the meantime we ground up another fifty or so pounds of outdated or rancid food stores.  (We've been rotating our stored supplies and feeding the old stuff to the chickens.)

Scott couldn't wait to help and is dumping old rice and beans into the hopper of the grinder.  You can't see them but the chickens are crowded under the table eating the rice that he spills.  It took about two hours of grinding to fill the 50 lb. sack.  We used rice, beans and old pasta for the most part.

The long, sunny days have given us an abundance of electricity so I've been running the case tumbler in the afternoons.  I've got about a thousand brass cases to run through the cleaner.  These are 30/06 and 270 brass.

Our youngest son "retired" his pickup.  He was given a newer car that gets much better gas mileage and he's giving this one to a sibling (we don't know which one yet).  He told us to take the tires (nearly new) which I'll put on the Cherokee later.

I dismounted his old tires and put some others back on that still had some life left in them.  Here I'm breaking the bead lose using my Harbor Freight tire machine.

Now I'm removing the tire from the rim using the same machine.  We got this one on sale a few years ago but they're still under $100.00 at Harbor Freight Tools.  We paid for this one the first time we used it.  I have an article coming out soon in Backwoods Home Magazine showing how to use it.

There are three, current issue, magazines on the news stands now with my articles in them.  They are Fur-Fish-Game, Back Home Magazine and Traditional Bowhunter Magazine.

The truck had a dead miss in it so I located which cylinder was cutting out then checked the compression.  It was about 125 pounds but the gauge leaked down before I could take the photo.  Anyway, that's plenty of compression for the cylinder to fire.

I checked the resistance in the plug wire and it checked out okay so ...

I checked the plug.  It's in serious need of replacement but the parts store is a ways off and I'll let whoever gets the truck buy new plugs for it so I opted for a temporary fix for now.

In case you aren't familiar with how spark plugs "wear," in the first photo you can see how the center electrode is rounded and burned down more on one side.  The rounded edges make it more difficult for the spark to jump the gap.  When the air in the cylinder is compressed as in the compression stroke it's even harder for the spark to jump the gap.  In the old days of point type ignition the spark plug would quite firing long before this.  The newer, electronic ignitions have a lot more juice (over 80,000 volts) though so it isn't uncommon to see plugs worn to this extent.  The problem is though, that when they get this bad it's sometime easier for the spark to go through the spark plug wire which burns the plug wire out.  Then you have to replace the wires and the plugs. So far the wires are okay.

Anyway, to "fix" the plug you can file the electrode flat again (as in the photo above).  You'll want a spark plug - AKA "ignition" or "point" - file (which you don't see many of today).   You can use an emery board (like those used in a manicure) in a pinch.  I put the plug in a vice and filed the electrode flat again then re-gapped the plug and the engine is running smooth again.  I'm sure the other plugs are worn as well so whoever gets it will need to replace them all.

We also siphoned the gasoline from the forward tank to use in the Dodge.  The tank switch valve hasn't worked on this truck since he got it two or three years ago so this fuel is getting some age on it.  We thought we'd better get it used up if it's still good.  (It was ... barely!)  The best siphon hose I've found is a hose and bulb for outboard boat motors.  The cheap ones don't work well and don't last long. I've used this one for several years.

I'd cut up a couple of small, dead trees back where the truck had been parked and loaded them into the back to bring to the wood shed.  It's the first wood cut for the season.

I knew where there were some recently blown down trees so I cut a couple of loads of them for firewood.  They're green yet so I'll stack them in the back of the wood shed to cure until we need them.

Because the wood was still green I didn't fill the truck quite as full due to the weight of the wood.  When the springs are flattened out I stop loading the truck.  I don't like replacing broken springs.  The first load is on the ground and the second load is still in the truck.  Only eight more loads to go!

I set my game camera up on a nearby trail to start taking inventory of the local deer passing through.  (You can see it on the tree in the center of the photo.)

When we (Scott and I) went to check it yesterday the cat came along.  There was a dead rabbit (snowshoe hare) in the trail.  It's unusual to see one like this.  Most of the time you just find some fur scattered about.

Scott wanted to check out the stump a bear ripped apart.  We put a bell on him to help keep track of him. 

When I got to my camera I saw that the lens to the flash was broken.  I had two pictures of the possible culprit.  The first was mostly fur as was the second.  I can't tell what kind of critter it was.  We have deer, elk, moose, bears (black and grizzly), wolves, coyotes, bobcats, lynx, mountain lions in addition to dogs and small game in the area.  Any ideas about what's in the picture?  I couldn't tell by the tracks in the area either.  It's a well-used trail.

Of course, the only clear photo I got of a deer is one where his head is behind a stump!

Noticing the angle of the sun it's entirely possible that the sun broke the lens out.  The flash's reflector may have focused the sunlight directly on the lens.  Anyone have any ideas or experiences with this?