Where have I been?...Well I kind of got involved in the political season. I'd been volunteering with the local tea party. In doing so I got to know one of the candidates that we supported, and her campaign manager. About a month ago he tapped me to join their team as campaign/volunteer coordinator. Being unemployed I had time, and being passionate I have the drive. It has been quite an experience so far. I never knew how much went on behind the scenes. I have been barely treading water for the last 4 weeks, but am finally getting a handle on things and am using other volunteers for more and more. I went from getting up when I naturally woke up to early rises and long days. They haven't seemed long though, they fly by. It's so busy which is nice. I've been putting in 10-13 hour days. So I'm in a routine again. It's all good, and we are going to win!

Sheetmetal

I finally got the sheet metal up. I did it all myself. The ceiling pieces were quite difficult alone, especially the ones with cut outs where multiple things had to be lined up at once, then I had to hold the sheet in place with one hand while grabbing the screw gun with the other and trying to get a screw in the right place. There were some choice four letter words while doing the ceiling, which no child or lady should hear! But I got it done. I put in enough screws to hold them up, but I need to go back and finish adding screws. You can see on the left side some small pieces that need to be screwed up to fill the final open spot. Next will be to finish assembling the overhead door in the foreground, Installing and plumbing the heater, and then lights and electrical.

I finally finished my shaving horse. This is basically a portable vise to hold a piece of wood while you shave it down with a draw knife. You sit on the rear portion, and activate the vise with your foot on the pedal, pushing it forward, which rotates the dumbhead down, trapping your wood blank. It's used to shave pegs or legs, or whatever you want. The main plank is heart pine, and the rest of the pieces are made from white oak and hickory. It's not totally finished as I still need to sand it and apply some oil and urethane finish, but it's close enough to call done.

Well, I've continued to work on my barn renovation project. Wall insulation and vapor barriers installed as well as rim boards and ceiling joists. Steel fire rated extra wide walk in door installed(freebie). Over head door tracks are now in. Had to redo both doors due to insufficient clearances. Next: Wall sheetmetal, ceiling vapor barrier, sheetmetal and insulation, heater, lights and a couple outlets, maybe garage door openers.
Here's the forklift I just picked up. It's a '75 Warner&Swasey, 8000lb lift, 24ft lift height. It runs very well, but I need to pull the tilt and side shift hydraulic cylinders for rebuilt, rebuild the seat bracket to reposition the seat. It feels like a very short person was driving it. And I need a new seat or recover the existing one. I also need to make a bar to tie the left and right brake pedals together. We used to have one of these when I was a kid, and I think that one had the brake pedals tied together. This machine is more lift capacity than I need, but I am familiar with this machine. I also don't immediately need such high lift height, but it will likely come in handy later for a timberframe erection.



I modified my engine stand legs to be removable and store on the stand. This makes it store more compactly and take up less space. I also had the stand blasted and powder coated white.
Finally I spent 3 days last week helping install a backyard fence and lay brick pavers along the driveway. Hard work, but we got er done. All for now...

Short blurb.

Not much to report for now. One overhead door finished in barn, Started putting insulation in. Decided I need to get that in before the ceiling framing. Today temps dropped big time and high winds, below zero with windchill tonight. Been dealing with heating issues all day at other locations. Next few days will be dicey. I did start back to work on my peg shaving horse. Will post a pic when finished. All for now. B.

Here are some updated pics from this past week of my barn renovation. I had a bad cold that kept me at 50 percent power for a week and a half, but finally got back to work on it this last week. As you can see since last time I had finished housewrapping, and applying the nailer boards and infilling with 3/4 inch foam to fill the voids between. Now I have the original sheetmetal back on(my friend Ryan helped me get that up), and I reused some old used sheetmetal that was from one of the other pole barns. Luckily I had just enough to fill in what I needed. New sheet metal would have cost about $900. They charge a premium, I think because they know you can't get the same interlocking pattern anywhere else. That's why I opted to reuse old stuff that was left over from a repair long ago. I didn't want to spend $900! It's orange and one piece is beige. I plan to paint the sheet metal maroon next spring when it's warm enough, to match the rest of the building.

It's been pretty busy since my last post, but not a ton to show for it. I have made more progress on my barn renovation. You can see in the photo above that working by yourself, you have to be resourceful. I rigged up an A-frame and a rope to pull up the door framed wall section. It was quite tricky as the bottom had to be slid outside past the door way to clear the inside rafter truss. The bottom was kept from sliding out with anchored chains. Then I had to slide the bottom back inside a bit at a time. Since then I finished the outside sheathing in OSB, housewrapped the whole thing, and installed treated nailers for the sheetmetal. Lastly I filled betwenen the nailers with rigid foam to fill the spaces. I'll add a new post with that pic shortly after this one. I've started to put some of the sheetmetal on, but I'm stuck right now waiting for the door trim to be fabricated, which has to go on before the remaining sheetmetal.
Also, On Aug.22nd I helped with a barn raising in Wisconsin. Craig Roost was in charge of this project(big guy in the bottom photo). It was a hardworking, but enjoying and satisfying day. I was one of the few there with timber experience, but there were a lot of guys working hard and the comradery was a good time.