How to make tack cloth, sanding sealer and grit size chart

 A forum page I found

How to Make a Tack Cloth
A tack cloth is one of the best ways to remove dust and grit before applying a finish, to make one soak a cheese cloth in water, wring out the water, soak it in turpentine, wring it out again, drip enough clear varnish on the cheesecloth to make it evenly gummy throughout. Store it in a jar with a lid to keep it from drying out.
Gently wipe away dust and fine particles.

How to Make Sanding Sealer Mix one part wood glue with ten parts water, apply with brush, let dry. This will raise the grain, sand smooth.
 
Save Your Sawdust
Before you start to sand a project empty the dust bag, when the bag is full empty it into a clean mustard or ketchup squeeze bottle. You will now have a supply of sawdust to match the project if you need to do the sawdust and glue fill. To do this squeeze some glue in the crack, then spray a bit of sawdust on it and work it in, repeat if necessary, remove excess.


Grit Size Chart

Retail Defination	Industrial Defination	Uses
Super Fine	600 600 400	Polishing metals, ceramics, stone and plastic usually wet. Not usually used for wood.
Extra Fine	360 320	As above.
Very Fine	280 240 220	Polishing finishes between coats, usually used wet.
Fine	180 150 120	Finishing bare wood.
Medium	100 80 60	First sanding for softwoods, shaping.
Coarse	50 40	Paint removal, rough sanding, shaping.
Very Coarse	36 30 24	Machine sanding bare floors, first cut.
Extra Coarse	20 16 12	Machine sanding floors to remove old coatings.

Boats and 100 degee weather

Yesterday started out kind of slow. I have been wanting to get out to the Venture and  fool around but life happens. I finally decided damned the temps full speed ahead! Mostly it  has been moving things around.We have  been using the boat to store some stuff in light of all the drama that was happening. Since I'm stuck here, with a house I can't sell, for a while any way, the decision has been made, as painful as it is, to move the stuff back inside and stick it in a corner some where and get back to what's important to me! If I can't sell this place for a while I'm darned sure going to get this boat ready and take it ANY PLACE that will sustain sailing even if it is Lake Texhoma or one of the area lakes  for the duration!

Having said that! Well it was  still a good day. I got outside and in the boat. I started out right after sunset. When I finally looked at the clock, it was about 82 degrees F according to weatherbug at 3:16 AM. . The good thing about the houses immediately around me being empty is the misc noises I make fooling around late at night are not a problem as if my neighbors were really close. Now I can't exactly start up a drill or a power saw but  little noises like dropping a hammer or climbing in and out of the boat are not going to give any one a sleepless night.  Not having to worry about my trouble light shining into any ones bedroom window makes it nice. It's how I plan to beat the heat for the not so noisy parts any way.

Tried to  pull the chain plates off. It's not happening with only one person. Have to have someone man a screw driver on  the out side while I pull off nuts on the inside. Did get the measurements for backing plates. I figure to get some  3: x 3/16 inch .  I'm figuring 6 feet should be enough to get that part done. Throw another 2 ft of 1/4 inch for new chain plates and I should be good. Am going to get new  bolts, nuts etc so all the metals match . That and some bytal tape (spelling) and I'm good to go.  I have been toying with how to do this. The voc tech school here has a class that operates a hug computer operated  metal cutting machine . You see where that is going, right? Have to wait til it opens but what the heck I'm here any way may as well make the best of it. If that don't work I'll get the Dremel out and do it my self. I looked up sources for the metal . WOW can you say EXPENSIVE! If any one has a source for 316 Stainless  3/ 16"  x 2" or 3/ 16 x 4",at a decent price PLEASE post it or send me an email!

Have been playing around with the idea of going ahead and saving up for the solar panel to get the wiring started, Have to get a wiring plan figured out.  Its only a 22 ft boat so I'm figuring rough eye balling it , the longest run I should have is maybe 16 ft, not counting mast of course. I've got enough block to raise this gal up and drop the keel, so that is on the agenda s a definite.

Where is all this going?
The baby boy has LEFT THE BUILDING! Now that the set back is almost over, once again I am free at last! Momma's days of being Momma on a full time in house basis are OVER! We had a minor setback this last three weeks but things are getting back on track! I honestly cannot decide who this pushing your fledgling out of the nest is harder on. Yeah, at 28, since the medical issues are resolved, its time for him to be on his own. NO DOUBT about that.

What I do not get is why, once they are  "on their own",  when your child steps into the "goo" and ask for your help, do they seem to think that this willingness to help them sort it out, as in think it through to THEM finding a conclusion and or solution THEY CAN DO,  means in THEIR OPINION, you and your assets are on call 24/ 7 all of a sudden, as if they were three again? OK, I get that it takes time for them to adjust to a new life of living on their own.. That's just a case of they have to get experience and there is only one way to get that. What I do not understand is why it suddenly becomes (in their opinion) your crisis?  Can you say OY!
Parents teach your children  how to plan! Make sure they have coping skills for really bad days! Teach them that THEIR LACK OF PLANNING IS NOT YOUR CRISIS! My son understands what caused the problem. He was taught the skills to cope with adversity. Some things only come with getting knocked down and pulling your self back up. This was one of those. Time will tell how long it takes for all that stuff  we tell our children that they  did not want to hear takes root and gets solid. The good news is at 28 he only has about a year and a half before that second coming of age that seems to kick in at 30 starts to take effect.

 The good news is he has a really good distraction so now mother won't be the single most important women in his life. He found Ms. Right! I got to spend sometime getting to know her.  She is a trooper! She will definitely do to ride the river with . She in not a wimp by any means.  We have been talking about what I'm planing on doing with my life . At first all kinds of bad experiences were really making her anti boats. Now you KNOW that aint going to work very long around me, right? We had some talks .She seems to be slowly coming around,. Last night she informed me that being afraid of boats, sailing etc over what happened in her childhood was not sometime she was going to allow to continue,. The girl has MOXY There are very few things that make me want to climb up into someones face but, oh by howdy! I'll not go into the details as it is not my story to tell, but I would so love to keel haul or at least,put a extraordinarily large knot on someones head after hearing  about the DUMB STUNT that some  so called adults played on some children!.
The GREAT news is  this gal is the one that has him inspired to do all that stuff men are supposed to do. Who would have thunk it! LOL
 I must have done sometime right. My other son informs me he also has started a relationship with his Ms. Right. She also sounds like a trooper and a basically well grounded gal.  RELIEF!  Who knows maybe grand children are on the horizon? Time will tell.

well I guess that's it for now. Think I'm going to go get my tools out and ready for later when the sun goes down. I have  some hardware to pull off a boat.

Sail safe but sail!
 

Options, Revenues and Providers

In the course of being part of several sailing and boat forums I've picked up a lot of learning these past couple of years.  A lot of insurance info has been on the boards lately.  Since eventually this is something I am gong to check out for my self I decided to put a page dedicated to just marine insurance. It occurred to me to open this up for others to post providers they know for all to have handy in one place by using comments.   As I was posting that page it occurred to me adding a page for other products those who have already been there and done that have used satisfactorily. I decided to open up the page of products I have used to others to post their favorite BOAT RELATED items, using the comments section.


Revenues. We all need to eat. I am opening this site up to advertising. If this offends please forgive. I figure it is not going to put a huge amount of money  into the sailing kitty, but every little bit helps.


PLEASE DO NOT just start clicking thu thinking your helping me if you have no interest in a product. It hurts the site marketability.  If however you are interested  in a particular product, please do so. The site only pays if you actually buy something  from a link. Also please be advised that google does collect information when you click thru.

FINALLY!!!! It's About BOATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While I am doing the hopefully FINAL sorting of the stuff in the house, I'm working on the Challenger as my sanity keeper. The Venture is still in the drive way but she is full of stuff I have yet to sort through before I put her up on blocks to drop the keel.  This is how I'm keeping my sanity in the mean while. Yeah I'm getting flack from some of the guys over the method and materials I'm using. By their standards and expectations,  I'm cheating like an erring husband on how I am doing this.  For this reason I make an open and honest offer to those who feel very strongly about how I should be using the two part epoxy on these little  fixes. Please feel free to shop and order the materials you think I should be  using and ship them to me. I will be more then happy to use them and even give you a blurp as donator.  Email me for my shipping address.

Having said that, on to the boat.  If you remember I picked this up last summer with the idea of fixing it up for  my son.  Well he is on his  own, several states away and I'm not about to carry it THAT far on the top of my car. I now have another toy to play with . You can tell I'm just heart broken over that development, right? :)~

Finally got her up on blocks to work on.

Sorry about he angle but had us use my cell phone and that aint gonna take a close shot  straight on.


Initial work to be done.

There are some gouges and dings along the keel. This one is the worse with out actually being a full fledged breach.

            Then there is this one which is a                     full blown hull breach.

                         A close up of breach.

Then there is the transom. The story that goes with boat is it got hit by a string lawn mower TWICE.

    Been busy sanding her down. Wouldn't  you know the sander went kapluie. I have go to learn how to replace bushings in these sanders! I do however have a LOW COST idea on how I am going to temporarily solve that  little problem. All I have to do is go digging in the shed which is another spot every thing is stashed in for now. GRRRRR  I'll let you know how it turns out AFTER I try it.If it is successful. This idea is so nutty, I'm not telling in advance.

Now some of you guys are going to hate this but I've been using JB weld products for years quite successfully. I've saved TONS of money using their line. They make water weld and I got some.  So far  I have  2 1/2  tubes invested.  Beats what epoxy cost. Yes, I thought about getting some filler and using the polyester epoxy.  It cost 18.00 plus a can and I have ZERO experience using that kind of set up. Before I do it on a boat I actually hope to be in the water with THIS SUMMER or what is left of it, I went with the water weld.  It's about SAILING remember?


In no particular order here are the current pics.

This is where the sander died . GRRRRR

Almost partially done with the first sanding .

Remember that really nasty hull breach?

That's all for now.
Sail safe but SAIL!!!!!!!!

Publish Post

Horse of a different color

Well its been a while. I have been in the south. We had arranged to go work for a guy doing some "minor " repairs on his house. Nothing big. Refinish a floor, refinish his wrought iron, little stuff like that. He was wanting us down  there and as any on who has redone a boat knows things ALWAYS take longer to do then anticipated and doing this house as no exception. so between him and me, we decided to go ahead, use his tools, and get down there. I wanted to take  the Venture since the original idea was a place to work on it and get her in the water. Tires being  as high priced as they are we decided to leave her here. go ahead and go do the job to make money for all this other stuff.
Turns out the floor he wanted to refinish was in a room filled with things he really should have put in storage It would have taken three days to just to get that out of there.
Nothing was ready to work on. Spent the first couple of days sorting through his garage looking for tools. and changing lite bulbs. Then he wanted to gripe about it.
Its funny I told him flat out I was not up for anything that required a license yet he wanted me to do plumbing.  One thing led to another and he wanted  us to do major remodeling like replace his windows in the front of his house etc. Now all of that we could have  done. That was not the deal breaker.


The job allegedly came with a 28 ft RV.  The orignal agrement was he would provide hook ups for and we would purchase on payments for my son. W wold work out some sort of contribution fr the utilities.  Almost immediately he wanted me to rent a spot at an RV park, Now housing and 10.00 a man hour is not to bad but when he took away the housing 10.00 an hour aint  all that much when your paying motel bills or rv space plus hooks ups. the profit margin crashed on that one. Still that was nothe deal breaker.  The fact that he wanted get work that wold have easily cos him way more then 10.00 an hour done as cheap as possible I can understand.Yes, I still have all the emails about this.




The travel trailer has storm damage which was repairable we knew that up front. When we got there and tore into the damaged area to see how  extensive the wood frame damage was,  come to find out that trailer has BLACK MOLD in it.  I've done black mold twice.  Once for myself and once for a lady I did garden wort for as a personal favor. THAT STUFF CAN KILL YOU!  Not something I want to Tackle especially not for 10.00 an hour after he had already tried to rip me off on wages. Black mold or mold of any type is a dangerous thing!  It is HEAVILY regulated by state and federal law.
Long story short in between that and him trying to gip me out of wages it did not last.  The final straw that broke the camels back was his hidden agenda. He knew this was a TEMPORARY THING!  He is in my groups and knew , same as any one else does that MY GOAL IS BLUE WATER! NOT living in an land locked area ANY WHERE!  He came up while  we were working on the wrought iron and tells me his real goal was to use the travel trailer to see how we did on it with the idea m and his brother would take turns hiring us to do work in his brothers RV rebuild place and his house.  He was trying  to "help" his bother since he apparently has trouble keeping people hired.  IN THIS ECONOMY?  That told me right there all I wanted to know.  When he old me that I about dropped my jaw to the ground.   After we go done working I told him we needed to solve the housing problem He allegedly went blank on ideas. He started griping about how I had not brought the boat., which he agreed to before we left. I gather his idea was that we would live in he boat when we found out the black mold was s to bad to stay in the travel trailer. I guess he figured he wold have us by the short hair and in a bind. I told him we were gong to go eat and he should text me if he had an idea. Spending  the night in a COLD mountain area in my van with two dogs and packed to the roof  was not my idea of how I wanted to live. Did not have enough cash left since I had spent ever thing  to just get there to do his job, so we headed south. Sleeping in the van is one ting but freezing  our butts of while doing it is a different horse altogether.
Yeah, I should have called OSHA or NLRB. I have something much more effective in mind. I am  letting providence deal with him.  Momma always said, what you do will ALWAYS come back to you and I expect he is going to get to walk a long walk in our shoes, sooner or later.




The good news is my son found him a place in a very nice area and is now on his own.
Me? I'm back in Oklahoma getting things set to up to deal with house. Have an unexpected gliche but nothing that can't be solved, It is just going  to delay selling house a bit. If your a praying person, do me a favor and pray the problem gets resolved so I can get house sold.


In the mean  time I am working on tiny things to get house  ready to go and working on the 16 foot challenger.


Sail safe but sail.

Landscaping: Plug it!

For the past couple of yard our yard has been dirt.  Plugs cost money. Reseeding with two active dogs seemed like a waster of time We had some old seed we thought would be to dead to plant but what the heck just in case, we threw back in the back yard to see what would happen. Believe it or not it came up. 

I looked at plugs. PLUGS are REALLY EXPENSIVE! All  a grass plug is is a chunk of grass root and all. Cutting our own to transplant in the front yard since its the beginning of spring and we are still here any way seems like an idea.
This is not a hard thing to do. You take a sharp knife cut through your grass down through the roots and into the dirt, then cut under it to get the roots. The thing s you wants LOTS OF ROOT!  Pull and you have the basis for a grass plug.  After I have a bunch  in the bucket, what I did was sit down and take a good look at each one. If it was large enough to cut into more  parts I did so. Its just like dividing house plants.

 

 This grass that we do have has not been cut yet this season, so we use  the same sharp knife to tip the plugs off. By tipping I means I cut the grass. We are literally gong to give the grass a hair cut. Make sure you do not take more then 1/ 3 off the top.

Plug Before Hair cut

 Now on to planting the plug.

 This is  not rocket science.

Dig a hole large enough for the plug. What we have been doing is digging 5 or 6 at a time  to keep the pattern right .

  Pour some miracle grow in the the hole.About 2 tablespoons is more then enough. I would use root stimulator but our car is down an I did not want to have to wait til we could go to a different store so we just not some regular miracle grow at Dollar General.

Plant the plug and your done with that one.

Looking good!

We did this in a couple of hours.

Floors: Bed and Bath

I don't know how well it will show on your monitor but the reflection of the door to the closet shows up really well. SHINY!!!!!

Except for a bit of caulking, trim board and plumbing  small bath room is done!

Bath

technology/Space Hurricne? Solar Storm? Either way its why I dont rely on "JUST"

Here is the text.

 GPS and all that may be a good thing . I don't want to become to dependent on any thing like that since one of these could theoretically wipe out the entire grid.

Taken off of Yahoo news. 

This story was updated at 1:28 p.m. EST.

A wave of charged particles from an intense solar storm is pummeling the Earth right now, which may trigger stunning aurora displays and cause minor disruptions to satellites over the next two days, NASA scientists say.

The storm began when a powerful solar flare erupted on the sun yesterday (Jan. 23), blasting a stream of charged particles toward Earth. This electromagnetic burst, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), hit Earth at about 9:31 a.m. EST (1430 GMT), according to scientists at the Space Weather Center at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"It's a minor to moderate storm," Yihua Zheng, a lead researcher at the Space Weather Center, told SPACE.com. "Probably in the next 10 hours or so, people at high latitudes can see auroras. This could maybe cause communication errors at the polar caps, but the magnetic activities are probably not too strong."

The northern lights displays will be especially visible for people in northern latitudes where it is currently night.
"For parts of Europe already, and further points to the east, we should expect to see strong magnetic storm conditions," Harlan Spence, an astrophysicist at the University of New Hampshire, director of its Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, told SPACE.com. "There's a very good chance tonight that we'll be seeing some very strong auroral displays. Typically auroras occur at relatively high latitudes, but for events like this, you could get auroras down at mid to low latitudes."

When a coronal mass ejection hits Earth, it can trigger potentially harmful geomagnetic storms as the charged particles and the fields within it interact with the planet's magnetic field lines. This can amp up normal displays of Earth's auroras (also known as the northern and southern lights), but a strong CME aimed directly at Earth can also cause disruptions to satellites in orbit, as well as power grids and communications infrastructures on the ground.

Yesterday's solar flare set off an extremely fast-moving CME, Zheng said, and the associated radiation storm was the strongest since 2005. But the ejected cloud of plasma and charged particles was not directly aimed at Earth, and is hitting the planet at an angle instead. This glancing blow will likely lessen any impacts on Earth, she added. [Photos: Huge Solar Flare Sparks Major Radiation Storm]

"Earth's magnetic field served as a shield, and pretty much shielded the radiation so that it doesn't penetrate that deep," Zheng said. "It's like a car collision: head-on or off to the side. A CME is like that too. For this one, if it was a direct hit, Earth would receive a much stronger impact. This one was on an angle — toward higher latitudes and a little off the ecliptic — otherwise it would be a much stronger impact."

Still, the storm does rank as the biggest space radiation event in about seven years, Spence said.

"It's not as big as some of the big, historic storms, but the chance for re-intensification is still possible because this active spot on the sun that created the initial havoc could go off again," he explained.

Several NASA satellites, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), and the Stereo spacecraft observed the massive sun storm. Data from these spacecraft were combined to help scientists create models to calculate when and where the CME was going to hit Earth.
"A CME is kind of like a space hurricane," Zheng said. "You have to predict how it will form and evolve. From the models, we can see which spacecraft will be in its path, and what will be impacted."
At the Space Weather Center, scientists were able to pinpoint the arrival of the CME more accurately than ever before.
"We predicted it would arrive at 9:18 a.m. and in reality, it arrived at 9:31 a.m., so ours has a 13-minute error," Zheng said. "Usually for this kind of model, the average error is seven hours, so this is the best case."

Yesterday's solar flare was rated an M9-class eruption, which placed it teetering on the edge of being an X-class flare, the most powerful type of solar storm. M-class sun storms are powerful but mid-range, while C-class flares are weaker.

The flare erupted from sunspot 1402, a region near the meridian of the sun that has been active for a while now, Zheng said. The powerful solar storm could be signaling that the sun is waking up after an extended period of relative dormancy.

The sun's activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle. The star is currently in the midst of Solar Cycle 24, and activity is expected to continue ramping up toward the solar maximum in 2013.

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of the auroras sparked by the solar storm, or other skywatching image, and would like to share it for a possible story or gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.

Do I need to say more?

Rude and Crude but it works danged it

Murphy's Law

 Some where in this house I am about 99.9999 % certain I have a 1/2 inch notched trowel for  ceramic tile work.  Murphy's law says if something can go wrong it will.  I'm betting some where there is a law that says after you go out and replace something you cannot find,  it will show up. Serendipity comes to mind.  You know, the one that says when you stop looking for something it will show up. I did some checking. One of the local hardware stores offered me a 5.00 discount off of a new  notched trowel. That's not a bad discount.  Money is tight and spending 11.95  on a tool for one small job like the wood stove surround, if I  don't have to, aint happening if I can figure this out. I can get the plumbing stuff for the sink or a new trowel.

  Time for the Dremel to earn  it's keep again.

It's rude and crude and did not cost me one red cent, unless your including the electricity to cut it out with the Dremel. It was fall off from all the plexiglass we used to replace windows  recently

 

Bath room lavatory pre cut

I put the sink on top of the counter upside down and  traced the sink outline. ( Outer marks)

Then I  measured the under side of the sink and marked inside the  tracing to know where I wanted to cut it.

 After cutting it out with  circular saw on  main lines and using a hand saw to get the corners it's ready to put the sink in.

Now all we have to do is go get the plumbing and we are done with it!

This week has been busy. We are finishing up the bathroom,. Have been installing trim, painting and all that good stuff. We are sanding the bath room floor to get it good and clean for vinyl tile to go down. I do not want any thing making the adhesive on the tile to not stick. I'm cheating.We are using the self adhesive tiles.  I had bought these to use in the kitchen. On a whim, becasue I really want to get this bathroom finished, I took them in there, They match the tan commode, sink and counter  my son picked out perfectly, so it's a done deal.

Wood Stove Surround Update

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are two photos.

You can see the ventilation holes in this photo. Once the tile is done there will be better balance between the intake and out put holes.

A close up some of the tiles I am planning on using for this.

Finally got the honey do shipping list pared down to just a few more items that need to be bought.  Finally I can start looking at boat equipment again! Yippppee!!!!!!!!!!    I ordered a puck GPS to go with the Open CPN. I have been playing around with the software just to get familiar with it. Down the road I want to be able to use sextant and old technology more then any thing. Lets face it the satellites are great and all that. GPS will tell you exactly where you are as will AIS. I don't have any thing against all that.  In the back of my mind I cannot shake this thought of what with the news reports of a major solar storms cycle being in progress, what good will GPS do if one of the solar flares they are talking  about as possibilities comes close enough to make an EMP that affects the satellites? The way I see it better safe then sorry.  Am I going to feel foolish if nothing like that ever happens? Absolutely not! Being prepared for worse case scenario is part of sailing the way I see it. Equipment breaks down. If I am not dependent on it, I do not have to worry about my trip being held up for lack of electronics.  For now I have a cheap plastic sextant  to use.  All I have to do is drill a hole in  it and put a lanyard through it to hang around my neck while I am using it so I don't accidentally drop it over board and I am good to go. Yes, eventually I want to get a better sextant. But I figure if  this cheap one is good enough to use as a back up it is good enough to use. as my main one until finances allow for a better one.

Logic of a group

 I posted a question about cells and providers on one of my groups. It has a rather lively discussion going on. That's the god thing  about yahoo groups . You ask a question and learn more then you ever thought you would know. Some really good ideas came out of it for  sailing and getting things done on the cheap. This is one of those make it work type of ideas that make me glad I found this group. Thanks Andrew


"LMAO  you reminded me about the log.  On my last sharpie i had rigged a copper toilet float with an eye screw and i could pull a string and drop it at the bow and time when it passed the stern to calculate my speed.  Crude but it worked well.  Especially Nice if you have a boat of even length like 25 or 30 feet."

Wet Cutting Cinder Block with a Dry Saw

If you have done any DIY your self you KNOW how expensive tools are. ESPECIALLY if you get specialty tools. We had to cut at least some of the blocks. There was no way around it.  First order of business was get  the right  saw blade for the job. I bought a diamond masonry blade. It cost me about 35.00. Not cheap but it will last a long time, especially when you consider I don't need to use something like this a lot.  Yes, I am keeping it. Once I am  living aboard, it goes in the "touch it and die" tool box.


We looked at our in house options.
1: Use the table saw.
2. Use the circular saw.
3. Rent a specialty saw. ( Renting  a specialty saw meant we still had to buy a blade.)


Our main goals:
Keep the saw and blade COOL!
Keep the dust down as much as is humanly possible.
Get all blocks cut and not destroy the blade,  the saw or the blocks..
Accomplish this ASAP.

Keeping the blade cool and dust down meant using water or doing a wet cut.  How to do that with a saw not designed for wet cutting was the question,. Solution was water down the blocks away from the saws,  then after the water has soaked in a bit, cut them as usual.

Next decision:
In doors now or wait until morning to do maybe an hours worth of work? Doing it tonight means the cement will be cured that much faster and I gain a day . Considering all the delays we have ran into getting an extra 12 - 18 hour  jump on this project would be a real bonus.
Decided if the circular saw would do the job then go  ahead and do it inside tonight.


Next decision: How to do it and NOT make a mess on a sanded floor that was not stained or poly-ed?
We took a large 30 gallon trash bag and spread it out on floor. The I found an old flannel sheet and folded it up until it was just a bit larger then the blocks to soak up any water that gets loose. That got put on top of the larger trash bag.  We added two short pieces of 2x4 on top of the folded sheet spaced appropriately to to support the blocks and wala we are good to go.

A large bowl of water and a cup to dribble a bit  of water on the area to be cut  and we are in business.

 I had marked the cuts with a pencil. The only problem was that as soon as you poured water on to the block the pencil marks disappeared. The cure was to make the first SHALLOW pass dry to mark the cut, then put water on and continue cutting.


Why the extra layer of 2" block?

If you remember the original post on this project there were big gaping holes at the back. The choice was cut full sized cinder blocks to fit those gaps OR make some sort of frame to hold in either cement or debris then top that debris off with cement to make it flat.  Neither idea appealed to me quite frankly. Making a straight cut across a single slab of cement such as we did tonight is one thing.  Custom cutting full blown cinder block to fit  is a horse of a completely different color. I just flat out did NOT want to go there!
When we moved the stove over I noticed that the pipe was not straight at the level the stove was at so we put  the 2" blocks under it and the pipe looked a lot better. How I did not notice it before I can't tell you. I just never noticed it was that slanted .

That solved the problem. Especially since I had enough blocks laying around.

Wood Stove Surround and Baggin The Coon.

Well I admit it I cheated . The more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me what was making this so slow was the fact I was throwing all these heavy blocks. Decided to get the guys involved. I basically did the cement work and the guys both chipped in on moving the heavier blocks in place so we could get this done faster.
It don't look to bad if I do say so myself.
Decided to try my circular saw to cut the  thinner blocks. We were not sure if it was heavy enough to do the job or not. My saw man looked at the thing and , yes, i will work. Read the directions the diamond masonry saw came with . It says to cool the blade down every 3 minutes with an air cut.  I timed it for first cut. It took  the saw man a bit under three minute to make a pass, adjust the blade depth for next pass  and repeat enough times to eventually cut through so that worked out well. One cut and cool blade and repeat. By the time he brought in the cut block and took the next piece back the blade was cool enough to cut .
 About 3/4 of a 3 gallon bucket of the local brand of Quick crete later and we have it this far.

You can see where we still have blocks to set in place.













This next shot is  one of the top drought holes. The surround is designed for room temp air to enter the hollow parts of blocks at floor level, heat and rise  by convection then come out the upper holes. The block also picks up a LOT of radiant heat that slowly releases long after the fire has gone out. It makes those cold winter mornings a lot more comfortable when crawling out of the sheets to start a fire. It looks really horrible at this point but once I have the ceramic tile in place it will look a LOT better.









Baggin'  A Coon


The other night I was working inside and all of a sudden BOTH dogs went off like a five alarm fire bell.  This is not something that happens a lot. Most people around here KNOW to not come into this yard unless one of us is standing right there letting you in.  I figured it must be someone walking down the road but since the dogs just flat out refused to shut up,  I let them out. Well they no more got to  the edge of the porch when all you know what broke loose. There was a full grown coon out there right at the edge of the porch. The coon got him self backed up close to  the front door porch hissing and spitting like it was completely crazy, with both dogs yapping at it one on each side, all three trying to get an advantage.
After about two or three minutes of this the coon noticed he had an escape route on the porch. Right now  I have a lot of stuff we are sorting through stacked up on the front porch. There is a spot that basically makes a tunnel to the side small enough that the dogs could not go through. Once that coon spotted it, you could see him hissing and spitting, back arched ready to attack, taking swipes at the dogs when ever they came to close,   with one eye on the dogs and one eye on that tunnel.  He watched for his chance and when it came, BOOM that coon was  GONE!


Any one I know would figure that this coon would be over the fence and gone lickety split after all that. That is not what happened. The dogs went off around the porch in the direction the coon has disappeared to which is to be expected. I figured that coon would be gone and the barking would die down momentarily. It did not,. After a few minutes my son went out to see what was going on. He put the dogs in the house still yapping like they had gone nuts and went back out side.  He came back to the front door hollering for me to hand him his shoes, socks and coat. Now my boy is 28 years old. I told him he is to old for Momma to be waiting on him like that,. to go get his own stuff. Then he told me he had the coon in  a bag. That was a good reason so I had him his stuff and he gets it on while holding this bagged coon.  That coon must have been awful hungry as he had found a dog food bag that must have had some crumbs in it and had crawled in. That is where he was when my son found him.



The coon was released unharmed into the woods down the road from us.