A Walk in the Woods

Sunday was a good day.  We got the kids all dressed up for our usual outing to the "Creepy Classics" held at the Long Center in the downtown.  We arrived on time, but were sad to see there were a ton of people standing outside.  The time came and went, and we were all still outside.  We believe there was a mix-up, and the show was cancelled for the day, but that information was not delivered.

So, we went to the Celery Bog and hiked around.  The weather was perfect at 60 degrees, and the sun was bright.  Kids were dressed up for fun, except our fireman got too hot in his vinyl coat and shed it quickly.

New Shelves

We moved 8.5 years ago.  In that time, the extra middle room in the basement has served as a catch-all for junk.  I decided to clean it up and organize it.  I hauled 8.5 years of junk out to another room and built some shelves.

So I hauled out the 8.5 years of garbage we haven't used, 

and I found a pool table under all that stuff.

And  ping pong table, too!!

Kids have been a having fun time with those.

At the moment, the new shelf is 3 layers (ground, middle, and top).  It is in the shape of an L.  The long portion is 16 feet long, and the short part is 6 feet long.  This is a ton of new storage for us, but I'm sure my wife will be able to fill it up with things we won't use until our kids have to throw it out when we die.

I chose a simple design for shelves.  Screw some 2x2s to the wall.  Uprights are 2x2s also.  The 2x4s up front prevents shelves from sagging under heavy loads of future useless items.  

The next step is to go through our 8.5 years of accumulated garbage and get rid of alot of it.  I don't plan to read any parenting magazines from 2006 after all.  And those cassette tapes?  All of our cassette players don't work because the internal rubber belts have dry rotted.  

It should be a fun winter project.

Practically Brand New

A few weeks ago, I finished the engine rebuild of my bro-in-laws chainsaw.  I have been waiting for a few parts from around the globe;
1.  Chain guides from Hong Kong
2.  New air filter from Oklahoma
3.  New chain from Florida
4.  New bar from Missouri
5.  New fuel line and impulse line from Shenzhen
6.  Rim sprocket from Michigan

The last of the parts finally arrived, and everything is assembled to its final design.

I've run it a handful of times with the old bar and chain to break it in.  I have yet to run it long and hard.  My break in sessions have only been 5 minutes or so.

As you can see, everything cleaned up real nice, and everything is just like new.  It's all so clean I nearly hate running it.

The new bar is an upgrade.  I couldn't file the warp out of the old bar, so a new one had to be had.  I upgraded from the standard 18 inch to the 24 inch.  With the upgrade in horsepower, the book tells me this could be done.

A new chain was purchased too.  This is the square full chisel chain.  The old chain on the 18 inch bar needed quite a bit of help and filing, and was the anti-kickback version.  This full chisel is more aggressive.

I sat my regular chainsaw next to the new beast.  The biggest and most noticeable difference might be the cleanliness.  Second would be bar length.

Fun days ahead. 

Next up - carburetor tuning to compensate for the larger piston bore.