More together than before

October 13, 2007 (5:52am)

23º F, Clear, No Wind.

Good morning,

There is a new, very nice smell in the Hobbit Hus. One that has not been there before - fresh, homemade, sour cream apple pie! One of the best smells that can be inhaled by this Old Norwegian. It my favorite pie of all time and has been since I was a kid. Margriet built two of them yesterday. One for us and the other for an ecumenical harvest dinner today. She finished them last night about the time for bed, so didn’t get a chance to sample them - yet. Might be good for breakfast.

When I woke up this morning and looked out the window, the grass was white. No not from snow, but it was down in the very low 20's, causing a very hard frost. There was some snow in the Iron River area yesterday morning though. Folks were saying that it was sticking on elevated surfaces, like pine trees, car roofs, &c. Some of the flakes were very large. Would expect that with the “warm” temperature of the snowfall. We are very anxious to see Guds Nordtre in white. Suspect we might see that often and for some time too.

Finally got the steering of the Fjord complete yesterday (except filling the steering box with oil) and started to put back some of what I had to take off to get near the bearing needing replacement. Hardest part was remembering where everything went, even with the pictures in the manual. The dirtiest part of the deal was cleaning the air cleaner. It is an oil bath air cleaner with about 2" of oil in the bottom. When I took it apart, there was not any oil, but the oil had been replaced by at least a 2" layer of grease and sludge - a solid mass. There also is a filter made from more or less a very coarse and large steel wool pad. It also was totally plugged. The rest of the filter case was just as dirty. I left the outer case and the steel wool pad soaking in parts cleaner until Monday. Won’t be long and the hood can go back on and we will see if we can get it running again after changing the oil, filter, starter Bendix, and antifreeze (with new hoses).

Once that is complete, I need to change one rear tire, lift arm, and grease it. Then I can start putting on the front end loader. Am looking forward to that last part for sure. I bought Margriet a new snow shovel, but am sure she will be happy to have the Fjord do some of the snow moving for her. Besides, I need it to do some other things, like skidding logs and doing some other things.

Eli started to work on the wood furnace too. He discovered a hole in the firebox so is repairing that by relining the interior with ¼” plate. The fire box needed to be cleaned of the accumulated soot and ash before being sandblasted. He had to crawl inside (no small feet for as big of a dude as he is) and chip it off with an air chisel. That is not a pleasant job with all of the noise and the incredible dirt involved. The furnace was inside of the shop. I had to get out of the building a couple of times thanx to the noise.

The firebox is a 36" diameter pipe, more or less, about 30" long. Eli had two pieces of ¼” plate rolled to the proper diameter, each to cover half of the inside. I will be interesting to see how he gets them inside through the door. Not too sure how he will do the back wall, but suspect it also will be in two pieces also. Sure will be a lot of welding - in a 3' cave. Even with a wire-feed welder, should not be fun!

Eli’s son, Mick, came back from his National Guard sojourn to Arizona on Wednesday and is a character just as his Dad is. There is a lot of Eli in Mick. Both are very sharp guys and pretty good craftsmen, in spite of how their shop looks. Mick said he started to work in the shop when he was 8 years old, now about 35 +/- years old I would say. He has served two tours in Iraq, being wounded both times by IED’s. He said that being shot at isn’t fun, but being blown up is really not good. He and his Guard unit will be spending 5 weeks on the Mexico border at the end of November and December, between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

They really have some big equipment. Two lathes have 8' beds and on with I think a 12' bed. All have overhead cranes to place bigger jobs on them! They also have a couple very large horizontal milling machines and a vertical milling machine. They also have a couple “little” lathes - the size I taught with. Their vertical milling machines are the same as I taught with, as is one of the horizontal milling machines. I really do enjoy being there and with them. It is probably a good thing the shop is in Iron River rather than Crystal Falls. I think I would spend a lot of time there instead of what I should be doing.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><