Afternoon project

A preface; I suffer from tough migraines, and today was not a good day. I did work my day job, but had to lie down after, to recoup. A couple of hours rest and I felt like doing a simple afternoon project.

A while back (before the big Covid outbreak) I picked up a kitchen table with extensions, to use as a work bench/surface. A couple of weeks back I also picked up a 1m x 1m sheet of cold rolled steel, to use in projects. Now, because of the new welder, I decided I wanted to have a metal surface/work bench to use as a welding table, and this was right in my mind. Had to cut a bit off the sheet, but an angle grinder and a cut off wheel did that job easy.

All in all I spent under 30 minutes on this, and now I have a great working surface to also weld on. The table can no longer “fold” together, but I don’t mind. Not in my use anyways.

Right now, I sitting here waiting for a confirmation on a new pickup it looks like I scored. It was listed for free, I jumped right on it, but the seller said it was gone in under a minute. Then, while working on the table, I got a message “He reconsidered and didn’t want it. You still interested?”. I answered Yes right away, but for almost an hour now there’s not been a confirmation. Might have to wait and pick up tomorrow, or I might have to pass as well ✋

Update;
Got the go-ahead to pick up the mower, an address about 25 minutes from me. Was told it was set outside the gate, and to just pick it up. Drove to where the GPS told me, but couldn’t find a house number and certainly no mower outside a gate. A BIG drive around to get back into this one way street, and by chance I saw a guy with a mower that matched the pictures… Stopped and sure enough, it was the one.

The guy told me it was one that was left at the house he bought, and that he had put fresh gas in it and pulled, but no luck. That’s fine and dandy and I can’t wait to dig in.
Now, tomorrow is Ascension Day, so no day job and probably no noisy work outside (no starting of mower) but I might just do some welding, because the weather has warmed up nice 😃

Project, started a few weeks ago

Over a decade ago, my mother was given a rototiller from a family friend, and it was an old thing that actually required leaded fuel! It worked great the first few years, as long as we bought an addition to be mixed with the unleaded fuel.

Then, it just stopped working and the engine was nothing to save. It has been sitting for many, many years but it’s time to try and get it going again. A couple of years ago I put a lawnmower engine on it, but that was a bust. To get that to work, I would have to swap out the flywheel on the motor… If you have a look at my YouTube channel, you can see a project I did some years back, the Ariens RM lawn tractor. That machine bit the dust after staying in the weather, but the engine should be saveable.

I took the engine off both machines, and was about to swap the pulleys when I discovered the difference in axle diameter. That put the whole project on hold while I try to uncover a new or used pulley. Called around to different sellers, scrapyards, shops and private people to no real avail. The only lead was a chain of shops called TOOLS, that sells (amongst thousands of products) pulleys and bosses. Measuring, calling, re-measuring and what not the other day I finally bought a pulley and boss but man… the price was up there!

I am hoping to get going again this week on this project, but I have hurt my back pretty bad so I have to focus on my day job Mon-Fri. Hope the coming weekend is better, and that I have a possibility of working and filming the next steps.

Please have a look at the video (I’m still learning this type of filming) and comment and share with your friends. I have lot’s of video projects in mind 😉