Just found a couple interesting sites.

Haven't had a chance to really explore it. At a glance it looks interesting. Especially to someone like me that believes there is more than one way to skin a cat. Of course low tech isn't very fashionable any more.

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/

http://www.notechmagazine.com/

Woods

A Tribute

This is pretty much a continuation of the previous post. I intended to attack the mushroomed wedges with an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel. I didn't have a cutoff wheel and the wife had our one and only car. I wasn't going to walk 4 miles to a hardware store.

Well I wanted it done. I had two teachers who both passed away too young. Ray Bishop my science teacher and George Schaefer my shop teacher. This post is a tribute to both men.  Both believed in keeping the old ways as common knowledge. This afternoon I spent 45 minutes remembering George Schaefer. I recalled the day he taught me to properly use a hacksaw and file. The prepper side of me decided to use the old way rather than let the skill atrophy.

You can see the crack in the piece I cut from the large wedge. To be honest I was pretty skeptical myself when I started. It is a 1.5x2" piece of metal afterall. It made me glad I took the time to aneal them. Another 15 minutes chamfering the edges with a mill file and it will be done. Just think no noise , no electricity also no sparks or grinding dust all over the place. I did one side of the small wedge with a grinder. It took as long as doing two sides with a hacksaw.

Thank You George and Ray. You may not have known it when you were still here, those old skills are apreciated. Thanks for teaching me the proper use of hand tools. They really aren't that much work when you know what you're doing.

Woods

Rain Barrel Building 101

As most of my followers know, I work in a "home improvment store". During the spring and summer months it's not unusual to get a phone call from the plumbing dept. Almost always it's a question about building rainbarrels. Most people are looking for what's called a bulkhead fitting, because they got barrel building instructions off the internet. Our store doesn't carry bulkhead fittings, so, plumbing sends the person to me and I try to give the person instructions to build a barrel my way. This usually pisses the person off, because they got instructions off the internet and it's got to be the only right way to do it.

So I'm going to put my way on the internet, so it can be acknowledged as being a correct way too. By the way I've sold these barrels to people that don't want to build thier own. I've never had a complaint about my design.

So, lets get started.

First of all. You do not ever want a bulkhead fitting! Not Ever! Why you ask?
1) They are expensive
2) They usually leak or start leaking soon after being installed.
3) To use them you have to cut the top of the barrel open. Which is a bad idea because it causes an evaporation problem. It's also a bad idea because it turns your barrel into a mosquito farm.

Materials for this project are:
1) Food grade plastic barrel. $5-$10
2) 1/2" Hose bib $5.30
3) 2-3" of 2" pvc pipe $2.90 for 2 feet
4) 2" pvc male adapter $1.14
5) 3"x2" pvc coupling $2.98
6) 1/2" nylon male x barbed adapter $.60
7) 4" square of fiberglass window screen material free from my scrap pile
8) A length of 1/2" garden hose, again from my scrap pile.
9) A tube of Rectorseal pipe sealant. Not sure of the cost, less than three bucks and it has built at least six barrels.

Tools needed are:
1) Electric drill
2) 3/4" spade bit
3) Hammer
4) Punch or metal rod

First make sure your barrel didn't have something nasty in it. Just because it's a food grade barrel, doesn't mean it didn't have some industrial detergent of something similar in it. This barrel came from a cannery and had 10% strength white vinegar in it.

Next use your hammer and punch to remove the bungs from the barrel. One of the bungs will have a 2" pipe thread and the other will have a thread that I have only seen on barrel bungs. I should add here that you should be sure to have the bung with the special threads when you select your barrel. Throw away the bung with the 2" pipe thread on it and screw in the 2" pvc male adapter. Now place your piece of screen on the 2" side of the 2x3 coupling. Use your hammer to gently tap the short piece of 2" pvc pipe into the 2" side of the coupling. Trim the excess screen away. You can also now put the bung with the special threads back in place. I try not to overtighten the bung in case I want to get it off again.

Now place the other end of the short pvc pipe into the 2" male adapter. You've now created a funnel to place you downspout into. The screen will keep out mosquitos and also prevent debris from your roof from getting in.

Stand your barrel in front of you with the funnel farthest away. I keep the funnel side to the rear for reference. Decide which side you want your overflow on. In the case of this barrel I put it on the right side. Drill a 3/4" diameter hole about 2" from the top of the barrel. Here I am using the metal threads of the hose bib as a tap to make threads for the nylon hose adapter. Be careful on this step. Pipe threads are tapered, if you screw the hose bib in too far, you will make the threads aversize and they won't seal well. Screw it in about 1/3 of the way in.

Coat the threads of your nylon barbed adapter with rectorseal and screw it into the threaded hole you just made. Rectorseal is the only thread sealant I've found that works well. The plastic these barrels are made of will not take glue. All your seals must be mechanical in nature.

Lay your barrel on it's back and drill another 3/4" hole about 8" from the bottom. Coat the threads of your hose bib with rectorseal and thread it into this hole. The location of this hole can closer to the barrels bottom. Locating the hole here leaves about 10 gallons in the bottom of your barrel. At this height you can still get a bucket under the hose bib, when the barrel is on a 4" concrete block. Also by leaving some water in the bottom, the barrel is less likely to be knocked over when it's empty. If you locate the spigot closer to the bottom, you will have to raise the barrel up higher to get a bucket under it.

Here is your finished rain barrel. Ready to put in place under your downspout. After you have installed it, put a length of hose on the barbed adapter. Use a hose long enough to get the overflow away from your house. If you need alot of water, you can use a straight adapter and connect a second barrel.  Now you have free water for the garden. Also when the municipal water has problems, or when the power goes out and the well pump won't run, you have water. The perfect companion to the water purifier we built last week.

Be Prepared
Woods

Honest! It followed me home! Can I keep it?

Part of the big tool deal turned out to be this old cider/wine press. Around the fourth of july these two elderly sisters called me and asked if I would be interested in thier late fathers tools. Too bad thier fathers tools went through a basement flood and didn't have much value. Except to me. I'm the guy that has devoted his life to keeping older quality stuff out of the junk pile. I threw a offer at them and told them I'd be interested in the cider press under the junk pile in the garage, and a couple other items for an additional money of course. They took a few weeks to think things over and I'd forgotten all about it. Then one day the phone rang and we met to talk things over. This time I took my photo album with me to show off my handywork. After looking at my other cider presses they decided I should have the cider press included with the tools. I can picture this thing refinished in food grade gray powdercoat with black legs. Unfortunately there isn't room in the workshop to keep it. There is only one wine/cider press allowed to have permanant residency on this homestead. I do know another urban homesteader that's been hounding me for a cider press. And he's an electrician! I can fix anything, but, if I can I hire out electricity. So, A swap has been propsed. My workshop may get electricity yet! Besides that this 100+ year old house needs some things fixed that are beyond my abilities. He gets cider and wine, I get peace of mind knowing my home won't burn down in the middle of the night. Sound like a plan to me! If any of my readers has information on Juicy Fruit brand fruit presses, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to know more about this thing.

The unintended collection

WOW! It's been almost two months since I last checked in. Summer is our busy time. I should have taken time to post, but, didn't.


Last time I posted I was showing off one of my custom cheese presses. I also make/restore presses of a different flavor. These are rapidly becoming favorites. This summer I tackled two restoration projects between working on our 105 yr old home, gardening, foraging, and working at a job.







That large cider press on the left looked like this when my DW Pelenaka dragged it home from a yard sale last fall. She paid a whopping $20.00 for it. There wasn't a good stick of wood in it. The big acme screw was siezed into the cast iron crossbar. With winter closing in I didn't get much done last year. As soon as it was out of the car I started soaking it liberally with KROIL penetrant. Best stuff ever made as far as I'm concerned. On the second day I started gently playing a propane torch over the area where the screw passed through the casting. Every day I followed the torch with another shot of KROIL as soon as the metal cooled. After about a week the screw would move back and forth maybe 1/8 of an inch. Then the rawhide mallet came out to tap the screw back and forth. After half an hour it would turn just as it was designed to do. It turns out the previous owner greased it with lard before leaving it out in the weather for the next 20 years. The KROIL broke the rust loose and the heat melted the old grease out. Now the screw has some pitting where it was stuck inside the casting. Not enough to affect operation though. With snow and foul weather on the horizon the old press was greased up and tarped until nicer weather could arrive. When july rolled around and I finally got back to it. I laminated a bunch of fir 1x4's to make a new frame. You may ask why I didn't just make it from maple like it was to begin with. The answer, as it sits today this press weighs close to 100lbs. Using the fir gave me strength, but saved many pounds of weight. Three coats of Krylon white make for easy cleanup. The old basket bands were from a different press and were so oversize you had to fight to get them in and out of the press. So, new ones were made from nice no rust aluminum. All the fasteners that might come if contact with juice are stainless steel. Slata sre red oak treated with Boo's Mystery Oil. Good stuff a bit pricey at $16 a pint, but well worth the price. A new press disk was made from a plastic cutting board. All this effort was made in an attempt to simplify cleanup. It's nice being able to just spray it down with a hose when you're done pressing.

The black press looked worse than this when we found it on somebodies lawn 2 years ago. Covered top to bottom with rust at least it was functional. I shot the red paint and cleaned the loose rust away so we could make our first three gallons of home made cider. Pelenaka hated the red, so when I finally got serious about doing the rebuild last year, I scrounged up some food safe black paint. New red oak slats and a bunch of stainless fasteners really made a difference. I did make one concession to technology when it came to the press disk. That was cut out from a heavy duty resaurant cutting board. When we're done pressing we just spray it down with a hose and wipe some oil on the slats to preserve them until next year. Last year we finally aquired a proper fruit grinder to prepare pomace. Prior to this we used a food processor. This brought a doubling of production and we could have done more if the wind hadn't knocked down all the wild apples before we could get to them.

The little green wine press was another of this summers projects. Found burried in a pile of junk next to an antique shop. It had somebodies version of a home made basket, made from galvanized pipe hanging strap and some entirly too small pine slats. A little grinding to smooth out the casting was all it needed before a coat of food grade paint was applied. Some new aluminum basket bands and some maple slats held in place with stainless screws finished the project.

The big white one is available if somebody wants it. The same for the green wine press. The black one isn't for sale. $300.00 takes the white one and $100.00 takes the little green one. I'll consider taking an anvil, forge , or hand cranked drill press in trade. I am also willing to buy more old presses to fix up. I can fix up your press if you have one needing restoration.

Woods