After finishing the slab or the whole house generator I ended up with some leftover concrete. I also had a post that was sitting in a drilled out hole along the east fence line, right at the end of the midway where the gates would go that would allow access to the greater yard. I decided to take care of this problem and concrete that post in. Since I still had plenty of concrete left over I decided to get a couple more posts and plug another post hole that I drilled out as well and sink the second post along the east fence line as it passes the garden. Reason for this is: first, I get more of the east fence line established so later once the posts are all sunk, I can start tacking up panels without interruption, and: two, I can get things set up to have the gates assembled on the posts that would make up the ends of the east gate.
With the posts sunk and the concrete cured, I started on the assembly of the two gate kits that I had sitting outside on top of a dog house for a long time. This was one of those deals where we picked up something with the intent to use it but never got around to it then more and more things came up that kept us from working with that hardware until we end up where we are now, which is finally working on the gate assembly after the packing of the boxes rotted away from the elements. I started off with one gate, getting the frame assembled and hung on one post, making sure all is solid and straight before moving on to the next gate frame. With the first gate done, I quickly got the second gate put together. Unlike the first post, I had to assemble the gate hinges at a different height on the second post as the ground is at a slight grade, making the first post be lower than the second post. With some help, after getting the second gate lined up with the first gate I was able to get the second set of hinges established in order to get the second gate hung in place. From there I bolted up the gate latches, latching the two gates together to ensure everything is lined up properly. With that, the east gate frames are established. They will need 2x4's to reinforce them, along with the pickets that will fully complete the gates, even before we get the fence panels hung along the fence line. The last order of business for this session was the preparation of a section of the garden for some new raised beds. I had already dug up the old raised bed that was set up here and smoothed out the ground to be level with the rest of the walkways around the area. I just needed to lay a bunch of gravel down over all of this area to cover up everything and have it ready for when I do make the raised beds that will go over all this. After getting the load of gravel and spreading it out all over the area, I also took time to remove an old drum raised bed that we've been using for years. This bed was made from a metal drum half with pipes for legs. I made a duplicate bed that had long since rusted and been disposed of. This bed was on its way to the same fate so I emptied the dirt into a spare plastic garbage can and moved the old bed out of the way to get the gravel over the space the old bed sat. I spread more gravel under the other new raised bed we set up next to this old bed, covering up more bare ground along the garden fence line. With the gravel laid over all this ground, I'll be better able to treat the ground to keep weeds from propping up, especially along the fence line. With that I'll be ready for the raised beds. I have two large drums that will each be used to make a drum raised bed consisting of the two drum halves side by side in a single table bed, much like the other drum beds made of smaller drums. Of course this bed, using the larger drums, will be much larger and heavier than the beds using the smaller drums. There is plenty of room in the area where the gravel was laid to accommodate two large beds with plenty of spacing around both. Also with the micro irrigation lines being present from the sprayers that were used in the ground raised bed, I already have the irrigation on site, I'll just need to add some extra hose to get the lines up to the beds.
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With the major work on the Dodge coming to an end to the point that this car will be ready for the road more sooner than later, I started doing more work on the FMT. The last installment had me modifying the fuel pump/sending unit assembly to install back in the front fuel tank, then hanging the fuel tank back in the truck and hooking everything up to complete the fuel system on the truck.
As the title states, the next order of business was the installation of the ignition key cylinder back into the steering column. This was pretty quick as it just involved aligning the internal switch gear so I can insert the cylinder all the way in where everything locks in place. Once the cylinder was installed and confirmed working properly, the next order of business was installing the clutch/brake pedal assembly. To do this, the first thing that I had to do was remove the old brake pedal assembly. This unit is smaller than our clutch/brake assembly since it's not supporting a clutch pedal or clutch master cylinder. The other thing that had to be done was remove the brake booster from the firewall since the four studs on the brake booster hold the pedal assembly in place, along with a couple more bolts. I also had to disconnect the steering column and set it aside to give myself more room to maneuver the clutch/brake pedal assembly into place. I also had to remove the blocking plate that covered the clutch master cylinder hole. I definitely needed the extra room to move the larger pedal assembly into place. The studs on the clutch master cylinder portion of the pedal assembly helped hold the whole works into place while I installed the two bolts at the top of the assembly that held it in place like it's supposed to. With the pedal assembly set up, I was able to reinstall the brake booster so the four previously mentioned studs can be secured to get the pedal assembly completed as needed. Several fasteners later and the pedal assembly was in place, complete with the brake master cylinder rod hooked up to the brake pedal along with the brake light switch. The steering column went back up just as well. I will of course have to get a clutch master cylinder along with the rest of the clutch system to get that whole section of the truck done. Of course that will go parallel to installing the engine and transmission on the truck. On a lighter note, I also took time to vacuum the whole inside of the truck out so I don't get as dirty when I end up having to sit on the floor to work on some item inside the truck. At this point now, the next thing I need to do is trace the circuits for the gauge cluster so I can isolate the circuits that would've fed the gauges so I can try to reuse the stock gauges versus buying and installing some aftermarket gauges. Slowly but surely this project truck is coming together.
After finishing the making of the door panels, it was time for me to install them on the doors of the Dodge. This would involve putting the panel on the door release for support, while lining up the screw holes for the armrest so I can get the armrest in place. This really wasn't that bad since the door release held the panel in place. Once I got the armrest secured with its two screws, I was able to install the metal lever to the door release mechanism to complete both of those components. With the armrest and door release lever in place I was able to then plot the holes that I would drill through both the panel and the door body to place the sheet metal screws and their respective washers to further hold the door panel in place on the door shell. Another thing I had to do was trim the window crank hole to a larger size since the hole wasn't perfectly lined up with the window crank knob. After using a box cutter knife to whittle away material, I enlarged the hole enough to allow me to install the window crank and secure it. This had to be done on both door panels. There was a metal piece that divided the original door panel from the top door panel piece. This long metal piece had to come off to accommodate the homemade door panel since the dimensions of my panels are going to be slightly different. That's fine since these panels are to be temporary anyway. As for the screws, I placed six screws into the panel. There are four screws for the four corners of the panel and two more along the bottom, evenly spaced from the two end screws near the bottom. With these fasteners in place the door panels were nicely secured to the door shells, along with their armrests and door release levers. Everything looked pretty good and the doors even closed with no issue from the panels. The next thing I was able to get done was installing the 2nd pair of headlight housings that I had been waiting for. I got the LED bulbs just as well and since I had the H4 plugs pre-wired, all I had to do was remove the headlight bulb rings and swap out the old sealed beams with the new round housings, which I had already installed the LED bulbs. Plugging the bulbs up and installing, this whole procedure went pretty fast. Of course when I turned the headlights on to the high beam setting the four lights all coming on at the same time were pretty bright. I'm sure this will light up the road pretty good but that's the whole idea. With the headlights done on the car, along with the door panels, the next order of business will be to make templates so I can reproduce the side panels that go in the backseat area under the side windows. These will be similar to the door panels as I have to accommodate armrests and window cranks. I'll do everything just as I did with the door panels and from there, may look at trying to produce other interior panels for the inside of the sails going up to the ceiling as well as a panel to cover for the backseat area to block off the trunk area. Since I'm not going to be installing a back seat any time soon the least I can do is try to build up the interior to make up for this missing piece of the interior to at least try to make the interior of the car look better. Doing these little things will go a long ways towards making the interior of the car more comfortable aesthetically, at least until I can get the right components to complete the interior in the future. I also plan on getting a new wiper motor to replace the weak old wiper motor that's currently in the car. I did get it to work but it was weak and its reliability is very questionable so with the availability of new aftermarket wiper motors for a very reasonable price, I had to just go ahead and replace this item. At this rate there's really not much left to do before I can really put this car on the road comfortably. The last place we left off regarding the homemade door panels for the Dodge was with the cutting of the final base panel that would be used for holding the skin that would be put on the boards. Holes were cut for the armrest mounting holes and door latch and window crank knob, along with the corners to match the contours of the door shell. I just had to find the right material for these panels. Since I planned on making the car blacked out inside, it only fit that I make the door panels be black, but what material would be appropriate? I decided on a vinyl material as many interiors on these old cars were made of vinyl. I ended up having to go to Hobby Lobby to find a large selection of different colored vinyl in rolls approximately 3ft wide. They sold the sheets by the yard and in the case of the vinyl I picked, it was $10 a yard. I picked a black sheet that had the plain vinyl pattern with no fancy designs stamped into the material. This would fit perfectly with a car door panel. With the measurements of the door panels, one yard was more than enough to supply me with the material to completely cover the panels with some overlap. This would be perfect as I would want to be able to glue the overlapping material behind the boards to get a better overall look and better adhesion where the chances of peeling back are minimized. At this point I had to lay out the sheet vinyl and put the panels down so I can cut out the individual sheets for each panel. Once that was done it was time to spray the adhesive down. I went with Permatex spray adhesive for car headliners and other interior materials. This stuff has to be sprayed onto the surfaces to be glued and allowed to sit for 5 minutes to partially dry before actually pressing the materials together. Before spraying the glue down I had to lay the vinyl sheet on the board and work the creases out of the material so when I start pressing the sheet onto the sticky surface of the glue on the board, the creases won't hold afterward, ruining the work. Once the creases were worked out of the vinyl I sprayed a liberal amount of adhesive onto the board, the side that would be considered the outside, and let it sit as per the instructions. Once that time passed I laid the vinyl sheet, outside end down, then got the edges lined up with the edge of the panel and slowly rolled the vinyl onto the sticky panel, getting the inside of the vinyl sheet laid onto the glue. I carefully worked the sheet across, making sure the material was laid perfectly flat on the board's surface, working further down the board laying more material down, repeating the same thing gradually every couple of inches until I finally had all of the vinyl inside end down on the glued surface of the board. I further worked the material to make sure no air bubbles were present and that the vinyl was crease free. With the panel glued to the vinyl sheet I flipped the works over and made several cuts at the corners on the overlapping material. These cuts were made where the corners are at diagonal angles or curves. Reason behind this is the cuts will create tabs that will more easily fold over to the backside of the panel, even when they overlap each other, making for a neater fold over when everything is glued down. Since this side of the panel isn't visible, it doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing, just neat enough that there won't be a risk of any material pulling up later on. Excess overlapping vinyl material glued in place around the edges of panel #1. Note the extra adhesive still showing past the vinyl that's folded over. Also note how the material, being cut in several places, allowed for the material to be more easily folded over, even with overlapping over other vinyl material. I sprayed a narrow patch of adhesive along the edges of the panel and on the flaps/tabs of vinyl, letting it all sit for 5 minutes. Once the time lapsed I was able to fold the material over and easily press everything together to hold nicely on the panel board, completing the fold over of extra material. With the overlapping material addressed I was able to flip the panel back over and cut the material from the holes that were cut in the panel board to accommodate the door latches and other stuff on the door. With that done I moved on to panel #2. Of course panel #2 was pretty much a repeat of panel #1, with the exception that the experience gained from panel #1 allowed me to more quickly do panel #2. It was the same, aligning the panel board with the vinyl sheet then placing the vinyl in a way that allowed me to roll out the material onto the board once the adhesive was ready. Once the vinyl sheet was glued in place I flipped the panel over and made all the necessary cuts to the excess vinyl around the edges of the panel and sprayed the adhesive on a couple of sections at a time so I don't get overwhelmed trying to get all the flaps secured around the edges of the panel. Slow and steady wins the race here. With everything done I was able to cut the holes out on this panel as well. By the time I get around to drilling the holes in these panels to accommodate the screws and washers to mount them to the doors, the glue will have had plenty of time to set. As stated before, the holes will be positioned in the corners and the middle, in a way to try and make everything look as "original" as possible. I'll try to have the holes be in the same position on both panels, especially where the middle holes will be at. I'm going to try and use smaller washers with a minimum of material sticking out, more than likely I'll spray black paint on the washers to help mask them so they don't contrast against the black vinyl material. I could've went through the extra hassle to try and match up the clip points on the door where I would've used the original panel clips to secure these panels to the door but because these are temporary and I plan on getting the stock panels that have their unique design for this car, there's no need to go through the extra legwork trying to make these panels fit like the originals. Now if I was unable to get replacement panels I would definitely be trying to add the panel clips since I would have to keep these panels in place. But either way it goes, this was an introduction to making some interior pieces for a car, using cheap materials readily available at any local hobby/craft store and hardware store. Really these panels were made for about $20 in materials all together. That's factoring in if I bought both panels, since one of the panels was a salvaged piece of wall paneling. If you can manage the same thing, then making a pair of door panels can cost you less than an average lunch. With a major focus being turned to the garden, many things are going on within the grounds of this area. One of the major things, after clearing all the weeds and other unwanted foliage, is the spreading of gravel. With all the old beds pulled up from the fruit tree areas and the remaining trees and bushes trimmed down to reasonable levels, I can now spread gravel with freedom, not worrying about much getting in the way. Of course after I do finish covering these grounds, I will be better able to come over these graveled grounds with more raised drum beds and hydroponic assemblies, not worrying about grass and weeds springing up through the dirt of these elevated gardens. I've been spreading the gravel, extending out from the greater patched areas, reaching out more and more to cover the bare grounds. Speaking of raised beds, there was one more ground level raised bed that I had to address. I was using it but because its on the ground, it's plagued with constant weed infestation to the point that it gets back breaking to maintain. The wood used to form the bed is on its last leg just as well, due to the inevitable rot that occurs when wood is in contact with the ground for too long. I went ahead and pulled up all the weeds first, spreading them out into the greater yard outside of the fenced in area as I did not want to transplant a bunch of weeds to another area where I'm trying to get rid of weeds. With the weeds gone I was able to dig up the dirt that was in the garden originally. I did not want to reuse this dirt for the same reason, weeds. If I put this dirt in a raised bed, the roots will pick up and infest the beds with more weeds. This dirt was spread out on the softer areas of the garden where I still need to spread gravel. At least if weeds do grow up they can be pulled, if I don't manage to cover the ground with gravel by then. With the last raised bed cleared away I took the time to cut up the boards that I removed from the site, since they were in the middle stages of rotting on one side due to the contact with the dirt on the inside of the garden. I could've used the wood for more firewood but the truth is I have enough tree trunks to cut and split that I don't need to try and salvage this wood as well, being oversaturated, it would take much longer for it to dry out to be usable anyway. I cut the wood into small enough pieces to stack around the remaining bit of stump wood so I can dispose of all this wood when I do another brush pile burn. From here I turned my attention to splitting some logs that were cut from the trunks of the Fallen Trees at an earlier date. I have a large number of logs spread around the ground in front of the stack of trunks that I've been slowly working on the splitter to get the wood processed and stacked on the firewood staging area piles. So far I'm covering up the available pallet space at a good rate, despite there being no real end in sight yet for the trunks being cleaned up. There's a probability that I'll cover up the available pallet space before I get all the tree trunks cut and split into usable firewood. My main goal with the Fallen Trees is to clear the logs from the areas that will be within the fenced in area, when I do get the fences up. By getting these logs cleared, I can then clear the remaining weeds and weed trees from the area, opening up the grounds enough to auger holes for fence posts. Once I get this far in the fence project, I can then focus on getting the rest of the compound closed in, even before fully clearing the Fallen Trees from the area. I also plan on clearing a path along the southern fence line just like I did on the northern fence line just as well so movement all the way around the compound fence will be easier.
With all the work being done on the Dodge and the available tech, it was obvious that we would upgrade the headlights on the car. For those of you who don't know, older cars such as these used sealed beam round headlights that were halogen and not really bright compared to modern day headlights. Of course the aftermarket always comes through and takes care of us. In this case, that aftermarket has provided an upgrade to the sealed beam headlights, which is a headlight shell that accommodates H4 bulbs. We did this upgrade on the 69 Mustang a couple years ago with great success so we decided to do the same to all of the older vehicles that use sealed beam headlights. The headlight housings we picked up for this vehicle were of the type where the lens mimics the old style sealed beams. We found housings that had diamond pattern lenses and other new age designs that would've looked tacky on an old vehicle like this. It's nice to just keep things original looking, since people will know these are not stock headlights soon as they come on.
I started off with a pair of the housings since I didn't want to spend too much in one shot getting two pairs to accommodate the four headlights on the car. I still had to get the LED H4 bulbs to put in these housings as well so that would've further added to the total cost for four lights. The two lights I'm putting in were going to be for both the low beam and high beam. I rewired the car so that the lights would only come on when the ignition is on so even when the switch is left on, the lights will go off when the key is off. I also had to rewire the inner bulbs on each side to serve as the high beam only bulbs, where both low and high beam lines are wired together so only when the high beams get power will the entire bulb come on. Installing these housings and their associated bulbs was rather easy. Since the plugs were already wired up, it was just a matter of inserting the bulbs into the housing, snapping the retaining clips in place to hold the bulbs in their housings then just place them in the headlight buckets, securing them with their associated headlight rings. The rings have three slotted screw holes that help hole the ring in place around the headlight. With the two bulbs in place and their respective headlight rings holding everything together, it was time to test everything out. As usual, these LED's impressed me soon as we turned them on. They lit up the wall nicely and when the high beams were turned on, damn! The wall was brightly lit by just the two lights. I can't even begin to imagine how bright that'll be when all four headlights are in on high. That little quartet will be blinding. But regardless of that, once I get all four lights in, that will check another box on the list of things to do on the Dodge to get it fully ready to hit the road. All that's really left to do on the Dodge now before I can be confident enough to say "let's hit the road", are the door panels, which I started working on; replacing the wiper motor with a fresh unit, despite the old one still working, albeit weak; the radiator needs replacing due to some small leaks in the core that will have coolant leaked out in a few days, and will probably spray out under the temps and pressure of coolant at regular operating temperature; and I have to troubleshoot and fix the charging issue on the car. These are all minor things that will get done rather fast, its just a matter of getting the things I need to finish these tasks and finally put the car on the road once and for all.
As you know, I've been working on the double stump for some time, enough so that I finally killed the drive sprocket on the chainsaw. After finally getting a replacement sprocket to fix the saw, I went back to work on the double stump. Of course to eat an elephant you do it one bite at a time. In the case of this elephant, I had to chop away at it one small section at a time. This stump, being as large as it is, was only able to be hit one section at a time, due to the fact that even the 18" blade of the saw couldn't reach all the way through the whole width of the stump. In the beginning I did save a few fair sized chunks of stump wood to split into firewood but after a while I said fuck it and started throwing all pieces cut out into the burn pile. The burn pile has some larger stump chunks that I've been burning away little at a time and adding to it as I cut more away. More than likely the stump wood would end up being some very tough wood to split and more than likely need a lot of work to get it to finally split, like some other logs I had issues with. Besides, there's more than enough logs/trunks to cut and split into future firewood that there's no need for me to try and save a few chunks of problematic wood. Off to the burn pile it goes! After repairing the saw and swapping out to a new chain I finally went all in and got the stump chopped clean away. At the angles I cut the stump, I left a depression in the center that is below the ground level, enough so that I can fill it in with dirt to try and level things off. It's not perfect but its good enough that we may be able to roll over it with the mower deck at a high setting. Either way, we can work around these remains without much issue. If I go to build or set up anything, the remains of the stump won't get in the way. After letting the concrete slab cure for another day I felt confident enough to move the generator onto the platform to conclude that small part of the project. Of course this thing is heavy as hell so it took the both of us and the removing of a couple of panels to allow us to get a better grip on the body of the unit so we can slowly move the thing up onto the slab. We reoriented the genny to where the access panel is facing away from the house, which also oriented the conduit ports in the direction of the power pole. After looking at the transfer switch that came with the genny, I did find out that the unit has to be mounted in the house next to the breaker panel. All of the circuit breakers on the old panel will have to have their lines transferred over to the transfer switch, more or less making the transfer switch be the new house breaker panel. Because the trailer house doesn't have a lot of breakers, it would damn near render the old breaker box useless since the transfer switch has pretty much the same number of breakers as what is used in the old box. Because of this, I have to look around and see if there's a transfer switch that is intended to be used at the meter outside where the main breaker is located. This would make things a lot easier as far as hooking things up, since I would be working the same number of breakers this way as I would with the original eight breaker transfer switch. Another thing I decided to start on was making a couple of door panels for the Dodge. Even though we did get the engine in the car and do a quick start up, we did find that the intake gaskets were leaking at the water jacket and pissing water into the intake valley, putting water into the crankcase and ruining the oil. We had to remove everything from the top and clean it all up so we can install new gaskets and make doubly sure that the intake was torqued down on all bolts all around, almost using the same torque technique for cylinder heads, which is alternating around the multiple bolts until they were all confirmed secured. When we tightened one bolt on one end it would cause the intake to move and twist enough to loosen up one of the other bolts on the opposite end of the intake. This is apparently what happened the first time and it caused the gaskets to not sit properly, causing the leak. Anyway, back to the door panels. Why make panels? Because replacement units for this car are around $400. This is not to say I won't get a set of the stock panels as I want to restore the car to a stock appearance, but for the time being to help put the car on the road in a more comfortable manner, I'll make a couple of door panels to cover the doors and allow me to put the armrests and everything back on. To do this I had to start off with making a template out of cardboard, with which I'll use to trace out the final panel on some lauan plywood panel and a piece of old house paneling. I took the cardboard template and traced the outline for the two door panels on the two boards previously mentioned. From there I took these outside and cut the base panels out then drilled and cut out the holes as marked. Later I'll test fit these panels to trim them as needed prior to the final stage of the project, which is the skin. My plan here with these panels is to find some type of material like a vinyl or something that is similar in thickness and toughness to the vinyl used in the car's original door panel. I can glue the bulk sheet of material to the door panel then cut out the holes from the skin. From there I will find some decorative washers that I can then use to hold screws that would be used to secure the panels to the doors. The screws would be mounted at the corners of the panel and in the middle to have some symmetry and look somewhat factory. Once I put the armrest molding and other hardware back on the door, it will hopefully look pretty normal, all things considered. I don't have the luxury to add any kind of chrome accents like on the original panels but for now this will tide me over until I can free up the money to get the original panels. After waiting for a couple of months due to a backorder, we finally got our whole house generator. This generator is a Generac brand, 7500 w, propane powered generator. The machine has automatic electric start, like most whole house gennies, and automatic switching via a transfer switch. We had to haul the thing back on our trailer since putting it in the bed of the F250 would make it impossible for us to get it back out since we don't have a forklift. Anyway, the first thing that we had to do was make a slab for this thing to sit on. I had already made the frame from some old 2x4's from our scrap wood pile and laid some paver gravel down before bringing the cement mixer over and mixing and pouring a bag at a time, since each bag is 80lbs. After getting enough concrete mixed up and poured, I smoothed everything with another 2x4, raking the water off that came to the top of the concrete, and let it sit. With the slab poured, I decided to let it sit a couple of days before we move the genny onto the slab. I wanted to do this to ensure that the slab is completely cured before putting the heavy weight on top of it, especially on this questionable ground. I did want to break open the box to check out everything so I can at least put my eyes on all of the equipment so I can plan how things will go together afterward. The generator was packed in a cardboard box on a pallet with a wood frame around the unit. I had to break up the wood from around the machine and cut the box to get it from around the generator. I then had to unbolt some temporary brackets from the pallet and shift the generator around to free the brackets to get them out of the way. These are of some heavy metal, I'll be saving them for some possible future use in some later project. The wood went over to the splitter with the logs to be cut up into smaller pieces for use as firewood later on. The cardboard box got folded up since it will make a good "floor" for use either in the garage when fluids wet the floor (as is the case now under the Dodge) or on the ground in the yard when its wet after a rain. One thing that I was looking at was the breaker panel that came with the unit after opening it up. The panel has eight breakers on it and looks like the type of panel that would be recessed between the studs of a regular wall. I will have to look at the instruction manual to see what the nature of this panel is so I can determine how and where I'll need to hook this thing up. Worst case scenario, I'm putting on the table, is building a frame to contain the breaker panel where the weather can't affect it but its still close to the generator. The other possibility is cutting a hole in the wall over the current breaker panel and rewiring the select breakers in the main panel to connect to this panel. We will figure it out. Internally this generator is just like every other generator, an engine with the generator head, control electronics for monitoring operation, and the added bonus of the electric starter, which means we will need to get a battery for this thing, which is no big deal. This being a smaller unit, it appears that it uses a motorcycle battery versus a larger battery. The cover on the unit is held in place with hex bolts which will require unscrewing to access the internals compared to our mother's genny that has a lock and a hinged lid for fast access. I will most likely just hand tighten the bolts so I don't have to dig out a hex wrench every time. I will take my time and carefully go through everything to make sure nothing is missed since this is obviously a first time thing. Not that I don't know what I'm doing, its just that I have to get the understanding of the hardware and how it would be hooked up then I can get it done. There's a difference between people who "can't" do it and people who can learn despite not knowing. Some people no matter how much education they get, just can't grasp certain things, in this case electrical and mechanical things, and have to seek help to get things done. I can say that I'm blessed enough to be able to look over these types of things and figure out pretty fast how to get things done in this field, and that I will do. In my advanced stages of clearing the backyard area, I cleared the grounds to leave just the large double stump remaining. This stump is two separate stumps that are right next to each other and are each almost 2ft in diameter. These stumps, unlike the other ones I've dealt with, will take a little work to chop them down due to their huge size. I wanted to make sure all the weeds around this stump were cleared for the reason that I needed to be able to work around this thing as I cut into it all the way. Using an only slightly used chainsaw chain, I managed to work my way around the first half of the stump, chopping away the huge chunk of wood, leaving a couple of inches of base remaining above the ground. Now even though the ground slopes some, there is still some more of the stump that can be chopped away. At least now I can make vertical cuts into the middle of the remaining stump where I can cut into it at different angles to slowly remove the remainder of the stump section by section. The second stump half was a little more problematic. Whether it was because I put some wear on the chain cutting the first one or if it was just denser but this one gave me the blues. I ended up going through more battery power and had to tension the chain several times to allow the chain to stay straight as I cut into the stump wood. Eventually after working on this stump from all angles, I finally managed to chop all the way through the thing. Of course the cuts were at all kinds of angles, no chance of a good straight cut all the way across on this one. With the main stumps gone there was still a matter of the base of the double stump that was still sticking a couple inches or so above the ground. With the sloping ground and how the stump is situated, I don't see us ever being able to go over this with the mowers without damn near cutting the stump under the ground level but I would still like to try and get it as close to the ground as possible. With the main stumps gone, this allows me to make vertical cuts around the middle of the base like I stated before, so I can then cut from the side and remove the sections of stump without overworking myself or the tools. After chopping at the last stump, on my third and final battery, I had just enough battery power to be able to cut about a third of one stump free using this technique. Even with the cutting away of the double stump and a little bit of the base, I had to work to get these huge chunks of wood over to the burn pile. Using the two wheel dolly I muscled the two chunks over to the pile and worked them up onto the middle of the stack. I Know its gonna take a while to fully burn this wood completely away but at least with them on the burn pile I can stack crap over them and just work em down with every burn I do, a lot better than trying to pile stuff around the stumps while they're in the ground. I need em out of my way now. Once I do get the stump base cut down lower, I'll be mapping out what this area is gonna be. After removing the Fallen Trees, I can then further develop this area, whether its building more outbuildings for various uses or setting up a garage for the vehicles or whatever. More than likely whatever I do over this area I will have to take into account this stump base that will probably not be fully flush with the ground, whether I build over the stump, using it as a bit of a foundation base or build next to it where its tucked away between two structures, I'll figure out something. Until then I have to start working on getting the Fallen Trees processed. |
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May 2023
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