What did you do today?

[Floorist]

Up here if there is any metal they would be on it like stink on ****.

Same here. Scrap metal is selling for high prices.

 

[Tom Picciani]

Someone told me the same thing about the wood from my deck. People would tear it down for free just for the wood. The deck was built in 1978. Might test the theory when I get $15k to build a new one.

 

[highup]

I thought scrap metal prices tanked after the Chinese stopped buying all of it.

 

[Floorist]

For some reason there is a shortage.

 

[Tom Picciani]

Ate a Gyro at a nearby diner yesterday. Pretty good. Place is called Black Olive. Not crowded at all. Many places still closed to indoor dining and temperatures around here are too hot to eat outside. Plus Lancaster is getting an infestation of all sorts of bugs I would have to fight with. Lantern flies are the bad ones right now.

putting down 60 lbs of Milorganite today. Want to get that done before it gets hot. Should drop my blood sugar pretty good.

Hunter wants to stay in bed. Beagles are cutest when they are curled up and sleepy.

 

[Tom Picciani]

The smells from the nearby farms will start soon so I started playing Farming Simulator 19 again. The farmers provide the reality pack.

Lancaster County, where corn does grow! (Love that song)

 

[Floorist]

Put flooring in the changing shed of a hog farm once. The smell was overwhelming and I grew up on a farm with hogs. They threw the dead ones on a pile and they were hauled away once a month.

 

[highup]

I'm sitting here down on the bay eating a burger and fries. The bay is being dredged before the winter rain set in and a large tow boat is coming by with a barge.
It's about 12 miles around the bay till they hit the ocean. They go a couple miles out to dump the load of muck. It's a hopper barge. When ready, they open up the bottom of the barge. Kinda like flushing the toilet.
Takes hundreds of trips. They have been doing this for a couple of months, one bucket full at a time.

 

[highup]

Here comes another tug. He is moving at quite a clip for some reason, to catch up with the barge. It's a couple miles to the train bridge.

He will get behind the barge and help steer it as they pass through the swing span of the trestle of the train bridge that crosses the bay. It gets very expensive when a ship or a barge hits the swing span of the bridge and damages the bearings that rotate it.

 

[highup]

Dang it's a busy day on the bay. An hour ago the pilot boats undocked a log ship so I could take a load of logs back to China well they will probably use them to make concrete forms then throw them away.
These larger tug aren't needed to take the ship all the way out to the ocean, so they are just coming back to Port. Their day is over.
These other little boats are just local guys fishing in one of the two channels in the bay.
Holy smoke the pilot boat is coming by now they must have made a fast Trip.
..... Correction. Both of those two orange and white tug boats only undocked the ship to help it head out to the ocean. Currently there is a local pilot onboard the ship and the actual pilot tugboat is closer to the jetty. Painted the same colors, but is smaller about 75 feet I believe. That smaller tug will follow the ship about two miles out to sea take the pilot off the ship and bring him back.
What a busy afternoon .....eating a hamburger, and watching everybody else work.

 

[DarisMulkin]

learned a little tool hack today. I've wanted an impact driver but never got one. A guy was working at my neighbors and said I love those hammer drills. He was using it as an impact driver. I never thought of it they turn avibrate just like an impact driver.

 

[zannej]

Those are beautiful photos Highup.

I have plenty of space around here to store scrap metal. I don't think anyone is paying for that stuff right now. Economy is absolute crap in my area. I think what I would do is take any decent pieces down to the my workshop & store them in the outdoor covered area in case we can figure out how to use them for a project. I will likely not use the metal beam in the new shed as it doesn't look like it would fit, but I will keep it if it's in decent shape.

I'm thinking building a shed from scratch would be the best approach bc it's hard to find people who will actually install out here for less than $2k. If I do my measurements right & build stuff a piece at a time I can then remove the old shed and assemble the new one. I'm thinking of seeing if any of the roof parts from the metal shed can be reused though- at least as a temporary cover. So, I'm thinking I can frame each wall and label everything. I saw some sort of concrete blocks with notches in them for shed frames in a photo somewhere. I want to see if those are available & figure out the best lumber to use for the bottom plate. I want to avoid pouring more concrete if possible.

So, I'm thinking frame with studs 16" on center w/ horizontal pieces in between about halfway up for reinforcement and spacing, rafters at 16" on center as well (also with horizontals at halfway up) 2x6 or 2x8 ridge board & custom gusset plates notched for the ridge board (that will help avoid the need to toenail stuff), hurricane rated hangers (not sure what they are called exactly) for the rafters where they meet the wall on the outside so I don't have to toenail near the bird's mouth and risk splitting the wood. Small gable fan up top on back wall (above the wall and in the gable part), small window in the back wall centered under gable fan for some sunlight), solar powered lamp rated for outdoor use in case power is out & it's dark inside, etc.

If the sort of lean-to overhanging the front edge of the shed makes it too difficult to get a decent height, I might stagger the roof and have a lower portion underneath the lean-to and then have the rest of the roof with a steeper slope for my headroom (and maybe some storage for supplies). Front would have simple custom made double doors where one door overlaps the other. Expanding foam sprayed between studs, Reflectix on the ceiling.... I might even dig some French drains to help water drain a bit better.

Pic with simple double doors & the notched support blocks


Various sketches of ideas for the shed & rafter setup


Now some people were suggesting that I should have some sort of hatch to open the roof on one side to be able to access the well from above, but I'm not quite sure how to do that & still maintain structural integrity.

 

[highup]

Wish I had a decent digital camera Zan. Our area used to have 30 to 60 ships per month in our tiny port. They mostly loaded logs and lumber back "in the day".
These days they load more wood chips than anything else. The ship that left port today was loaded with logs. There is one port here where they can load logs and two that load wood chips. The last one that loaded and shipped lumber left the area a long time ago. Lumber and some plywood are still transported by train. We were once the largest lumber exporter in the world. ...... population, 16,000. Ain't that a hoot. We was somebody back "in the day"
What are the dimensions of that shed you need?

 

[Tom Picciani]

learned a little tool hack today. I've wanted an impact driver but never got one. A guy was working at my neighbors and said I love those hammer drills. He was using it as an impact driver. I never thought of it they turn avibrate just like an impact driver.

harbor freight has adapters to go from impact driver to socket. 1/4, 3/8, 1/2 inch. Pretty cheap

 

[zannej]

Wish I had a decent digital camera Zan. Our area used to have 30 to 60 ships per month in our tiny port. They mostly loaded logs and lumber back "in the day".
These days they load more wood chips than anything else. The ship that left port today was loaded with logs. There is one port here where they can load logs and two that load wood chips. The last one that loaded and shipped lumber left the area a long time ago. Lumber and some plywood are still transported by train. We were once the largest lumber exporter in the world. ...... population, 16,000. Ain't that a hoot. We was somebody back "in the day"
What are the dimensions of that shed you need?

I imagine the wood smell was nice. Would have been cool to see those ships with the logs. I've seen old black & white pics of lumber rafts from the Mississippi River.
My town used to have some sort of paper mill that used a very noxious chemical. Whole town stunk like crazy. An online friend of mine happened to have gone through here before-- her husband actually worked at the local detention center. She said it was the nastiest smelling town she'd ever been in. It used to make me sick. Paper mill shut down years ago & the air has been much nicer.

I just went and tried to measure the shed. Outside wall to wall measurement of the depth was about 91" (not counting overhang for roof). I had trouble measuring the front as there was a big open space for the doorway & my measuring tape only goes to 8'. So I'd say it's roughly 10' for the front. So, looking at around 7.5' x 10' ? or does the roof overhang count? I'll have to go back out with a helper & a longer measuring tape for the front. I completely forgot to measure the height but my cows came to see me & brought mosquitoes and nats with them. I had to stop and sing the one cow her favorite lullaby before she let me walk away.

I got overheated as hell for the brief few minutes I was out there.

I'm hoping these two tropical storms that are blowing through won't get too bad. One of them will be hitting my area round the time of my dental appointment so I'm hoping my appointment won't be canceled or postponed.

 

[zannej]

Dental appointment got bumped to earlier. Marco passed without a problem. Got the tooth pulled but we all agreed it would be better to do the crown after the extraction site has had more time to heal (plus I wanted to let them get out of there sooner and I wanted to get out asap to take care of stuff). They gave me three 1 gallon jugs of distilled water. Dr. Honey lives up to her name-- very sweet. Everyone was super nice. They wouldn't let me carry any of the jugs of water. They don't know I had to lift a full back of water bottles later. I had to change gauze quite a bit within the first couple hours. Now I think the bleeding has stopped. I was able to eat some stew with one side of my mouth.
I saw some friends who evacuated- they just finished paying off their trailer but will probably lose it to the storm.
Hoping power won't be out for too long from this hurricane. I will likely lose phonelines due to flooding in the area but I'm on high ground.

 

[highup]

Where do you live Zan? I have a short memory. Storms here don't usually do more that break off tree limbs.

 

[Floorist]

Are you doing ok, zanne?

 

[Floorist]

Where do you live Zan? I have a short memory. Storms here don't usually do more that break off tree limbs.

She lives in Louisiana.

 

[highup]

Damn. I was thinking somewhere else.