YouTube convert

Outside of watching funny videos with Sam, I really have not liked YT or the kind of junk videos that are 98% of what is out there. The ease of posting videos by the average person has really diminished the quality of the videos out there. Don't get me wrong, there are some pretty cool videos that people come up with and I say I am impressed on occasion.  However, I do not subscribe to the typical totally pointless videos that seem to be popular.

That being said, I have come to find that there are a lot of instructional videos, some better than others, on tools and processes that I am looking to learn or invest some money into for a project. For instance, I have been looking at the HF Flux Core Welder for a long time but have been uneasy about how easy it would be to learn, knowing what material I would be able to use and  how to do it safely and produce a weld that would be not only attractive and safe under load.

Watching a few of these videos, for the specific HF welder I have been looking at, has allowed me to gain some familiarity with the process and some idea of what gauge steel it can handle and what it can't; which has let me feel more comfortable with it being able to handle the types of metal I would want to weld together for projects and repair work.

Raised bed progress

Today, after sleeping in til almost 12 noon, I got up, ate "lunch" and then went out to cut the raised garden boards to length. I had to figure out how to support the long end of the boards as I cut them and found that two scraps of 2x6 and two pieces of 1/4 inch plywood did the trick. I should have screwed them all together to keep them from falling over when I was trying to position the board for the cut, but just dealt with it.

I got them all cut then realized I needed to go get more gravel before I could take them out and put the boards together. So I borrowed my neighbor's truck again and went to get a half yard of 3/4" Open gravel from the local landscape yard. It took 5 wheelbarrows full of gravel to empty the truck, with Sam's help. Sam then helped me sweep out the liner and get the truck ready to return.

With four of the five wheelbarrows of gravel in with landscape fabric underneath it, I was able to finally able to take the lumber out and start putting it together.  I made a drilling template to be able to evenly space out three screws to connect the lumber together. It made it really easy to get them located in the right place, square so the screws went in right and evenly spaced; aesthetics, you know.

While I was out there finishing up the drilling, I noticed there were a bunch of birds flying around above us. It turned out that it was 7 hawks of some kind just swirling around pretty close to each other. It is kinda hard to see them in the photo but the black specs are them.

With the drilling done, I had to put together and level out the gravel for the first level. It went much more smoothly than I expected for only having a 4 foot and two foot level out there to level the gravel around the perimeter of an 8 by 40 inch frame, two feet away from the other raised bed. After the leveling of the first layer, the other two levels went together even easier. The last wheelbarrow of gravel went in the bottom and put a final 2-3 inches in the bottom for drainage. There will be quite a bit more dirt in this one since I didn't fill it up with gravel like I did the other ones; a good depth of soil for carrots and beets.

They are just stacked on top of each other right now, but tomorrow if the rain holds off, I will be able to pocket screw them together like I did the other one in the picture. I ended up with the new bed two and a half inches lower than the bed beside it and the middle bed is an inch lower than the first bed, to the right of the picture. So I think I am going to make a three and a half inch spacer row for the last bed then put a small cap on the top to it is easier to lean on and sit on. Then I can make a cap with a 1 inch spacer to put on top of the second bed and just put a cap on the first bed. They should all end up about the same height.

Aimee weeded more of the rest of the yard; in front of the shed, a little under the cherry tree, next to the house in the back, more around the flowers by the deck area.  She had done the strawberries, out front by the house and finished along the back fence including the raised beds by the garden. It really is looking quite nice, especially since I haven't had to do much weeding this year.

Longest day

Today started with getting up at 7:30 wondering where Aimee was; she had evidently opted to sleep on the couch in light of my rampant snoring when she came to bed. That got me up and going since my mind wouldn't calm back down, even though I would have normally crawled back in bed for awhile.

I started the projects for the day by getting the planer running and planing the boards for the garden bed. I had to cut down the 14 foot boards from the deck in two: 8 and a half feet and 5 and a half feet boards. This allows me to have room for the gouge out at the end of the board as it leaves the first roller and the blades dig in a little more; allowing me to get the 8 foot and 40 inch boards I need for the raised bed.

The boards planed really easy once I had them cut to length, with the exception of a couple I had to back up the depth a little bit due to some cupping that wouldn't let them feed through at the depth I had set. I re-ran these boards again at the same depth as the others, keeping track of how far back I turned the depth knob.

The melamine board I was using as an extension table in the planer, with the melamine skin worn off from planing the deck boards (please pardon my phone, it sometimes has issues corrupting pictures).

Once those were done, I went to HF to get the 12" Compound Sliding Miter Saw I have been wanting to get; I had a coupon for $119 for a saw that retails at $199 and usually never on sale for less than $149. I am pretty happy with it, with the minor exception of the saw's table not being level with the center portion of the saw that swivels with the angled cut.  I even didn't mind the tuning I had to do to get the blade square to the fence and table. oh and there was a slight adjustment i had to do with the extension arm to get it to be level with the main part of the saw table involving a hammer and a block of wood, those arms are surprisingly tough to bend. 

With the saw put together and "tuned", I turned my attention to lunch and then to preparing the garden for the last raised bed. I had to relocate the wood chips I had spread out over the ground to keep it from being so muddy. The chips moved and the landscape fabric pulled back, I started measuring where I needed to dig out for the gravel for drainage.  It was going to be tight and pretty close to the fence, so I fudged it a little ways toward the other beds and marked 6 inches wider all around for ample drainage area. I got it dug down about 4 inches and to make the area drain that much more due to the muck, I borrowed my neighbor's post hole digger and dug six holes down to the sandy soil that is below the clay surface soil.  Sam was a great help during all the digging, taking shifts to help put a shovel full of dirt in the wheelbarrow or dig out the edge of my hole. 

I only had a small amount of gravel left from the dry wells, but it was just enough to fill in the 6 holes.  I will have to go get more or steal from my driveway extension in the front. That will have to wait till tomorrow since it was getting to be dinner time and we cleaned up, ordered pizza and came inside to eat. After sitting here in my chair for a couple hours now, I can really feel that I worked hard digging in really sticky soil that weighed a ton, and the post hole digger really worked a lot of muscles that haven't been worked in a while. Translation... I hurt; wrists and hands being the worst, but my quads are a close third. I don't really understand why my quads got such a workout, but it was a day of about 8 wheelbarrows full of heavy dirt that I dumped in the front and one of gravel that got dumped in the holes. 

After the first wheelbarrow of dirt from today, the dark dirt on the ever growing pile.  

Halfway? through digging out for the gravel. 

After I was finished digging.

The picture of where the holes were roughly located.

and without the stamps so you can actually see the gravel filled in holes 

Sam and Aimee planting Marigolds in the garden beds; they are suppose to have pest repellent properties, so we thought we would try it out. (I like his nonchalant pose.)

Aimee finishing up the last of the flower beds against the back fence. She has been doing a great job weeding out the beds and making it look fresh for spring. Now to get landscape fabric down, Preen weed preventer, and some bark down to keep the weeds at bay.

Plane great separator

I spent last night trying to clear off my work bench and ended up putting up another section of peg board above my bench after taking my One+ charger and drill holder off the wall there and hanging my One+ multi-charger on the end of the cabinets, out of the way but within reach.

The bench got cleared but I know now that it was there cuz i didn't know where to put it; it was stuff that didn't have a home yet. Still looking for that home for most of it still. It is sitting on a make-shift bench, plywood on saw horses, behind where I was taking the picture from.

Then tonight I finished putting together the dust hood for the planer since the order with the dust ports for it finally came yesterday. I wanted to build a longer support table for it too, so I went to HD to get a melamine shelf to use and ended up getting a garbage can for the chip separator ports that came also; it will collect the chips from the planer so they don't clog the dust collector. I tried it out without the separator and it lost suction after a short time since the planer chips would not pass through the screen protecting the motor blades.

The garbage can should probably have been bigger, but I bought the cheapest one, 20 gallons. The ports went in really easy since I was able to cut the holes for then in the lid with a utility knife. With the smaller can, there are some chips that get through to the collector, but it does separate most of it out.

The table went together pretty easy too, with the hardest part figuring out what the right height to make the supports for it, the legs, so that it was level with the planer. I used my new Kreg jig to put pocket holes in the legs to secure them to the melamine board. I probably should have bought a sheet of melamine instead of buying a shelf; the skin on the shelf is quite thin and has come off with just the couple boards through it. I may have to veneer it with formica or something a little more durable.

I should be able to start planing the boards for the last raised garden bed this weekend. Hopefully I can get it planed and built with enough time to dig out the area where it will go and get out installed. We really need to get the last of the seedlings in the ground.
All in all it was a good project night.

Little helper, lots of garden

Sam helped me sift the rocks out of the second raised garden bed by shoveling dirt into the sifter. He had so much fun getting dirty.

We now have most of the garden starts planted, with carrots and onions to start from seed once the rain lets up this next weekend. We will probably need to buy some lettuce starts since they didn't seen to make the transition to outside, but I want to try it again and see what may have gone wrong.

Oh and I got the trellis up for the peas and beans to climb. What we did last year didn't work very well so we are trying a basic frame with string wrapped up and down it so the vines have something to grab onto. Should work; it is  similar to what I remember my grandparents did in their garden.

Praying that everything survives the rain we in the next couple days. The beats have been a little on the wilty side but I think they just may pull through. We will see in time, I guess.

Second raised bed, planer dust port started

It wasn't raining for a little bit tonight after we got done with dinner, so Aimee suggested we spend some time out back. So we got out work clothes on, bundled up a little bit due to the cloudy weather and went outside to directly take the bundling back off since it was like 80% humidity and almost 70 degrees. Anywho, I started by going through the leaves of the second raised bed and finding all the lava rock, then started loosening up the dirt and pulling out any rock I found.  It was slow going and so mucky that I was having a hard time with it; I decided to try the dirt sifter and see if it was any better going. It was, slightly.

Sam did have fun helping to shovel dirt into the sifter so I could push the muck through the grid uncovering the rocks. There don't seem to be as many in this bed but there are a lot of smaller rocks. I only got about halfway through the bed before it started getting dark and we realized that is was well past Sam's bed time; time to go in. So I helped Aimee weed the last bit she was working on in front of the lilies by the garden.

We picked up and Aimee got Sam in while I put the tools away. I got Sam in bed and then went on a search for my glasses; still haven't found them btw. I ended up just going out in the garage without them to try to figure out how to put a dust collection port on the Delta planer my brother has let me "borrow", well he hasn't asked for it back yet, for several years now.

It took some doing and I first started by taking off the deflector but that didn't work very well. It all has to do with a port off the motor that directs air through ports in the deflector; presumably to help eject the shavings, but it was impossible to figure out how to build a port around it. So I left the deflector on and build a surround that collects the shavings as they come out. To keep the dust port hose out of the way, I think I am going to put the port on the top but I may have some difficulty attaching it until the Dust-Right port comes from Rockler. I was going to see if there is anything at HD or somewhere else local, but may just have to wait til next week.

Cleaning up the garden

I took a stab at cleaning up the raised garden beds yesterday. Sam and I went to Costco and got potting soil and blueberry bushes; and of course I found leather gloves and MiracleGrow on a good price so ended up with those too. Oh and I got a 3 pack of organic tomato plants that looked really healthy.

Since Costco only had potting soil, we had to stop by HD to get the garden soil and I ended up getting a bag of soil conditioner to put in with the blueberry bushes since they are getting planted along the fence where it is a little clayish (or whatever the form of that word would be to describe clay soil).

After Sam fidgeted through his nap when we got home we went out and ground up the leaves I had put on top of the raised beds with the electric shredder/chipper. It didn't go too well since the leaves were half decomposed sitting over the winter on top of the soil, under landscape fabric; it really gummed up the shredder. I did the best I could to do the dryer, less composted leaves and left the mucky bits to just mix in the soil.

In the process of going through the leaves, I found that there was quite a bit of lava rock from under the cherry trees where we took the leaves from. So along with the lava rock that was under the leaves, as I was breaking up the soil and finding that it was quite sticky with clay and fortunately full of wonderful worms, I ended up pulling a small pail full of rocks out of the soil too.  I hadn't had a sifter to sift the soil from the yard I had put in there and it had a lot of rock in it; but how has much less and should be easier to dig in now. Luckily I do have a dirt sifter now, so I will be able to keep the

The first bed was topped off with a half bag of garden soil from last year before Aimee called me in for dinner. So I covered it back up with the landscape fabric and went inside with Sam to clean up and get ready to go to our Birth to Three Thrilling Three's class. BTW, we had a great time and it should be fun to get to know the 6 of the 7 other families we didn't know from previous classes; (that sounded like we wouldn't have fun with Tara and Scott, who we know from previous classes, but it now what I meant).

Now to wait out the rain and get that first bed mixed up and the second one started. At least we have the veggie starts conditioning to outside started today so we should be able to plant them in a couple days. I figure I can start working on the third raised bed while I wait for the weather to clear up this weekend; getting a dust port built for the planer and planning the deck boards to clean up the weather wear from the old deck. I just have to figure out how to build the dust port, which I guess will be easier when I get the planer dug out from underneath my workbench.

Spring cleaning start-off

Don't think I have ever been this glad it is raining and I can't go outside to work on digging out the lilac roots. I am really sore and tired from the weekend; cleaning out the garage Saturday and pulling out the lilac and rhodendrons against the backyard east fence. It included moving about 8 wheelbarrows of dirt to the front so I can eventually take it to the yard dump; my neighbor took the dirt I had piled up there for his weed barrels so I had plenty of room.

Saturday, we worked on getting the garage cleaned out and I got most of the stuff either thrown out or recycled or packed into the front brother of the garage. The biggest help was moving the entertainment center into the master bathroom to use as a storage cabinet for the bath stuff. It is unfortunate that it is too big and won't work long term, but ary least it isn't in the garage any more.

Sunday was spent at Costco shopping, a longer than expected nap, but then finally got outside with Aimee and Sam. Aimee was weeding and generally trying to clean out the garden beds. I started digging out the dirt piles left in the backyard and ended up taking out all the bushes on the east side fence cuz they were ask routed out. I basically yanked out one of the rhodes but had to use the come-along to get the lilac stump out, except that it was so rotted that it just broke off at the ground.