Something NEW

Well its been a whole day and my pics still show up Picasa may have saved the day...

So lets get something new on here, first an update.

You might remember when I built the mk2 mod2 wood rack for camp that I cut enough wood to make two of 'em. This is the other one installed at the house. The mk1 it replaced is actually in pretty good shape, I'm going to push it over to the side of the yard where the big woodpiles are and use it there. I've had terrible luck building woodpiles this year which is to say my wood piles have had a tendency to fall over this year so I'll use that once its full of wood as a brace for the other piles. We've had a heckuva lot of rain lately and I'm sure glad I built this new rack.

This here:

is a Chinese made ETQ 1200w 2 stroke generator. I picked it up in 2008 when we had the big ice storm. I ran it a couple times just to make sure it ran but never really used it as such. I'd planned to take it to camp a couple times but kept forgetting. In November I finally took it to camp. We've got a little solar electricity system at work (more on that in another post) that isn't really big enough for our needs in the fall when the sun is low in the sky so I hauled the generator up so we could use it top off our batteries. The battery charger only provides 6a at 12v which is only 72w. The generator is rated for 8 hours of run time on 1 gallon of gas at 50% load. I figured it'd run a good long time with this teeny load on it.

So I got it up to camp and went to fire up when the fuel petcock broke right off.
 Fortunately our local CarQuest (now Advance Auto, *sigh*) had a replacement:

The only problem was that the replacement drains from the side and the original went out the bottom so the gas line was a little short. It worked well enough that I didn't worry about it at the time, once I got it home I replaced the line with one slightly longer. To do that the airbox has to come off. Two of the airbox screws also hold on the carb in place and just as I started to reassemble things I managed to break the seal between the carb and the engine tearing the gasket. Fortunately I had some gasket paper in pretty much the same thickness as the original and within a few minutes I'd made a new gasket.

I find making my own gaskets very satisfying, I didn't have to wait a week for parts, all I needed was a pencil, scissors, utility knife and a punch. I didn't have a punch big enough for the carb throat but it wasn't so hard to cut that out with the knife and get a pretty good circle.

Sadly the generator doesn't like to start now, and by now I mean from the time I replaced the petcock. I think the carb has some varnish built up in it and I really should take it all the way apart, give it a good soak and put it back together. I'm reasonably sure thats going to mean some more seals will get ruined but I'd like to have the thing reliable in case Angie needs it while I'm away. Back when I first bought it it started real easy but now it wants a shot of starting fluid into the carb every time it starts. Oh well, I might as well give it a try right?

Wood rack part: many

If you've read back through the archives you'll realized I'm somewhat obsessed with storing firewood. The original mk1 firewood rack at camp had about had it so it was time...

This is actually two mk2 mod2 firewood racks. While the rack at home hadn't rotted out it didn't have a top so my wood would end up wet. Its almost just as easy to cut out two firewood racks at once as it is to cut one. You can see on the right where I started assembling one, thats actually a mistake, the block should go inside the long 2x4s, the way its built in the picture the uprights will be too close together...

The mod2 version features a less steep roof pitch which should result in better wood coverage, its one piece for the uprights and of course the 4x4 blocks underneath. Everything except the roof is pressure treated.

The original mk2 model had a plywood roof with metal roofing over it, this one just has the metal roofing but has twice as many stringers (as in I put them on proper 16" centers this time) to make it strong.

It sits on the same site as the original mk1 and while it doesn't hold quite as much wood it will keep the wood it has much drier and cleaner.

Since cold weather has arrived in central MA I've been using up the wood in the mk1 wood rack at my house in preparation for installing the second mk2 mod2 there, I still need to source the metal roofing. One of the design specs in this one is to make it work with a single sheet of roofing and fortunately I'd thought to bring my angle grinder to camp to cut the roofing. This also ensures we have good overhangs front and back, the roof structure is 27"x48", the metal roofing is 32"x52", that will make sure the wood is covered and the roof structure itself is protected.

The next structure I need to work on at camp is the shower house. When I originally built it I didn't think about roof overhang so the rear wall never really dries out. Thats awful hard on the OSB sheathing. My solution is to put metal roofing over the existing asphalt shingles. That roof is 48"x79" so I want more like 54"x83" for the roof. Metal roofing comes in 36"x96" sheets so I think I can make it with just two sheets. We've got some scraps from the camp roof if I make a mistake...