A comedy of frustration

Almost two weeks ago we drove to our cabin to get more firewood and change the blade on our chipper.  The latter was to set it up for winter storage.

After I hit a deer in March, I’ve been leery of driving alone.  I try to go only when my “eagle-eye” wife can also watch for deer.  She is pretty good at seeing deer dozens of feet from the road and even calls attention to deer busy eating dozens of feet from the road.

But, probably close to where I hit the deer in March, another deer was in front of the car.  I slammed on the brakes, hit the deer, and then it was standing well off the road wondering what happened.  I got out and checked the front end but found nothing even scratched.

We continued on to our cabin and discovered a snowplow mound of snow across our drive.  OK, I’ll get out the shovel in back and clear it off.

Except there was no shovel in the back.  We hadn’t put it in before we left.

OK, I’ll get the snowblower.  It had started with only a couple of pulls a few  weeks ago.  I uncovered it, pushed the primer a few times, and pulled the starter cord.  One times, two times, three times… Nothing!

I pushed it back to the cabin in order to plug it in.  Even though there was not much snow, it still was an effort to get the wheels to turn.

i unburied the cord from under the splitter and plugged it into the outside outlet and into the snowblower.  The power-on light on the cord didn’t come on.  With a bit of wiggling, I got it to come on.  I plugged it into the snow blower and pushed the ignition button.  Nothing!  Not even a few turnovers.

So, I grabbed a snow shovel and went back to the road.  My wife had used a little shovel that belongs in her car to clear a goodly amount of the snow.  I used the bigger shovel to get more out of the way.

Finally we were able to drive into our parking space and unload the car.

We ate our lunch and then I went back out to put the snowblower back by the parking space.  As I started to heave it along, I noticed that the electric cord was not attached to the spark plug!

I put the cord back on the spark plug, and I think I had the snowblower going in three pulls.

The good news was that I was able to work on getting the chipper blade off.  I had already spent three weekends trying to loosen the nuts holding it in place.  I used two different kinds of penetrating oil.  Now I came armed with acetone and a ten-inch breaker bar.  The hardware store recommended acetone to loosen the blue Loctite, supply the level that could be loosened with hand tools.

I decided to try the breaker bar first.  It is long-handled socket wrench.

Would you believe that the nuts loosened with only three or so pushes?

I took the nuts and bolts off the flywheel and the chipper knife, the latter well-nicked.  And I managed not to drop the knife to the bottom of the housing as I pulled it out.  That would be lots finagling to get it past the flywheel.

I didn’t put the sharp knife on.  Our time was running short.  I sort of stuffed all the tools and parts into the shed and covered the chipper up.  I did take off the battery and the solar charging panel to take home to a warm basement.

Putting the chipper back together will have to wait until spring.  ’Tis a pity!  We have a huge pile of balsam boughs to chip.

No fires where there should be and one where there should not be

We have no wood heat in our cabin because of some problem with the chimney.  Why is another story.  I went to our cabin yesterday to help move that solution along.  When I was outside I was fine, but even with water boiling and a small electric heater, I never felt warm in the cabin.

Another task I had was to put the cover on the chipper we brought from servicing the previous week.  I forgot to bring the cover then.  The hopper was filled with snow and I thought I would blow it out before covering it.

I started up the chipper but the snow didn't seem to go down.  And then steam started coming from parts I didn't expect it and the engine started shaking.  Holey moley!  That's not steam.  That's smoke.  Then I see flame coming from the belt housing.  Throwing snow at it doesn’t help much.  I fetch the fire extinguisher from the cabin.  I takes me awhile to figure out how to make it work.  I aim under the housing and a cloud of noxious yellow stuff comes out.  Finally the flames are out and the extinguisher is empty.

Looking under the cover I could see the belt hanging down.  Now I'm going to have to take it back to have the belt replaced and any other repairs done.  I don't relish another 40+ mile drive at 40mph!

When I get home my wife reported that the furnace is going on and off and not giving any heat.  She also reported that with a loud bang the outside spigot started spewing water into the back yard.

We left a message with the plumber who installed it years ago.  We set up our one heater and started a fire in the fireplace.  My wife decided to stay downstairs and keep feeding the fire all night.

This morning the plumber came and checked several things but couldn't find anything wrong.  He then followed the gas line back to where it enters the house.  The valve near the wall was turned off!  I couldn't see how anybody could bump it and turn it off.

After the plumber left my wife looked at the valve and realized she had thought it was a water line to another outside faucet.  She had turned it off in case we had the same problem with faucet.

We did better than the old joke about a plumber charging $100 to fix a furnace with a single whack with a hammer.  One dollar to hit it and $99 for knowing where to hit it.  The plumber only charged us $40.

First blizzard of the season

We've had a few snowfalls in Duluth this season but all of them have been minor snow shoveling jobs.  Now we are on day 2 of a three-day blizzard.  Then the temperature will drop to 0 F to 15 F.  What snow isn't cleared now will be cement later.

This has been problematic to us for two reasons.  One is that my wife flew to Japan this morning.  Two is that I told Denny's Lawn and Garden that I would bring in my chipper for maintenance today.

So we were up very early this morning so that my wife could be at the airport two hours before takeoff.

But before we could go, I had to shovel the walk to the garage and then at least half of the apron to the alley.  I had already planned to take the SUV because I would go direct to Brimson to haul the chipper back.  Good choice.  With four-wheel drive it was easier to maneuver into the alley. Done!  Onto the side street.  Oops!  Intersection was blocked by ridge made by snowplow on through street.  Back up in snow.  Don't hit parked cars.  Back into alley and go another way.  Hurray!  No ridge on the other through street.  All streets were packed snow, even plowed streets.  Three cheers again for SUV with its super-duper tires that are skid-resistant.  Drive 5-10 mph under the limit.

Arrive at airport with plenty of time before my wife's flight.  Haul out her humongous suitcase and place on dry part of sidewalk.  Give her a long hug and wish her a good trip.

Drive on plowed roads at 40mph because they had packed snow.  As I was outbound in the morning I don't think I had a single car behind me.

The snow kept falling and falling as I drove.  I had visions of having to get the cabin snowblower out of the shed, fueling it, and getting it started by hand rather than electrically.  Should I abandon this chore.  No, I told Denny's that I would bring the chipper in today.  After all, they had called me last week that my service request had come up and I had said I would bring it in today.

When I was in the Brimson area the snow seemed to be less deep, in fact it looked like there was three inches or snow or less on the side of the road.  As I drove the final road to our cabin, I thought I might be able to just pull in.

No such luck!  The snowplow ridge was just to high to plow through with four-wheel drive.  I'll have to hand shovel an opening.  Oops!  I didn't put a snow shovel in the SUV!  Trudge through the ridge and walk down the drive to the cabin.  Oops!  Where's the snow shovel by the stoop?  Ah! There it is covered by snow, but at least I can still see its outline.

Trudge back to the road (we're talking about a football field length).  Clear snow from end of drive.  That really was enough exercise for the day, and I had already cleared about 200 sq  ft at home that was fluffy.  This wasn't!

Take lock off driveway cable.  Oops!  I dropped the lock.  I don't see it.  Whew!  With enough foot scuffling I found it.

Drive in close to chipper.

But first check sheds for mice.  Oops!  One shed has an open lock.  How did we not check it on our last visit?  Good news for me and for the mice; none were in any of the traps.

Get trailer hitch out and insert it with the correct ball up.  It has to be the one with the most wear.

Drag chipper to car.  Thank goodness for the wheeled hauling bar I bought.  But the increased leverage won't get one wheel over a frozen ridge.  Great!  Pull this direction.  Pull that direction.  After too many minutes I get the chipper moving.  Then another ridge.  Pull!  Puff!  Pull! Puff!  Finally I get chipper's trailer tongue near the hitch.

But the hitch won't fit over the ball!  I try and try.  I clean out debris from the hitch.  To do this, I let the chipper go back on its feed end (which is about five feet high).  Check the ball, check the hitch.  This has to be the right ball.

Oh, no!  I can't get the chipper upright again.  Am I going to have to abandon the project?  After several tries, I get the chipper upright again.  This time, the hitch fits over the ball and I can latch them together.

I had a few more details to tend to, but you've probably read too many already.

Finally I am ready to leave.  I drive out, lock up the cable, and turn onto the road out stressing the hitch or hitting the SUV with it.

The drive to Denny's Lawn and Garden was slow but uneventful.   The speed limit for the trailer the chipper is mounted on is 45 mph.  Because of the packed snow I generally went 35-40 mph.  Still, the chipper bounced around a couple of times that made me wonder how much it could take.

When I arrived at Denny's the place was packed!  More than I had ever seen it.  It was lots of people in to buy snowblowers or get parts for snowblowers!  The manager asked me why I brought my chipper in during a blizzard.  I replied that I had said I would bring it in on Tuesday when they called last week that they could take it in for maintenance.

After a couple of other stops, I finally got home about one o'clock.  I knew I should go out and shovel and blow snow, but not just yet.  The snow had really piled up since we left at seven.

When I checked for mail, I saw a neighbor shoveling a path on our sidewalk. I thanked her but said don't bother, I'll do it later with a snowblower.

After a leisurely lunch I put long underwear on under my shirt and jeans.  It was a-blowing and getting colder.  I better clear the snow before it set.

I got out, fueled, and started our Duluth snowblower without too much difficulty.  I got most of the snow off our apron including the ridge made by a grader while I was out there.  I also cleared the ridge for a neighbor.

After I finished that, I brought the snowblower around the garage to the walk to the house and the front sidewalk.  It kept riding up over the snow.  I looked at the blades and they were packed with snow.  I cleaned them out, but the same thing happened again.  And again.  And again.  Finally, when I got to the house, I did a more thorough check.

One of the blades wasn't turning or would catch on the housing.  The blade was bent and the shear pin was broken.  Rather than looking for the shear pin, I put the snowblower away

So much for doing the front walk with the snowblower.  Off I went with the shovel.  Even shoveling smart, that is, lifting snow in layers rather than from the sidewalk up, it was a lot of work.

Finally at about four (was it that late) I called it quits.  I'll need to do it all again tomorrow.  At least, I hope, it won't be a 12-15 inches deep.

Now I'm wondering how I managed to reheat some of the food my wife had left me.  I do know that I was so tired, I didn't even want to have wine.  That would have put me to sleep and you wouldn't be able to read this long tale, if you did get this far.  Thanks for reading!

Paper, scissors, rock ain't so!

Many of you know the game of paper, scissors, rock.  Two players hold their hands behind their back and on the count of three put out a flat hand, two fingers extended, or a fist, representing paper, scissors, or rock.  Assuming the players display a different hand, the player displaying the "stronger" hand gets to whack the other player's hand.  The circular hierarchy is paper covers rock, scissors cut paper, and rock breaks scissors.

This hierarchy doesn't always hold.  The most obvious is that rock can hold down paper.  How about that paper wears down scissors?  You can see it when your scissors need sharpening after years of cutting paper.  Or a razor blade gets dull cutting whiskers.

I saw it big another way last week.  I checked the blade on our chipper.  It had many knocks in its edge, including a one-sixteenth chip.  All that has gone through the chipper is wood, no stones or other hard debris.  Paper is made from wood.  That wood, all from softwood trees, wore out a high-quality steel blade.  All in probably less than 20 hours of use.

Has spring sprung in Duluth?

As you know, we gave up on skiing for the season this past week because it has been too warm.

Yesterday we went to our cabin with the expectation that the temperature might be in the high 40s or low 50s. I packed our snowshoes just in case the snow was still to deep to trudge through.

When we got there, there was more bare ground as expected, but the snow that remained was not as deep as we expected. We trudged around our usual path without snowshoes without problem other than my wife's boots not being as waterproof as advertised.

I had intended to use the chain saw to cut up some wood or cut down some trees, but I discovered that the chaps that I just bought should be washed before use!! (See "I tried to cut my leg off!" http://magree.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-tried-to-cut-my-leg-off.html)

OK, I'll use a handsaw to cut the smaller stuff. But where was that nice draw saw our son gave us for Christmas several years ago? It wasn't in any of the places that it should have been. Well, last week we had cut overhanging branches along the drive. I checked and there it was on the ridge of snow along the side, the sheath sopping wet. I pulled out the saw and it was still shiny! Talk about not making things like they used to. To shorten the story I did use the saw yesterday and today to cut up several small trees and large branches next the saw horse.

We looked at the thermometer on the side of our wood shed a bit before noon. The temperature was at 64 F!!!

I looked at the snow around the chipper and saw that it was almost gone. I had decided there was too much snow around it yesterday. I had brought the battery from home and installed it. Set the choke and throttle and push start. Vroom! I got rid of two piles of branches and did three cartloads of chips. They lengthened the "paved" section of a trail by almost 20 feet.

Oh, yes! I should mention that the predicted overcast skies for Duluth were blue with big puffy clouds in Brimson. I should mention that on our drive back I did see rain showers way off to the south and west, but we only got a few drops on our windshield.

Prepared for the unprepared

I've been waiting and waiting for a humongous chipper to take care of all the brush I've cut on our cabin property. The twenty-year-old plus 5 hp chipper just doesn't "cut" it anymore. I was spending more time unjamming it than actually chipping anything.

I've forgotten how long ago I ordered the chipper, but many of the accessory parts arrived over a week ago at Denny's Lawn and Garden. It supposedly was shipped from Vermont almost two weeks ago and I was hoping it would arrive last week, especially as the weather is getting more rainy and snowy. I called Denny's every couple of days are so to check on the progress. I wondered if the driver had gone to Duluth GA instead of Duluth MN.

I called yesterday afternoon and it still hadn't arrived. Today I was going to our cabin with a plan to do several other things. On my way I stopped at Bixby's to meet with our little gang for coffee. About 10:30 I left and thought I'd pay a courtesy call at Denny's.

As I parked my SUV I noticed a familiar-looking machine outside. It was a chipper like I had ordered! It was on trailer base like I had ordered. I went inside with my mouth agape and surprised. Tom, the manager, said that he had called this morning and left a message. I had already left by then. The chipper had finally arrived about four yesterday afternoon. Tom had assembled it this morning and it was ready to go.

I had promised to pay by check rather than credit card, and normally, I don't carry my checkbook. However, I had made some debit card purchases yesterday but hadn't entered them in my check register. I just happened to decide to bring the checkbook along to do so when I was at our cabin.

I wrote the check for the amount Tom told me, but as he was entering it into the register he noticed that he had given me a higher price than he should have. He asked me if I would write another and I did. As I tore it off, I saw that it was the last check in my book!!

After a long, slow drive, never more than 45 mph, sometime less than 30 on really bumpy sections, I arrived at our cabin. I let it sit while I started a fire and ate lunch.

I won't bore you with the details of setting it up by a huge pile of brush, branches, and small trees. But I was finally ready to go. Set all the levers, push the start button, and a big cloud of exhaust. Everything eventually settled down and I started stuffing things in. Chomp, chomp, spit, spit. Beautiful! The stuff was drawn in and out came chips into a cart. Down went the pile of brush, up went the pile of chips. When the cart seemed to be heavy enough, I moved it a few feet and dumped the chips along the path I was on. In about five cartloads, I had the essentially three pile all chipped. The only things I left behind were lots of leaves, some really small branches, and branches that had too many smaller branches at the wrong angle to go into the chipper. In two hours I did what would have taken me five days with the old chipper.

Better yet, I had no skin problems. Earlier this summer if I was even at the cabin for a day, the balsam would produce a skin reaction. I guess the zinc tablets have helped.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow when I prepare some piles of really crooked stuff and stuff the result into the chipper. If it doesn't snow or rain much.

Next year I should make some real progress on keeping our trails open and "paved".

The Adventures of Superwoodsman, Episode 12

Last Monday we went to our cabin to check on our newly planted basswood and to clean up some of the uncut wood and piles of branches.

It looked like only three of the 25 seedlings had been bitten, but they might not have had the longest branch intact when we planted them.

Our first order of business was to unjam our chipper. We had left it jammed from our visit two weeks ago. I don't like to bend over to work on things, and so we wanted to have it elevated. I had a loading dock that was at a good height for such work, but it had too many rotted boards two years ago. The picnic table that I built seventeen years ago is still usable although we use another table for al fresco dining. It has become a de facto work bench for many tasks.

I hauled our aluminum ramps to the one end of the table and the two of us were able to push, lift, and wriggle the chipper into place for further work. Now it seemed a piece of cake to take off the screen and the input chute and reach next to the flywheel for the jammed piece. Well, the first two were a piece of cake, but even seeing the jammed piece was not.

I pushed in a cheap, long keyhole saw I had bought for this purpose, but its teeth were too fine to really grab the wood. I could saw at the wood, but that was a long, laborious process.

If I pushed the flywheel in the opposite direction that it normally went, I hoped it would push the piece within reach. Unfortunately, pushing it backward jams the handle of the starter rope against the housing very quickly. I had figured out that if one of us pulled out the starter rope first and the other pushed the flywheel in the opposite direction, we could push the flywheel for several rotations.

This worked only once. A very little piece showed itself at the chute opening. I grabbed that piece with pliers and pulled steadily. The whole piece came out shortly and the flywheel turned easily.

The next time we were not so lucky. I had to use the better back saw to get at it and cut or grab. Eventually the piece broke up into smaller piece and the flywheel turned freely. However, there is still some still in there that could cause some other wood to jam.

The problem is one of design. The gap between the blades and the housing is quite large, and so a piece can be pulled in and jam, especially in an area away from the blades. The problem is further compounded by the nuts and bolts in the cutting area that hold the housing to the engine. These are just one more obstruction to cause a jam.

Why, oh why, didn't I buy that Troy-bilt drum chipper when they were still marketed? Supposedly, if it jammed, one inserted a crank into the axle and turned it backward. These are available from time to time on eBay, but they always seem to be in Texas or Pennsylvania or some other locale two or more days driver away.

When I wasn't busy unjamming the chipper, I was cutting up the tree bolts. I had moved my sawhorse close to the pile of the biggest bolts. I only had three problems with this.

The first was getting the biggest bolts onto the sawhorse. There were six to ten inches in diameter. I had to use what I call the "little brother carry". I would stand one on end, squat a bit, put my arms around it about 3/4 the way up, stand up, and stagger over to the sawhorse. I could leverage one end onto the sawhorse, and then walk my hands down and lift up the other.

The second was despite the bolts being on a sawhorse, the saw would still jam. Not seriously, but enough to have to back off. I did manage to make most of the cuts perpendicular and clean. It was amazing how much easier it was to control the saw at waist height than it was bending over a trunk on the ground.

The third problem was probably a result of the second problem. The chain broke! Fortunately for me, it didn't fly off and hit me or anything or anybody else. It just dangled from the saw. I got out another chain, put it on and I was back in business.

I also took a few minutes to split a few rounds. This late in spring, they still split easily when I hit them correctly. Correctly doesn't include being dead on center.

So, we got rid of one pile of bolts and several piles of branches. There is more waiting for our next visit.

Unless something really interesting happens, this will be the last episode of "Adventures of Superwoodsman" for a while. Our next few visits will be more chipping and sawing, then we will widen some paths and do more chipping. I do hope we start spending more time walking around or just sitting around enjoying the outdoors.

If you would like to see some pictures of our place in Brimson and the surrounding area, see my Brimson set on Flickr.