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Today I (Joette) was fortunate to talk to Howard and found out that he has some news to share with everyone. It seems that Howard found out that his kidneys are not working so well for him. He just found out about his kidneys one week before he had his first heart attack. The medical team that assisted with Howard's first surgery, did not complete the entire surgery that Howard required. The reason was that his kidney's shut down due to the contrast dye that the medical team use. So they closed him up and sent him home to recover and to allow his kidneys to mend, before they decided to schedule his next surgery. He received a phone call from the kidney doctor and he received the all clear to have the second surgery. He will be having that surgery on Monday, March 18, 2019. He told me that he will be at the big show in June. The reason why Howard has not been on Red Square is because he forgot his password and has to relocate the paper he wrote it on. Then he will be back on Red Square. Please keep Howard in your thoughts and prayers

Today I went and got a truck and trailer load from an old dealer today. One thing I was excited about (among many others) was a new truck decal set from 1969

I figured this is no longer a shop project, we’re down the road from that. We have 46 taps and 21 buckets collecting sap. The prime maple season is after a cold winter, when days are in the 40’s and nights are in the 20’s. Trees with the most sunlight or southern exposure seem to build the most pressure during this time and yes, the south side of the tree will produce more sap than the north. Once sap is collected, it’s time to simmer and evaporate the water content out. Syrup is 1/40th the volume of sap, so there is a lot of heat (wood fired in our instance) to make that happen. We’re looking at 2 weeks of syrup season, before buds start on the trees and the sap goes bitter. Some people continue to produce bitter syrup for cooking purposes. I on the other hand pull taps and make some flap jacks! There are many variations of evaporators. One thing is for sure; shallow water levels and the most surface area possible is the best way to go. This is my third evaporator and each one has increased in output, ergonomics and efficiency. Here’s to the 2019 maple season!

Saw this pic on the news site of channel 8 here in Maine Squirrel eventually won it's life war by ducking into a hole.

Thanks everybody !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Most of time I complain about it being a pain is only because it's time consuming. I really do enjoy doing this stuff as it's creative, mechanical and challenging. Some things are a little over the top, but by drilling the holes into the steering wheel pieces instead of simply gluing them, it becomes much stronger and less likely to break. This is especially important with something like that which protrudes out right on top. If it's only glued it will be broken within 15 minutes of someone handling it and it's much easier to repair the shaft than make a steering wheel. I try to build them so people can actually pick them up and handle them to examine it closer rather than only being able to stare at it through a glass window. The people who are scared to touch it because it might break are the people I trust the most to handle it. Some fool who just grabs it without asking will most likely be the one who breaks it because they just don't give a $4!t.

I rarely ever get on Facebook anymore - just not worth my time to see all the political bs and misinformation being posted by various beliefs of the members there. The only reason I check in on occasion is to see what my wayward Nephew is up to in his international travels and keep in touch with old friends. In the last few years, Craigslist and eBay have turned into sites not worth visiting - way too many scammers and people trying to make maximum money from junk. There are occasional good deals, but it has gotten a lot worse and a lot less useful. Oddly enough, the FB marketplace has become the new CL and direct feedback has kept the bad sellers in check pretty well, so far. I do take time once in a while to scan for things I'd like to own, but don't want to pay for new due to cost or shipping. Enter a local machine shop businessman that is retiring due to a health problem. I noticed he had posted a few small measuring tools, mostly worn and quite dirty but for a home shop they are more than useful. Most things he's posted have sold pretty quickly - but one item seemed to just sit there with no interest to anyone - except me. After a couple of messages, we arranged to meet up and look some items over - Does anyone know what this is, lol? For those that know what these are - those numbers will mean a lot. Its a shame it hasn't been re-certified since '07, but I cannot find any marks in it and he stated it has seen almost zero use since that last certification - plus, it lived in his office with no one else having access to it. The process to lap these stones in and certify their tolerances is quite interesting - no mechanical instrument is capable of reading a tolerance down to .00005", or 50 millionths of an inch. This one is a class Grade A - Inspection grade. For my shop - it is far more than I could ever require when setting up tooling or inspecting/measuring parts - current certification or not. I've wanted to find a smaller one for the shop for years, but this was too good not to pass it up, although no fun at all to move around at almost 220lbs. To make it worse, this one has no ledges at all and that makes it much harder to handle but the good news is the edges have not one mark or chip in them, nor the entire main surface. He did have another one with dual ledges as well as a hard to find pink Starrett, but that one is even bigger and thicker - as well as over 300lbs and I just don't have the room here or I'd own that one, too. The dual-ledged version was thinner, but also quite beaten up as it lived on the main production floor and saw quite a lot of abuse by the machine operators. The bigger pink Starrett had a couple of serious chips in it and he still wants quite a buck for that one, of course, due to the name brand only. Lab grade stones are not really that expensive, but the real killer is moving them and the cost of shipping - the bigger they are, the easier they are to damage and more expensive to ship. I have wanted a good, solid inspection plate for years but the added shipping price has made them a very expensive investment for an otherwise low-tolerance home shop - so it made no sense to buy a new one. Most used ones I've found are generally damaged, misused or just priced way too high for what they are - this one was $60. Other than a really sore back, a very worthwhile investment for the cost but it will take a day or two to make room in the shop for it. Oh, I also scored a pretty nice Brown and Sharpe surface gauge that was filthy and had a cheap dial indicator on it that is missing the lens. Already got that cleaned up and ready for service again and other than some missing paint it looks nice. Missing the hardened pointer as most are, but I can make a new one easily enough. It took 3 of us just to unload this thing safely last night - when I bought the thing the shop owner had a nice lift table cart that placed it perfectly into the back of my truck, going to ask him if he wants to sell that thing as well - rated to 750lbs and in excellent condition. Now, back to rearranging the shop and getting the stone in its final resting place on the old bench. I'll have to make up a cover for it as well, nothing worse than something landing on one and chipping that lapped surface. Sarge

neat photo. i was looking at it like the eagle is saying oh *ell yeah dinner! LOL and the squirrel is saying don't even think about it. i will get at you like a spider monkey! Bring it!

Quite an operation, I'm thinking @pullstart isn't showing us everything. Let's think about this a rounded tank with a fire in it in the middle of the woods. That Maple Syrup Evaporator looks like a MOONSHINE STILL in disguise. Of course he's got his seasons wrong, moonshine is typically cooked in the fall after the corn harvest. Not that I would know anything about moonshine or stills. So maybe that's a dual purpose cooker. He did say....

Honestly, if you read about them and how to use one they can come in quite handy for almost anyone. A grade B or even C is more than most home shop owners require but they are an excellent tool for using as a surface plate to check engine or transmission parts. Even for wood shops, setting up cutter heads or just measuring things off a known, certified flat surface is worth the effort to own one. Look around, they are out there and lightly damaged stones are worth buying - even if you only ever use it to flatten small engine cylinder heads or check for warpage on other parts. A few simple tools and a couple of cheap imported or good used US-made test indicator/dial indicators make easy work of identifying problems. Need two parts cut to the exact same length? No problem - a dial or even cheaper vernier height gauge can be used to scribe lines for duplicating parts to an exact tolerance. Just a cheaper marking gauge with a fine adjustment is more useful than most folks would imagine. Most folks get by with consumer-grade pieces of glass, ceramic tile, and such things but if you actually checked those surfaces against one of these high-grade inspection plates you'd be surprised how far off those glass or ceramic pieces really are - many times well over the required tolerance for manifolds, heads and various castings or machined parts in need of repair. A simple sheet of 220 grit or higher will reveal where parts are warped from age or damage - these can save you money over time easily when working on high tolerance parts. Sarge

This is the burns. They were made by burns for the 4 or so years before gilson bought them out. Mine is a 1963, I think. On the tractordata page I've been helping to fill in information.

Thank you so much guys. Don't know what to say! You are a bunch of very fantastic people! Thanks

Still at it, 9 hours in and we’ve pulled off a pint and a sipper! The day has been wet and we spent longer getting the fire super hot than anything else, but it’s been fun! We’ll have a big batch ready soon 😁

Enough of @Sparky's buzz kill! Anyone want to guess how many tries or toothpicks it took to get a steering wheel made? And I'm still not happy with it but it looks OK. Drilling the holes and getting them lined up in 3rds with the holes in the center piece was a pain! Didn't have a dime to show the scale but you'll get the idea with the quarter And here's where we're at now. Still need to finish sanding the tires and complete the inner rim but it's getting there.

I could use about 30 ton if is also free

Would that be called Italian Toast, @Digger 66? I’ll take syrup with a side of almost anything else, thank you very much! We we ended up finishing after 25 or so hours of fire under the pot. I don’t think we took pictures in the heat of canning, fighting clogging filters and fighting tiredness. I believe we ended with 7 or 8 pint jars, one full quart jar, a half full quart jar, and a 2 quart jar filled with some syrup and a sugar filled filter bag. There were some mishaps along the way and we learned a bit too. While I ran to town yesterday to get Pizza Hut’s finest, a couple new axe parts and some high temp silicone to seal the pan gaps, the sap ran a bit low and the fire ran a bit too hot. There was a good amount of burnt product that ended up being scraped out, filtered away, etc. Also in the extreme heat, a crack developed in the corner where the finishing valve was located, resulting in a good flow of wasted materials. We knew we were loosing the best sap, but to quit for repairs would loose the entire batch. We plan to have another go-round on Sunday, hopefully with more production and less figuring things out. The top change to be made will be adding an air intake with the option of mounting a blower. The maple leaf will be blocked off and I’ll add a tube to the door with a splitter at the end to force air into the coals for a high temperature blast. Josh had a blower for inflating air mattresses, floating tubes, etc. that made for a fast paced evaporation, like a torch was in the fire box. It was a huge help! I want to figure out a few baffles inside the fire box to help direct heat to the entire pan. There were obvious hot spots that required more attention than we hoped for (stirring) in surprising areas. The area where the sap enters the baffled pan sunk from heat, I’d like to be able to support that for optimal flow in the future. We will eliminate the filter basket most likely and opt for a supply of cheese cloth for filtering the syrup. The filters I found just for maple syrup wouldn’t allow a pint jar to be poured without difficulty. That’s not the time of production that should be held up in any way, we need to operate smooth and efficiently. I got a couple hour nap this afternoon and I’m ready for hibernation in my bed tonight! Camp outs in the cold windy rain are for the birds tonight... but I’m not totally opposed to the idea of it happening again. More than anything, we had an absolute blast. Josh and I normally don’t get much time to hang out on our terms, and we both needed the break from the daily grind. Thanks for coming along on the journey!

Imagine how many flicks per second that squirrel tail was going!

Video not working for me so I'll just suggest a stick of dynamite and run!

I left my door open while I was painting.

Nice Sarge I have no use for such tools as the best I can get to is +- 1/8 inch and that's with my shoes off but can appreciate it's use.

You REALLY have to love syrup to camp out at the still in the rain in the woods.

That's where it is now, it started as this.

did you check carb to see if the needle is stuck in the seat ?? I had a Kohler 12 that the needle stuck, had to blow air in fuel inlet of carb to get it unstuck and it would run and start fine, until left sit for any long period of time then would have to unstuck it again to get it to run. Finally got a kit and rebuilt the carb and had no more problems with it. good luck eric j

So original pump doesn't work, new one doesn't work and electric one doesn't work. May not be a fuel pump problem.

While you have the fire raging, may as well toss some brauts on there, smoked sausage at the least.

Didn't get much done today ( except writing jokes) but did get to work on one tire for a rim and try to get it to look right. Curved the sides so it doesn't look so flat walled and more like a tire. And more side wall on the new larger tires. Time for little slats around the insides

Sweepin cinders with the 657. Can't beat free driveway fill.

I'm to delicate for that kinda violence! It does work if all of the hardware contact points are clean. Plus you can always push the button if it has trouble. More of just an originality thing in my opinion.

You want one of those SCOOBIE DOO vans too? NICE SCORE on the old decals. That's a great find and I'm sure very rare. How about some pics of the load?

That gives me an idea

So I just took these 8.50 deestones off of my wide rims and put them on my 855 rims and I must say they look really good! They don’t bulge out as much as I thought they would.

Hahahahahahahaha Jim I want you to know Trina said exactly what you did

You need a machine Eric(dozer, excavator)...just a one day rental would do it... to cut down Trina's rock pile...add material in front of your shed's entrance... slope all those ramps away from your entrance, to stop funneling all the runoff into it.

Yes thanks .....prayers Howard... I'm sure the other fellas are going to want to know this. @roadapples

Yeah I don't disagree with that. I'm not the fool that put the shed there in the first place. I would have put it off to the left where it was higher up. C'est La Vie. It's been there 15 years. Just gives me a good reason to build a much much bigger building now doesn't it?

I live around 6 miles North of Brockville Ontario which is right on the Saint Lawrence river. Quite often I will get snow when Brockville does not, or gets rain. Moderating effect of the river I guess.

I’d kill for wild blueberries. Dangit @ebinmaine, now I’m hungry for some big ole Belgian waffles with butter and BB Syrup.😂🤣

Oooooo yeah. I've grown quite a liking for Maine lowbush small blueberries. I've tried the great big fat highbush blueberries in many different varieties but I just have never found one that beats the lovely wild ones that we have on the mountain tops around here. Love that blueberry syrup too.

That is the number one reason it’s illegal to sell, followed by no oversight of production. The government can’t collect on the transaction therefore it’s illegal. But, that aside, you are in the prime country for my favorite kinda syrup: Blueberry. First time I had it was at a little blueberry farm between Coldwater and Sturgis. I picked blueberries there every summer from the time I could stand until my grandpa passed in 2009. I’ll take good blueberry syrup over the best maple syrup any day haha. *Eichers is the name of the place. Best blueberries I’ve ever had.

Pizza Hut and a maple syrup still

Forgot crazy in there... the crazy man

Definitely a boil that will be remembered.

We have about 35 more gallons of sap to go through today. If we don’t process it, the temps today will likely spoil it. I better get chopping some more wood!

So this repair’s gonna turn out like all my other repairs - I’m gonna have parts left over.

Yep, you can take out my frontal lobe, replace the missing cells and reassemble. Right after dinner before the Friday night parade works for me. I wanna be 100% for driving in the parade.

Really nice evaporator. Thanks for sharing this great project. Many don't appreciate he amount of effort required to produce a gallon of this liquid gold. I did this one time when I was about the age of your daughters. I collected about 100 gallon of sugar water in two 55 gallon drums, cut a cord of firewood, and boiled it down in two butcher kettles. It took about 30 hours to get it down to two gallons of syrup that was worth about $5.00/ gallon at that time. This was when I lived near Meyersdale, Pa., home of the annual Pa. Maple Festival. https://www.pamaplefestival.com/ At one time, my mother and step dad had one side of their Somerset Co. mountain tapped and piped carrying the sugar water to a 2000 gallon tank at the base of the mountain where, during the peak of the run,it was emptied daily by tanker truck. Pure Maple Syrup is like these red horses. It is addictive and I use about 2 gallon/ year on pancakes, waffles, ice cream, pan hause, puddin, cereal, and with brown sugar, it makes the best ever glaze for a baked ham.

I bought this tractor a little while back for $50 from my neighbor that was moving out of state. It had been stored for over 15 years and had 211 hours on it when I bought it from him. The machine came with a nice snow plow, mower deck and wheel weights, but the engine wad bad. It took some time to gather all the parts I needed to get it back up and running, but i'm satisfied with the results. I had to replace the 2 front tires, repair the engine, it was ran out of oil by his son. I had to replace pistons, rods, new rings and a crankshaft and now it runs like new. It still needs a little more work to be complete, the pulley covers on the mower deck need replaced and I plan to change oil in the tranny come spring. I also did some touch up paint work on a few places that needed it. This is my 3rd horse and it hopefully will last a few years.because there is nothing today that comes close to what these machines are. Just thought I would share my last project with the members here.

That is a 36" mower deck...looks in fair shape. It is VERY EASILY converted for use on an actual Wheelhorse 'garden tractor' that has a HORIZONTAL shaft engine. The same 'converted' mower deck is 'useable' on most 8 hp to 20 hp tractors with horizontal engines. If converted and in good cond, the deck MAY be worth 150 - 200.... depends on how good it is and location location locaiton.

I put 26x12x12's on 8.5" wheels I don't think they bulge

Mmmmm, pancakes! Received a couple of bottles from a customer which has been making maple syrup for years. Think he has perfected his craft as it's the best I've had. Talking to him for a while I got interested in maybe trying to still some moonshine using the sap. It's got enough water content. (Another hobby of mine which has been on the back burner too long. Pun intended.) He also invented a strainer cage to hold filters so they have 4 points or cones which helps speed up the process. Super nice guy and if you're interested, I can contact him about his strainers or any other stuff. He may talk to you directly too.