Greetings! And welcome to June. As I suspected last week, very little got done on the main project over the holiday weekend. But there are still things to talk about. The irrigation pump I was using to move oil up to my rafter barrel needed detoxifying as it was needed elsewhere. Keep in mind that this pump will never be used for drinking water, so my standard for clean here is 'can I see an oil sheen on the water coming out?' A couple of fills with Simple Green and water and some Lysol and water left in overnight seemed to do the trick. With the Simple Green, I also ran the pump with the inlet and outlets closed to get some good agitation going.
The night time work sessions in the pole barn turned out to be quite buggy, and I don’t mean equipment problems. I had the doors wide open because we actually had warm weather. I was under attack from two fronts. Behind the pole barn is state swamp land which seems to supply roughly half the mosquitoes on the planet. The front is roughly 400’ away from Houghton Lake, and this was the weekend that the mayflies chose to rise up from the lake to find mates. By the end of the night, there were swarms of them around every light in the shop and plenty of them covering the floor and other surfaces. In addition, there were plenty of large moths and other night time insects all flitting around and generally making it look like the set of some horror movie. So nobody can say that I don’t suffer for my craft!:)
As most people are aware, Memorial Day weekend is a huge time for garage sales, especially in my area. On Friday I wasn’t even looking to stop at any, but on my way back from town I saw one that had potential. I ended up scoring big time! For a grand total of $15 I got a new captain’s chair for my boat, a box of galvanized pipe fittings, a box of brass pipe fittings, a box of 3” PVC DWV fittings, and a box of miscellaneous electrical items that included outlets, floodlight fixtures, and a motion sensor for an outdoor floodlight. Any one of those boxes had items that would have totaled close to $100 if purchased retail, and I got three. On Saturday, my wife, child and I all went out together to do the garage sale thing. It was also a very successful day. I scored a utility sink (with faucet) for the laundry room for $12, a well pump and galvanized fittings for $20, and an old style well pump tank for $20. (Old style does not have a pressurized air chamber inside) The pump is going to need some welding to repair a crack, but this was a great find because now my lawn watering pump will not have to do double duty anymore. The tank is not necessary for pumping oil, but I will be modifying it to increase air storage for my air compressor.
As I said earlier, I did not get a lot done on the current project. Partly due to time constraints, but also partly due to some indecisiveness on how to proceed. I could not keep myself focused on either getting the centrifuge set up just enough to see it work, or going forward with setting it up as it needs to be when completed. The two objectives have some overlap, but they are not the same. Eventually, time constraints made me choose work on the permanent setup. Much of the temporary work would have had to have been replaced or altered so I might as well be patient and do the work once.
That’s about it. Next week I’ll either have some video of a working centrifuge, or the story of a bigger deal I snagged last week.
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