I worked on the grinder stand some more again today. It was time for the grinder to be actually mounted on the stand (I know! Call me a radical). I rummaged in the spare bolts bin and only found some that were too long, so my first step was to cut them to length.



First I compared the bolts to the stand and used a Sharpie to make a mark on the threads where I wanted to cut. Then I threaded a nut onto each one to about a centimeter above the cut mark, and clamped the bolt to the workbench using two C clamps - one on the nut, one on the hex head of the bolt. I used a hacksaw to cut off the end, then did a very minimalistic cleanup with a file (maybe 1 or 2 swipes) before backing the nut off.



Here's the grinder mounted on the stand with the 2 nuts just exactly to length. Stylin'!  The nuts will remain unpainted in case we need to remove the grinder for maintenance etc.



I did, however, paint the little shelf for the water cup blue to match the rest of the stand. My Spouse voted for attaching the water cup with Velcro so I will do that once the shelf has had a few days for the paint to cure fully.



Also left to do is to repair a broken guard on the right hand side (left in the picture above). See the "5" on the piece of masking tape on the grinder's backside? That is left over from the $5 label from the yard sale we got it from. LOL, I love yard sale tools!

A couple of days ago I got the grinder stand primered. This new primer we have is a bit different from the old stuff. It is runnier (hence the drips underneath) and also it does not require 24 hours before painting over it. More like an hour!



While I was primering stuff I also hit this cup-holder nut on the backside of the log spray station. I keep a mental list of things that need X type of paint or primer so that I can catch up when I am working with that color on other projects.



And the side of the little standoff for the spray station cup itself. The sides are all you can really see when working around the station.



Once I realized the primer only needed 1 hour of rest before painting over it, I went ahead and painted the grinder stand blue the same night. I had new paint also, but it appears to dry the identical color. Here's the stand with the grinder set atop it as a sanity check. Everything looks good so far!



The plans for the stand call for it to also have feet and a can to hold water for dipping tools in. My Spouse, who requested these features, suggested a large tuna can as a good size so I will be using one of those. Originally I was going to screw the can directly to the upright but then I realize that'd make it a pain for rinsing out and refilling the can, so I opted to make a shelf instead.



The shelf is fairly simple: a piece of 2x4 held on with L-brackets. There will also be a way to temporarily fasten the can so it doesn't fall off when bumped or moved. I haven't decided between velcro or a small dowel peg yet. Another option would be to put a raised ring around the edge of the 2x4 or raised triangles on the corners to corral the can.



In the meantime, the shelf is all primered in preparation for painting.



The can is also being painted black. The underside has black gaff tape on it to protect it from the paint in case I decide to stick Velcro to it.



Here's the underside of the stand with feet added. The feet are rubber non-skid bumpers. They just screw on and are dirt cheap.



I will need to touch up the paint on the underside when I do the cup holder.

That's it for now!

I worked on the stand for the bench grinder some more today. My Spouse helpfully cut the 4x4 to length so I had everything I needed to assemble the pieces.



The 2x4's of the base are attached to each other with long deck screws, and to the 4x4 upright with 5/16 lag bolts. It took a bit of pondering to figure out how to do all this in such a small, asymmetrical area without the hardware interfering with one another. Ultimately I did figure it out, but it'd take about 6 drawings to show what I did so am going to skip that unless someone is really interested.



Here's the top. It has 2 holes for mounting the grinder, and then it is bolted to the top of the upright with a pair of lag screws. It doesn't matter that they stick out because the underside of the grinder has a concavity that will accomodate them.



I tested out the grinder on the stand to make sure it is the height I had intended and everything. I'll put it on permanently once the stand is done being painted.



Here's the stand with all the holes from all the nails I pulled out of the scrap wood filled. Tomorrow I'll primer the stand and the next day I'll paint it blue. It will also get small feet underneath the ends of the legs, and a water can mounted to the front.

That's all for today!

Today I got together the wood I'd need to build this project:



It's basically an upright 4x4 post with four feet to keep it stable and standing, and a small 2x6 pad on top to bolt the bench grinder onto.



I spent a few minutes pounding out nails from four 15" pieces of 2x4 that were in the scrap heap and cut off a cleaned piece of 2x6 from there too. More on this soon!

I got the rolling lumber rack mostly painted, but unfortunately ran out of the good blue workbench paint before I had finished the last of the base. I made sure the parts that still needed paint were around the outside though so I'd be able to go ahead and load it. I am not sure when I'll be able to get more paint but I figure it'll probably not be until I finish another project at this point. My teeny monthly allowance has run out until March in any case ;-)



Here's the rack filled with wood. It works great! There are various small items on the bottom most layer, and then the rack part contains all the pieces longer than 36". Not too much up on top yet but that will be filled once I get more 2x4's in stock.



The basement floor is looking pretty wide open and clean with all that wood picked up! Makes it a lot easier to sweep too.



The remaining wood in the scrap heap is full of nails and screws which I will be removing gradually over the next several days. Most of what is left in this heap is destined for the wood burning boiler at this point. It is stuff I salvaged when I ripped out the soffits on the kitchen ceiling.

More progress down in the basement today. I managed to get the rolling lumber rack completely primered, using up the rest of the older white primer in the process. The rack therefore has some blue primer too in this picture:



The blue primer is actually exactly the same color as the workbench paint I have. A kindly hardware store clerk had offered to tint the primer a paler version but by mistake the end result was nearly identical, lol. This makes it really confusing to paint over. Luckily the blue primer is almost gone too. My Spouse says that aboard ships they use pink-tinted primer to make it absolutely different from any normal ship interior color.



The underside of the server rack shelf got its 2nd coat today as well. It's looking pretty good and I hope to paint the top tomorrow. I can't wait to put it to use!

Also in basement news today, my Spouse brought the electric wood splitter down to the basement to start tackling the huge heap of wood that was too wide to fit in the boiler this year.



This little guy is just big enough to split an 18" long log. It was bought new but insanely cheaply and it has made up for its low budgetness by being exceedingly high strung and temperamental. It tends to break and/or require rebuilding on a regular basis. Here's to hoping it behaves much more nicely here in Wisconsin where it'll mostly be indoors. In Colorado it lived outside all winter on dusty bare ground, or in a snowdrift.

I really shouldn't complain. This thing is WAY less work than chopping all the wood manually using a splitting maul, which is what I did before we bought this. LOL

I did a bunch of small painting work in the basement today. First I sanded and primed the server shelf I had been working on:



I also masked off and primered the plywood bottom of the old table saw we have:



I have been using up some old primer I found lying around that only needs 2 hours to dry before the finish coat is applied, so I went ahead and put the first coat of gray on the underside of the server shelf:



This will require 2 coats of gray as this is not very opaque paint. I'll have to finish it another day.



And here's the table saw base painted bright blue, to match its big brother the radial arm saw in the background.

I also did a bunch of work to prep the rolling lumber rack I'm building for painting as well. First I took off a lot of screw stumps that were sticking out of the bed:



Oh wait. First I removed all the snowblower parts that had found their way in there. For once, the half-done projects lying around aren't all mine ;-) Then I ground down the stumps of the screws.



The above picture shows a ground-off stump at center (it is just a spot) and a still sticking up one above that. My spouse suggested I use the big disc sander to take them off and it worked great!



Neither of us actually remembers where this sander came from. I think it may have been inherited by my father from his father. I am not sure if he personally used it much though. It's amazingly powerful, though a bit scary because it just has a toggle switch for power and can be left on so when you plug it in, look out!



I also had to partly re-build the corners with longer screws to make them good and strong. I am not sure what the original issue was with them but the bottom boards were warped and pulling away at the corners. All tight now though. I redrilled the holes deeper, then held the corners with multiple C-clamps and ratcheted in longer screws.

I also filled and sanded all the holes throughout the wood rack, and washed the part where the snowblower grease had pooled up. The basement is so arid in winter it dried off really fast.



I even got it all masked off and started on the primering, but quickly realized it was getting too late to work on such a big project. So this is how it stands for now. Pretty close to done! I can't wait to put all the wood on, decluttering the basement floor quite a bit.

I worked on the rolling lumber rack a little bit more today, finishing the structure the wood will rest on:



I have a couple tweaks I need to do before I can fill, sand and prime, but it's basically finished! :)

Those who have been following my "project shop furniture" tags might remember a while back when I posted that I was planning to build a rolling lumber rack to house my copious but ever changing supply of spare wood. I even posted rather scenic photos of heaps of wood all over the basement floor. Well, after laying some pieces and parts out on the floor to float different concepts, and then letting it all rest on my mental back burner for several weeks, it suddenly clicked last night! I was able to draw up this plan:



Tada! It is basically a flat rolling bin about the depth of a 2x4 on edge. Then there are two pylons for laying longer pieces across. The cross pieces for each pylon are some scavenged metal toolbench legs left over from a dismantled table. They supply 3 ways to store different shapes of long wood: above the diagonal, below the diagonal, and up a narrow slot on one side. After drawing this picture I also added a top rail connecting the 2 pylons across to one another. I also added a line along the bottom edge to signify that there would be plywood between the casters and the frame.



I had found a spare 2x4 in the rafters while cleaning the garage the other day so now I suddenly had everything I needed to do the job! Maybe that is what inspired me. At any rate, today I made the 2x4 frame and then added the 3/4" plywood bottom. That tiny blue dot on the wood in the picture above is a "25 cents" sticker from the yard sale where I bought the plywood from, LOL. I think I'll leave it on for posterity. I still use servers that have the "$9.99 As Is" and "$19.99 No OS" stickers from Computer Renaissance on them.



A couple of 2x6, one on each end underneath, form the structure for the casters to mount to. These are very nice casters, able to take 400 lbs. If I ever manage to accumulate enough wood to stress out four, 400-lb casters I need to be finishing more projects.



Here's what it looked like turned right side up and resting on its wheels. The joint between the plywood is nice and smooth. The color difference won't matter once it is all bright blue. I always paint the shop furniture bright blue. We have the most cheerful dang basement in Wisconsin.



Here's the rolling rack with the aforementioned black steel table legs just resting in it. The rack was sized so that a 2x4 frame would fit between the sides and the black steel pieces. I think the narrow slot on this end of the steel pieces will be great for putting in narrow pieces of molding and such that I want to find again soon and not lose up in the rafters.



Here it is with one side all framed in. I need to do this same thing to the other side, bolt them both on, then add the pair of 2x2 rails connecting them to one another, and then it'll be done! Definitely one of the quickest and easiest projects I've done in a long time... unless you count the eons of pondering exactly what to do.

Since the wood rack is now empty of all immediately usable wood, it is time to throw all the extra wood outside down into the basement. In procrastination of preparation for this I have swept out the wood rack completely:



The amount of sawdust, bark, and splinters that accumulated underneath was huge. I had two large dustpans full to toss into the boiler when I was done.

The wood rack has held up really well and I had been planning to touch up the paint each year before loading anymore wood but it sure doesn't need it at all this first year. The workbench paint I used is incredibly tough stuff. And incredibly bright blue!



There were some medium to large size sticks that hadn't been used yet, which I set aside so they won't get mixed with the new incoming logs. This is partially because they're used differently (only at the beginning of firing the boiler, not as much when it's in full stride) but also because I don't want to physically mix wood loads. This way any wood that goes unused this spring will be from this year's batch, not the previous year's. With any luck this will allow us to avoid a replay of the Great Beetle Disaster of 2008.



The "needs split" logs have also had to move yet again. They are probably starting to feel like the unwanted stepsisters of the wood pile. Luckily they should all be taken care of in the next month or so, when my Spouse comes back and puts the wood splitter to good use!

I did a lot of miscellaneous stuff today such as shoveling 3" of snow off the sidewalk, paying the bills, and walking down to the post office downtown to mail my in-laws' Christmas present. But in between throwing loads of wood in the wood boiler I got this little project finished off: the holder for the spray bottle on the log spray station.



I drilled 2 holes in the leg of the spray station. The lower one needed a small standoff because the cup I am using (a recycled lamp housing) wasn't a perfect cylinder but had an indent. The standoff is a piece of thin wood with a hole matching the mounting hole and fitting over it, and then is attached using a drywall screw. I drilled and recessed the hole first so it wouldn't split the wood or stick out.



Here it is with the cup attached. I cut some carriage bolts to size and attached them with nuts on the backside of the leg. I'll touch up the nuts, and the sides of the standoff, with blue paint next time I do a project involving that color of paint. 



Here is the entire spray station with the bottle installed in its new home. I've been using the station for a while now and it works great! A small amount of sawdust appears to be stuck permanently to the trough but there has been no damage to the paint otherwise. I sweep out the loose stuff once a day when I fire the boiler, since it's generally all dry from the day before at that time.

That's all for now!

For some odd reason I decided to treat you all to a tour of the basement as it currently stands.



First we have the boilers. The tan one is the natural gas one, and the blue one is the wood one. Wood's output goes to the chimney while the gas has its own chimney (the narrow chrome pipe rising vertically to the left, and its air input is the white PVC pipe next to that). That small white unit next to the gas boiler is one of the dehumidifiers, which can probably get put away for the winter now. I'm about to start running a humidifier upstairs.

In the background from left to center is the wall rack of wood burning tools, the door to the wood room, and 3 very nice framed diagrams of the boiler plumbing created by my spouse. Apparently this is how equipment is notated on ships, so it seemed appropriate!



Panning a little to the left you can see the corner a bit better, showing the new wood spray station which has been pressed into service and has been working great! It still needs the cup holder for the spray bottle added. The holes are drilled in the leg but it needs mounted. That small pail to the right in the corner holds the ashes from each cleaning of the wood boiler. The bright yellow item up near the top left is the incoming telephone punch strips. I wired the whole house for both our house line and my business line. Gotta love a fully wired house!



Here's the firewood rack which could be seen in the left edge of the last photo. As you can see the first row of the 3 in the rack is almost depleted. There are actually about 2 layers worth of "needs split" logs (the ones with the labels) but a bunch of them were placed in the wood room to put them out of the way. I'll assemble them all on that front row once it is cleared of burnable wood.

It took about 2 weeks to use that row, which is faster than I expected to be using wood. Then again we weren't able to use quite all of the row considering how many logs were too big. If I continue to use wood at the same rate a ballpark estimate would be that I'll be able to throw the pallets of wood that are outside down into the basement around the first of the year to repopulate the rack. I'll be able to burn the wood in the wood room until the beginning (or possibly middle) of March, at which point there'll only be a month or two left of wood burning so I think we are good for firewood and will likely have extra. To be honest I think some of the stuff from the second truckload will be too green to burn well so having extra will allow some picking and choosing. Whew!



Moving farther to the left are the laundry and freezer, all of which have been behaving themselves and working great. The cooler on the floor is waiting for 2 days from now when I must go pick up the final load from the chicken farm: 2 fresh turkeys!



Panning around farther to the left is the opposite wall, where the heaps of wood that will reside on the new rolling lumber rack are awaiting their wheels. Beyond the heap is the door to the parts room. To the right on the edge of the picture is the growing table (on sawhorses). The wall contains tool pegboards which were one of last year's big blue furniture projects, and then the unfinished workbench. Now I'm going to into the parts room because I have not posted much on that yet so far.



This rack of tubs takes up one end of the tiny room we use for parts. It's bright blue of course! The red and yellow tubs are from Tidy Cat cat litter, with yellow contact paper covering the art. These things work great for stuff that needs to be stores in categories like "casters and feet", or "hooks and hangers". Underneath this shelf on the floor are spools of wire and similar.



There's the other end of the parts room. The shelf on the left contains hardware, and then the other two have paint and chemicals. It's fairly organized now because I went through and sorted out all the unwanted hazmat and old paint a few months ago. We had inherited crap from every house we've lived in along the way so there was a lot!



The only bit of remaining wall space in the parts room is awaiting a small blue shelf which is the final parts room project currently on the books. These boxes will reside on that shelf once it is done. They contain things like string, jars and sandpaper. Basically these are all the things I didn't predict I'd need a tub for back when I built the tub shelf, but which gradually shook out as "needed" over several months of basement cleaning and sorting. The shelf design then followed once I saw what I had.



Back out in the basement I continue farther left showing the other end of the tool pegboards and work bench, then the drill press and household supplies shelf. The shelf was my first furniture project down there and everything else has followed. When the work bench is finished there will be an entire row of bright blue guys lined up along that wall! The white wall on this side of the basement was inherited from the previous owners. I kind of like it and may continue the trend and make the whole basement white once the cracks are filled on the south and west sides.



Last but not least, here's the stairs. We've come full circle because that shelf behind them is the one you can see beyond the chimney in the first photo. :)

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Since it is basically done (and was very in the way) I moved the log spray station over by the wood room, where it will be living from now on.



In this picture it is wearing a lawn bag "hat" to protect it from the spraying until the paint has fully cured, which takes about a week. For the same reason I won't be putting the stuff in the bottom shelf right away. It'll just stick to it after a couple days of the weight bearing down. The handle has been added in this picture, but not the spray bottle cupholder yet.



As a note the plastic bag was doing a great job as a temporary spray station for the past couple weeks. I draped it between two boxes of wood which formed a little trough under it and it worked just fine. Aside from having to bend over all the time and having a plastic bag strewn about the place.



Here's the lamp housing cupholder for the new spray station getting painted. I got the additional mounting hole it needed drilled also. You can't tell in this picture but the cup is standing up on top of a small block of wood I taped to the underside so that I could paint the entire thing in one go.

I cut some small carriage bolts the right length to fasten this cup to the leg of the spray station. I should be able to do that tomorrow provided I can get the threads fixed up OK. At that time the project will be complete!

Today I painted the log spray station bright blue!  The background of this picture has a great view of the drill press table and the unfinished rolling workbench. The log spray station is almost completely finished now. I might add a few coats of clear coat on the trough to protect it a little bit. It is also going to have a handle for lifting the non-rolling end and a cup to hold the sprayer.



Here's the handle being painted black. 



Here's the cup that the spray bottle will live in. It hasn't been painted yet because it needs a few holes drilled in it first. This is the housing from a disused desk lamp. I placed the innards in the lamp parts tub for later re-use. It's actually going to be mounted on the end opposite to the handle, not on the same end as shown in the drawing below.



All of my projects have drawings. This one is fairly typical, done in pencil on lined paper with a title, measurements, and a date of initial conception. If there are a lot of repetitious parts (as for shelving) and particularly if I need to buy wood, there'll be lists of parts too. Sometimes if it's a pretty complicated project I use a ruler for straight lines. I don't bother to try making these drawings to scale as I personally don't need that to visualize the project properly, and the numbers are all I look at when it comes to measuring for cuts.

Notice the start date on this one was nearly 2 months ago. If you ask my Spouse, you'll probably hear that makes this a blazing fast project for me. I prefer to think of it as uh... going well! :D

Since moving to my "forever home" and becoming more organized than I have ever been before in my life, the project drawings have an actual 3-ring binder they live in, in chronological order and divided by "pending" and "completed". At some point when I clean out my oldest files still in the storage locker, I'll get to organize 20 years of papers like this into that binder. That will be genuinely fun!

Today I started moving ahead on a project to build a rolling cart or rack for all of our scrap wood. I tend to re-use everything possible before buying new wood as you could probably tell from the pictures of some of my other projects. The piles of spare wood are many and various. In addition to two boxes of very small pieces (they get weeded out as tinder every so often) I also have this:



and this:



There are also some separated (necessarily, for safety) heaps that require de-nailing and de-screwing before they can be considered spare wood:



And:



While everything is organized well enough that I can find things, needless to say the basement would be a lot neater and roomier with this stuff all picked up and out of the way. Thus the rolling lumber cart project.

We had this spare table that we got nearly free at a garage sale but it never quite turned out to be as useful as we hoped. I needed to get that out of the way too so I decided to harvest the cork top to hang up and use as a pegboard, which would then leave the black metal legs available for stealing for my lumber rack project. I thought they would make good shelf brackets for it and would be sturdy enough to stand up under another load of more lumber too.



Note: the chop saw at lower right also came cheap at a garage sale... only $25! It is one of my favorite tools ever. Usable power tools at garage sales is definitely one of the Good Things In Life.



Oddly enough once I removed all the assorted legs, sides and what not from the tabletop I discovered there were 2 rings on it, right where they'd need to be for hanging it up as a corkboard. I think this "tabletop" may have actually been a corkboard to begin with. Handy!



Here are some pieces of the future lumber cart being tried out in different configurations. I will need to go buy more 2x4's no matter what.

Today I sanded, re-filled, re-sanded, then primered the log spray station:



Tomorrow I will paint it bright blue! I was thinking of painting the trough part a different color just to somewhat disguise the fact that wood chips will be accumulating in there. Tan maybe. Luckily that part will be getting the most beat up so I'll have plenty of excuses to repaint it in the future if I pick badly.

The weather has been below 40 degrees the past couple days and should be for the next several so I've been getting lots of wood burning days in. I believe the new gaskets make a big difference in how much extra air gets in there because you can now hear the air hissing in when the fire is really burning well. Of course, the bottom flap with no gasket in at all cannot be closed tightly. I did go ahead and order smaller gasket from McMaster Carr. Their website is really neat. Try putting part number 8818K46 in the search box to the left hand side of their website. It immediately pops up a nice catalog page with BRAIDED FIBERGLASS ROPE SEAL, 3/8" DIAMETER highlighted and a little box to enter how many feet you want. It turns out the wide and narrow rope I had was only 1/16" different in width, so I ordered the next 2 sizes down. One or the other should be the right size for that bottom flap's gasket.

I have been experimenting with loading the boiler in front as well as in the back. This allows it to burn longer and more evenly. It does require raking coals from the back over to the front from time to time. I was not able to do this last year because it was guaranteed to make it overheat, but between the new gaskets and a number of adjustments made to the automated controls at the end of the heating season last year (mostly widening the window between "wood boiler ready" and "wood boiler overtemp") that appears to be much less of a problem this year. Also occasional overheating is less of a pain than it used to be because the 2nd floor zone has been taken off the heat dump. That means my office doesn't turn into a raging sweatbox. Always a plus!

In other wood burning related news, I had to resort to labelling the logs that are too big to fit in the boiler opening so I wouldn't keep grabbing those ones and trying them. My Spouse has a special relationship with the wood splitter that I would really rather not get in the middle of. For one thing I'd probably break it, and also it is likely to get oil all over the basement floor, and I'd really rather not have been responsible for that happening ;-)



Don't laugh! I printed a bunch of these on a sheet and cut them up, and put them in an envelope nearby so I can staple them to each wide load log as I run across them. They then go in the wood room where they will be out of the way until February when my Spouse can come back and tickle the wood splitter just the way it likes.



There are also a few that will likely need chainsawing but they are way down at the bottom of the heap and I won't likely have gotten to those by then.

I worked on the log spraying station some more today. First I took the rotary disc sander and took off some bits of the underside of the trough that were sticking out too far. Then I was able to screw on the trough bottom cover pieces that I had cut the previous time I worked on this. The other thing I did today on it was cut the plywood bottom for the shelf that is below the trough. I did all this while the unit was upside down for ease of access and drilling.



Here it is, essentially done but still upside down. In the background you can see two previous finished projects, the drill press table and the household supplies shelving (with water jugs on the bottom shelf). To the right at rear is one end of the rolling workbench, which is still very much a work in progress. That little green and black guy on the floor is my planer, which needs its own little blue table built as well. Things to do, things to do!



I did all of the filling and such and should be able to sand and primer the log spray station tomorrow. As a note I wrote to Saver Systems, the makers of Anti-Creo-Soot, and described my project, asking if I could get away with using regular Latex paint on the trough or if the ACS would eat it. A fellow wrote back very promptly the next day saying it should be just fine, as the ACS isn't activated until it reaches 300 degrees. What great service!

A far cry from when I wrote to Green Giant with some questions about one of their products. I got a brain dead form letter back from Betty Crocker (apparently the owners of Green Giant now) that was notionally regarding the topic I wrote about, but did not answer my questions whatsoever. It was clear someone just cast their eye randomly over the page and punched the "send form letter" button for whichever topic caught their eye first.

As a result of my adventures in Dentristry (receiving end) earlier, I was too tired to accomplish much but I did get all the wood cut for the underside of the trough and it is partially installed. Here's what it looks like with most of the pieces in place and some of them screwed in:



Before I can go further I need to trim a little off some of the underside pieces of the trough where they stick out a little. I'll do that with this really huge powerful disk sander we have. This thing is insane. In Colorado I used it to shave full size 2x8's down to match dimensional 2x8's on our deck post-installation. One thing that is a little odd about this monster sander is it has a dual position toggle switch for power. The first time it got used in this house (about 2 years after it got moved from Colorado) it was sitting face down on the floor when the cord was plugged in and it took off at a gallop, the switch having been in the "on" position. Good thing I don't like vinyl flooring anyway. Cough.

The log spray station will, of course, be painted bright blue.

Later tonight I worked on the log spray station some more. I realized I'll probably need that if I am going to be using firewood now. :-p

When I last left it, the basic frame had been built, with the four legs having diagonal cuts on top to accomodate the trough shape where the log would be held:



Unfortunately what I discovered was that these leg-tops had to be somewhat lower than the inner edge of the horizontal 2x4's if I wanted the top of the trough itself to be flush. So my first task today was to take a hacksaw and chisel and cut down the 4 legs to be the right height:



The above picture shows one of them in progress. It really wasn't that bad to do but it sure took me several days to work up the heart to dive into the task.

Once that had been accomplished, I was able to put in the 4 sides of the trough:







I was ecstatic when I reached this point because it meant I could return the table saw blade to the 0 degree position and put the guard back on. That thing is scary when it is not covered.

Also I had time to do part of the filling and such:



I will need to do a bit more construction on the underside, to provide the trough with some personal privacy and to add a shelf about 6" off the ground for the spare bottles of Anti Creo Soot. But the most difficult part has been accomplished!

Now, in our family I am famously the person who supposedly starts stuff and doesn't finish it. I don't personally agree with this assessment; I think that what I do is retain a long memory of what needs to be done, and attack whichever project I feel I'll work hardest at on a given day. But whichever the explanation, my supposed monopoly on this behavior is totally fictitious. LOL. I seem to remember that I was the one who did the bulk of (and finished) the most heinous jobs of moving us from Minneapolis to Glencoe, from Glencoe to Colorado, and from Colorado to Wisconsin, while my dear Spouse was conveniently on the other side of the country or if possible, the planet.

Recently this phenomenon has taken on a hair raisingly local turn as well. Imagine my surprise when, shortly after my Spouse took the initiative and placed 4 of our lighted ceiling fans on eBay for auction, the call came from the Union for an assignment on a ship at sea. Hmm.. someone will have to take down, disassemble and ship all these devices, who would that be? :-p

And so, along those same lines, we come to today's project: replacing the gaskets on the wood boiler. This is something it never would have occurred to me to do on my own, probably due to a lack of boilers in my early life. But when presented with the information that they were worn out, and the previously-purchased supplies sitting on top of the kindling stack in full view, OK.



Here's the old gasket on top. You can't really see it because it is dirty, but it basically sits in a channel corresponding to the lip of the boiler opening. When the door closes, that lip pushes into the channel and sits in a nest made by the gasket. The gasket itself is some kind of white ropy material that I hope wasn't asbestos. This is the top half of the boiler into which the wood is shoved and all poking and arranging activities occur. The little arched opening in the lower middle is where you can open a little door to see how the fire is doing. This works way better than I had expected.

The boiler is the only bright blue object in the basement that is not my fault!



There was a gasket on the bottom half as well. This half is where the wood ash gets cleaned out every couple of days. There is also an air flap that is automatically opened and closed to allow more or less air in depending on how much heat (fire) is needed to keep the water temperature right.

This is a really cool boiler but it is no longer sold in the United States. My Spouse contacted the manufacturer in Europe and they were very nice and even sent literature.



The first step was to remove the old gaskets. I did this with a flat head screw driver and some very stout needlenose pliers. Much of it peeled out easily but the part over on the left hand side of the bottom (corresponding to the hinge side of the door, plus where there was clearly some rust action) was tough. There were two different sizes of rope, wide on the top door and narrower on the lower.



Some of the channel was left in much better shape. This part has nice shiny iron showing and little to no "gasket hair" left behind.



Hairy gasket channel, yuck. As you can see it is rusty too.



Holy gasket hair, Batman!

The next step was definitely the most labor intensive part of the project, and took the bulk of the time. This was cleaning all those channels with a wire brush.



I used the brush shown plus another that was smaller and had brass bristles. With its smaller head that one was better for getting the last bits out and getting the sides of the channels. But the long one was excellent for doing long stroke initial cleaning and it took care of the bottoms of the channels really well too.



Here's what the hairiest part of the channel looked like once cleaned. Hurray! Needless to say I was blackened head to toe like a coal miner by the time this project was finished. Once the channels were clean on the first two doors I realized oh yeah, there is a 3rd gasket as well, on the air flap. It can be seen pretty well in the photo above.



The gasket in this 3rd channel was way different than the others, being woven of some kind of silvery metal and a tiny bit smaller in diameter than the narrower sized rope. In retrospect I don't think I needed to change this one because even though it was as worn and compressed as the other two, this door flap never actually closes. It has a locking mechanism in case it is ever needed, but practically speaking it is open all the time. I suspect the reason why this had a different gasket material is because the last person to do this didn't bother to change it. Well, it's changed now.

Once the channels were thoroughly wirebrushed I wiped them out with water as instructed on the back of the gasket glue packaging, and squeezed some of the black glue down each channel. The rope got pressed in manually, wide on top and narrow on the other two. I think maybe the heat flap could have used yet a smaller size but none of that was on hand. It pretty much worked out however.



Here's the finished project: 3 new gaskets. They look nice and clean because the stove has not yet been operational. According to the glue instructions the stove will have to be run at least once for the glue to be fully cured but other than that, it's done. I was not entirely sure what to do about the ends of the new fiberglass gasket as it was extremely prone to fraying and the frayed ends bushed out like Afros, not staying in the channels whatsoever. I ended up opting to paint the ends down with the black gasket glue... we will see if that works out. So far so good; when I closed the doors to make sure everything was seated right, the glued ends conformed to seat the lip just like the rest of the gasket.

We are having a beautiful warm spell right now so it will be a few days yet before the boiler gets fired for the first time this year. When I got done with this project I walked around the corner and found the whole other end of the basement lit up with sunlight, which I had never seen before. With leaves off the trees, sun was able to sneak in from the kitchen through the open basement door. Crazy and cool!

The wires running overhead in the photo are our extensive low-voltage wiring system including video, ethernet and 2 phone lines running throughout the house. This is one of the first things I do when moving into any house. Mwahaha, nerd heaven.



Today I also replaced the old Anti-Creo-Soot spray bottle with a new generic one from the grocery store. The old bottle's spray head had started leaking, and it was a drag to have vinegar-smelling gack running down your hand every time you went to spray a log. We had inherited that bottle from the previous owner so it was probably very old. The wood boiler had not been in use for 8 years at the time we bought the house.



The old bottle is in the foreground, getting ready to take a flying header into the trash can. (They actually say the bottles are recyclable on the website, but since I can't find a # symbol on this bottle it's probably an old one that isn't). We have lots of gallon refills we use to reload the sprayers.

If I haven't mentioned it already, the purpose of Anti-Creo-Soot is to weaken creosote deposits so that they fall off easily. This both makes the chimney easier to clean, and prevents the creosote (hopefully) from ever succeeding in building up a glazed impermeable coat. Apparently it works because we got an A+ and keep-up-the-good-work from our chimney cleaning fellow this year, something that never happened at our old house!

The anti-creo-soot is supposedly non toxic. As I mentioned before it smells a lot like vinegar. According to their website the active ingredient is manganese. I spray each log with 10 squirts once the fire is good and hot. The instructions actually say to spray the interior of the boiler before starting it up, and to spray every log not just the big ones. But what I discovered is using it while starting the fire interferes with the firestarting process as the steam from the Anti-Creo-Soot actually fights a small fire. So what I do is hold off on the Anti-Creo-Soot until the fire is basically lit and I've passed through the small-and-medium stick insertion stages. Then all the regular sized logs get their 10 squirts.



This is a project I started today but didn't have time to finish. It will be an insulative plug for the coal door in the wood room. This is where wood is tossed in from the outside and it is just a stamped metal door on hinges, set into a window-like cutout in the foundation. When we first moved in some insulation was just stuffed in there, but this was impractical when the coal hatch is in actual regular use.

My intention is to staple insulation into this frame, then stick regular door weatherstripping foam around the outside edge.



Here it is with a thin plywood cover on one side. My idea was to add a couple handles (such as those found on homemade screen doors) on this side to be able to place and retrieve the plug in the opening.

Unfortunately once I had reached this stage I took time to test it in the opening and there was too much interference with other stuff in the area (pipes, the wall, etc.) for it to get all the way to where it needed to sit. Therefore I need to do some modifications before I go any farther. This will probably involve making the Z-dimension of the bottom less than at the top (so the plug can be inserted top-first then angled in) and also reducing the overall width by about 1/2" to make it easier to maneuver to the coal hole initially.



Looking at the coal hole it is really non-intuitive that this plug absolutely will not fit as-is. The problem is those pipes on top overlap the opening by a lot more than they look like... about 2 inches.

When we re-do the ceiling I fully intend to move that silly electrical conduit that is entwined through everything so that it is properly parallel to everything else. I have never understood people who don't value neat wiring, especially on permanent install.