First fire up of Furnace

We tried the furnace last evening. The first pic shows the set up. Second pic shows that we broke the top piece, and that the fire was not getting eonugh air to get to high heat. Picture three and four shows the added air. That gave us the heat to melt the aluminum. We aslo melted the can that we were using for the crucibel. So we will have to do something else for the melting pot.

Home Made Foundry Furnace For Aluminum Cans

Forest and I were wondering what to do with an empty Old Crow Resurve bottle, when one of us thought that we could build a furnace around it. So we did.

Slow it goes

Continuing to work of 10X10

Starting to work on the 10X10 again. I flew to Denver for the opening of the West line of the light rail, and wanted to give special honors to those who worked on the start up of the original start of the Denver Light Rail, back in 1994. We started with 12 trains and just over 6 miles of track. Now they have 172 trains and I not sure how many miles of track with this West Line added.
So anyway; when I got back Brahm and Dagmar were at the house for a few days and we goofed around and I didn't get anything accomplished. Good times with the kids though. So yesterday after work I went to the Dermatologist and had the stitches taken out of my head (another story of skin cancer) and went home and started putting the concrete edge around the brick floor. I just want to have the bottom of the walls off the ground a few inches. I will use pressure treated lumber, so I shouldn't have any problems. Here is a picture that I took this morning. That is all for now, take care.

10X10 Work Shop (Post #2)

I ran short of the granite screening and had to get another yard. I finished filling the forms with the screenings and dug a channel, and put the tubing down and covered it up with the screenings. The tubing wanted to pull out of the screenings so I had to completely cover it as I went along and could not get any pictures of the tubing lay out. There are 8 rows and extra along the bottom to return the tubing to within 8 inches of of the starting point.  Then I packed it down, leveled  the top even and started laying paving bricks. I got about half done and ran into fire ants where I had the paving bricks stacked. As I was using the bricks I uncovered 2 snakes and 1 lizard. That was still not enough to consume the ants. I do not like to use pesticides, but I don't like fire ants. I gave in am hoping that my hens stay away from that area. Anyway; I will wait till next weekend and see if I can get the rest of the paving bricks laid. Here are a couple of  pictures of where I'm at with it.

The tubing entrance and exit point

Brick Pavers at a 45

Radiant Heated Work Shop.

The last time that I posted I thought that I had some pictures of building my chicken tractor (coop). However; my phone went on the blink and I got a new phone and lost the pictures in the old one.

Sense that time I started to demolish and build a new tool shed. So now I am posting a picture of my chickens and the work on the tool shed. Sense I have a lot of brick pavers that are just stacked in the corner of the yard, I will use them for the floor of the shed. After thinking about what I need to do that, so I left the 4X4s in the ground from the old shed to use to level the ground.

I  bought some granite crushing to place the brick on and decided to go one step farther. I put some foam panels down as insulation from the ground and began shoveling the granite onto the foam insulation.

I will put some tubing in the granite so that I can run hot water through to heat the floor in the cold months. I will build some kind of solar water heater to do that. I haven't thought that far ahead. I am going to stop calling it a shed and start calling it a work shop effective immediately. Stay tuned to see what pops out of this head next. Be safe.

Movable Chicken Coop

I thought that I would post a few pictures of a little project that I have been working on over the past few months. My grandson Denny came to spend a little time with us a few months ago. So I got this whim that I wanted to get a couple of chickens so he could see where eggs come from. I didn't think that it would be a big deal, but I didn't think Alex would like them. Anyway, she didn't seem to mind too much. So I sat down with pincel and paper and drew out my plan. Went to the Big Box and bought some 2x4s, chicken wire and some other material and got busy. It took me a week or so after work and on Saturday afternoon. Then a couple days before Denny and Becky arrived, I got on Craig's List, and looked for some hens. I found a lady that had trree hens and a rooster, that she didn't want to split up. I told her that that would be fine. I didn't want the rooster, due to the neighbors. I went and picked them up, and took them home. The lady that sold them to me($30 total), told me that she didn't want to feed them all winter because her husband was getting laid off. She just wanted to keep a couple for herself some eggs. I didn't mention that I planned to name one of them Rooster Noodle Soup. Since I brought them home, I get 2-3 eggs each day. With both of us eating as many eggs as we can we cannot keep up. Alex gives about a dozen a week away to her friends, so now I see that she actually likes the chickens. I let them out to run the yard each day when I get home from work, and they have about an hour of daylight. Then they return to the coop for the night. I have not had any problems with them, except that there is a hawk that sets in a tree and watches them sometimes. I guess that hawks have to eat too, but I hope that they find some mice instead.