Today I went wine tasting and shopping and found a neat winery in central Victoria in the town of Great Western that had a neat wine cellar that they let me wonder around in. The winery, Best Wines is about 150 years old and from the amount of cobwebs and bits of sunlight filtering through the rafters it made for a great little photo adventure. Some of the vessels for storage were of the largest I've seen in quite a while made of oak; a real testament for the craft of good cooperage. I think the images work well in color or B&W depending on your mood

And they had some really nice wines so I ended up with 6 to bring home next week. That makes 28 bottles so far!

Wow.

Australians. "Cellaring" wine in sheds for over 150 years. :lol: Cause "shedding" wine sounds gross.

That last image is great. Have you offered it to them, maybe for their website or promo uses?

Beautiful.

Well done, Chris.

great.

now I'm thirsty.

I got to play with a new toy today
 

So i got thrown off into a cluster F**k of a job ( nothing new here but it still SUCKS ), F'd up old truck scale that we moved ( why , because the customer wanted it )

So we had to make some holes in new bace plates for anchors(Bace plate is 19"x 13"x 5/8" thick ) these holes need to be 1" so a 3/4" anchor can pass thru and secure the plate to the cement ,
I spent the better part of an afternoon drilling progressively larger holes with a Hand drill , Screw that stuff !!!!!!

Here is the bace plate ,
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8509/8...269cdbfe_z.jpg
Photo422 by zippyt, on Flickr

So I called around and found a Houge drill , Truely a Cool thing !!!
Here is the drill , more milling Mec if you ask me ,
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8234/8...0d641478_z.jpg
Photo423 by zippyt, on Flickr
it has a Electro magnetic bace and uses a Cool bits ( actualy called a Roto Broach ) that cut a core out of the steel
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8239/8...10a55646_z.jpg
Photo425 by zippyt, on Flickr
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8229/8...13ca0d70_z.jpg
Photo424 by zippyt, on Flickr
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8089/8...c9a04fcf_n.jpg
Photo429 by zippyt, on Flickr
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8106/8...e3f7c364_n.jpg
Photo428 by zippyt, on Flickr
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8230/8...7b70b81a_n.jpg
Photo427 by zippyt, on Flickr

Zip 20 holes later , it was harder jacking up and pulling the bace plates and putting them back in than it was cutting the holes .

cutting cores sounds like smart engineering. you have to move less metal to get the same amount of hole. Niiiice tool buddy!

Plus, you get to keep the really short, ƒucking metal bars. ;)

And build a cannon to shoot them. :D

Hougen drills are the shnizzle, we used a lot of them at Westinghouse, where you needed big straight holes in 50 or 100 ton pieces, in the field.
zippyt is smarter than the average bear. :thumb:

That's a cool tool. I love the electromagnetic base. Great idea. That final picture looks like it has some sort of oil tank on the side. Does it oil the cutting bit automatically, or do you have a helper squirting as you cut?

If it's got an electro magnetic base I bet it has an automatic oiler. It looks like it might be that yellow hose leading from that plastic reservoir.

I kinda want one, although I have no use for one or space to store it.

I'm sure your wife has a bunch of outfits she never wears, get her to give them to good will to make some room. Show her the bits that go into the thing and she'll see how cool and necessary it is.

I'll bet not many $1500 dresses though. :haha:

There's a ball valve at the bottom of the oil reservoir.

Yes thats an oiler But im a paranoid feller so as holes were being cut I was giveing it a dose of cutting every now and then , l didnt want to mess up the only bit we had.
That it turns out we bought when we rented the drill , so when my boss took it back for me ,they looked at him funny when he asked about the bit, oh thats Yours, so I have acool thingee to add to the collection

It would look good as a smaller mace, like Glatt's gear. ;)

Smart move, that bastard son of a hole saw and an end mill, needs lots of juice.

Caught a mutha f'in weasel. I put the remaining hens in crates in the chicken coop, baited the trap with a chicken leg from the earlier tragedy, and voila a super smelly morning present.

Well done!

Clever trapping technique.

How many more will you need to make Pete a nice coat?

Dare I hope that the weasel was peacefully liberated far from your home?

Or, failing that, that the weasel was peacefully liberated from the endless cycle of death and rebirth?

Head on a stake to warn others. :yeldead:

I'm curious though. How do you get rid of the damn thing? The old school method of dropping it in a pond to drown inside the cage seems a little cruel. If I had a burlap sack, I'd maybe try to gas it with the car's exhaust piped into the sack. Shooting it might damage the cage, so you don't want to do that. How do you do it? Do you really release it in the woods? How do you do that without getting bitten?

Run it through with a saber.

you've got to be cruel to be kind
in the right measure
cruel to be kind, it's a very good sign
Cruel to be kind means no more weasels
baaaaaaybeeeee
you've got to be cruel to be kind.

Over-dose of vitamin Pb. Sometimes its the velocity not the dose. He is now a chew toy for Benny just to give him the idea. He did, however, achieve total consciousness, so he's got that going for him.

In all seriousness, I always reflect on the taking of life, but wasn't eager to transport my problem to someone else.

But it will already be there waiting for your next job...

I am disappoint. Why no skin it, make nice fur cuff?

<Clue> It was Griff in the chicken coop with the lead pipe! </Clue>

Bye pretty weasel.

/lazy

how you gonna get your cornmeal made?

That is what thralls are for.

:D

Hey kids, been a while, but here's a new project for me. Years ago, before my disaster, some of you may remember that I owned and was proud of a marine aquarium but lost it when i went on my hiatus from society. Well just this last Sunday a friend of mine, whom i've only recently met, sent me an I.M. asking me if I would be interested in a 125 gallon tank for $300.00. yeah, let me think about this......YES!

It's been neglected some and needs some TLC and patience. First thing in order is a canister filter followed by a UV filter then after that about 50 more pounds of live rock to create a make shift mountain/reef. You will notice that one of the live rock has live coral growing on it (super bonus!) anyway, here are the initial pics......

the sole occupant of the tank is a Blue Damsel as the other two fish (Sargent Majors) died due to shock/stress of the move. no worries. i'm setting up a community tank so they were too aggressive from the git go but selling them to the fish store would have been an option. oh well.......I have my work cut out for me.

Cool, now you need some Krugerrands to sprinkle on the sand.

Nice! How big is it? Like 3 feet long or so?

lol XoB! i wish!

and Glatt it's 18"d x 4' w X 21.5" tall :) it was a steal at $300!!!!

Oh dude. We just took one to goodwill, the same size. My buddy is retired and he just cruises tag sales all year long 6 days a week during the season. He's got a dozen tanks, the smallest is 75 gallons. He gave us a 55 gallon that he outgrew. In his basement he built a 20x10 kidney shaped pool for his Koi.

I wish I could have given you our tank, but 300 ain't bad. IF you are retired and do tag sales 6x52 then you can get them for 50, but sometimes you gotta let the other guy make a living.

Fish are so cool. I love to watch them.

That is nice phylthi!

tnx Griff!

and yeah 3F, i can watch them for hours. hell last night i sat there studying and imagining what i'm going to do to it for a solid hour at least.

I don't have teh time to go bargain hunting though and 50 bucks beats 300 any day of the week.

sometime today i'm going to order a eheim canister filter, uv filter and a circ pump for both. then next week bring in more live rock. on second thought i might get a protein skimmer before the live rock. it has a duel bio wheel on it though which might be enough....

Glub glub glub...

Jumped right off the cliff....
Attachment 44194

Wow! Very impressive.

I'd bee skeered to do that.

Yeah, I couldn't do it. Had the opportunity to make the jump off the Stratosphere in Vegas and just no way/no how...:headshake

But that is a fantastic picture!

I had that urge to vomit up my guts when initially I took off. But then frankly, it was not all that scary. At least not scary enough to prevent a shot!

Yesterday, my son and I finally demolished the last of the old lower kitchen cabinets. Since we are living in the middle of this project and need to use the kitchen as it progresses I made up some nifty little counters from scraps and put them on some small wheels that I had out in my storage shed. Even the stove and kitchen sink are on moveable counters; all I need to do is shut off the gas and water and disconnect things and the counters move away from the wall while I finish things. The first shot is from the other day when the cabinet for the stove was removed, the second one is from last night.

I was real proud of my sheet metal work. We had a downdraft ventilation system before and are now going with an over the stove top vent so I built a box to fit in the wall cavity to take the air from where the hood will go and vent it down to the hole already in the wall which you can see in the first picture. Covered the hole with some plastic to keep the humid air from outside coming in! Had to also reroute some wires around where the box had to go.

Today, I plan to move the counters away from the wall and finish up changes to the electrical and plumbing. Hope to get the new drywall on and then next week start floating and taping all the seams and holes.

I don't see a vapor barrier.
Don't you need one, especially considering the high humidity of the kitchen ?

Otherwise, it looks like a very neat workmanship, and I can imagine
the difficulty of living under a "work in progress". :thumbsup:

You made that sheet metal box? I'm very impressed. Sheet metal work is a skill.

FYI, vapor barriers are generally a bad idea in the south where air conditioning is in use more than heating. Buildingscience.com goes into GREAT detail on when vapor barriers should be used and when they actually cause rot. This is very much not a one size fits all situation.

Glatt, you're right. That's an excellent resource.

Yes, houses here typically have some kind of barrier on the outside between the stud wall and the brick or siding. Tivek of similar on new homes, mine is older so it has some kind of foil covered board at the lower level where there is brick outside and roofers felt on the upper walls where there is composite siding. I think they let it breath more.

I really prefer fiberglass insulation over the cellulose I have but removing would be a huge mess and I already am creating enough dust!

Glatt, my son asked me where I learned to form and bend sheet metal and I explained that back in the dark ages when I was in high school I took several years of wood and metal shop. In the latter I learned how to use a box and pan brake, how to weld, cast metal and run a metal lathe. I think it too bad that so many schools no longer offer students these courses unless they are going a vocational route.

Oh and on working with sheet metal I learned to always wear gloves. You can get some nasty cuts from that stuff!

Chris, that is awesome!!!! can't wait to see what it looks like when you're finished! I know it's going to be very nice!

Here's an update on my project.

Yesterday the canister filter I ordered arrived and I set it up. It was a bit of a pain in the ass to understand the multi-language translated directions but basically it's no more than common sense on setting it up so it really wasn't that bad. This filter is a multi-level media filter which does several things. 1.) obviously filters out junk floating in the water but more importantly 2.) creates and maintains "good" bacteria to eat fish waste and help keep the water crystal clear.

Today I tested the water and it couldn't be more perfect so I hauled my butt up to the fish store and brought home an anenomie and a host clown fish. Now this little bugger isn't the normal clown fish, nope doesn't look like Nemo! Have a look......think he's cool? I sure do!

canister filter.......

neato, philthy! i was thinking of getting a fish tank but i may get phucked out of some of my pay so i'm holding off. nothing that intricate, either, having never done a tank by myself. you should come be my aquaman/handyman.

tanks for the photos! :)

Wow! That anemone is cool.

Ya, I had no idea people had them in their tanks. Coolio.

i work for sex. oh, and beer.


they are a pain in the ass to keep alive. usually they only last about a year in household aquariums. this one cost almost $50 bucks.....they had one......for $350. shit you not.

Just few cans of beer! True that drunk brute can't recall the count but he can say they were just 'few'. And damn he was stalking the streets like a vampire with his new zoom lens.
Guess what, no inspiration found out there and drunkard blabbered like a fool for few minutes. Next thing, he pointed the camera towards sky and gave it a short.
Came home, slept like a dead man.


And actually it didn't came out that bad considering the hang-over I found in the morning :D
Attachment 44250

Nice moon shot!


Today I vacuumed the cars, which they desperately needed. As I was cleaning out the old Prizm, I had the driver's door open, and could see leaves and debris in the body panel behind the driver's wheel. The shop vac wouldn't touch them, and poking a stick in there didn't do a thing except dislodge a little green sapling growing in there. I realized that many leaves that fell on the windshield would slide down to the driver's wiper and get under the hood where they would fall down into this body panel. They were supposed to continue through a gap and drop to the ground, but they were getting stuck. So I took the plastic wheel well cover off and found about 2-3 cups worth of decomposed leaves.
Attachment 44251
This is the accumulation after 18 years. Very fertile looking soil. I was amazed that there was no rust after that long.

So then I wanted to clean the vents under the windshield. Lot of seeds and leaves and stuff were getting stuck in that screen and contributing to a slight must smell coming from the vents. So I removed the windshield wipers and pulled off that molding that covers the vent intake.
Attachment 44252

It was filthy.

Attachment 44253

Around this time, my son came out to see what I was doing, and if he could help, so I asked him to blast out the screens that cover the vents. He had fun playing with the hose and did a good job.
Attachment 44254