What did you do in your shop today?

@rocky1 What do you do with the bees in situations like this?
 
Got to spend a couple hours in the shop this morning (the offset of me working late tonight) and did a little more parts cleaning and even a small amount of reassembly on the scroll saw restoration.
 
rocky1 said:
Those might be interesting packed in a mold and poured Ken!
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I haven't been too much into casting - but these did get saved off separately with that thought in mind.

I've been interested in casting stuff but since I hate turning acrylics (even though I've done it) I've not worked up the motivation to actually do too much of it. Although the dyed loofa I cast did look pretty nice.
 
woodtickgreg said:
@rocky1 What do you do with the bees in situations like this?
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They do OK with it Greg as long as there's no flooding. Bees seal up all the cracks in the hive aside from the entrance to keep other bees and bugs out, maintain temperature, moisture, and pH in the hive. They're usually stuck together pretty good, then sitting on the pallets you wind up with a nice chunky little block that sits fairly low to the ground. Occasionally have wind catch a lid that isn't stuck down good and blow it off, and they get wet inside, but it doesn't affect them too bad.

Actually had a small tornado EF1 pass within a hundred yards of a bee yard one time, picked up several 800 lb round bales within 30 - 50 yards of the bees and deposit them 100 to 200 yards across the adjacent slough, carried a couple half mile across the slough, and never blew a lid off the bee hives. As long as you haven't worked the hive and have everything loose on them, it's not really a problem. Case like the storm in North Dakota this summer, they'd just worked 14 yards in the path of the storm that day, 15 - 20 yards the day before on the fringes of the storm track, and they had a LOT of stuff blown apart. Hives that had been worked more than 48 hours weren't affected, occasional lid blown off was about it.

Have had several cases where flash floods occurred, (washed 56 of 64 hives out into Lake Sakakawea on one), rivers flooded (farmer carried the old man and the boys in with his swamp buggy and they waded around and pulled the feeder jar lids out of the beehive lids so they could get out/get air, and only lost a few out of 60 hives), and in one case had a yard silted in at the bottom of a summer fallow field (lost 20 or so hives in that one and had a helluva time cleaning the mud out of everything, over half the yard was buried in 14 inches of silt).

Fire is a much worse natural disaster to deal with, you find a pile of ashes, littered with nails and pallet clips. Early blizzards in ND, you have to run around and dig the mouths of the hives out so they can get air. As long as they have honey in the hive, they eat and and cluster together to generate heat. Extreme sustained cold will kill them, but as long as there's not a lot of wind, they can survive it if they have sufficient feed. A lot of bees are stored in refrigerated potatoe warehouses over the winter. They go more or less dormant and don't eat up so much feed, but they have to be taken out every so many days on nice day so they can fly and do the Nature Call routine. Bears are actually way harder on them than anything else we deal with in nature. Over the long haul, if you spend any time in bear territory, you'll lose more hives to hungry bear than any other force of nature, except disease and parasites these days.

We really aren't supposed to get anything to ugly here, so all is well on the bee front. Unload a semi tonight if the driver gets through, ride around tomorrow and check lids if it gets windy.
 
kweinert said:
I haven't been too much into casting - but these did get saved off separately with that thought in mind.

I've been interested in casting stuff but since I hate turning acrylics (even though I've done it) I've not worked up the motivation to actually do too much of it. Although the dyed loofa I cast did look pretty nice.
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Yeah, the stuff is a tad messy to turn! I'd pack them loosely and give it a whirl. Would likely be good stuff to do with Silmar and Collin's sit on the running table saw for vibrating air out.
 
rocky1 said:
Unload a semi tonight if the driver gets through, ride around tomorrow and check lids if it gets windy.
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Driver put it in the wind to outrun the storm, arrived 5 hours early, at 2 pm this afternoon. All set off and buzzing around in the wind and rain like they don't know any better.
 
Getting ready to head into the shop for a good portion of the day! Going to, for the most part, continue restoration work.

Couple packages arrived for me this morning though that I've been looking forward to.

Some vintage twist wire. Well, new wire made to look like the vintage stuff. Going to use this on the lamp on the scroll saw (and in a couple other upcoming projects) for an extra touch since the cord needs replacing anyways.

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And then something I've been waiting a couple years for. A while back I picked up a Powermatic spindle sander from @Schroedc and wanted to get some more spindles for it, since Colin only had the one for it. I wanted to be able to have a couple to put rubber drums on so I can have a few different sizes ready to go. So a couple years ago I dropped the spindle I had off with a friend in MI who works as a machinist and also has his own shop set up at home for machining and building precision rifles so he could make a couple new ones for me. The original, plus two new ones, arrived today. The odd sized left handed thread posed a little challenge for him, but he nailed it and they fit and work well in the sander. Now to get some rubber drums and sanding sleeves! It's good timing to get these as I will have need to use the spindle sander on some upcoming projects.

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@Sprung I scored a powermatic bench top spindle sander awhile back at an auction. I got a milk crate full of sanding sleeves with it. I haven't even messed with it yet and you make me wonder if it came with any other arbors or rubber drums?
 
woodtickgreg said:
@Sprung I scored a powermatic bench top spindle sander awhile back at an auction. I got a milk crate full of sanding sleeves with it. I haven't even messed with it yet and you make me wonder if it came with any other arbors or rubber drums?
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I know what milk crate you're digging through tonight! :sarcastic:

This isn't a pic of mine, but if yours looks like this, then we have the same one. If you have no arbors and need an original to borrow to copy, I could loan mine for a few weeks.

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@Sprung yup that's it, I know it has at least one arbor. I think the new jet is the same arbor wise, just an fyi.
 
woodtickgreg said:
@Sprung yup that's it, I know it has at least one arbor. I think the new jet is the same arbor wise, just an fyi.
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Before I asked my friend to make me a couple, I did some research on that. Found that many of the internal parts are not the same between the Powermatic and the Jet (including some pictures of the internals that verified that). And found conflicting feedback on whether or not the Jet version was the same arbor. The research I did at the time - over 2 years ago - didn't leave me confident in a gamble on buying one from Jet, so that's why I had my friend make me a couple more. But it could be worthwhile to check into that again, should I ever need more than these 3 spindles.
 
You guys should check the gears on those spindle sanders. Powermatic did a recall many years ago. They had brass gears for the up/down motion that wore out easily. They were replacing them. That was quite a few years ago and your units might not be affected/newer. Worth looking into though.
 
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