![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.3){kind=small}
I borrowed his huge old drill press, the Camelback, to drill a few big holes in heavy steel plates as part of my recent project to build a hydraulic press. Here's the Camelback just after making a 2" hole,
What a cool old machine.
And here's the new hydraulic press, dominating my little shop with quiet authority--
It will look better with some paint, but it works fine, and I've already gotten a little production out of it.
We are loading up for the annual spring logging trip, so my next note will probably be after we get back. It's always a good time, especially if the weather cooperates. Debbie has taken off to Kansas and a reunion with her family. She will be back on June 18, so Barney and I are on our own for a while.
Here's a couple of pics from a test run in Ben's boat a few days ago.
The ducks and geese are mostly back, which means of course that the mosquitoes are too--the birds fly all the way up here every year to eat mosquito larvae, which means that the bugs must provide many thousands of tons of nourishment per year. Bright side to everything, I guess. It's always kind of impressive that the bugs come out while there's still ice on the water, but they must know their business.
And here I am in Tok. Might get back before the ice goes, but it must be getting close.
I'm taking a class on wood boilers and related issues in connection with a renewable energy project for the elder center in Galena. Eight of us flew to Fairbanks and rented a car (a Ford Expedition--I get to drive it), then drove the 200 miles southeast on the AlCan to spend a week here taking classes and visiiting local biomass heating and power plant projects. Tok is an interesting place--interior Alaska like Galena, but completely different in several ways. It's on the road sysstem, for one thing. THE ROAD, in fact, since the highway through town is the only way to actually drive to or from "the states." It's about 100 miles from the Canadian border, and the only town for a long ways, so it's like a big truck stop/tourist stop, and wilderness access for this part of Alaska. There is a lot of tow trucks, car, truck, and RV repair shops, and the general sourdough culture of rural Alaska. It's bigger than Galena, but not officially a city, oddly enough--more a collection of alternative lifestyles in close proximity. The main resources around here are the ROAD, wildlife, and trees. It's in the home range of two caribou herds, and we saw some on the road when we drove down. There is a state forest that-a-way and a federal wildlife refuge over there, and trees everywhere that they haven't already burned down in one of the many wildfires that come along every year. It's easy to see why they have wood projects here--
We're staying at Fast Eddies. It's the big motel/restaurant in town, and the food is good plain cooking and lots of it. Say that twice. A lot of food. Whew.
We visited Tetlin Village yesterday. It's another small village, comparable but radically different from Galena in other ways. Techically it's on the road system, but their road is a long, winding, muddy track, and as I told a friend lately, this isn't a good season to see Alaska--it's like the whole state is just waking up from either winter or a bad hangover. Mud, brown vegetation, and trash everywhere. I saw a blade of green grass this week, but you still have to look for them. The geese are coming in, and the ducks, but warm weather is still just out of touch.
We're going back to Fairbanks tomorrow and Galena the next day. Where else can you travel two days and still be in the same state?
Breakup season is also flood season in Galena, and Jake can't decided whether to panic about a flood or not. The flood forecast seems very mixed this year--cold weather and lots of snow last winter, but the snow seems to keep the ice from getting thicker. So we don't know. Might flood this year, might not.
I got the Jeep running a few days ago, so not only do I get to style around town with the windows off, but now there is room to move around in my shop, and even to sweep the floor. All winter, I would do my blacksmithing with at least one door open and one eye on the carbon monoxide monitor when I was using the propane forge. More recenty, it's like working in an empty ballroom, with the sun flooding in from three open doors.
Looking forward to getting home.
Andrew had another dog race, in Nulato weekend-before-last. He went down river about 45 miles with a handler, dogs, sleds, and two snowgoes. One of the snowgoes broke down and is still in Nulato, to return by barge this summer. The handler flew home, and Andrew made it back with the other snowgo, pulling three sleds, the dogs and the gear. The trails pretty much went out the next day. We are in the season now when the snow freezes at night and melts all afternoon. Most of the roofs have dumped, but we still can't use our driveway because there is one big bank of snow hanging on the edge of my shop roof.
The birch firewood season is pretty much over, and I put the snowgoes away a couple of days ago. Some of them still run, but the Lewis winch got the rest of them under the house.
Debbie has organized a sort of a supervised science fair this year for just her six-grade science students. She recruited me and several of the Fish and Wildlife scientists to be mentors for small groups of students doing group projects. Mine is to measure the speed of sound, which involved driving aroung town measuring distances and honking an air horn to time the sound with a stop watch. Some times we used a radio to catch the starting time, and sometimes we used echoes. Then Wednesday for the big finale, we had Jake shoot off a gun while we listened for the sound from 5 miles up river. Yesterday and today are the writeups, and I'm finding that crowd control for three sixth-grade boys is about a full time job. My respect for teachers has increased immensely this week. And I'm married to one--
Next week is a busy one, with contactors in town for the biomass energy project, and a bunch of meetings coming up. There seems to be a natural law that every thing happens at once. The following week, I'm ging to Tok for a week to take the wood boiler class.
The snow is still only about half gone, although the roads are pretty much open now. The migratory birds should be getting back about any time now, and the mosquitoes, of course. Then, after the mud dries out a little bit, we have breakup and flood season in about mid to late May. After the river is open, the driftwood gathering starts, then logging season, then fishing. Ben and I are helping Tim Kalke with his logging trip this year--he and Ayla are building a new house, and they are planning to move in this fall, so it's going to be a busy summer.
Pics later. Gotta go.
ETA--
Here's an interesting project Jake has been working on. All of those pieces are made from antique wrought iron chain links.
The glacier on the roof. It just keeps hangin' on.
Galena scores zero percent, largely because the nearest coffee shop is considered to be almost 3000 miles away. It also scores the nearest grocery as 35 miles away (that would be Nulato, and good luck walking there--), with no shopping, no books, bars, or entertainment to be found.
Guess I'll finish my coffee then fire up a snowgo to gather some more firewood. I certainly wouldn't want to try to walk anywhere.
The only casualty so far has been that empty woodshed, but it will be a relief when the rest of the snow comes down.
Breakup and flood season are still about a month or more away, but meanwhile we get to enjoy the spring melt and mud season.
Well, Andrew just pulled out of the driveway with his dog handler (Brian) and his selected team of 10 dogs to go to the race in Hughes. He has been working up a dog team for a couple of years now, and the dogsled season is flying past, but there's one more race left this year in Hughes. It's a llittle town on the upper Koyukuk River, about 100 miles up from Huslia, and north of the Arctic Circle. He and a some friends have chartered a plane to get there and back with their respective dog teams, and I'm sure they will have a good time, but riding in a plane stuffed with hysterical sled dogs wouldn't be my first choice of a way to spend the afternoon. It's a lot quieter now at the neighbor's house since they left.
Speaking of dogs on airplanes, Jake's last two dogs got here this week, after having disgraced themselves by killing chickens in Fairbanks.
I've had a bit of an internet/blacksmithing fantasy today. Jake and I both have found that we are limited in what we can do as smiths because there we can do so much pounding on steel without hurting ourselves. My right arm has been bothering me for some time, ao I decided to pursue a hydraulic press for forging. I bought a cute little doityourself book Build Your Own Hydraulic Forging Press a few months ago and started looking around for the parts. Today I fell into a couple of critical items on Ebay, and it feels like the project is finally coming together. The tool I have in mind is a 25 ton (plus or minus) press with an electric motor driving a hydraulic pump and a big (5") hydraulic cylinder. Most of the essentials were already here due to the demise of the steam boat project last year, but today I ordered a 3 hp motor and variable frequency drive that will let me adjust the speed of the press for doing detail work. The main missing pieces now are the structural steel to hold everything else together, and the sunlight is even now melting the snow to help recover all the stuff we have lost under the snow.
My batting average so far on hydraulic projects is exactly 50%--the hydraulic log splitter exceeds expectations in every way. The hydraulic drive for the steam boat was quite the opposite; but there is a bunch of stuff to salvage for the next project.
Still a lot of snow on the ground, but it's fairly warm outside, and severe clear with bright sunlight. Happy spring time!
Well, as Jen said, March weather is finally here. This particular icicle caught my attention this afternoon, but we've had a couple of days of definite melting weather. The roads are still covered, but the south facing snow is getting eaten by the sun, and the trails are getting soft and punchy in the afternoon.
Most of the roofs still haven't unloaded, so it's wise not to leave anything you want to keep under the edge of a roof. An engineer friend asked me recently how much snow load our roof is designed for, and I told him I was wondering about that too. It must be OK, but there is a lot of weight up there.
Still gathering firewood, but it's a good idea to get out there early in the day, while the snow is still cold. We talked about when the birch trees start getting sappy, and I think it's several weeks away yet--I figure the roots have to thaw before the end of the spring firewooding and the beginning of syrup season.
The "main" dog race, for example, was five teams, driven by two married couples (Tam and Andrew, Jon and Tonya), and Andrew's brother Gilbert. The kiddie events included one and two-dog sled races, skiing, snowshoe races, and something called a Kitty-Kat race. Here's our youngest grandson Zac with his buddies Ilona and Ida getting ready for the 2 and 3 year old ski race--
A snow shoe race (that's Milo leading in the blue suit)--
And a scene from the one-dog race--
I have to admit that I exercised my perogative as an old grump and missed most of the events. So take away my grandarent card, I guess. It's a pretty time of the year, and I got in some firewood gathering this week, over in the woodlot we have started calling Mooseville.
What's a Kitty Kat race? Well, there is a tiny little class of snowgoes made for kids up to about eight years old. They can go about a fast walk or jogging speed. I will let you imagine the rest, because we don't seem to have any pictures.
In other news, our friend and neighbor Tim went caribou hunting over the weekend--about 200 miles northerly from here, past Huslia to Selawik hot springs. He got back late Saturday night driving this Indy Lite that he built from pieces gathered up around our yard last fall.
The caribou is in Ben's shop.
Now I guess we can start waiting for breakup.
