That sounds so good.  I'm really looking forward to it.  Ben and I are at about the same stage of installing wood stoves in our respective shops.  He made the stove for his shop last winter, and has the chimney just about done.  I'm going to use an old but servicable barrel stove that he found somewhere.  We are both planning to install heavy steel pipe liners inside the chimneys, so there is a lot of welding and stucture involved in the projects.  As soon as my stove is installed, I'm planning to move the big lathe over next to it, and arrange the shop as a combination garage/machine shop.  It looks like there will be room for both activities, and having the car indoors for the winter would be ahh, very different than our past practice.  Moving that big lathe is going to be an interesting project involving jacks, levers, rollers, and such.  I'll be interested to see how it works out.  I made some levelling plates for it yesterday, and now I need to lift it far enough to get the plates and rollers under the lathe.   

One of the issues with cleaning up the yard and the shop has been the heavy structural steel that was lying around in the way.  There was a 25' x 16" I-beam under the old house that I plan to use in small pieces to make a porch extension, and I finally bucked that up and moved it.  A couple other I-beams even heavier and a sheet of steel plate has been lying in front of my blacksmith shop for a year or more,  the results of heroic salvage operations in ages past.  I cut that up and saved the worth while pieces, so there is actually vehicle access to the shop now.  It took three days, off and on, to part out all that heavy steel, and it was a bit reminiscent of cutting moose--strategic cuts to separate, reduce the good parts to manageable sizes, and discard the bones.  There is a pile of steel "bones" that need to go on to the dump now, and the salvage was easily enough to make the firebox for our steam engine.  That isn't done yet, but I have a kit of plates to take to Don, who has volunteered once again to do the welding.  It's going to be about 2' square and 3' long, and the vertical boiler sets on top.  The firebox plates are 5/16" steel, so there's another 500 pounds or so. 

Speaking of the boiler, Jake notified me this morning by email that he has been offered the use of the big fiberglass boat I've mentioned.  It should be a lot safer, and I feel better about the project already.   There is still a remaining question about the inherent flotaton--we can't be sure yet that the wet deck doesn't have a bunch of water inside.  I think it's OK, but.  The plan now is to put a skid under the boat and drag it to Jakes place,  then build another shack/tent next to it for the boiler and engine assembly.   And I suppose we will need to start working up some fiberglass kinda stuff.