Day 814 - This was Long Overdue

PPO3 is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220 CRZ mill, or one of many Foley hydraulic options, go to TimberKing.com. Good morning to you. It is early. It's 543 in the morning. Our sunrise is at 545, first light 515, and it's start early season. It is the middle of summer in Mississippi, July 1st today. It's hot. It is hot. The whole east side of the United States is going through a heat wave, I guess. So today's high is like 98 degrees with like a 77 degree dew point. It is so humid. And our heat index is supposed to be like 112 today. We're in a heat advisory, which means I'm out here at the butt crack of dawn and getting started early because it's going to be a hot one. I finally got the CNC built and it's ready for a spoil board. But before I do the spoil board, I don't have much lumber. So I want to run the saw and I don't know if you've noticed, but my goodness, we've got this space cluttered. It's just in chaos because we haven't really been working out here often and just becomes a catch all clutter space and Tyler's using this space for kitchen area and just chaos. Well, I've also had the sawmill for a little more than a year. I got the sawmill July 11th of last, I'm sorry, June 11th of last year. It is July of the following year. So I think it's time for a big strip down and clean up. So my goal today is to empty as much of the lean to as I can completely empty it, take the sawmill out of here, take everything out of here, scrape the ground, get rid of all this stuff, clean and tidy everything as I put it back together. And then also kind of organize, if I can organize the BalmaLite attachments to where I don't have this monster clutter right here. So that means a bunch of moving stuff around. I think the easiest thing to do is put the ball hitch on the BalmaLite because it can move several of these items without hooking up to different equipment so as far as the four-wheelers go. And it's easier to move these trailers around with the BalmaLite than it is the four-wheeler. One of the reasons why all the BalmaLite stuff is out is over the weekend I did a photo shoot with a friend of mine. So we got a bunch of marketing images completed. That's one of the terms of this rental agreement with all the BalmaLite stuff is providing a bunch of marketing media for them. So we got all the BalmaLite stuff out and staged a bunch of photos and it was a good day. But it was also crazy hot that day so we just worked as fast as we could and put equipment everywhere and it's all scattered. So this will be also a good opportunity to get everything organized and put back. Man I am so tired. I have not woke up yet. I'm trying to talk myself awake I guess. 44.6 hours. I got this thing with what 6.9 hours on it. On the road again. Just can't wait to get on that road again. I am totally not awake. You see all this cloud of smoke. It wouldn't crank. It wouldn't crank. I had the hydraulics set to or the auxiliary hydraulics turned on and it won't crank. Well I mean it'll crank but it won't start with the hydraulics on. So I just cycled it 10-15 times without it cranking up. Freaking out. I had the hydraulics on. I'm not quite awake yet. Okay do better Jay. Do better. When I recorded the video for this electric cart for Jamie I don't know if I spaced. Well I do know that I spaced out. I didn't realize that I didn't record any footage with audio showing how quiet this is and all you hear is the cage rattling a little bit. You don't hear the motor at all. One thing I really miss is riding the four-wheelers through the trails. This thing's never been through the trails yet because all the ice storm debris and we've come to the conclusion that it's just too hot to work on the trails during the summertime. So this fall is when I think I'll work on the trails for the first time. The dogs really miss it. This little four-wheeler is Tyler K's and it it actually is pretty fun to drive around as an adult. It's like an 85cc but there's no weight to this thing. This thing doesn't weigh hardly anything and it's just a power to weight ratio. It's just so much fun. Chain keeps popping off though so something else to work on. This is a super handy attachment. This is a whoa come on it's not that heavy. I'm just not awake yet. It's a little ball hitch so you can put two different size balls on there plus it's got a receiver in the middle. Anyway super handy for moving a bunch of stuff at once. 6 28 a.m and I already feel like I'm soaked. I'm not yet but starting to get sticky. Good old humidity. Stuff just starts to pile up and it gets to a point where it's just easier to move the entire sawmill out and get a fresh start. It's quick and easy to level this thing so it's no big deal. I also need to move the mill anyway because every one of the legs keeps shifting forward or the whole mill keeps shifting forward and I can't shift forward much more you know what I'm saying. I don't know if it's when I put the logs on or when I turn it or whatever but I seem to keep bumping it in this direction somehow. All of the legs are just barely on the platforms I put on. Cribbage. What is that called? Anyway the 4x4s and leveling blocks that I put on the bottom. Quick tip for you. Use old oil jugs to store your chains. I got this from this tip from who is it? Name is on the tip of my tongue. R&R Builders on YouTube. They use chains a lot and use these oil jugs. That's a 50 foot chain in there and it's always ready to go. Nice handle. Don't have to fight it. Good little tip. While I'm at it this chainsaw you give it a thumbs up. It's just a little top handle pro-yama chainsaw. Relatively inexpensive and I keep this around the sawmill for cutting stuff. Basically if I need a quick cut and I would use a reciprocating saw I reach for this. Like if I'm breaking down a pallet I reach for this instead of the reciprocating saw. This is incredibly incredibly handy for just tasks around the property around the shop rather but also you know cutting wood and whatnot. It's not the strongest top handle. If you try to use that full bar you're gonna you're gonna be slow but it's reliable and it cuts good. Well assuming you have a sharp chain as always. But anyway I leave this here for the sawmill area. And speaking of chains wasn't I just saying something about chains? You could do something with those chains? I need to get another oil bucket. Long ways to go but just that alone just makes me feel so much better. At our last house we were very well established. You know the infrastructure is there. The house was there. The shop was there. So you get established very fast and everything had a home. Everything was nice and tidy. We kept the house super nice and tidy because there were storage solutions. Every place, everything had a place. Everything had a home. Here it's just it's the battle of incrementally adding storage solutions and it's going to come over time with everything that we've got going on. But it really is getting to the point where it's frustrating. Where you look around and it's stuff everywhere. We don't really have like I said organizational solutions just yet. Once the CNC is fully up and running I want to use it to make a lot of cabinets and whatnot. So we'll have places to put stuff both inside and outside. I want to get a lot of the stuff in cabinets because the dust and it's not really sawmill dust. It's the dirt. It's very very dusty here. It's getting better now that we have a lot of vegetation growing out there. But the first summer the majority of this clearing was just bare dirt and we didn't want to spend any money on seeds or anything like that to get some grass growing. I figured you know what just let nature do what it wants to do and it is doing what it wants. It was growing quite a bit and all this vegetation is creeping its way towards the shop which is nice. But in the meantime when the wind blows it just stirs up so much dust and then the dust gets all over everything. And then the spiders. We have we live in the woods. It's expected right? But we have an insane population of spiders. And what what comes with spiders? Spider webs. Thick thick thick spider webs. And this is the dust I'm talking about. You can't you can't keep up with it. It's just incredible how much dust is on this property. So time to get a broom and knock all these down once again. Everywhere you look everywhere you look is a spider web of some kind especially around the windows. We have I don't know where it is where you live or how it is where you live but we have dirt daubers. Dirt daubers, mud daubers, clay daubers, you call them whatever you want to but they're a wasp that feeds off of spiders. Well like I said we have a healthy spider population therefore we have a healthy dirt dauber, mud dauber population. And I used to get so annoyed with these chunks of mud everywhere and I still kind of do. But once I researched what they actually do, the dirt daubers, I'm not too worried about these chunks of dust everywhere. Oh that's huge family of spiders there they're moving. Anyway dirt daubers, mud daubers, what they do is they start these mud tunnels. They make a mud tunnel and then fill it with spiders. So dirt daubers are a wasp if I'm not mistaken some type of wasp. Jeez spiders webs. And they don't really bother humans much like it takes a lot to get them really mad enough to where they're going to bother you. So just leave them be. And they have a I don't know if it's a venom or a neurotoxin or what but they sting a spider and paralyze it and then they take it back to those mud tunnels and then they pack the spider in there. They pack several spiders in there and then right at the very end they lay an egg on top of it and then close it all up. That way when the egg hatches it has some food it feasts on those spiders and then it comes out and starts to cycle all over again. So if you don't like spiders or if spiders bother you then dirt daubers are your friend because they eat a lot of them. Jeez Louise I wish one would be over here. This is like I mean this spider web is like fabric it's so thick and I don't want the spiders clogging up the air intake on this uh what is that air compressor I almost call it a dust collector nope I mean it is a dust collector it's collecting dust holy cow but uh anyway dirt daubers ain't so bad after all. I know all this dust is not good for the motor on this air compressor but it does have an air filter on the intake and when I put it out here occasionally I would take that air filter off and look at it and even as dusty as this is the air filter still looks fantastic so you know it's only sucking in air very occasionally. I don't leave I've never left my air compressors turned on 24 7. I'm of the mindset of if you want to use it that's when you turn it on and when you're done you actually turn it off. I wish I could be that uh diligent about putting the hose away but anyway um so it's not sucking in all that dust 24 7 it's not you know turning on in the middle of the night because there's a very very very small air leak and the pressure dropped so I think that's one of the reasons why the filter is staying so clean. I also don't have uh electricity out here just yet. I have a I don't know if the camera angle is wide enough but uh I have a sub panel mounted on the inside of the wall shortly that direction and I want to come out of it and put some electricity out here. I haven't quite done that yet so I crack this window and feed the wire through and because of which I'm looking right at the inside through the window and of course there's a fabric of spider webs in there too. Oh hey a dirt dauber. That one's sealed up so we'll leave that one. This side is acceptable with enough space to put one maybe two of the implements for the baumelite over there. Happy about that. I think I'm going to throw the pallet forks on and move this uh well I got to get this coal lumber out of here. This is just off cuts that I need to move. I think I want to move this out of here. We use this tote as kind of like a door stop to pin the door. It opens so the wind doesn't slam it shut on one of the animals. However I don't need this firewood here and let's just get it out of the way while I have everything out. I also need to put the bucket on and just scrape all this stuff out of here. So much build up. It's like four inches. All this is about four inches too high and you know how that happens. And then over here this is my pile I've been tossing over for the chipper. These smaller off cuts that'll go through the chipper. I think I'm just going to cut my losses on these. Not worry about the wood chips because they're all muddy and dirty. Push these out of the way and get all these weeds knocked down. Well grasses. Get all these grasses knocked down. They're growing so I didn't want to mess them until they went to seed. They're at seed. Let's move on. 902 a.m. already. Time is flying and the heat is kicking. What a mess. This is a bunch of debris obviously. So the sawmill blows the sawdust onto this side and there's just no stopping the sawdust. So I actually like having all this wood debris in here because it gives it more traction. Once the sawdust gets up high and fluffy the tire and tractor tires just kind of spin a little bit. So this wood debris actually is beneficial. I think the next thing to do I was going to put the grapple on the mini skid but there's enough here to justify cranking up the tractor. I'll use the tractor to get rid of all this stuff and then I'll use the grapple to just spread this out more evenly and then I can actually mow that down. And while I have the mower on I should probably take care of a few more spots over here too. I've got some walnut logs over there. Some branch logs. I'll and get this somewhat tidied up. But it does look like crap with all the debris but it is useful. A fresh start sure does feel good. Really does feel good. I just parked this over here out of the way but I think it makes more sense to have this side nothing but BalmaLite stuff and this side nothing but trailers and four-wheelers. So I think that's the plan. Speaking of the plan it is 9 10 o'clock now 9 57 and the heat is kicking so I'm not going to put the mower on and take care of this tonight. Right as the sun goes down I'll just get the weed ear out and I'll mow with the string trimmer that side as well as this side over here. Oh there's a breeze. Oh you see that thing just wiggling right there that wind catcher. Oh breeze. Thankfully a breeze. Incrementally getting better and better up here. This clean out was long overdue. Felt like I built that up quite a bit out there which is cool. And I changed up my plan as I went. You know I think this is going to be better keeping all the BalmaLite stuff over here. That way it's under roof and it's not getting rained on but these quick attach. The quick attach mechanism on this is just well it's quick it's in the name quick attach. So having these kind of clustered right here I think that's going to work out. And I have all of the BalmaLite stuff in one spot which is nice rather than having a few over here a few over there a few inside which is what I had. This side over here just cleaned up and much more egress. It just it just feels good to get this done. What doesn't particularly feel good is this heat. I want it to be done by 10 a.m. It is well I don't know what time it is. It is come on watch it's 12 23 shortly after lunch but I did take a pretty long break a little while ago to cool off. So that's it for me outside. Just checking stuff off the get it done list. I need to go cool off. I will talk to you in the next one.