Repair Snag, DIY Laundry Soap, Luffa Harvest

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. It's the next day and I've got to work on this disc harrow just a little bit. I don't know much about these, but from my understanding, there are obviously discs on a shaft, spacers in between, and these segmented grease blocks in the middle. So I think all this should come apart and I can just replace the shaft in the middle. The best stuff that I've found off the shelf over the years to break free rusted nuts and bolts is PB Blaster. However, I do recall reading an article of I think it was like Popular Mechanics from the 1950s and they tested various different penetrating solutions to break free rusted stuff and setting it up there like it's an advertisement. Anyway and they tested like PB Blaster, WD-40, and a few others and the thing that blew everything out of the water like tremendously, they measured the foot pounds of torque needed to break free some stuff and the one that was the best was the 50-50 mix of acetone and ATF, automatic transmission fluid, and ever since reading that article like two years ago, something like that, I've been meaning to buy a little you know one of those little oil squirter jugs and mix it 50-50 ATF and acetone and I've yet to do it. Every time I reach for that can, that can's just about empty, I'm like I really should do that. I really should get some and mix it together and have it on hand. This will work and then I really should do that. So once again, I really should get an oil jug and mix it with 50-50 solution of acetone and ATF. Have any of you guys out there tried that? I don't remember the exact numbers but just to throw some numbers out there, the scale went something like there was four, the numbers two through five we'll say, they were like 500 foot pounds necessary, 450 say 400, 350 and then the 50-50 mix of acetone ATF was like 150. It was like such a massive jump at how much it penetrated and loosened stuff up. So have any of you guys tried that before? Now this is going to be fun. I think I can get to these easily with no problem because I can get an extension on top of that. This one is underneath this piece of angle and I maybe have a little bit of a swing in here, not much. But these spacers, it looks like, again some of you may know what's going on, I don't, this is all new, but it looks like these spacers that go in between the discs, they also go inside here and this one is completely busted. I broke it right there completely. So at the very least I got to buy one of these spacers and an axle shaft. So hopefully this will be less than $200. Dog hair everywhere. When I first bought my tractor I noticed that a lot of the bolts on there are bigger than a typical socket set. So I bought one of these Quinn sets from Harbor Freight it's all half inch drive stuff and this has been really really nice working on the tractor and it's just a really nice set of sockets. It really is. The only downside is this thing weighs a ton. All this stuff is massive, like an inch and five sixteenths socket. That's a big boy. And then what's the biggest one up here? 32 inch millimeter, 32 inch millimeter, 32 millimeter sockets. Anyway, big stuff and it's needed working on stuff like this. Ha! Lucky. Nolly, Grace, don't eat the rocks. Don't eat the rocks. Shame. Shame. Don't eat the rocks. You're not allowed to eat the rocks. I've been getting on to them so much lately for eating rocks. I have no idea why you guys want to eat a rock. Please don't. I don't want a big vet bill again. Yeah, we know how this ends. Hand. Hand. No, no, no. Hand. Thank you. Well, I can't get those bolts off right there. They're just spinning. The carriage bolt is spinning on the bottom side so I've got to take this up to the tractor shed, the family tractor shed, where this actually belongs and use the cutting torch to cut them bolts and then I should be able to get the parts off and figure out exactly what I need. So plan B for right now is to make some homemade laundry soap. Once again, we're getting low on our laundry soap. We've been making this stuff for five or six years now. A really long time. All right, so nothing new here if you've ever seen this online. But like I said, we've been doing this for many years and it works and it's inexpensive and you don't have a bunch of extra scented chemicals and stuff that irritates skin. So anyway, three bars of fels naphtha soap. Blend that up. I use a ninja blender to blend it up and just chop it up fine. You can use a cheese grater. One box of borax, one box of washing soda, and one box of baking soda. Mix it all together and we like to use this particular bucket for the laundry soap. It's just the cat litter bucket. But the reason we like it is it's deep so it stores a lot, right? There's a little bit of residue in there or what's left over from the last batch. But when it starts to get where it's not convenient to go this way, you can flip it on its back and it still opens up and you can access it very easily. And this just lives on top of a washing machine. Oh kitty kitty, is it a hard life that you have laying around the shop all day? Oh yes, right there. That's the spot. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Yeah, we can pour it in there because I can also mix it up with this. You may need to use this to poke that in there to break that up if it's clumpy. That doesn't have a scent but it is awfully fine powder so you might might not want to be It's probably like my favorite part of it. You know what they say about families who make laundry soap together, right? You make laundry soap together, do all our clean clothes. Grace, no. The blender is way faster at blending up the soap than the cheese grater is. Yellow parmesan. I want more parmesan but I'm embarrassed. Previously, every other time I've made this, I use this paint stirrer with a drill to kind of get the last little mix going on. But this is the first time I haven't done it and I think that just your hand in there like an excavator scoop just picking up and doing that from the corners, I think that's a better mix. Way faster too. Anyway, now we have a bunch. Let's see, that's about right there. That's two batches of it. It's about that full right now so this container could probably fit three but this is going to last us probably more than a year because that right there, right there, that's how much we put in our load of laundry. Sometimes if it's really soiled, we'll put two in but there's our scoop. There's our laundry mix and you can do the math to see if this is a better solution for you. Obviously, prices change so much. I'm not even gonna do the math for this batch. However, when we first started doing this, which was pre-covid, this was way cheaper than the laundry soap we were using and because you just do it once, that's gonna last, like I said, probably over a year. You don't have to do this often. Made a little bit more of a mess than what I typically like to. I normally do this outside so there's no mess at all. I mean, it's just outside, right? But it was fun and I had some help. What are you doing, zombie? I had my zombie helper over there having some fun crushing some stuff up. I brought out the cheese grater because I thought, you know what, I haven't used this since the beginning and I realized why I haven't used this since the beginning because it's slow. It's very slow. We break the fells and amp the bars. This little blender is way faster. When we started doing this, we designated this as our fells and amp the machine and that's all we use this for. As far as can it be used in high efficiency washers and dryers, we bought this washer and dryer set back when, let's see, HE, so it is a high efficiency washer. We bought this back when we first moved into our last home so this set is from 2019. It's 2026. This is a seven year old set. Works just fine and that's a pretty big load in there that we can jam in there. We can put our queen size comforter in there with sheets and it washes it just fine. So yeah, homemade laundry soap. Get the kids involved and have some fun making some stuff. This video is supported by Brunt. This is the Marron boot from Brunt and if I'm not mistaken, this is their best seller and for good reason. I've had these boots for a couple months now. As you can tell, they're not just fresh out of the box. These are really comfortable. These are my daily drivers whether I'm out here on the concrete or outside on, well, on everything outside. They're really comfortable boots for two reasons. Number one, the sole is nice. It's a soft sole but it's a durable soft. I don't know how they do that but it's a durable soft and on the inside is the cushion insole system. So there's two parts to this. Obviously, the main insole and below it is another layer that you leave in if you have a narrow foot and you take out if you have a wide foot. So the same boot can accommodate a wide and a narrow foot and I take them out because I've got a wide foot and they fit great. These also have a, this is the wedge style sole. You can get that with a heel. You can get this in a six inch or an eight inch version. This is six inches in height and you can get the toe and a hard toe or a composite toe and with or without the brunt toe which is an extra layer of protection that they put on the front side. So if you're constantly bending down on your toes, maybe wearing out the front of your toes and other boots, it's an extra layer of protection there. You can get this with or without waterproofing. There's so many options with this one particular boot and they're really, really comfortable. I do recommend them. The soles are slip and oil resistant and heat resistant up to 572 degrees. Anyway, I recommend them. I've been wearing them for a while and I'm going to keep wearing them. If you want to check them out, I'll have a coupon code that you can use for your first purchase from Brunt and thank you Brunt for supporting this video. It is super bright out here. I've been inside editing all morning so my eyes aren't adjusted to it. Not a cloud in the sky. That butterfly almost took my head off. Butterfly almost took my head off. Proverbially speaking, I think. What are we doing today? We're gonna harvest some loofahs. Harvest some loofahs. Tomatoes are pretty much done. Pretty much done. Cucumbers are done. Dogs are not done in the water hole. They're out there splashing and loofahs are kind of tapering off, right? No. No, they're not. They look like... They look awfully yellow. These are new growth. Oh, new growth. Cool. Like this one's ready. You hear that? Yeah. That's the seeds in it. It's a musical instrument. Pull. You got it. Oh, no, no. I'm resting it. There it goes. There it goes. How many you got that are ready to pick? Just two. But this one should be a pretty good size. This one could be all right. Yeah, sounds like... What do they call them? Maracas? I have no idea. Like a musical instrument? Oh, yeah, yeah. I thought you're talking about something else. All right. I was like, you do know what that is. Today is August 22nd and it's the later part of summer now. That's the part of summer where it's always like... By now, we're just tired of summer. The heat's just so brutal. Fall will be great and then the beginning of winter will be great and then the end of winter, it's the same thing. You just get tired of winter. When the extremes just kind of linger and never go away, that's when you're like ready for a season change and we are ready. I am ready for a season change. So, this is another aloofa that we've... She's previously cleaned up and this is just, I guess, the outer skin. Did you cut out the spine? This is the spine. Yeah, the spine's gone. So, if you cut the spine out, this becomes like fabric. We saw somebody else do this to where you can put like a bar of soap in there, flip this over and then like sew the edges up with some real thick crochet or is it knitting thread and a needle. Then, you have like a soap and one of these and you can give them as a gift and make them nice and tidy. This is obviously a smaller one so the shape is kind of weird but the video we watched, it was a real big aloofa. So, the piece that she cut out was a rectangle. So, when she folded it over, it looked really, really nice. She had like a good six inches, I think, in diameter. Yeah. All right. So, I'm gonna do a little one first. I brought this here to collect the seeds and there are so many seeds in these. Yeah, this one probably doesn't have maybe around 50. That's what I'm gonna guess. I'm just gonna make a mess. That's fine. It's a workbench. Make a mess. So, the first one you did, how many did you count the seeds on it? Um, I did and I forgot. I think it was close to 100. We had two. Tyler had a small one and then I had one about the size and I think between the two, we had around 50 seeds but Tyler kind of smushed her so not all her seeds like were counted. And you only planted like what five or six of these this year? Um, I think I got a pack of 20 and I planted 16. Sounds familiar. Not positive on those numbers. Well, how many do, how many were actually transplanted into the garden? Was it all of them? I don't know. I should have, I should know numbers better than this but I don't know. I just know I didn't plant all of them and almost all of them came up out of the seeds I had. So, are you peeling us all off or are you gonna do the vinegar bath? This worked really well last time so I'm just gonna do this. Like, the video showed us one thing but I kind of did another. Yeah, so the video showed us, uh, it was four parts water, one part vinegar and you let them soak for just a couple minutes and if once they soak then the whole peel just slides right off basically. And she said you could also crack them open like this. Uh, they're just a little bit more messy. Yeah, but this is why I didn't because the seeds are just easier to mess with when dry. Seeds are what? Easier to mess with, in my opinion, when dry. Gotcha. So, you'll have all the seeds for next year basically today. Oh, yeah. Like, I already have a lot. Like, I have more than enough. Plant them all. Yeah, plant on it. I just need something for them to grow on because they do really well growing on those trellises. That is a really loud crackle. Yeah, it's kind of satisfying. And then I just put all this into the compost last time. Yeah. Okay. All right, let's see if I can get them to... All right, there's more in there. I don't know if you can see them. Yep. I'm just gonna take this and, uh, slide it over and I'll look. There's more right there on the spine. Let's see if I can get it to... Do you want to soak the big one just as a difference or no? Um, sure. Let's do this. Let's cut the top off of it first. Shake, shake, shake. You know what? Let's, uh, cut the bottom too. Top? Wait, I guess this was the top. There you go. I think that's it. You see any more in there? No, I don't see any more in there. All right, so we'll just... No, that's fine. She bent hers about right there. Just crush it down in there. That's what she did. We'll just let that do its thing. It was three or four minutes. That's okay because we're gonna go back to the other one. Right. There we go. Oh, the vinegar smell. It's gonna be all over my hands. Yeah, I'm so used to doing pickles now. They don't bother me anymore. You like vinegar, Gracie? Interesting, huh? Oh, that... Jealous Nellie. What do you think, Nellie? Vinegar water? You guys, it just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You guys will eat it. I feel like they're like a kid. You know how kids are? It's like, mom and daddy have it. I want it, whether they really like it or not, you know? Good girl. You don't like that vinegar, huh, buddy? You're a big boy. You're a big boy. So, are you keeping the spines that you're cutting out? Yeah, I used a couple of these already. Like, that spray foam that's in the bathroom. Some of that is around the base of the toilet and is no longer there. This took care of it. Oh, the blue spray foam. Yeah, and stuff like that. It didn't want to come off very well with just a rag and stuff without a lot of elbow grease. So, it's been hanging out, but that took it right off. It was pretty nice. So, that's like a one-time use thing. You just throw it away after that. It's kind of deceiving. I guess it is somewhat like an aggressive sponge, too, because when they dry out, like, you think, I don't want to scratch myself with this in the shower. That's like super hard and scratchy, but when they get wet, they're soft and they're not bad at all. Right, but they still do a good job. Like, I cleaned the tub with this already. Marvelous. Marvelous. All right, so this one, there's still a little bit of seed debris and other stuff in here. So, I'm just going to soak it in there and let it clean up, and then I'm going to try this right here. Oh, this is gooey. It's gooey. Yeah, it has like a, I don't know, different texture to it now. A little bit better. I understand why that's a thing. You understand why that's a thing. Wow, that was just a couple minutes. Yeah, and this one, hopefully, this one's a pretty good size when it's all said and done. It's kind of hard to determine what they're going to do, and I've seen some people just leave them in this shape. They just cut them, you know, about like that, but I like this. You like the flatter? Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking that you wouldn't, you know, fillet them out, I guess you could say. Instead, I was thinking just you cut them into cylinders and use them as a sponge in that size, or that shape, rather. Yeah. Yeah, one of the benefits of taking them like this, taking the spines out, was it allows you to get all the extra little seeds that are kind of hidden and trapped in there. The little seed coverings, or whatever they are. Seed shells? Yeah. Yeah, all the seeds have this like, I don't know what they're called specifically, but these like little seed shells or skins that are on the seeds. Yeah. So the white that you see, oh here's one right here, this still has it on it. Well, it just rubs right off. They don't, they don't hang on at all. They don't hang on at all. So they, they start with this little bit of a skin. When I ordered the seeds, they just came like this. They just look just like the black, just the black. These just didn't develop I guess, but that's gonna take a, see how clean that's looking already? Yeah, a bunch of debris just floats off. Yeah, you want to get it clean like that before you use it. And then my goal is to get a tote and save all these, and then just pull them out as needed. Use them to the ear. Yeah, so are these going to be primarily cleaning sponges for you or like us people shower sponges? I'm gonna say both. Both? Yeah, like you know, just have the bin and that's like new, not been used. If you want to use one, so we'll borrow soap in there to designate it so what its purpose is. And we might even just sew one up and set it on the sink over there and be like, watch your hands with that. Let's see how that goes. I guess a nice pair of scissors would also be beneficial. I was gonna say, if I had nicer stuff, yeah. This is some Metallica scissors. Metallica scissors. Yeah, and you know, they probably have had glue and who knows what else on them. Keep coming back to my vinegar hand. And I just cut all this extra off too. I guess you can leave that if you chose, but I'm just gonna just cut it down close to the spine. Why not just leave it? It's extra, extra sponge material. Because I think it looks nicer with that. Because the sponge that you're gonna pulverize and get all gross has to look nice. Yeah, I'm glad you understand. I wonder if you could sew it up with one of your smaller, thinner ribbons, maybe? I don't know, because I don't know if I have some that thin. Like, this one needs to be kind of thin to get through it, because I mean, like there's, it's porous, you can see through it, but I don't want to, you don't I don't think you'd want to create bigger holes just to sew it up, if that makes any sense. Yeah. But this has been one of my favorite things to grow this year, just because I've never done this before. I think it's just nifty. Interesting. I hope to get tons of these next year. I did not plan enough. You know, we got all that extra space with the watermelon area, that non-fenced-in garden. Put all the stuff that's delicate, you know, inside the fence, like tomatoes, like these guys would just destroy the tomato plants. Yeah. But we could throw some trellises back there for loofahs and cucumbers. They didn't, I don't think they'd bother cucumbers. I don't think they'd bother anything that there was a trellis next to. I don't think they would either. So it's just them straight line running through stuff. Yes. Massage the loofah. Oh yeah, see all that little stuff that just came off? Here they are dried. They're all hard and stiff, and they get soft with moisture, so as of right now, it just doesn't feel like that's a something you want to scrub on your body. But they do, they do soften up quite well. And when you put a bar of soap on the inside, of course, like she said, you can sew them together and soap inside of a sponge. So we haven't harvested that many of them, but there's still quite a few on the vine. And like always, next year should be better.