More grain cleaning, and an announcement...

Once again, I am sitting in a farmers yard babysitting the grain
cleaner, and writing a blog post on my iPod. :-)
Monday, Dad and I spent the day working on my grain cleaner, still a
long way to go... Tuesday, Dad took the grain cleaner to a job that
was over 100 miles from our place, while Mom and Cora went down to
Eureka to help my grandparents pack, and Jacob and I stayed home to
watch the cows, and work on my cleaner...
This morning Dad took off early with the cleaner while we did
chores, then after lunch I drove to where dad was cleaning, and we
switched off, so now I am sitting out in the dust, and he is at home
working on the cleaner...

And now for the announcement: Tomorrow is my 1 year Bloggerversary!
And in honor of this milestone, I will be holding a little
drawing. :-) The winner will recieve their choice of: (A) A copy of
the promotional DVD that I made of last years Prairie Days! (B) A copy
of the DVD I made of my Graduation, (C) A bottle of my very own
Dehydrated H2O, (D) An old rusty bolt from my grain cleaner, (E) An
old computer keyboard and mouse, (F) A set of earbuds that don't work,
(G) A Lego wheel without a hub, or (H) just about anything else I can
find laying around! ;-) (You can probably tell I'm a little bit
bored...) Anyway, if you want any of the above mentioned items, just
leave me a comment between now and Sunday, and you will automaticly be
entered in my little drawing. ;-)
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog!
Andrew B.

Sent from my iPod

Grain Cleaning, Part 2

After retaping the exposed wires, and insulating them with some old
tire innertube, the moment of truith had arrived. You see, seeing as
the wire that had shorted was one of the main wires coming direct from
the generator, and there was no protection of any kind between the
short and the windings, I was rather afraid that I had burnt out the
windings on the generator. This would mean a very large repair bill,
and at least two weeks of down time...
Sooooooo; I started the engine, grit my teeth, and flipped the
switch to activate the exciter... The volt meter instantly jumped up
to where it was supposed to be! "Don't get too excited" I told myself,
as the voltmeter only reads from one of the three legs at a time. I
slowly turned the switch to the second line; still good! Number three:
still good! (HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF) :-) Thankfully there was no majo
damage, and I am up and running again.
Enough for now,
Andrew B

Sent from my iPod

Cleaning Grain

Hello all,
Well, I am at it once again. Grain cleaning that is. :-) today is my
first day of the season, and along with that comes the normal "First
day out" problems... After sitting all winter, things tend to
acumulate a little rust, and it takes a little while for the grain to
polish everything up again. Also, seeing as we have a different
generator on this cleaner now, I have to get used to that too...
I had a little scare earlier this morning, shortly after I got set
up and running. I had just about gotten the cleaner set how I wanted
it, and was standing not too far away from the generator, when it (the
generator) suddenly sounded like it was pulling much harder than
normal. I instantly knew something was wrong, and suspected an
electrical problem. My suspicions were very shortly confirmed, both by
a flash of light, and by the very pungent aroma of an electrical short
circuit... In a matter of seconds I was at the control panel flipping
off all of the switches, hoping to avoid any further damage to the
wiring. Fast as I was, even before I could flip the main breaker, I
noticed that the engine had run back up to a normal speed; strange I
thought, seeing as it hadn't even tripped the main breaker... After
shutting everything down, I started examining the afected area.
It didn't take long to see a burnt spot on the front cover of the
generator -- not a good sign. After removing the cover, which was
rendered more difficut than usual due to the short having effectively
spot welded the cover to the frame, my fears were confirmed: one of
the wires that I had reconected the other day had burned through the
electrical tape, and shorted to the frame.

Sent from my iPod

Pictures!

Hi Again!

Yesterday morning, we got a large yellow package delivered here. Well, actually not 'here,' as it was delivered to our local farm equipment store, about 1.5 miles from our house, and we had to go pick it up there... What was it?

A "new" generator for Dad's Grain Cleaner!

(A picture of the control panel)

Seeing as I bought Dad's old generator to put on my grain cleaner, Dad had to get a different one... After looking around for quite a while, we finally found one with low hours, and a good price; the only problem being it was located in Pennsylvania! We ended up having it shipped out here, as we didn't have the time or inclination to drive out and pick it up...

On another topic, here are some pictures of a recent addition to my Lego Collection:

You are probably asking yourself what I want with a BASIC BUILDING SET, let me explain... My B. Grandparents are moving to a smaller house due to my Grandpa's health needs, so they are trying to get rid of some of the things they don't really need. Now, most of my relatives know I am a Lego nut, so Grandma B. told me I could have her bucket of Legos. So now I am in possession of some of the very first Legos that I ever played with, and which I have fond memories of playing with ever since I can remember... Thanks Grandma!

I also took some other pictures this morning, but you will have to wait till I get time to redo my header to see them...

That's all for now!

Andrew B.

Another day, more work.

Hello again,

Today was another busy day, starting at 5:30 AM when I was called to go help dad, as he was stuck in the hay yard with the truck. He was planning on going and getting a load of hay, but the hay trailer was in the hay yard, and when he tried to back in with the truck he got stuck. After helping him get the trailer hooked up, and getting him pulled out of the hay yard, I came back to the yard and spent a little time finishing my work on my pickup.

Dad got back with a load of hay shortly after chores, then we had to fix the door handle on the tractor, as a pin had fallen out which kept the handle on the door... After unloading the load of hay, we got back to work on my grain cleaner project. Currently we are working on getting all of the augers set up, and I still have to do a lot of wiring and other odds and ends. We're making progress, slowly but surely... :-)

I'd best get to bed,
Andrew B.

A New Blogger!

Dear readers,
I am writing to inform you of a new fellow blogger, and to ask that you would join me in giving him a warm welcome. ;-) Not that I think it is necessary to ask, as you would probably do so anyway. :-P
His name? David. Location? Northern Michigan. How did you find him? He is the brother of some of my sister's best blogging friends. Enough questions? Yes! Here is his blog: Up In the Valley
Welcome David!

Andrew B.

A Picture (For the Bartlett Boys)

Peter and Andrew:

This is a picture of the new style wrench for a DeLaval Cream Separator:

Sorry about the fuzzy picture, I had just brought my camera in from outside, and the lens was rather foggy when I took this picture... Anyway, you can get the idea. :-) Actually this is only about half of the wrench, the other side has a smaller sort of star shaped wrench thing, which I have yet to find a use for... Anyway, this is the only useful side. :-)

Best get to bed,

Andrew B.

A Video Update

Here is a little video I took yesterday of some of the things we are working on on my grain cleaner, Enjoy!

For Cora:

In honor of her birthday, Cora asked me to upload the slideshow that we had put together for her graduation 5 years ago... I tried to get it put up yesterday, but it just didn't want to behave, so sorry I'm late. :-) Here is the slideshow:






Hope you liked it!

Andrew B.

Today's Project*

/*This post was started several days ago, but I got busy with something else again... */

(One of) Today's project(s) involved making a certain modification to an otherwise nearly useless tool. For those of you who grew up on or now live on a dairy, you may know what this is:

For those of you who might be wondering what that thing is, it is a wrench-like tool for an old style DeLaval Cream Separator. As you can see in the second picture, there are only 2 studs on the original tool, which makes it very hard to turn the nut with... Soooooooo, I found a little scrap of steel in the steel bin, drilled a hole in it, cut it off to the right length, bolted it all together, and Presto! It works much better!

Now the wrench actually stays on the nut, and you don't skin your knuckles trying to loosen it...

Best get to bed,

Andrew B.

Answer to Mystery Sound

Hey all,

I'm back! And now that the olympics are over, I have my monitor back, so I might post a little more often... :-)

The 'Mystery Sound' was made on a Banjo, by muting the strings around the 6th fret and then TAPPING the strings with my metal finger picks -- a very interesting sound! It is amazing what can be done when one is willing to think outside of the box...

Got to go do chores now,

Andrew B.