New Engine

This is just a short post to update our progress. Not much exciting has happened the past two weeks. I've been waiting for the rubber pieces for the outsides of the tires that will straddle the chain in the middle of the track. We also got a new engine donor with a newer better engine. I think we'll use the newer engine. We spent last week testing out the new engine to make sure it works.

Tonight we measured the tires for the rubber pieces. I have a friend at a tire recycling business that told me he found the stuff. He just needs the dimensions.

Next week we should make some progress that is picture worthy.

Halftrack Axle Mounting Brackets.

I missed posting our progress last week, so I'm covering two weeks with one post here. Last week we cut out the angle iron to make the brackets that the axles will attach to. This was the first real useful job for the new Chop Saw. It's worth every penny I paid for it. The cuts are so much more precise that I was ever able to do without it. Bubba and I got to make the cuts, while Jo took pictures.


Last night we welded the brackets together. That's my 5-year-old Bubba welding with an AC stick welder in the picture while his 8-year-old sister looks on. He's just burning a rod over a 3/16" diamond plate in the picture. Jo is actually a pretty good little welder, but the picture of Bubba turned out better.

These brackets are going to take a lot of stress, so I decided to do the welding. Later if there's some non-structural welding I may invite the kids to do that.

Halft Track - Night 2

This is the second try for this post. I managed to post the first try on SWMBO's blog. The power tools and rusty machinery just didn't look right against a pink background.

I'm running late so I'll just post some pictures with a few captions...

Here is the Google Sketchup version of what the half track is going to look like... Tonight we removed the second axle from its donor mower...

The bolts were being very stubborn. At one point I was swinging a 10 pound sledge at a cold chisel, and Jo suggested we use a vacuum. I let her go for it just to see what she learned. Sadly enough the vacuum and the sledge hammer had about the same effect.

In the end it was the sawzall you see in the background by the vacuum that won the day.

I did spend the first money on this project when I gave $10 for the mower that donated this second axle.

Half Track - First Night

I got permission from SWMBO to spend one night a week with my kids, ages 6 and 8, to build together. Our first project is a Half Track vehicle. Tonight is the first night, and we will probably take about a year to build it.

The first order of business was to get the engine running. I got this engine along with a turbo charged lawn mower that I bought from a guy in Kaysville, Utah a while ago. (I've since sold a few parts for what I paid for the whole bunch and traded the turbo mower to a guy for a box of big bearings.) We had to dig the engine out of the weeds and add an ignition coil. Bubba and Jo helped me pull the coil off of an engine that had a cracked block, and they installed it on the new motor. We test fired it with a little bit of Gumout sprayed in the carb. I don't think Bubba expected it to run on the first try, because he jumped about a foot in the air when the thing fired up and ran. After drying a few tears and handing out ear-muffs, we tested it a few more times and moved on to the axle. I have to point out that Jo was rather excited that the jackstands are orange and pink.

The axle is an old Peerless transaxle out of a MTD riding mower. It is the only one I've ever seen with 5 forward gears and a reverse gear. This one will be the drive axle. I'm planning to use another transaxle for the idler axle at the back of the track. Using a transaxle allows there to be a differential. Jo helped me undo the bolts to pull the axle out of the mower, and once it was loose, both kids helped pull the axle out from under the mower while I lifted. If you look closely in the picture, you can see the axle donor (red mower carcass) in the upper left of the picture.

The final task tonight was to do some fit testing with the tracks. The picture shows Bubba on the left and Jo on the right demonstrating just how "easily" the track is going to roll. We had to do the fit test to measure the track for future design purposes. The track set up like this is 4' long, 20" high, and 9" wide. The transaxle will make the two tracks 3' wide from outside to outside.

That's all for tonight. we worked about an hour and a half, and so far we haven't spent any money. All the parts we've used so far are left over from other projects that have since paid for themselves.

How Did I Not Realize This!!??

My wife sat me down to watch a YouTube video about Genetically Modified Foods that someone posted. Though reluctant at first, I sat and watched. I didn't even make it through the end. I was speechless. I was moved. So moved in fact that I'm blogging about my experience even though I haven't blogged anything for months.

Here's a link to the video... Future of Food There's some real touching footage. Aerial Bombs = Nitrate Fertilizer; Tractors = Tanks; Insecticides = Nerve Gas. I about cried when I saw the dying cockroach. Who'd have thought that "higher yields, increased food production, cheaper prices, and greater availability" of food could be such a bad thing. It threatens all we hold dear and sacred. I was shocked that farmers so willingly dowse their crops with costly chemicals. I thought that all farmers were like the hundred or so that I can name personally and could probably tell you who I am too. They are extremely cautious to use any chemicals unless they have to. (Keep in mind that it may cost you $20 to weed-and-feed your 1/4 acre lawn, but a farmer with 1000 acres would need $80,000 at the same per acre cost. Do you honestly think he's going to use any more chemical than he absolutely has to.)

I was so moved, in fact, that I started looking for what other gross malevolence lurks behind the auspices of good and wholesomeness.

I found this little video about bread: Dangers of Bread
(I'll warn you after about 1:40 it digresses from the original message.)

That bread video is even more credible and uses even more sound logic than the GMO video. Granted the bread video didn't have some guy with a beard and glasses looking very scientific like and very distinguished and credible nor did it have the touching film footage of starving Africans or dying cockroaches, but the trains of thought and use of obvious facts is just the same. There must be some link since a lot of wheat is genetically modified and bread is made out of wheat. I even have a niece that gets really sick if she eats anything that even has a small bit of wheat in it. THAT PROVES IT!!! Wheat bread will destroy the world long before Genetically Modified Foods will. I'm not even going to bother with putting anything away for retirement. We're all doomed!!

I got to looking around even further and found this little tidbit right from my hometown of Idaho Falls which is full of scientists. (We have the worlds premier nuclear research facility just 50 miles away and most of the employees live in or near Idaho Falls.) Apparently there is this chemical called Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) that's in all kind of pesticides and poisons, and it kills more people every year than all other hazardous chemicals combined, and Idaho Falls was the first city to attempt to ban it thanks to an ambitious student in a science fair back in 1997. No kidding!! It's all verifiable fact. Here's the Snopes link to prove it: Snopes: DHMO

They even have a website now dedicated to the whole movement to ban DHMO: www.dhmo.org Go there! I promise that you will learn something you didn't already know... Probably about yourself.

Penn and Teller even did a segment on it for their television show. Here's a snippet from YouTube: Penn and Teller: DHMO (Caution: Penn and Teller, though milder than usual, still use one bad word; and even though I agree with that one use of the word, it's still a bad word.) THIS IS SERIOUS STUFF!!! We have a world wide crisis on our hands!

How many people don't know about all of this?? What can we do??

The worldwide crisis, is not that we are surrounded by all of these terrible malicious things. The crisis, unfortunately, is that we are surrounded by all of these people who are too easily duped by pseudoscience, sensationalism, and hype.

Bring on the backlash...

A Husband's Defense

See, I knew it was a good idea to establish a presence with which I can defend my point of view. My Dear Wife caved to a “blog tag” and spilled all the dirt about me, so now I have to clean it up. You’ll have to read her blog for the original answers. I’m just posting the rebuttal here.


1. Where did you meet? She failed to mention that I was just the first guy she met at BYU after her mission… Like less-than-a-dozen-steps-out-of-her-parents-Dodge-minivan-carrying-a-box-of-something kind of first guy she met.
2. How long did you date before you got married? Six months. Here’s how I figure: We didn’t date in the traditional sense of the word that includes asking each other out with extravagant schemes like slaughtering a pig on her front lawn and using the intestines to spell “I’m dying to go to the dance with you”. We did spend a lot of time together, though; and it’s hard to say when we went from “Hanging Out” friends to “Love Interest” friends. Unless she was a lot more promiscuous with her kisses than I am currently led to believe, I think it’s safe to say that sometime before February 14th (see #11 below) was when it happened. That makes it six months.
3. How long have you been married? Just long enough to know how fun it is to make up after fighting.
4. What does he do that surprises you? Apparently I surprise myself, then, because I’m still trying to understand her.
5. What is your favorite feature of his? The “FAVORITE” feature could be interpreted to be that she just loves to see me walk away.
6. What is your favorite quality of his? Way to go, Babe! Make me sound all sensitive and caring. That’s worth at least a night of doing dishes. (Can we count yesterday?)
7. Does he have a nickname for you? See, above
8. What is his favorite color? I used to think that there were only 8 colors in the world. Back then my favorite color was blue. Since marrying Mikelle, I have learned that there are muted colors and burnt colors, and pastels, and deeper richer colors. Now that I’ve learned all that, my favorite color is, well… still blue.
9. What is his favorite food? Anything that Mikelle cooks J. She’s such a wonderful housewife and cook. She always looks so perfect when I get home, and the kids are all happy and dressed nice. (That’s getting even for #6, Babe. Now it’s your turn to do the dishes).
10. What is his favorite sport? No comment.
11. When and where was your first kiss? February 14, 1998, and I had to work for it.
12. What is your favorite thing to do as a couple? As long as “your” refers to Mikelle’s favorite thing to do as a couple it’s pretty accurate. If I have any say in it… Well, we won’t go there.
13. Do you have any children? It depends on if you count Zoey as one. She takes as much energy as 3 normal children.
14. Does he have a hidden talent? I suppose that she picked artist since I’m not really that good at hiding any of my talents.
15. How old is he? 32 and balding
16. Who said "I love you" first? I don’t remember, but it’s usually me.
17. What is his favorite type of music? It’s a tossup between classical and big band swing.
18. What do you admire most about him? Dang it!!! I’m back to owing her a night of doing dishes again.
19. Do you think he will read this? Pretty self explanatory by now, idnit??

RAI$ING $HEEP I$ $O FUN

I took the sheep to the auction today.

This is my first direct experience working with sheep, and I really wasn't sure what to expect. Lamb Prices are not something I've made a point to keep track of throughout my life. Typically to estimate the value of something I'm selling, I'll look up what others are asking and dock about 15% to 20% figuring a buyer will dicker. I saw that some were asking about $1 per pound for fat lambs in the local want ads, so if I could get $0.80 to $0.85 per pound I'd be doing well.

I also wasn't quite sure how to estimate the weight of a lamb. I know how to weigh a horse with a measuring tape, but all I know about sheep is that they are a lot of wooly fluff. I guessed that they looked heavier than they really were and just took a SWAG that they were about 100 pounds each. What I thought they were worth was really irrelevant because at auction they are going to sell for whatever a buyer is willing to pay. It doesn't matter what the seller thinks. I just have to do some figuring so that I have hopes that can be dashed when I don't get what I expect.

I learned from the pig loading experience (an hour and a half of chasing crazed pigs all over my half acre pasture all the while reminding myself that pork tastes a whole lot better when it's not beaten and bruised). I had been pre-conditioning the lambs by feeding them grain in the horse trailer. I loaded them this morning in the dark in less that 60 seconds.

At the auction, I was the first seller there at about 7:30 am. Everything had "Closed" signs on it, but I roused a rough-looking old cowboy type out of the coffee shop under the auction pit. He directed me where to back in and admired the ease with which I chummed the lambs into their assigned pen with a hand full of grain. Then I dropped the trailer off at Dad's house and went to work.

I went back after work to pick up the payment. The place was about as busy as when I showed up this morning. This time instead of a well worn cowboy in the coffee shop, there was a classy looking mature lady in the office. Lucky for me, since that's where my check was. I told her my name. She could tell I wasn't a regular and teased me that my lambs may not have sold at all. I knew that would have been a disaster since I'm flat out of feed. Not to mention the fact that Dad's trailer that I used to haul them this morning was already off on other adventures. She shuffled through a pile of envelopes and handed me a check.

I was just happy that they sold at all by that time. I looked at the check, and it was for just over $550 after the auctioneer's commission, and the inspection fees, etc. Not bad. The lambs weighed in at 640 pounds for the six of them, and I got $0.89/lb. for them. I'm so pleased with myself for figuring it out that closely. I was sure that I was going to get something like $300 for them all.

I have to admit that raising sheep was more fun that I thought it was going to be. I had grown up calling them range maggots, and believing that cattle ranchers were far superior to sheep herders. They were really fun to have around, especially with the kids. The pasture is in better condition now than before we got them. They ate the noxious weeds, and didn't dig up the roots of the grass. Plus, we got well over twice what we paid for all the inputs.

In all honesty my wife did nearly all the work. She feed them bottles when they were younger, she watered them most of the summer with the kids' "help". She chased them when the neighboors let them out of the pasture. All I did was feed a little hay the last few weeks and take them to auction.

I may even buy lambs again.