How'd it go today?

I looked my boiler and found the leak. Corrosion it is, a 1/8" hole at the bottom of the steel body under the foam insulation. With the pointy welding hammer, it turned out in a 1/2" hole and two other smaller ones 1 and 2" apart. It seems just a the edge of the thermal affected area from the welding of the bottom. I guess that there are other waiting holes all around the basal plate. I'd like to fix it just for the time to find a new boiler and adapt the tubing. Knowing myself, that could take some time.
I'm not sure how to plug the holes though. They couldn't be better positioned, just in the front under the opening for the burner, so welding should be the best bet, but I feel that my welding skill isn't up to the task. I only stick weld and I guess that I will blow new holes in the thinned steel instead of patching it. Brassing should be possible, but I fear a drastic increase of the corrosion with the different metals in an intimate contact. Epoxy is my other choice, but I don't know if the resin can stand the water and the heat (coldest area of the boiler though). Luckily the outside temp rose again, so I have a few days ahead of me, minus the time to work of course.
 
Put another plate over it and either weld or braze weld around it. Braze would be fine if you are more comfortable, obviously welding is best. Stick is the correct method as well there, if you need to use a thicker plate so it'll take more heat and is easier to weld, you can keep most of the heat on the thicker plate and simply make sure you're tying into the thinner plate. If you have an ac output welder make sure you're not in water or getting wet, dc is wayyyyyy safe for this reason. 6010 would be what i would use, 3/32 is easier when it's super thin but you can weld thinner metal than the rod with either 6010 or 6011. Just whip it more to spread the heat out as you can and weld faster. Ideally do 2 passes to ensure that it's sealed good. If you have water running out of it you can stuff some bread in there to stop it momentarily, it'll simply dissolve when you're done.
 
Great day at the womens test drive event. Had over 80 women shooting and many more people come with them. Raffles did good. Lady won a Taurus .357 and a couple more CCW classes. Bunches of little prizes. We did 3 categories based on value. Gun was seperate. Lots of smilesfrom the participants.
Had two food vedors. Breakfast burritos for the earlyy birds and us volunteers. Tacos, burgers and Brats for the lunch crowd. I took smash burgers home for dinner :)
4h kids helped at the gates and directed folks to parking. Nice sunny warm but not hot day out 👍
 
finally got my firewood guy loaded up with that maple, err half of it, I forgot he has a 7K trailer instead of a 14K

yeah so anyways if he makes it home he will be back for another load maybe later today
 
ive just realized, Dustin Dethlefs off axemen commented on one of my facebook posts last year!
ive also done a bid for Thom Reed (yes, the guy with the UFO park, founder of Miami Models)

does this make me famous? LOL
 
did a bid today, customer forgot he had an apointment so I had to quote over the phone, no reply when I texted the price over to him, maybe for the better?
 
subbed for another company today, 2 climbers, and climber/bucket combo throughout the day, chipper clogged beyond fixing, like solid concrete and all my chips coming out are whole sticks,1-4 feet long <3/4" diameter, time to check that the anvil hasnt backed off somehow, knives are sharp enough yet

lot of rigging, some sketchy stuff that id rather not post publicly, had to close off 1 lane of a 2 lane double yellow, rich river side neighborhood so all the angry grandma's got to give us the stink eye

customer and his (hopefully) son were "directing traffic" and turned it into an absolute shit show, I had cones and a men working sign out with no flaggers and it was all going perfect till these 2 tried to get in the middle and almost caused a bunch of wrecks all day

I climbed for the first time in a while, little 16" dbh 60ft tall white oak, rigged it out on my own
got a call from a local dude wanting me to bring the bucket truck out in a week or two and help hang an antenna on his house, what for? a robotic lawnmower, yes you read me right, dude called a tree company to help with an antenna/dish thing for a lawn mower!

also ran an SVL75 for all of 5 minutes, much nicer to operate than the T62 bobcat I ran a while back, pulled over a pretty good size oak with it, no pics due to a lack of PPE from the other companies employees, me and my dad were the only 2 people with helmets, high vis and saw pants


heres a few pics of the white oak
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Some people call tree companies just for their bucket truck reach. Stuff like that starts around $50-100 cash to get something out of a tree or off a roof (minimal time/effort)
 
Some people call tree companies just for their bucket truck reach. Stuff like that starts around $50-100 cash to get something out of a tree or off a roof (minimal time/effort)
yeah, I helped put a flag back up a while back, was doing the work for free due to the nature of what it was, got tipped like $125

I told this guy $150/hr 2hr minimum, im told the setup area is 10 to 15 degrees, 15 at absolute most, we all know this means im going to show up to a 4ft drop between my outriggers or something crazy!
 
Did a stupid job today. We had to grade specimen trees that were located ~15 years ago on a project we're doing. It's a 3 point scale; Poor, Fair, or Good. Boss is calling a nice looking tree fair cause the tree guy said "Downgrade it if it has dead branches". I say "WTF?! All trees have dead branches. That's what trees do" I then question the three point scale " So, you have a rotten piece of shit at 1, a champion tree at 3, so the middle is every other tree?! WTF kind of scale is that?!" I then ask him if anyone's gonna check, and if the data's gonna be used and he says "No". I tell him we could do the stupid job from the office. Ridiculous, but it was a nice walk in the woods.

I liked the base of this tree. If I knew it was doomed, I'd like drop it and get some nice cookies from the base...

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