Tuesday April 16, 2024 Guerneville CA.
Bumper work
I started out the day working on Skiddy’s bumper. But first I needed to practice with the new flux core welding machine as I’ve never used one. All I’ve ever had and used was what they call a red buzz box arc welder which has worked good for me for years and I’ve used it lots.
I set up to try out the flux core and made a few test welds. Works pretty good, not too much different from the arc welder as far as he welding goes. I welded a few pieces on the bumper and made some decent welds.
Hike in the woods
Barry showed up so we hopped in Hondo and rode up to this place in the woods where I’ve been wanting to go for a hike to check out this ravine that has some water coming down it. We plan to hike up the ravine with the big ferns, but had to go around to start as it was too steep at this spot.
It was pretty much uphill all the way and got steeper as we hiked.
Barry goes much faster than I can up, when hiking and he was waiting on this log for me to catch up. We split up when we left this spot as Barry was interested in checking out an old road and I just wanted to check out higher up. He was waiting on this log again when I came back down.
After we split up, things got real steep and eventually, I had to go through the brush like a deer.
Some parts weren’t so brushy but they were real steep.
I hiked up as far as I wanted to a rocky place and then cut across the hill and worked my way back down.
Egg shell
I spotted this egg shell which was rather large for wild birds, about an inch in diameter.
Spring
I made it back to where Barry was sitting on the log and we headed on down, stopping to check out this spring which I will have to come back in the fall to check it out to see if the water is still flowing at that time of year.
We continued on down the hill to where Hondo was parked, just below.
I had Barry driving today and he was waiting for me to load up.
Dozer
I had him drop me off at the dozer as I wanted to move it further down the hill where it would be a bit safer. He took off and I followed on the dozer.
After parking the dozer we headed for home and Barry took off. I had a good break.
Bumper work
I moved my chop saw over to this work area and made some more pipes to fit into the bumper. I made a few mistakes trying to get the pipes the right size to fit, but eventually got them to fit and used the flux core welder to weld them up doing some vertical welds which actually worked out pretty good. So I tried some overhead until I caught my shirt on fire. That’s something I couldn’t do with the red buzz box. I had to work a bit to fill in the quarter inch gap on one of the pipes I didn’t do a good job of cutting right which was my worse one. 
The bumper
Here’s what I have so far. It has to be real strong to not have it bend when hitting a big tree. The bumper is fastened to the machine at the bottom and not at the top, which makes the top have a lot of leverage to possibly bend the top of it, so I have to put a couple more pipes on it to give it more support at the top. The shape of this bumper is dictated by some big engine covers that have to pull out the back on each side, so that’s why the big slots on both sides. I figure two more pipes on it and then I can clean it up to paint it.
Nice day.
