A neighbor wanted 50 bucks for an old farm bell. I’ve always wanted one so I jumped at it. I forgot before pictures but trust me, at 100 or so years old it had a crap ton of poor paint jobs.
When I brought it home the yoke was not broken. When I stood it up it cracked. I noticed it had already been repaired in a couple spots so I decided to research new parts. They are still made but holy crap, to bring my 50 dollar bell back to working condition would cost close to 500 bucks.
Once the bell separated it was a lot easier to sand it completely.
The upright in the picture (last one) was home made with awful welds but it did serve it’s purpose for many years.
I’m changing it from a swinging bell to a stationary bell with a bell pull on the the clapper. Maybe for Christmas someone who loves me will get me the parts.
I’m not painting it, just going to keep it oiled now that it’s back to bare cast iron. I wonder how much lead I inhaled sanding off the paint. The rustoleum came off easy but someone, decades ago, put a really nice very hard coat of paint on it. Originally they were not painted new or from the factory.
If all goes well I should be finished tomorrow. It’s a C.S. Bell #2.
Finished. I’m going to get a better pull and maybe an original clapper if if I can find one. Any project like this that I can finish and walk away with all my fingers and no hospital visit is a good project.
I may braid my own pull if I can find a decent how to. My dad was able to braid and splice rope for anchors and other nautical uses. He’d be handy right now.
Put in a shady spot, and in a few weeks, there will be mushrooms.
Need to point out that any real mushroom growers are probably pulling their hair out right now, because i am not using sterile technique and such. For me, in my climate and with these mushrooms, it works. Oysters are incredibly aggressive and will outcompete most unwanteds, and pink oysters love heat, so VA summers are just fine with them. I have tried some others and gotten poor to no results. So i stick with a winner.
Tonight i will pasteurize another batch and do 3 more tomorrow morning. Fun times!
No, there are 1/4" holes drilled all over the sides. The 'shrooms grow out through those. I didn’t take close-ups, but yes, lots and lots of holes. If you zoom in on the pic, you can see them
The race is on!
I think I’m a week or two ahead of you, and I have no idea what I’m doing, but fingers crossed.
Do you add water, ever? We’ve been away a bunch since starting them, so I haven’t really been doing anything except to move them to a shadier spot when I saw they were getting more sun exposure than expected in the first spot.
I used 4#/3 buckets. Probably (certainly) could get away with less. I have tried several strains, but the pink oysters do the best in my climate with my technique. Mostly due to their aggressive, take no prisoners attitude. They are the mint of the mushroom world. And the pinks do well in heat. I would love to grow yellows or kings, but they just don’t take heat as well and our springs are too short to get anything from them. If I had a more climate controlled grow space, it would probably work, and I might do some this winter in my cheese cave, but for outside cultivation, pinks are the bomb.
I have an old disused cistern attached to the cellar that sometime in the past had an entrance put into the side. It’s about 8-10 ft underground and holds pretty consistent temps. So, I use it as a cheese cave. One of the advantages to having a 125+ year old house!
I’ve been meaning to do this for a couple years now, just been too lazy. But on our last trip, I found a live mouse in my kayak, which provided the impetus to finally stop storing our boats on the ground.
Basically just two studs, built up with 1x4s to fit the car’s rooftop rack, tied to the car’s rack with short pieces of webbing. I’ve got cam buckle straps permanently attached to the center of each crossbeam, sized so the buckle falls conveniently on the outside for easy tightening.
The strap clamps anchor the stack to the carrier (I’ve tucked the loose end into the door in picture two, but the strap doesn’t go through the car). Threaded endstops at the rear make sure the load stays where it’s supposed to.
As an added bonus, the carrier makes loading plywood easy- just rest the upper end of the sheet against the carrier and slide it forward.
I intended to make a more rigid version out of aluminum extrusion, but as with so many things, once a working solution is in place it’s exponentially harder to find time for improvements
