They need visas!Wouldn't it be easier just to get some Hebrew slaves and a couple of Egyptian taskmasters?
The Cook Shed
- Thread starter WarDamnEagle
- Start date
This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.
- Thread starter
- #142
Laid the 5' slab off the side of the Cook Shed this morning. Had no intention of doing so. Morning started off innocent enough but then the 3 yo grandson asked to ride on the Kubota. Bucket still had some #57 and some crush and run so we parked it nearby and went to ride the Gator around with all the tools. He hadn't lost all patience at that point so we shoveled out some aggregate and started tamping.......
Fast forward an hour or so and we have a slab placed.
Fast forward an hour or so and we have a slab placed.
I bet he will buy a tractor when he is old enough. Sounds like you etched his memory. Fantastic!!
- Thread starter
- #144
He's come a long way in a week and a half. My oldest son, his father, is moving the family from the Florida panhandle to Colorado Springs, new job with the same company. He is already out there and our daughter in law and the two grandchildren are staying with us until they buy a house in Colorado Springs. At first he wouldn't go near the tractor or the gator but it only took about a week before he warmed up to the idea. It helped that our daughter was here last weekend with her family and her three children are very use to equipment between mine and their other grandfather. Her youngest is just 3 months older than this one so he's been watching and learning from him.
I was still pleasantly surprised when he proactively suggested we go "ride the Kubota".
Not the best picture to illustrate my madness ...
Behind the CA is a two-wheel dump trailer that I picked up at Northern. Visible in the trailer is our son-in-law. Hidden from view is our eldest grandson.
Our grandkids call rides in the trailer as tractor rides. This picture is several years old because we now have 3 grandkids and the older grandkids watch out for the younger, so the son-in-law is no longer needed on tractor rides. We buzz around the property and the park on the next block over, which has always been a hit.
However, I would rate the best tractor rides are to Culvers for frozen custard. The Culvers is ~3/4 of a mile away and the CA is small enough to scoot up-n-back on the sidewalk. With the dump trailer loaded with 3 grandkids + 2 aunts plus the tractor in lead position, pulling up to the drive-thru window is an attention getter for the Culvers staff and a memory maker for the grandkids.
It is fun for all. Enjoy your personalized tractor rides.
Behind the CA is a two-wheel dump trailer that I picked up at Northern. Visible in the trailer is our son-in-law. Hidden from view is our eldest grandson.
Our grandkids call rides in the trailer as tractor rides. This picture is several years old because we now have 3 grandkids and the older grandkids watch out for the younger, so the son-in-law is no longer needed on tractor rides. We buzz around the property and the park on the next block over, which has always been a hit.
However, I would rate the best tractor rides are to Culvers for frozen custard. The Culvers is ~3/4 of a mile away and the CA is small enough to scoot up-n-back on the sidewalk. With the dump trailer loaded with 3 grandkids + 2 aunts plus the tractor in lead position, pulling up to the drive-thru window is an attention getter for the Culvers staff and a memory maker for the grandkids.
It is fun for all. Enjoy your personalized tractor rides.
- Thread starter
- #146
That old Allis Chalmers reminds me of an old Farmall Super C tricycle tractor we had on the farm when I was young. It was only used occasionally and then only to maybe pull a small trailer somewhere on the farm. There was a crosstie bridge on the farm with no ties in the center and my uncles were adept at driving this tricycle tractor across said bridge by riding one of the two front tires on one side or the other of the split bridge. The "bridge" was over a drainage ditch and not very deep but one day one of the farm hands had to go across the bridge with that tractor and totally missed the concept. He ran the front tires off the ties and into the ditch. He wasn't hurt but it broke the tractor literally in half where the transmission bolted to the engine (engine and transmission being the "frame" of course).
Good times with the grandchildren for sure and certainly outings they will always remember. It's important to be the "cool" grandfather.
By the way, we haven't had any carpenter bee or mosquito activity at the cook shed thus far. So come on in; the water's fine.
- Thread starter
- #147
Just took an after dinner meloxicam. Guessing I will be better tomorrow. Nothing pulled or strained but I haven't been this sore in a while. Second consecutive weekend of the staircase build. Only 1 1/2 days each weekend. Thankfully the youngest son is home for a few days to help my son in law and myself. We finished the relatively easy placements last weekend and had to start sliding them into place from the side yesterday. I know that sounds easy, "just slide them over", but sliding these 400 lb slabs across relatively slick forklift forks is like trying to undo Velcro by sliding the two pieces in opposite directions - in other words, tantamount to impossible.
On the bright side though, we are past the "two slab" treads. It's all single treads now and only 10 or 11 left to go (have to see where we wind up at the top). Single slab treads are much less digging, shoveling, tamping, etc. Unfortunately though, the higher we go the more difficult it is to get the tractor close.
No photographic evidence; no presence of mind given the relative humidity lately; but we basically slid each slab onto a 12x48 sheet of birch plywood, got them more or less centered, and then slid them forward onto short pieces of the same material. Prybar lifted each side and pulled the plywood. Have to be very careful not to screw up the expertly compacted crusher run. Pregame huddle of ultimately like minds vetoed any notion of flipping these slabs into place - contrary to my last posted "idea".
So you might say, 13 slabs in a total of 3 days doesn't sound like much...and you might have a point; but let me throw out a couple of figures. We have laid 5200 lbs of stone slabs and placed 5400 lbs of crusher run and 1000 lbs+ of #57 stone under the slabs. The #57 is in a pile and scoopable with the tractor bucket but the crusher run comes in a super sack (1 yd3) so it has to be shoveled into the bucket. Both materials have to be shoveled out of the bucket. So if you consider that every shovel full of crusher run has been moved twice, we have manually handled 17000 lbs of material thus far and that's not even considering the slightly less dense but almost equal volume of dirt that we have had to remove and move.
But enough of my whining. It looks fantastic!
On the bright side though, we are past the "two slab" treads. It's all single treads now and only 10 or 11 left to go (have to see where we wind up at the top). Single slab treads are much less digging, shoveling, tamping, etc. Unfortunately though, the higher we go the more difficult it is to get the tractor close.
No photographic evidence; no presence of mind given the relative humidity lately; but we basically slid each slab onto a 12x48 sheet of birch plywood, got them more or less centered, and then slid them forward onto short pieces of the same material. Prybar lifted each side and pulled the plywood. Have to be very careful not to screw up the expertly compacted crusher run. Pregame huddle of ultimately like minds vetoed any notion of flipping these slabs into place - contrary to my last posted "idea".
So you might say, 13 slabs in a total of 3 days doesn't sound like much...and you might have a point; but let me throw out a couple of figures. We have laid 5200 lbs of stone slabs and placed 5400 lbs of crusher run and 1000 lbs+ of #57 stone under the slabs. The #57 is in a pile and scoopable with the tractor bucket but the crusher run comes in a super sack (1 yd3) so it has to be shoveled into the bucket. Both materials have to be shoveled out of the bucket. So if you consider that every shovel full of crusher run has been moved twice, we have manually handled 17000 lbs of material thus far and that's not even considering the slightly less dense but almost equal volume of dirt that we have had to remove and move.
But enough of my whining. It looks fantastic!
Last edited:
Soreness is your bodies way of reminding you not to forget all those small (and large) muscle groups you haven’t used since the last time you rode a bull or hunted T-Rex with a sharp stick.
Highly reccomend the following:
Tart Cherry extract
Omega 3s
Magnesium
Small Knuckle boom crane.
Beautiful work on the steps.
Highly reccomend the following:
Tart Cherry extract
Omega 3s
Magnesium
Small Knuckle boom crane.
Beautiful work on the steps.
Great work Greg and crew! Could you use straps to place the steps?
- Thread starter
- #150
Maybe Michael. The straps would likely mess up the tamped aggregate but it would probably be manageable. Impossible to use straps with my tractor though at this point as I can't get the forks over the remaining pathway. I think we will just have to set them to the side, uphill, and slide them into place using gravity as much as possible.
We are sliding them onto the top step first (with plywood underneath). These steps don't move once they are in place so working on top of the last step doesn't disturb anything. Once they are on the top step and aligned side to side they only have to be moved forward ~ 14" onto the tamped aggregate. By using 2 small pieces of slick birch plywood we have been able to slide them forward and then lift one side at a time with a barge pole to pull the plywood. That technique has thus far minimized any disturbance of the aggregate base.
Now if I had a crane sitting around and not costing $1000+ per day then I would definitely figure out a way to use straps. And cranes don't like hills so it would have to have a pretty good reach.
@Chungas Revenge, by small knuckle boom crane, I assume you mean a forklift attachment boom crane? That might work but it would be trial and error for sure.
- Thread starter
- #152
Good suggestion and something we gave a bit of thought to. Quite a pain to set up though and remember the position you're flying them to changes every time. I think for now we will stick to what is working until it doesn't. Worse case scenario we drop them inside the yard at the top of the hill and slide them down on plywood. Pretty sure that's imminently doable, just slow and arduous. We have the technique down pretty well to move them into place once they are set on top of the last (top) step and thankfully that's a relatively immovable object to stage them on. It's also nice that we aren't dealing with two slab treads anymore. Those were much more painful to get set properly and at the right relative heights.
Last edited:
- Thread starter
- #153
Switched gears yesterday afternoon and got a few hours in with the youngest son laying brick on the pit. Only finished two more rows but that's enough for me to warm up to the "Old Jackson" brick. I'm happy with the results considering we are total neophyte brick and block layers but my goodness we are slow. Slow, but I can tell we are learning and getting faster. I also go through 1 shirt a day vs 4 or 5 when working on the stair treads so it's almost a relaxing day all in all. Who knows in about 5 years I might be able to eek out a living doing this.
He's headed home tomorrow and we are coming up to a few weekends of home games so probably not going to make much more progress in the next few weeks on the stairs or the pit.
He's headed home tomorrow and we are coming up to a few weekends of home games so probably not going to make much more progress in the next few weeks on the stairs or the pit.
Maybe something like this would work?
- Thread starter
- #155
Pretty cool. Thanks for sharing. Will have to give that technique some thought. Of course my pipes would be on dirt so they might have to be larger. Maybe 2" sch 40 pvc?