Bog Ditching Spring 2003

Ditching a Spring Bog

May 2004 - A Killer Weekend...

With better drainage over the last year, the ground has dried up enough that we can bring in trucks and the tractor to do some work.

This is just one of close to 20 loads of wood that we hauled over the last month.

From the previous page you can see how much the bush has been thinned and cleaned-up.

For every load of wood there were probably 3 loads of brush.

We burned brush from about 8:00AM right through till 5:00PM on one of the nicest sundays this year.

Most of the burning was being done after work in the evenings.

This isn't really work (especially since Sandy did most of it...), or because we'd stop and just sit by the fire with a cool beer when ever we wanted.

I knew I'd put the Back-hoe to use, but what I'd never imagined was how much I'd enjoy it...

On friday night I thought I'd put in 1 hour before heading out to a poker game... Even though I didn't take any Bug-Juice (insect repellent) with me I endured the torment of thousands of black-flies for 3 hours, as I couldn't pull myself from the controls.

This is my progress by Sunday afternoon...

Initially I scoured the web in search of some sort of general manual of Back-Hoe operation. Surprisingly I found next to nothing... But what I kept coming across were coroner's reports on deaths related to back-hoe mishaps...

Perhaps that was the best way to get a sense of how not to handle a back hoe...

The physical movement came almost naturally once I started to just use my finger-tips to move the hydraulic levers.

This stretch of highway can be quite treacherous for commuters due to wild life hazards that abound.

This fawn stood and watched the truck for close to 5 minutes.

Unfortunately I didn't have my trusty 32 Special at hand or I'd have finally gotten myself that spotted vest that is more than a fashion statement... but a status symbol within the circle of people I call "Friends".

The delicate taste of such a young animal is akin to milk-fed veal, except for the pronounced cedar taste so prominent this time of year in these ungulates.

And to top it all off...

Above are a couple of pic's of my latest acquisition, a Dual-Head Lars-Gorton CNC Vertical Mill. This unit dates to the early 1980's (as determined from the maintenance manual drawings dated 1982).

The Lars-Gorton was originally used to engrave ID info on reactor tubes at the Chaulk River Atomic Energy Laboratory, from there it changed hands at least twice... and now it sits patiently in my shop about to be resurrected to it's former glory.

The original controller was likely scrapped by the first owner, as it was a Numericon 850, a CPM based text based terminal that predated the earliest version of DOS, loading it's GCode from a streaming tape reader. Likely the next owner cannibalized the Encoder driver board that was originally housed in the square box located on the base with the octopus of cable harnesses coming from it. The last owner prior to me is a machine builder that I met by chance that is a mechanical genius.

A chum and I went to his shop to pick-up the mill, we figured we'd be there for about half an hour... A full tour of the shop took a pot of coffee and closer to 2 hours, it was a most humbling experience to see a 22ft wood lathe used to turn 15 ft pillars, a spindle lathe that was designed and built in the shop that can turn-out a perfect banister spindle every 6 seconds, numerous custom machines that cut specialty blades from a library of patterns to a CNC plasma cutter with a 4 ft by 4 ft cutting area.

The Lars-Gorton lost it's encoder motors to one of the many machines, and was mine for the taking. Once home I spent a couple hours pouring over the manual to see what I had in my possession. With little more than a few long days effort, the machine can be made serviceable as a manual mill... My first step.

Once I know what condition the ways, ball screws and beds are in I'll start to plan it's return to automated machining capabilities. The mill heads (yes there are 2 Left-Right) are 1.75HP power-quill units that require a 90PSI air supply for cooling and 210V single phase. Only one power-Quill speed controller remains that has a range of 4,000 to 24,000RPM...

Like I said, just a killer weekend.

Return to Main