I am burning some Black Walnut that I cut and split last spring. I have one stick of ash and two of BW in the stove right now. The BW is underwhelming as firewood so far. I assume that it is an issue of not being dry enough.
Working in the orchard
I flushed two antlerless deer out of the orchard when I drove in and I found four, fresh beds.
I was able to work for an hour and forty-five minutes before the second battery puked. I have them warming up before I put them on the charger. The outside temperature was 20 F and the wind-chill was +2F.
Bit-by-bit, I am beating the orchard back into shape.
Mopping floors
I have skilz!!!
Cold weather means that it is very dry inside. It is a good time to mop wooden floors. I put down water on about 100 square-feet and then pick it up. I run floor-fans to help it dry.
Mrs ERJ likes that I know how to throw a mop. She attributes my smooth ballroom-dancing moves to my practice with a mop.
It is possible that she is onto something.
Lucy Leftie
Back a million years ago, I was told that the SR-71 (the Blackbird) was one of our first fly-by wire planes. That is amazing when you realize that your wristwatch or your microwave oven have more computational power than the sum-total of the CPUs in the original SR-71.
The precise location of the Center-of-Gravity for the plane is critical for maintaining stability. The SR-71 had multiple fuel tanks in widely dispersed locations. Part of that was driven by the very streamline shape. Part of that was driven by the desire to increase the survivability in the event of being hit with shrapnel from exploding AA missiles. Combine that with the fact that pulling Gs with X and Y components plus pitch and yaw making the fuel slosh in the tank and you have a nightmare monitoring fuel-levels and knowing how fuel to pull from each tank to maintain optimum C-of-G location.
According to the person who was attempting to edumacate me on these things, each tank had five sensors. The high and the low readings were ignored and the three readings in the middle were averaged. I assume that part of the appeal of that approach is that it could be elegantly done with analog logic.
What does this have to do with Lucy Leftie?
She is getting wrapped around the axle with Donald Trump's victory. She believes EVERYTHING that comes into her echo-chamber. She believes that gay people and women and people-of-color will be hearing banjos and made to squeal-like-pigs. They will be thrown into county jails and turned into sex-slaves or they will be shackled to electric fences and tortured. Yes...they actually believe that...
Those of us who consider ourselves conservatives are not immune. Trump, who loves to troll Progressives, is getting trolled by the Left. Rogue judges, wholesale pay-to-play pardons and carpet-bombing Progressive donors with Presidential Medals of Freedom are twisting the knife. My inclination, my personality if you prefer, is to let it ride. Those moves are unlikely to age well because the optics reek. If your opponent is doing something stupid, don't stop him.
I know you didn't ask for any advice, but throw out the high and the low, average the middle, stay away from crowds and hold your family close.
Changeling Island
I enjoyed reading this book by Dave Freer.
Changeling Island is a coming-of-age story about a young man who feels like a misfit in the big city. The young man complicates his mother's social life so she sends him to an isolated island between Tasmania and Australia where the mother's impoverished ex-mother-in-law lives.
The pace is fast. Most of the characters are endearing. The villains are oily. The cops are not perfect.
It might not be a perfect book, but I enjoyed it.
Rumor has it that Dave Freer might be a guest editor for one of Raconteur Presses anthologies in the near future.
---Added a bit later---
The Black Walnut just wanted to run a little hotter with a little more wood in the box.
Sort of like my little-brother's 2-stroke race bike. Gotta keep the RPMs up.
Nothing wrong with it, if you know how to drive it.
Many thumbs up for Dave Freer's books. He writes in several genres, I especially like his Witches of Karres books with Eric Flint and "Joy Cometh With The Mourning: A Reverend Joy Mystery", a cozy mystery.
ReplyDeleteIt’s very dense wood which is why it’s perfect for gun stocks. I lived in Ohio for years and there was a heavily wooded lot of just over an acre that was covered in black walnut.
ReplyDeleteThe property was sold and cleared of walnut. They were hauling it off. I told the foreman that if he pitched it over my fence I would take care of it.
I split and stacked four full face cords. It takes walnut two seasons to season. It burns hot best, I used it in my fire pit and fireplace once it was dry.
If I cut green spruce and split it here in Alaska for fuel it takes two years to dry. Back in N.Y. I could cut live but diseased beech in May and burn it that winter! I agree, stay out of crowds and subways!
ReplyDeleteWalnut burns fine when real dry. Splits really easy, too.
ReplyDeleteMy beef with walnut is the vast amount of ash it produces. Over 50% volume of ash to wood burnt.
Cherry and oak leave maybe 5%.
I burn everything, including walnut. I just shovel out the firebox much, much more often with it.
NWA Mike
Any recommendations for a woodstove? Mine works fine but it has minimal glass. My wife misses the view of flames compared to a fireplace.
ReplyDeleteAlas, Mrs ERJ wanted to see the fire AND she didn't want a stove in the middle of the room. Our compromise was a fireplace insert. The most cost effective solution for us was made by Drolet which is a Canadian company.
DeleteI bought mine from Amazon but it doesn't look like they carry them anymore. However, Northern Tool DOES carry them. This unit (https://www.northerntool.com/products/drolet-escape-1500-wood-stove-65-000-btu-epa-2020-certified-model-db03135-86659) might be what you are looking for.
The other brand I looked at was Osburn. At the time I was shopping, they had a model with three "windows" so there was 180 degrees of visibility with regard to flames.
Lopi made the stove in my last house. I ran that thing as a primary heat source for twenty years (and it was there when I moved in). Built well, and parts are available.
ReplyDeleteMr. Copenhaver was my Strenght of Materials professor. He did the same thing. Threw out our two outlier tests and averaged the middle. I'd never thought about applying that to the echo chamber. Again, I get such illumination from the ERJ headspace.
ReplyDeleteI usually use walnut to get a fire going, but to "hold" the fire-go on to something else. Used a lot of it in years past, cleaning up the leftover treetops after selling walnut timber off my place.
ReplyDelete