Druidic exploits of a various nature!!

[Muz]

aye sorry guys ..... been real busy ...... owe you all a huge catch up

Dont owe us nuttin fella .. I think we all owe you for the pics, details, knowledge , and all else when we get it *looks around* ......innit boys ?.......*hears clapping*

[Nobody]

Dont owe us nuttin fella .. I think we all owe you for the pics, details, knowledge , and all else when we get it *looks around* ......innit boys ?.......*hears clapping*

[ianoz]

Yep , what the boys said . I have been lucky enough , that Druid , because Facebook is so easy to share photos , to see most of them as the job progressed , but didn't want to steal his thunder by posting them here .

[v8druid]

cheers guys .... .... " normal service will be resumed, as soon as possible"

One down side of not being here for 5 weeks is ... the missus has been left to her own devices ..... and dug up a sizable chunk of patio ... she been on about some flower beds in it for a while ..... came home one evening to find the beginnings of a 'pile' of rubble on me patch .... which had increased substantially by last Saturday ...... my last day in Ross!!



in fairness, the patio's succumbed to the cold weather this year (and last) and a lot of the slabs needed replacing, so she's re-used any good uns where she's been able to and now we have two bare patches about 8 x 8ft in the middle .... (forgot a pic) ... which're gonna get some beds built (guess who'll be doing that) and planted by the boss ...... still fathoming HTF I am gonna get a serious amount of dirt into the buggers though ..... other than a lorrabarraloads

Stuck me lil kinshoffer grab on the VA-r this afters and relocated said pile of rubble, from the patch and 're-laid' 'the patio slabs' some where useful



Now for a lot more rubble and it'll be half passable with some black on top

now as for Ross .... WTF do I start/did I get to ????

[2414.ginger]

Nice to se you back Druid, although I have kept up to date on the other channel.
You need Wee Jim with his new toy to come play with your rock pile, you would have plenty of hard standing then.

[v8druid]

too bloody right ...... gonna get a local guy to come have a look at me rubble heap shortly ..... give me an idea of £? to turn it into hard stand fodder

Haven't had much time to keep t'other channel up to date either

[v8druid]

different angle today .....



she's had me busy .....

this lot were in a tidy stack .... all spaced out on stickers ... about 10 ft high ...



..... at the back of everything else....... up on the top level .....



which although not its usual cheesecake consistency .... was still pretty soft, but dry enough to leave 95% of it up there when I came back down, with a LARGE pile of the most expensive sleepers in all Christendom.

after some considered measuring, calc.ing and chopping with 'Charlie' (the chain saw) they turned into this ........









ready to be relocated to the recently 'excavated' patio

These sleepers are some of the most traveled you'll ever see ......

I used to do a lot of machinery movement and installation for an American co. locally ... made car component pressings for all the biggies

these got air freighted in from Chicago on 747s to Heathrow at a cost of $20,000 per unit ..... been used to make pallets, for six big C frame Hare presses .... they'd gotten held up in some freighting/shipping strike over there and were needed real urgent.
Company paid for special, instant customs clearance, on arrival and came straight to the factory, where we'd been sat tooled up and waiting since 18.00. ..... our 25 ton crane to off 'em with and stand 'em up, 2 x 7t FLTs and enough skates, jacks, bars, lifting/shifting gear and cribbing to sink a ship !!

Arrived at two in the morning (and it was snowing like ****), laying on their backs ..... we had 'em unpacked, uprighted and installed in the line ready for a 07.00 shift start .... not a night I'll ever forget .... ..... like flies round sh1t all night !!

When we'd cleared up the carnage, I was asked if I would be kind enough to dispose of all the 'crap' .... .. "do the bears crap in the woods" ..... these are the last of my Yanky sleepers .....12" x 6" crossings ...... the 15" x 6"s got used to build Pam's veggy boxes, some time ago.

Anyway ..... I now had to relocate these to said patio .... having spent some considerable time getting these right .... as in ..... the right way round, the right way up and all cut to suit the 'hole' (according to the boss's desires) and looking pretty reasonably 'as required', I reckoned the safest and easiest way, (rather than wop 'em all on the forks and lug 'em round, en mass), was good ol' Manuelle Labori ...... so .......




this bugger nearly got away from me


and there they were ........



Gone!!


The boss and her 'apprentice', inspecting progress






Just got to get some ironmongery installed inside, to keep 'em all put and in shape ....... and make another one


Then ...... fill the buggers with dirt ........ which is gonna be yet another challenge, in its own right ...... access onto here is not easy .... without knackering the slabs ..... can get close-ish ..... but the final few yards is a barrow job ....... or fly it in by helicopter!!!

So guess what I'm doing in the morning ...... No. 2
i

[Nobody]

Looks good! Cool to have the back story like that of material now reused as decoration
How did you go about attaching them to each other? Would love to build something out of sleepers at home.. but would probably be hanged by the neck until dead by the municipality for enviromental polution

[Muz]

...... access onto here is not easy .... without knackering the slabs ..... can get close-ish ..... but the final few yards is a barrow job ....... or fly it in by helicopter!!!i

Or phone in rent-a-boyo for some muscle ... (Ihave to say that sounds a bit dubious)

[v8druid]

Or phone in rent-a-boyo for some muscle ... (I have to say that sounds a bit dubious)

........ sounds like a plan ......... if it didn't sound so "dubious"

[v8druid]

Looks good! Cool to have the back story like that of material now reused as decoration
How did you go about attaching them to each other? Would love to build something out of sleepers at home.. but would probably be hanged by the neck until dead by the municipality for enviromental polution

Perforated galv.ed wall plate fixing strips ..... got hundreds of off cuts i kept from a crop job years ago ..... lopped about a 1000 of 'em down to length for a customer and kept the off cuts .... as I knew they'd cuminforsummat ..... still got a few hundred left ..... just bend 'em into angle brackets and nail the lil' buggers into the corners .....

How can re-cycling be construed as polluting the environment Boyo ....

[Nobody]

Perforated galv.ed wall plate fixing strips ..... got hundreds of off cuts i kept from a crop job years ago ..... lopped about a 1000 of 'em down to length for a customer and kept the off cuts .... as I knew they'd cuminforsummat ..... still got a few hundred left ..... just bend 'em into angle brackets and nail the lil' buggers into the corners .....

hehehe! If you just got a few hundreds left, they sure must have been handy!
Concidered U-bent rebar for that extra rustic look?

How can re-cycling be construed as polluting the environment Boyo ....

The ones you got there dont look too much impregnated, so that would work out fine.. All I can get a hold of is dripping wet with creosote Turns the ground into a rainbow on a wet day

[v8druid]

well the sun shone on the righteous today .... was very nearly warm ..... and t'other got lopped up and assembled .......





the cats loved their new playpen/dust bath












Pam returned from her 6 weekly 'pilgrimage' to the hair dressers this morning, armed with the beginnings of her planting regime ..... before I'd even finished nailing the damned things together

Late start though, after an early start .......to the vets with one of the miaows .... has a sore mouth and needs some dental work .... so bloody busy, he gotta wait damned near a week .... unreal, so he'll be on the moggy version of pain killers and antibiotics 'til then .... great fun getting capsules down his throat ... they stick, unlike ordinary tablets, so have to wash 'em down with a syringe full of water (old Indian trick ) ..... all whilst trying to hold this 6.5kg cat down !!

re-stacked all the now excess/surplus to requirements std. UK sleepers ...... and the last two Yankies ......



...... before setting about packing/palletising Metod's (Traktorist) new band saw I picked up for him about a month ago ..... first weekend I was over at Ross with Alex's job.
not been here, since then, to sort out loading a carrier to collect it, for the trip to Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Nice saw, not far from me ........ and I wish I'd seen it first ..... Met had PM-ed me on FB to ask if it was far and could I please - pretty please - deal with it for him .... which I did ..... in fact I damn near stole it for him ..... 'twere a bargain

been sat here ever since, waiting for me to be at home ... to pack it and load it.



















told they'll be here tomorrow ...... sometime

Don't think it'll escape off the pallet 'en route' .... and'll hopefully arrive in the same condition as it leaves me ..... driver's in for a shock tomorrow .. as a lot are ....... when they get unloaded/loaded, by a VA-r wielding, fork equipped 'duck' ...... it's a first for all that've experienced it so far

[v8druid]

hehehe! If you just got a few hundreds left, they sure must have been handy!
Concidered U-bent rebar for that extra rustic look?


The ones you got there dont look too much impregnated, so that would work out fine.. All I can get a hold of is dripping wet with creosote Turns the ground into a rainbow on a wet day

Aye I know the type ... come across a few of those in me time .... the type you don't even want to handle ..... bought a load for a job I was doing for Royal Ordnance once ..... jeez did we ever get in a state, handling and fitting them into their final resting place .... new ....straight out the vat I reckon

[v8druid]

got a phone call from a truck driver this morning 'bout 11 o'clock ..... "How do I get to you?"

" where are you?"

" Bottom of Penbidwal Lane "

Don't FFS try and come up there ... it's a struggle with the car!! " and proceeded to re-iterate the directions I'd emailed his outfit yesterday!


Good job I can see the top-ish of our drive from my patch ... watched him sail by our turning about 10 minutes later .. and just caught him before he ended up in a world of sh1t.

He eventually maneuvered his way backwards up the lane to where he should've turned right, down the drive and stopped in the turn area by the cattle grid 2/3rds the way down ..... as instructed.

18 tonner and was not even gonna try and get him down to me ...... "hang on there and I'll bring the pallet up to you"

Five minutes later he was well surprised to see a duck heading his way with a pallet on the forks .....
Instead of pulling into the turn area, he'd parked across, it along the length of the road and as I pulled up along side him says "how we gonna get that in the side curtain?"

"Simples" said I ..... as I spun the forks 90 to the dipper and slipped yon pallet onto his bed

He was impressed!! ........ as predicted .... another first for yet another truck driver and Metod's bandsaw was on its way to Slovenia

Sorry ...... no pix ..... didn't have the time