The Useful Duck!

Friday, November 21, 2025

More failures in carpentry

I have had a couple days off from hauling Christmas Trees. I needed to make chicken feed and finish my floor yesterday.

I got off to a good start. I found the locations for the shower drain and the toilet. I drilled the holes in the right location! 

I made a tool to layout the holes. It was just a piece of paint stirrer stick which I drilled a hole for a screw and a hole for a pencil and then traced the outline to cut the holes.

Apparently there is a difference in radius, diameter, circumference, and I learned this in like elementary school. But I get easily confused. So in stead of taking half of 4.5 inches I doubled in and cut a 9 inch hole. 

Can you see a problem here?



This worked out for the best as when I got confused about finding flooring that was close to 21/32 I went with 3/4 instead of 5/8. I mean, go big or go home! Right?

This is a very handy tool. If I would have used it before I bought sheet of the wrong thickness it would have been better! I like the fraction feature.



So I cut a ring out of the better flooring material and put it under the toilet flange. That sucker ain't movin again!

I thought I would have to split the plywood to get it under the flange. But by accidentally cutting the hole twice as big I may have made a better floor.

I did not get a lot of work done. I mostly worked on five projects I had already started. 
A friend called me that he was cleaning oats and he was getting a lot of the hard inner oat seeds without the hull. I think they are called "grotes." He didn't want to dump them with the screenings and did I want them. So I took over my bag stand and we put a 1000lb capacity bag under the cleaner. 

It took six hours to fill and I got 1000lbs. This bag usually holds 850lb of whole oats so I am thinking there is good feed value there.

We also had people come out and repair posts in our hay shed. This was a relief as I figured for the past 8 years that I was going to have to stand on a pallet high in the air and work on this post.

Better them than I! Of course we don't have the bill yet...



I had to move a few things and of course the forklift was out of diesel, the battery in the pickup with the diesel tank was dead. 

I got them a couple loads of gravel out of the stock pile with the 2-60 White, then let them use it. I could hear them using the clutch as a torque converter a couple times in afternoon but just kept my mouth shut. The guys really liked my little tractor.  I think it is because it has no muffler...

In other news: One of my customers showed me an advertisement on MarketPlace for oat/grass/alfalfa pellets for $200 a ton bulk or $400 in a one ton tote bag. Then I see All Stock pellets down to $300 a ton. I wonder what is up with feed prices. I absolutely loose money below $400 a ton.

Perhaps I should stop negotiations on upgrading a pellet mill? Or just double down as I have raw materials stuffed in every spare nook and cranny!

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