The postman hates it when I order brewing ingredients

Posted on January 22, 2017 by james

Can’t really blame him, to be honest. It’s very decent of him to carry this little lot all the way from the drive to the front door…

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100l stockpot HLT conversion

Posted on January 22, 2017 by james

Starting with the easier one first. The first part of the plan was to fit a 2.4kW heating element:

It needs a big hole, obviously and stainless isn’t the easiest of stuff to work with, so I used a Q-Max cutter of the appropriate size:

A pilot hole is still required, so to help in keeping the drill bit in place I put a few layers of masking tape on the metal.

The cutter works by pulling the cutting bit through the metal into a socket on the opposite side using a bolt passing through the pilot hole. Once the bolt is engaged, it’s just gradually tightened up using an Allen key:

It pierces the metal several times and gradually enlarges the cut, eventually pulling all the way through leaving an oddly-shaped waste piece and a beautifully clean cut:

That done it was just a case of fitting the element.

The holes for the other fittings were also made in the same way. I had a thermometer housing:

The tap (with an elbow on the inside so the tap actually draws from very close to the bottom of the pot):

The water inlet:

And the sight tube:

(The red seals for the fittings were cut from a silicone baking sheet, using a compass cutter sold by craft shops for cutting discs from cardboard and paper.)

It took a little while, but eventually I had all the holes cut.

That was all the hard work over, really. From there it was just a case of fitting the parts and nipping up the threads.

That done I poured in water so it was above all of the holes to check for leaks:

The boiler conversion was in fact pretty much the same. There’s no upper inlet or thermometer and there are two heater elements, but really that’s the only thing that is different.

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Let’s hear it for Kellyanne Conway

Posted on January 22, 2017 by james

“Counselor to the President”, whatever that means, but described by the BBC today as a “Top Trump aide”. Does that mean she can remember the stats on all the cards and knows which one is best?

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The Man Who Picked The Hornet’s Nest

Posted on January 22, 2017 by james

I had some empty hives stacked up in the apiary and when I was working there one day noticed a hornet flying about. It disappeared inside one of the empty hives where it had been knocked aside slightly (probably by a visiting deer or something like that).

When it left I opened up the boxes and removed the nest it had built, closing everything up again properly. The nest was in its very early stages, just holding the first batch of grubs the queen had laid.

To give an idea of scale, here it is with a tennis ball.

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Chicks Away!

Posted on January 22, 2017 by james

Most years I put some chicken eggs into an incubator to add to our flock that provide us with eggs and meat. This year I might try to set up a “chick cam” (somehow I feel that’s not going to get the desired results in a Google search) to watch the entire process (the first 20 days might be pretty boring though). Here are a few photos of the previous batch.

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First batch fermenting nicely

Posted on January 22, 2017 by james

Just a quick photo of the first batch of beer made in the beer shack fermenting away nicely in my fermentation cabinet despite the cold temperatures outside.

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A mangled mangle

Posted on January 22, 2017 by james

Whilst clearing out the barn to allow space for the scaffolding, I came across the remains of this mangle, hidden away behind some other stuff that must have been there years:

I wonder if they provided mangling services to Wile E. Coyote?

Also present was a bit that looks as though it needs attaching somehow, with wording stencilled on both sides:

A hunt for similar items in somewhat better order turned up this image from the Grace’s Guide website:

Clearly the one I found is missing the two tensioning bars for the top roller. I’ll have to hunt around to see if I can find them, though possibly it has been moved so many times that they have been lost.

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YM1510D battery addendum

Posted on January 22, 2017 by james

Once the old battery was removed and cleaned off, this useful part of the label became visible:

The replacement battery I purchased claims to be 48Ah and has a CCA figure of 430, so looks to be a more than adequate replacement.

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Yanmar YM1510D tractor battery replacement

Posted on January 22, 2017 by james

I have a Yanmar 1510D compact tractor, brought into the UK as a grey import. It’s a great little thing. Does lots of stuff that anything larger would just be too big for. The battery is giving up the ghost however. On cold days it absolutely will not start. And I need it working for tomorrow to transport stuff around for the builder doing the barn roof replacement. Unfortunately there’s not much information to go on regarding obtaining a replacement and the labelling is all in what I assume may be either Japanese or Chinese, but regardless it’s unintelligible to me.

Having cleaned the dirt off a little I managed to find the text “60B24R”. I think, though I’m far from sure, that is something to do with the battery rating and dimensions. It was enough to stick into a search engine however, and the results led to the inference that it might be the same as an NS60 battery. That’s not something I could find for sale in the UK either, but in turn it looks like it might be the same as a Yuasa 057 model. That’s something that even Halfords stock as as the HSB5057 (or elsewhere it seems to be available as an YBX3057 or YBX5057). The dimensions looked correct so I decided to go for it.

Not everything went smoothly with the replacement however. The bolts holding the battery retaining bracket were so corroded that one of the stays snapped when I was trying to get them undone. And then the negative terminal connector collapsed when I was trying to undo it. For the time being I’ve wired the battery into place so it can’t rock about or slide around until I can make up some new stays. And the terminal connector I just closed up with a pair of pliers and then tapped it into place on the terminal. Hopefully that will hold until I can get a replacement strap to connect the negative terminal to the chassis.

Despite the problems, once wired up and given a little burst of preheat the engine fired up first time, so it can at least be used tomorrow morning.

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Tearing the heart out of music

Posted on January 22, 2017 by james

My daughter likes to listen to Heart FM for reasons I’ve never quite felt the desperation to get to the bottom of, so it’s often what the car radio is set to when we go anywhere. I’m not a big fan myself, but when doing the Saturday trip to swim training today they actually played a few tracks I like, including Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise”, Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” and Clean Bandit’s “Rockabye”. But there’s a problem with the last one. It’s been emasculated by removing Sean Paul’s part altogether. I’m lost as to why anyone would do that. Part of the power of the track for me is the counterpoint between the two singers. Without that it’s really quite bland.

I’m reminded of the version of Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” that they used to play, where in reference to photoshopped images the lyrics are “we know that shit ain’t real” and the word “shit” was removed whereas it was apparently fine to leave “go ahead and tell those skinny bitches”. Seems bizarre to me that it wasn’t considered acceptable to call something “shit”, but referring to other women as “bitches” wasn’t a problem.

In the case of Rockabye however the rap sections don’t contain anything I’ve spotted as potentially offensive (and Sean Paul has been removed entirely, not just those sections). It makes no sense to me at all. Leave it alone. It’s a great track.

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