Walls a Plenty

My daddy always said a house aint a house without walls. Dont know if wall frames constitute walls, matter of fact they dont. But daddy would be proud I'm sure. The point of which is, um, We put the external wall frames up. Thus, with the addition of interior walls and appropriate fixings, a roof becomes a possibility. Which I would be far more likely to constitute as the defining feature of a house. However I have already stated that it is the working crapper which truly constitutes a house, and I shall stick to that. 

But it is nice to see what the view out of the windows will be, even if such windows are yet to be inserted. Actually it was pretty easy, the wall frames are really light and tech screw together easily. So... Onward, Avante!

Naked Lady VS Blast Furnace

Once I saw a lady with no clothes on, so my blast furnace in operation is not the coolest thing I have ever seen. However I have provided a couple of images for your  comparison and perusal, and I reckon you will have to admit the blast furnace is pretty danm cool. On the left is the blast furnace, and the lady with no clothes on is on the right. Just give the blast furnace a chance. Go on.

I fired up the furnace to fire the lining in order to finish it. It's called a blast furnace because you blow air in the bottom to force the fuel to burn feircly, and a jet of fire bursts from the top. Sparks fly two meters into the air. It took the thing twenty minutes to chew through a whole bag of heat beads, and when I looked in after that the interior looked like a depiction of hell. Red hot and glowing! Thus I was inspired to name my furnace as below:

The air blast was provided by a matress inflator attached to a length of thin walled tubing. The furnace will allow me to ment aluminium and zinc aluminium alloy, an in turn this will allow me to do green sand casting, which means that I can cast in metal of a similar strength to steel, anything I can make a pattern for. The benifits to an unplugger are pretty obvious, as we want to have the ability to bootstrap, or build ourselves up to an advanced level from nothing.

If you want to build a fire breathing devil, read David Gingery's "The Charcoal Foundry". Just be careful, "furnace" means "heat"! It aint called Lucifer for nothin'. Now get blasting and mind your eyebrows!

Good enough to eat

Here is the lid for my blast furnace cooking in the oven. Love those fancy handles! I need to fire this lid (metal hoop filled with refactory clay mix) so that I have it to sit atop the furnace when I fire it up for the self-firing run. This will allow me to get into greensand moulding and make my own bits for various projects.

Horay! beans are up and producing! Much less annoying than shelling peas, broad beans are definately the go.

Low Loader in the Land of Plenty

Went up to the Land Of Plenty to unload the latest shipment of house bits. Here are the steel wall panels. Also roof framing, windows and exterior doors amongst the shipment. Hmmm. The road ahead is long.  The deck is in a sorry state because I covered it with black plastic to protect it from the sun, but succeeded in creating a solar kiln which has caused the decking to heave and warp (aaaugh!) I am hoping that some decking oil will rectify things. We covered the new components in plastic and marked out on the floor where the walls are going. It's getting plenty hot in the land of plenty, and it's almost time to have local radio on (groan) to monitor bushfire warnings. Onward!

Peas to the world

My world at least. Have started to harvest the peas, got enough in the first harvest for a good family meal. Will not be challenging the pea industry just yet but it's a start!

Onions now clearly distinguishable from weeds which is nice.

Beans continue to grow, will be forming actual edible beany beans very soon

What a difference a bit o water makes. These critters show up every year. I assume they're hanging out somewhere we cant see in winter but tis spring here so they're getting more visible ATM. Great for eating flies (Australia, mate) and generally showing the health of the garden, frogs are a litmus test for life friendly gardening. Western Green Tree Frog, or motorbike frog, if you're interested. Here we have Him and Her, respectively.

Big Deck Man

Progress on the kit home: I shot up to the land of plenty with Bret and got most of the deck done in three days. The character of the house is starting to emerge. It is slowly starting to dawn on me that after all this building is done I will have an actual house here. Here is Bret as we near 3/4 of the deck down and dusted. Looks bonza I reckon. There's a man who's earned some beers on the deck in the Land Of Plenty. Pretty hard to get started on a job like this with one row (or less) of decking 2 1/2 meters off the ground, but it would've been an absolute horror show doing it alone. I'm right on track for the rest of the house to be delivered and that will be a milestone! Had the compost dunny(toilet) delivered a couple o days ago. Once that dunny is in I'm calling it a house. Pretty hot in the Land Of Plenty, which makes decking thirsty work, but the solar system will lap it up. Of course we could also burn fallen timber in a steam engine for power: Check out this post from factorefarm about modern, open source steam: http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2010/09/cyclone-technologies/  

                                                           
Wandoo View.  Good venue for a summer get together I reckon. With the addition of a railing. And a house.