I haven't contributed here in a long time! My big news lately is that I finally have a shop with heat in it for the first time in my adult life. You'd think someone 60+ years old living on the NY/Ontario border would have done something about this decades ago, but I'm as stubborn as I am cheap. So I've been spending a lot of time in my new favorite place to be. In the past week I've repaired 5 or 6 chainsaws, got an ancient Foley-Belsaw chainsaw chain grinder back together, motorized and more or less ready to work, welded up a pedestal stand for it and got that bolted to the floor, managed to figure out a way to hang my arbor mouted wire wheel and motor off the column on said pedestal, figured out how to reverse the rotation on a 3/4hp electric motor (successfully) for the first time and got that mounted to a low speed grinder for grinding things like chisels, axes and plane irons, more or less reorganized my collection of manuals and books related to everything shop oriented, fixed my late father in laws old hand lantern (the type that used the 6v, screw terminal batteries that run $20 if you can even find one) to operate off a couple of 6v rechargeable batteries I got on sale at TSC ( I think they were for deer feeders or maybe cameras of some sort), discovered that I need to build an insulated cabinet to put my cordless battery chargers and batteries in after reading the manual for my new DeWalt 1/2" 20v cordless impact my oldest son got me for my birthday and finding out they aren't supposed to be charged at less than 45F, managed to get my no good, hunka crap, POS Coleman side by side out of the field it's sat in for 6 weeks back to the garage so I can hopefully get the no good, hunka crap, POS to a dealer that actually has the know how to repair it since we haven't had use of it since early June, and today I rehung/secured a post vice that had decided losing it's leaf spring while falling to pieces was something I'd enjoy messing with! Oh, and I got to comfort my 17 year old going through another broken heart because "Boys are JERKS!!!". (Yeah honey, I told you that moron was 100% ahole right after the first time I met him, but no girl has ever listened to her dad in the history of mankind, so we're par for the course!) But, at least I got to do it all with warm fingers and toes. Life is good!
And then today, after searching for literally years and years for a very nice, yet affordable!, example of a McCulloch 10-10 to ad to my ever growing collection of chainsaws, I managed to snag not just a nice 10-10, but a VERY nice Pro Mac 10-10, AND!, a Pro Mac 700!!!!!! For those not into chainsaws, that kind of like running onto a stash of minty H+G's or a pair of consecutively numbered Smith 357's. It just doesn't happen to people, especially people like me and most especially not when people like me actually have access to enough cash to make the deal. It's a big thing for me, I'm.....giddy I guess is the best word. Dang they're nice!