Welcome to Westwood Metalworks, What is he building in there?

[Dan Dubeau]

Not much shop related stuff going on lately. A local contractor picked me up off the out of work list at the hall for a shutdown a few weeks ago and has kept me around for other since jobs and will hopefully try and get me some steady hours moving forward. It was just a couple days after I bought all the steel to finish my sawmill carriage I got the call, so that project got put on hold for a while......I don't foresee getting back to it between now and winter, but we'll see how it goes. After 6 months of being laid off with sporadic work here and there I've been taking all I can, and it's really nice to be working again. I took today and tomorrow off though, so I could trench in a new water line before the winter comes. Been running a temporary solution since Feb 2019.....D

While I'm waiting for the mini ex to show up I figured I'd track down the source of the banging I heard outside last night, and found a broken screen door latch on the back door to the shop. Luckily I found one hiding in a nearby scrap of aluminum angle and saved another trip to town.

That should help me sleep a bit better now....

Here's a pic of my view earlier in the week. 120' up, and 60' out assessing some building facade repairs. My first time in a lift, and it wasn't as bad as I thought. Kinda fun actually. Way off in the distance you can see my house .

 

[Dan Dubeau]

No sooner did I make that post than the truck showed up. First time ever running an excavator, and within 30 minutes I popped/dug out a small stump, and an old fence post behind the barn that I couldn't get with my tractor a few years back (when it was running). This thing is fun and super handy. I really want one......Wish I had a few more days with it around here, but I'll try and bust ass in the morning on the trench so I can play around more tomorrow afternoon with it, as there are a few more things I'd like to get to if I can.

I'll go out and play with it some more after dinner to get a bit smoother on the controls. There's a few stumps at the side of the house I'm going to try and dig out if I can.

 

[Tom O]

Watch for the gas lines a contractor at my brothers house hit his line .

 

[Dan Dubeau]

I lied. Couldn't wait till after dinner. Just put 2 hours on it, and dug out 7 cedar stumps from the side of the house. 2 of them were as big as the excavator itself. One was a cluster of three 15-24" stumps and a root ball about 4'x6' across. Pretty impressive what this little thing can do. I went after the biggest one first, and honestly wasn't expecting much, but digging out around all sides of the root ball little by little eventually got it free. Maybe 25-30 minutes for that one. Once I pried it out of the hole I could inch it along pushing and poking at it to shove it back into the weeds.

Pictures...

The middle stump is about 24"

I cut those cedar trees out of there about 12 years ago (22 of them). Tried pulling a few out with the tractor at the time with little success. I never would have rented this machine to do that job, It wasn't a big priority, and I always figured it would take a much bigger one anyway. Long story short, I'm pretty happy with this "bonus job". It'll be really nice to be able to just run the mower up through there now. As you can tell, I gave up trimming it years ago. Now there's enough room there to build another shed now.....

Pretty impressive little machine. I'll bust ass on the trench in the morning, and then see how many more stumps I can pop out till it gets dark. I did grind out a couple a few years back, but I think there's still about 7-8 more hiding in there. If I can clean up the ones around the blacksmith shed I'd be pretty damn happy about that. If not, I'll rent one again in the spring....

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Watch for the gas lines a contractor at my brothers house hit his line .

There isn't a gas line around here for miles (I wish there was...). Buried electrical wires though.... Digging the trench for the water line will be interesting. Trying to avoid the existing line, and an electrical line running out there too. Will need a spotter, and that was the reason for playing around with the stumps tonight, to get some more stick time and get more comfortable with the controls. Still going to have to hand dig some of it, but should be able to knock most of it out with the excavator.

 

[Bandit]

Leave you stumps tall if you can, the extra leverage can help trying to get them loose.
Generally it is the " just one more bucket full a bit closer" when the line hits happen or the not even knowing there is anything in the ground and digging!
We had to start shutting down any digging that was being done that did not have a B.C One call in place (B.C.) and locating done to confirm any lines in the ground, this was gas, electric, water and sewer. Ripping and tearing caused a lot of problems.

 

[Stuart Samuel]

Here's a pic of my view earlier in the week. 120' up, and 60' out assessing some building facade repairs. My first time in a lift, and it wasn't as bad as I thought. Kinda fun actually. Way off in the distance you can see my house .
View attachment 53703

I'm not bothered by heights, so the few times we've had to do site work on lifts, its generally been me.

Ended up in a what I'd call a spider lift (tank treads, plus six stabilizing arms) in a church (St. Paul's, on Bloor by Mount Pleasant) a few years ago, assessing some lights, and showing the electricians how I thought they should pack them to ship to our shop. I think the highest we got was 50', pretty entertaining. The four electricians (Guild Electric, I think) were a hoot, two massive (6'3-5", 250lbs+) guys, and two really petite (5'4ish) Quebecois guys. I guess they'd always have muscle when they needed muscle, and access to tight spaces when that was needed...