Day 1260

I woke up at 8:50 and got up immediately.  After pet stuff and breakfast I did a little surfing.  It was cold, upper 50's, and windy.  I figured that I wouldn't be able to put the weather vane up, but I could get it ready.

I went out to the garage to work.  I'd spent a good deal of time last night visualizing how I might put things together and put it on the pole.  That pretty much went out the window when I actually started looking at things.  There was rally only one way to do it.

The first step was to center the new bearing in its housing.  Yes, the cheap Chinese had shipped it off center.  That didn't take long as I have plenty of experience in doing that.  Then I measured the length of bar that I needed and cut four lengths.  This went really well.  Two of the lengths didn't need anything to make the nuts thread on.  The other two only needed light grinding.

I put a nut and lock washer on the end of each length to make it "bolt".  I put the two bearings on the shaft.  Then I put each bolt through the top bearing.  I put two nuts and two washers on the bolt between the bearings.  Then I tightened the top to nuts to the top bearing.  When all 4 "bolts" were installed I lined up the bottom bearing housing with the top one.

The result was a really strong and ridged structure that turned freely on the two bearings.  I was pretty happy with the result.

By the time I was finished it had warmed up to about 70 and the wind had died down.  So I got out the tools and ladder and got Ellen out to help.  When I lifted the vane to the top of the pole it went into the four holes easily.  Unfortunately I'd left the "bolts" almost too long to fit nuts on.  I had to put nuts without washers on three of the bolts.  Then I could put bothe washer and nut on the fourth.  Finally I took off the other three and added the washers.  When I tightened everything up the vane was level and turned freely.

Putting the tail on the vane went really well because I'd done it before.  The end result is really nice.  It took about two months from start to finish to get it installed.  Ellen took several pictures to send to her sister.  I wish the wind would pick up again.

I put everything away and went back into the house to surf and order a car cover for the Bronco.  I went back out to do my exercises.  Lunch was a turkey sandwich and some crackers.

Lee had texted to say that he'd bring his daughter over sometime in the afternoon, so I surfed until they showed up.  I showed them the property.  He also wanted to see the new Traeger.  After he left we went to HEB, mainly because I was bored.

I was going to stop at the shaved ice place, but they had at least 15 people in line.  So I went across the street for yogurt.  We stopped at HEB and bought a couple of things.

When we got home Ellen fixed pizza on the Traeger for dinner.  After dinner it was TV.  I'd had enough surfing for the day.