[Bob in St. Louis]

Amen to that!
By the way...I still want to drive the Kubota! 

[ACHiPo]

This is what I did with my Performax 16-32 today...






It will be the top to my new stereo rack.  It's 3" thick curly spalted maple.  I figure the 47" x 18" piece weighs about 100 lbs. and it made about 100 passes through the sander.  I'm tired, but happy!

[ACHiPo]

How about some manly man tool talk. Post your new tool here.



I love my new cordless impact driver, even though I've not used it yet. It's got three torque settings and doubles as an impact wrench too. And a light. Whoa.


I've thought about getting one--they seem pretty cool.  Do you find the lack of a chuck a disadvantage?


PS Home renos circle still needs a facilitator. Like manly tool talk? Just drop me a line and you can sticky this thread.

[JohnR]

Do you find the lack of a chuck a disadvantage?

No, not at all! But it's for driving screws and bolts, not for drilling. I have a really good cordless drill as well This one takes quarter inch hex bits and half inch square drive.

For some reason Bosch use completely different model numbers for the US market,  but this appears to be known as the IDH182 (Amazon for reviews.)

I did get to drive a half dozen screws today, but haven't really tested it yet. My Makita 10.8V is a little beast but struggles sometimes e.g. screwing through aged hardwood battens.

Lovely piece of wood there.

[JohnR]

OK you win 

Seriously, how cool is that. Please do show some of your projects.

Relatively new, we picked this up last spring.



This thing is a whole lotta awesome

...headed out to dinner. I'll post some more pics of what she's been used for when we get back.

[Scott F.]

This is what I did with my Performax 16-32 today...

ACH, Bob,

I really need to get one of those. I've got a 14" planar but I have to use my hand sanders after to get that kind of smooth...and it's never really as smooth as a drum sander makes it. Those big drum sanders are awesome

[steve in jersey]

This is what I did with my Performax 16-32 today...






It will be the top to my new stereo rack.  It's 3" thick curly spalted maple.  I figure the 47" x 18" piece weighs about 100 lbs. and it made about 100 passes through the sander.  I'm tired, but happy!

Nice piece of wood !!! 

Are you sure you want to cover it up with equipment ? (He,he,he... Yeah, I can appreciate we love to display our Audio equipment, but
being a frustrated "Wanted to be an Acoustic Guitar maker but caved & went to work in Pharmacueticals for 30yrs & had a heart attack
instead " kind of guy", I'd have a hard time with this not being it's own focal point !)

Have you considered using it for a small table in front of your listening seat ?

Tools are indispensible things to have if we use them to "Step outside of the Box" that is our daily lives & create some type of imprint
of what we can do. (Naturally, I'm not talking about just a hammer & nails here!; but even that has it's place)

[Bob in St. Louis]

That's a great looking piece of wood!
Looks like it could also make two turntables as well. 

[Scott F.]

Besides my engineering day job, we've got a really small commercial farm. We grow jalapeno peppers for a local butcher shop who uses them for his spicy beef jerky. We also grow luffa's. My wife sells those to the local beauty shops for skin care. We also grow the usual veggies for friend and family consumption on the same plot. That is the biggest reason we bought the Kubota.

Here are a couple of the projects I've used the tractor for;

Here is the latest. We live basically on a hillside. In turn, we built a big patio and landscaped the hill that surrounded it. First is a pic of the landscaping and sets up the issue we were having. As you can see, we've got a big mulch bed on the hillside. In turn, three or four times a year we get really heavy rains and what happens is the water rushes off the hill and it strips the hill of the mulch.



So, a couple weeks ago I took a full week off to fix the problem. What I had to do was create a swale that surrounded the driveway, the mulch bed and the garden (because the water washes all the fertile topsoil off). I didn't measure it but the swale is about 600' long.

On the driveway side, I took back about 10' of the woods on our property cutting out a couple of trees and honeysuckle. I then cut in about a 36" deep swale. Though the Kubota isn't a production machine and the hydraulics are sorta sketchy, it did a fairly decent job. Oh, to cut the swale, I used a 4' tiller attachment to loosen the soil, then I used the front bucket blade to move the soil to the sides of the swale then I installed a 4' box blade to cut the swale a bit deeper in the middle and do the finish grading.



On the top side of the main mulch bed I cut about an 18" deep swale with the box blade







then on the back side of the property leading down to the garden, I cut about a 12" deep swale to keep the water from washing the topsoil in the garden away




last year Zoysia (grass) took over the garden. Since its a rhizome (deep, mass rooted grass), there was no other choice but to strip about 6" of soil out of the garden because you can't kill this stuff, it just keeps coming back. Here's a pic on the garden with the new topsoil I brought in. I got the dump truck stuck in the front yard where he couldn't make it back to the garden so we had to dump two loads of soil in the driveway . In turn, I moved 24 cu yds of soil and 12 yards of mulch.








Here's the garden with the fencing up and my wife adjusting the sprinkler heads




Here's a pic of the first year we did the garden with all the plants up and thriving. The garden is at least twice as big now.




Besides using it for the garden we use for doing all kinds of stuff around the property. Here' we are digging a few holes an planting some arborvitaes lining the driveway at our bridge. 



You might think this would have been a hard sell to my wife in order to buy a tractor but, believe it or not, she has said numerous times, how the heck did we get by without this thing over the years. Thankfully my wife isn't a girlie girl. She's into power tools and is also a 'car guy' hence our (her) TBird and my (hers also) truck. In fact, today she put on her bibs, grabbed the truck and headed over to my daughters house to help her get her garden up and going.


JohnR, as for winning, not a chance bside123 (Din) has a full blown commercial farm that supplies his local community, his sandwich shop plus his farmers market. My little Kubota is all of 25hp. I think Din has two or three tractors and all of them are over 50hp. A couple of years ago he dug and stocked (I want to say) a two acre pond. Now THAT is a project.

That said, I still love this little thing. I've got a ton of attachments for it. So far I've got the Backhoe, a box blade, the tiller (which is awesome), a 6' rake, a 6' blade for the front and a forklift for the front.

Right now, I'm debating getting a PTO (power take off) generator to use on the three point hitch. We loose power here several times a year. I've got a little 3500W gas powered unit but it doesn't cover everything we'd like. I can get a ~15kW PTO GenSet for the tractor and we could power most all of the house, heat and cooling included. I just need to install a transfer switch and outlet on the side of the house to make it happen. Still debating between the PTO Gen and a bigger stationary, backup generator (23kW liquid cooled propane powered).

[Bob in St. Louis]

That's impressive. You've done so much in such a short time, I haven't seen most of what you've shown here.

[Scott F.]

Best guess, last week I moved or dug 120 cu yds of material with the Kubota. Keep in mind that front bucket is only 6 cu ft (<1/4 cu yd).
I think I got the best part of 50 hours of 'tractor therapy' last week

[ACHiPo]

ACH, Bob,

I really need to get one of those. I've got a 14" planar but I have to use my hand sanders after to get that kind of smooth...and it's never really as smooth as a drum sander makes it. Those big drum sanders are awesome

I bought the Performax used, and it was ok at flattening the slab--certainly easier than hand planing (it was WAY too big for my 12" jointer/planer).  It left a lot of grooves that I smoothed with a Festool Rotex--probably because of the slab being cantilevered and the drum cutting into the wood.  I had an outfeed table set up at the right height, but really need a side and infeed table to support that big of a hunk of wood. This was my first time using it, so part of the issues I experienced may be due to my lack of experience.

I do know that I'm feeling every one of the 200 passes I made carrying and supporting that hunk of wood.  I even had to hand saw it to length--it was too deep for my circular or table saws, and too awkward for the bandsaw.

[ACHiPo]

Besides my engineering day job, we've got a really small commercial farm. We grow jalapeno peppers for a local butcher shop who uses them for his spicy beef jerky. We also grow luffa's. My wife sells those to the local beauty shops for skin care. We also grow the usual veggies for friend and family consumption on the same plot. That is the biggest reason we bought the Kubota.

Here are a couple of the projects I've used the tractor for;

Very impressive!

[Bob in St. Louis]

Have you calibrated the Performax?
I had a heckuva time doing mine. I "thought" I had it dialed in. I could put a steel rule under it, and it was perfect, but I kept having problems with gauging wood.
Took me a while, but I found out that I had tightened the conveyor belt in such a way that it twisted the entire deck.
There was about 3/8" of twist overall!    But of course, the distance from belt to drum was "dead on".
If you get your eyes level with the side of the belt, you should be able to see what I mean. Also, if you have a piece of board that's the same dimensions as the belt, see if it rocks on any of the corners.

[ACHiPo]

Nice piece of wood !!! 

Are you sure you want to cover it up with equipment ? (He,he,he... Yeah, I can appreciate we love to display our Audio equipment, but
being a frustrated "Wanted to be an Acoustic Guitar maker but caved & went to work in Pharmacueticals for 30yrs & had a heart attack
instead " kind of guy", I'd have a hard time with this not being it's own focal point !)

Have you considered using it for a small table in front of your listening seat ?

Steve,
I bought 400 bf of air-dried maple, much of it figured.  This is one of the few spalted pieces, and I picked it specifically for a shelf for my turntable.  The design will hopefully complement this cocktail table from The Joinery already in use in front of my listening couch.



AC

[ACHiPo]

That's a great looking piece of wood!
Looks like it could also make two turntables as well. 

I've got another ~400 bf of it, but not this thick--I was only able to get a couple slabs 3" thick.

[ACHiPo]

Have you calibrated the Performax?
I had a heckuva time doing mine. I "thought" I had it dialed in. I could put a steel rule under it, and it was perfect, but I kept having problems with gauging wood.
Took me a while, but I found out that I had tightened the conveyor belt in such a way that it twisted the entire deck.
There was about 3/8" of twist overall!    But of course, the distance from belt to drum was "dead on".
If you get your eyes level with the side of the belt, you should be able to see what I mean. Also, if you have a piece of board that's the same dimensions as the belt, see if it rocks on any of the corners.

Bob,
No I didn't do anything other than run an offcut of the slab through and got good results, so I dove in.  In general it worked well, just not perfect.  I'm a bit spoiled as boards coming off my 12" j/p are dead flat and smooth.  I guess I could have broken out the jointer plane, but kinda wanted to try out the Performax and was glad I did.  One of the problems was that the slab was cupped about 3/8" over the 18" width.  I flattened the back some, but it still rocked a bit going through.

Evan

[JohnR]

Right! New tools. Lessee...

This is the most awesome cordless drill/driver in the world. If you don't have one, you don't know what you are missing:



Seriously.

Anyway I just picked up a little brother to go with it. Enough with slow/gutless/imprecise drill/drivers from "major manufacturers." Now I'm pretty well set for the forseeable future 



They are being sold now at a silly price because Festool have taken over the Protool brand. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me but anyway. If you can find a Protool branded DRC-18 or PDC-18 and/or Compact version (no interchangeable chuck, smaller batteries), chances are it's a really good price.

[EdRo]

Where did you find that tool?

[EdRo]

My Boschs 12 Volt clutch is starting to fail. I need a new one!