Gate cable duct

 In feb 2013 I pulled in a dodgy data cable to the gates with the power cable.

Lost a core in March for the gate open. No spare cores, so swapped it for the door bell.

Pulled in a new pure copper today. Existing pull was very stiff and gave up at 20m. Turns out the duct had quite a lot of water in the horizontal portion. Sucked it out with the hoover. Then tried to pull a plastic bag down. Only went ~1m. There is a joint, so maybe that killed the suction.

Tried again with more lubricant and it went in quite easily until the last 5cm when the pull snapped!

Wood

 It's that time of year again. Wood for the wood store.

A shock this year, as the tree repo was bare.  I'd thought that there was a fair amount of oak, but it turned out that there was mostly compost from birch cut several years ago. A small amount ~1/4 stere was cut.   Birch that fell last year was wet, but cut to burn this year. A large goat willow was wet and will probably be rotten by next season.

Oak felled a year ago was put in the back of the store. About a stere had failed to stay in a pile and had fallen and got very wet. Another pile of a stere had been kept dry until October when the cover blew off. It's the start of the next 2 rows. These 2 will be topped off with wet birch.

A friend has 10 stere of beech, so this have to be found a home.

Snake Bush

Snake bush is so called as we found small 2 asp vipers there when we hadnt been in long. Back then it was maybe 2m deep and 4m long. We'd hacked it back quite hard a few years back as it was causing a fruit tree to not grow straight.

Today it was probably 4m deep, 10m long and around 6m tall. Removed up to 1m in depth in some places (it borders the neighbours) and maybe 3m off one end, and some of the blackthorn trees were 4+m. Plenty of bramble too. We had a good crop of both sloes and black berries this year.

Even with kevlar gloves, it was punishing work. About 2 man days providing about 2.5m3 of chippings.

Captur rear view mirror trim removal

 Another hour of my life...

Separate the 2 parts as best you can, and pass a small screwdriver under the tab nearest the screen (blue) and lever the yellow one gently down, using the blue tab as a fulcrum.

Releasing one seems enough to wiggle the other off. Then the lower cowl can be removed.

Hedge cutter

 Removed bolts and spacers, cleaned with oil, removed burrs and sharpened with diamond file. Didn't remove from body.

Hedges

Cut the southern hedge back very hard on top. It's down to around 1.5m, to allow it to grow and be cut at 1.6m where I can just reach. Took off around 2m in places - the laurel had got way too tall. Around 4m3 of waste shredded in 1 hour. About 40m of hedge.

Parkside PFDS 33 B3 dead on arrival

 80€ at Lidl. I'm not a good (stick) welder, and a good welder will not make me a good welder. Looked at the more expensive one (140€) which does everything, but only seems to be sold in Belgium. Disposable gas bottles last 15 mins according to plenty of forums and at 25€ a pop, that wasnt going to happen. I could hire/buy a bottle, but I weld maybe 10 times a year. Gasless was the way to go for me. And after a bad start I'm happy with the results.

Set it up, turned it on, fan spins, but no wire feed.

The main circuit is very similar to this one https://www.instructables.com/id/MIG-Welder-Repair-and-Mods/   but it is AC output, and the speed control is more complex. All the pin numbers and AC correct on this one. https://www.reddit.com/r/Welding/comments/amsy7p/help_can_someone_please_explain_the_wireing/ Mine uses the welding supply to drive another bridge, and the drive is 24V, so ignore all the electronics. 

When you press the trigger, you complete the AC circuit from a small 12V trafo on the pcb, which drives a large relay and a small relay together, so you should hear a click. I had no click. The large relay feeds the large welding trafo. The small one runs the feed motor via a 4069UB chip, pot + SVF740 mosfet

I removed the PCB, and the 1/2A fuse, and put a 12V psu on the fuse and pin 4. Doesnt matter that it's DC as the next device is a bridge rectifier. Nothing. Tried on the relay.  All good. Kept working back and it was a dry joint on the bridge. Looked fine, but a quick re-heat and all good.

I repair quite a lot of stuff and this is by far one of the best pcbs I've seen in cheap gear for a long time. They could be fake parts, but they are branded, and the soldering is err good. I think it's hand soldered, but it looks like lead to me, not ROHS - way too shiny. A good layer of conformal coat too...all over the connector too! 

The dodgy one is on the right

harbor freight flux 125

I might look at changing to DC - see here 

https://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/modding-a-really-cheap-swiz-ac-welder-some-help-please.85827/