I guess I missed out on de-lurking week

As Big Daddy Possum mentioned earlier this week, but I don't it matter 'cause all four five of you normally leave comments anyway.

Moving right along, I didn't get to try out the chainsaw-on-a-stick, or rather I did, but I going to have to read the manual... that's a hard thing for a guy to admit, but it's true. Something is not quite functioning right. I did have it running, but not at a fast enough rpm to cut any limbs. Besides, it was too bloody cold to spend much time outside. Matter of fact, I didn't accomplish a damn thing today other than going with TC to look at the Dozer from hell.

Some guy told him he had a big old Allis dozer he wanted to sell, so we went to look at it. This monster turned out to be a 60's-70's Allis HD-16, a huge machine that weighs close to 25 tons. That is probably overkill for what TC needs a dozer for, but it's cheap and if it will hold together for about four days, it won't matter if it blows up because he will have finished clearing everything he needs to clear. Then he can sell it for scrap. No kidding, this thing will push down anything in front of it.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop? Herein lies the problem, otherwise known as the reason it's cheap... there is a crossmember underneath this beast, about amidships, that holds the whole shebang up out of the dirt. It be broken.

The old boy tried to weld it back together, did a half-ass job and it broke again, he's got a piddlin' little ole chain holding it together right now.

I'm thinking the reason his weld didn't hold was because that crossmember is probably a cast part and this genius probably tried to weld it with a 6013 rod or a mig or something else that won't work with cast steel. See. Allis was big into casting back when they were in bidness. If I'm not mistaken, they built some (or all) of the cast pieces for the turbines in the Hoover Dam (read that somewhere, don't recollect where, so don't hold me to it). Anyhow, bigger brother thinks he can weld it up, but he needs to look at it to be sure.

TC may be getting himself a behemoth toy to play with in the near future. Hope so, I'd like to borrow it for about a day.