The boy and I sure we can take it down, a little notch action and we could drop that sucker on a dime, well maybe a nickle. The mom objected. We were able to convince her we could at least trim back some of the lower limbs.

To prepare we went to Lowes and picked up a hard hat for the dad. Sure it may seem like overkill, but we are cutting things above our heads and me, the dad, is really into setting a good example and as they say, safety should never take a holiday. I may have received some sideways looks from neighbors, but the boy now knows being safe is more important than looking cool.

Here is the boy and I ready for action

So back to the tree. I got my pole tree trimmer/saw and started taking dead limbs down.

The saw may be small, but cuts through the limbs like nothin’ (notice the boys helmeted head in the bottom of the picture, safely out of the way)

At one point a tree limb pinched the saw so I had to climb up into the tree with a  wedge and hammer to get it loose

The aftermath (well part of the aftermath, in reality this is about half way through)

We got most of the limbs that were in any danger off falling. The real fun was using the mower and a rope to drag the largest limbs into the backyard.

The difference between normal carving and man carving is the use of power tools. Our tool of choice, the black and decker handisaw.

We went the traditional jack-o-lantern route, nothing too wild. The mom told me the types of pumpkins I used to carve were too scary for the boy. For those not in the know, I am a pretty well accomplished pumpkin carver. All total I have won almost $200 in gift cards for my creations over the years. I also have two pumpkins on extremepumpkins.com.

So by normal standards this pumpkin was pretty tame.

The boy supervising the carving

It’s like normal carving, only faster and more dangerous

cuttin’ eyes

we had to use a knife for the details

The boy checking out the finished project

(for the record I took the blade off the saw before letting the boy hold it, safety first)

just a couple of dudes and a jack-o-lantern

We went out and dug the final batch of carrots out of the garden.

Short and stout

Just a couple of farmers showing off their harvest.

We got a sweet deal on a Bosch 14.4 volt cordless drill on Amazon. It is a beauty.

Here are some pictures

Here it is in front of its huge storage case

Here is the new drill with the boy’s toy drill. It is like the daddy drill and the baby drill.

Here is the boy checking it out

Now we just need to find something to fix to test it out.

The mom spilled a delicious Sonic orange slush on the carpet. As she ran up stairs to grab some towels the boy and I said “fear not”. We marched off to the toolbox room and emerged with the shop-vac. A few seconds and a little sucking later and the carpet was clean and dry.

Once again the men, their know how, cool heads and awesome tools prevailed.

We rolled up our sleeves and dove in. A little wrenching, a little wiring, and little pulling, and a surprising lack of any swearing and the Blue Ninja is good was good as new.

Here are some pictures of the proceedings.

Headlight assembly, check, tools, check, the boy, check

Loosening the bolts (10mm incase anyone is keeping score at home), notice the extension, that means we are big time mechanics.

Getting dirty rooting around for the wires.

Out comes the old assembly, we are half way home.

The headlight hole

Check out all the water that collected in the headlight from one little crack in the lens.

Getting the wires ready for the new light. This is the tricky part. Luckily I know what I am doing…..I hope

With the wiring done we popped in the new headlight, make sure it is sitting correctly and tighten the bolts

The boy made sure the bolts were tightened to the proper tolerances.

The boy showing off our handy work. The Blue Ninja is good as new.

My passenger side headlight lens was cracked when it was struck by flying debris as I was driving up Afton Mountain one night.

Instead of paying to have it fixed, the boy and I used the insurance money we got to buy the replacement assembly and will swap out the old for the new ourselves.

We are both pretty excited because we will get to use our new set of metric mechanics wrenches, the 10 millimeter size to be exact.

Here is the new assembly just out of the box.

Well, I guess technically it is still in the box.

Stay tuned

The first picture is a view of some of our tools on the tool board.

In the middle are some of the boys favorite tools, our standard size wrenches (the metric set is currently on assignment) behind them is one of our ratchet sets.

The next picture shows a few of our power tools.

On the lower shelf from back to front are: the saws-all, the heavy duty dewalt drill, the sander, the jigsaw (another of the boys favorites),  the cordless dremel and a bunch of rechargeable batteries for some other power tools.

On the tops shelf from back to front  are: the circular saw, the laser level, the small cordless reciprocating saw( the boy calls this a chainsaw) and a can of wd-40.

Stay tuned for more tools

I must say I don’t mind crawling around, sweating my butt off pushing batts of insulation between the joists. It does give me an excuse to say joists.

Here I am about to head up into the attic, notice the coveralls, grandpa lew gave them to me, they are coal miners coveralls and I am told they are fire resistant, maybe someday we will have to test that.

Here is a close up of my headwear.

I figure two more trips up into the musty blue yonder and we will be sufficiently insulated.

Project update

The anti-scald faucet installation has been placed on hold. Removal off the old pro-scald faucet will require a little more work than the mom anticipated. So it is on hold until further notice.