Gettin' a Grip...

 After finishing welding up the snow blade, I realized there were a lot of vise grips pliers. So I dug around in the garage, the basement, and upstairs and this is what was there...

Apparently they're all Vise-Grip brand, except the second from the top and bottom, which are Craftsman. Since I always bought the original vise grips, not sure where the one near the bottom came from, maybe out of my dad's toolbox after he died. The smaller one near the top was found on the side of the highway when I was driving the tractor over to a neighbors. Then I remembered there were a couple more...

The top one's for bending sheet metal while is bottom's mainly for welding. It didn't get used this time cause it wouldn't work setting the wings at an odd angle to the snow blade. 

According to Wikipedia, "The first locking pliers, with the trade name Vise-Grip, were invented by William S. Petersen in De Witt, Nebraska, United States in 1924; the brand name Vise-Grips is close to a generic name for this type of pliers. Locking pliers are available with many different jaw styles, such as needle-nose pliers, wrenches, clamps and various shapes to fix metal parts for welding."

So there you go, you can't have too many vise grips when it's time to weld!

Gettin' the Angles...

After mounting the old plow on my new, for me anyway, 4-wheeler, the resulting plow job was less than spectacular (Solstice Stuff 12/23/20). Most of the snow falls off the sides of the blade, so figured it needed some side boards to keep the load intact. A while later, maybe a couple of years ago, made some angle wings out of a piece of steel that had been cut from an old barrel we had used for making a stove.

Finally got around to welding them onto the blade. Since we couldn't find the magnetic welding forms that Andy bought me years ago, had to finagle some way to hold the metal wings on an angle to spot weld them to the blade. Who says you can't have too many vise grips?

Jack Black...

Not much new to report, mostly been splitting and stacking wood for next winter. The wall o' wood slowly disappears as well as a few spruce and birch logs got bucked up and split, adding to the stacks of firewood. But Andy's been getting some random shots of Jack Black, so thought I'd add them to the post. 

Here he is sleeping in the loader bucket. He never had much to do with the tractor before, but now he seems right at home.

Here he is inverted on the floor. Like Ruty before him, upside down is the way to go.

And finally on the bench by the back door. Not sure if he hangs out here to keep an eye on things or it's just another place to sleep. I suspect it's the latter.