Almost There!

It may have been cold and snowy but work still needs to be done. This weekend was spent attaching valves to drain the sap/syrup, adding dividers to the large pan, and filling the pans with water to check for leaks and welding the leaks closed. Pah! If only it was that easy to weld the leaks closed. I'm sure if David was writing this he would say it was a big f*#@ing pain in the a$$!! Seriously it sucked, but David was persistent and finished late Sunday night. Next tasked will be to clean out the tanks, do a couple of boils and we should be good to go for the most part. Wheels will happen at some point but we don't need them to at least start.

I love how still it is when it snows out here

Valve to extract the mostly finished syrup

Layout for the dividers

Marking the pan for even spacing

Locating leaks when the pan was filled with water and welding them closed. Check out David's new welding helmet! I took the initiative and just got him a nice one. Definitely worth the money to have a nice helmet on a project with this much welding.

This one sucked royally. We filled it but the welds to close the leaks weren't working with water in the pan. Located the leaks using the air compressor to see the bubbles and mark the spots (that is where the water did help). Drain the pan. Weld the holes. Add water again. Check spots, weld again. As I said, big pain in the a$$.

One thing that David and I realized this weekend is how much the pans can hold. The preheater holds ~40 gallons and the large pan ~50. We figure the preheater will be a good storing container for sap collected through the week and then we'll probably just do one boil a week. Learning as we go.