Sugaring weekend

I finally got some time away to do some sugaring. I went to my friends sugarbush about 3 hrs. N.W. of Green Bay. He has about 200 taps in his sugarbush.  I made a 3 x 4 divided pan which he plumbed up and extended his arch for. 

Arch specs: WEGNER METAL WORKS  3 x 4  divided pan in front(3 channel), WEGNER METAL WORKS 3 x 4 divided pan in back (4 channel), preheater over rear pan, bulk tank supplying. Forced air, wood fired arch made by Mark hawkins (in picture).

you can see the progression of light to dark from right to left. This shows how the divided pan work pushing the more cooked syrup towards the end through the channels.

Parker had tons of fun running around the farm and riding on the tractors to collect.

Mud Mud Mud. Most of it came out.

This picture was early morning before we fired for the day.

All in all it was a great weekend to see my pans working in action. I learned a lot and am looking forward to doing it again. I'd like to get some land with some maples on it to start my own sugarbush now.

Second week of March

This week was still a busy week. Been working on some custom pans. My friend Mark needed a 3x4 divided pan for his rig. He's running two 3 x 4 divided pans on a forced air arch. They collected 200 gallons of sap and did their first boils last week.  Working also on a replacement for an old english tin Leader pan for a customer. I still have a finish pan and a 2 x 4 divided pan to get caught up on. 

 I've been working on plans for next season and will be posting new items as I get them done.

First week of march

Things have been steady at the shop. I've been selective on orders as to keep things moving smoothly. I've been sticking to standard size orders. This week we shipped out 10 orders early in the week. Wednesday I came down with the flu that the rest of the family had last week. So I didn't get anything done wednesday or thursday, but my helpers still came in and got some work done for me. Last night I did some ground work for today by tacking up 5 pans and welding a couple up. My friend Mark Hawkins came over and we drew up the plans for his 3x4 divided pan. We sheared, bent and tacked his pan together and if all goes well, I'll be working on that some more today.

This week I saw a video of one of my pans on the Mapletrader.com forum. Loun(screen name) posted it on his test fire. It was exciting to see some of my work put to use, and his block arch looks great.

Romania update.. I had a huge answer to prayer for funds being raised to go. I had a package that got damaged earlier in Feb. and UPS denied the claim(improperly packaged supposedly) so it was sent back to me and I made another for the customer. I considered it a loss, and scrapped it. Tuesday UPS sent me an email and called me saying that they reversed their decision and now will honor the claim, sending me the full invoice amount + shipping costs. How often does UPS do that?!! That was a huge blessing and now I have almost have the funds raised to go.